8 ms·

On Being Black in China

56 points by patrick-james 13y ago

steele 13y ago
Not to minimize the overall message, to be fair, those students would probably would complain about a ethnic Chinese English teacher.
- yapcguy 13y ago
  Just like how non-Chinese expats in Hong Kong get higher salaries and packages including housing allowance, whereas oversea born Chinese are treated as locals despite being expats.
olalonde 13y ago
I live in China and there is indeed still some racism towards black and even asian people. A black English teacher in China will have a much lower salary then a white person for example (though this is also true of English teachers who are asian). As crazy as it sounds, schools will often prefer to hire a white teacher who is not a native speaker to a black/asian teacher who is a native speaker.
- lambdasquirrel 13y ago
  You see some of the opposite here in America. For some reason or another, people tend to prefer an Asian-looking kung fu teacher to a Caucasian or African-American one. The present-day East Asian cultures have become strangely obsessed with image. There was one Taiwanese pop star, I think her name was Jolin or something, she's rumored to have had 3 different plastic surgeries in the last however many years, and come out looking quite different in each one. It's supposedly kind of scandalous now in Korea, when a husband and wife marry and then the kids turn out looking nothing like the parents.
  - noname123 13y ago
    > when a husband and wife marry and then the kids turn out looking nothing like the parents. Doesn't seem like a bad thing, just means that there should a good market for plastic surgery for the next generation.
    - cm2012 13y ago
      Yeah, I'm not sure what the common 20-something intellectual culture has with plastic surgery. We're all assigned a certain level of genetic prettiness at birth, out of our control (as measured by how people perceive you, facial symmetry, etc.) Isn't plastic surgery a great equalizer?
      - kalleboo 13y ago
        It's not an equalizer if not everyone can afford it, instead it creates an even larger gap between the haves and the have-nots.
cloudwizard 13y ago
I grew up on the Canadian Prairie. The only black people in the entire city were part of the professional football team. At school, the few black kids were tall and very athletic. It may be a stereotype but it was real in my city.
- shef_hauwanga 13y ago
  Are you certain that you knew every black student at your school or just the popular ones? If there are few blacks it makes sense that the ones you'd notice would be tall and athletic as these are qualities that tend to engender popularity for school children. Did you conduct a formal or even semi-formal survey? I've heard similar suggestions to this before and they rarely conform to reality. This sounds more likely to be a case of conformation bias.
  - philwelch 13y ago
    When you go to a school with very few black people, noticing one is already surprising enough that you won't miss many through confirmation bias.
temphn 13y ago
This author has an incredibly solipsistic worldview: Mao issued another statement of support in April 1968 after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. But despite these expressions of support, there is scant evidence to prove Mao or any other Chinese political leader at the time would have been willing to align themselves actively with the Civil Rights Movement. In fact, Chinese foreign policy in the 1960s mirrored much of that of the West, due in part to the Sino-Soviet split and the coming détente with the U.S. After the deaths of Mao and Zhou Enlai, the era of alignment with the developing world and oppressed peoples gave way to Deng Xiaoping's pragmatic plan for economic development epitomized by his statement, "To get rich is glorious." From the 80s to the present, this new mantra has fueled a single-minded devotion to the pursuit of wealth, leaving little room for concern with past ideals. The "past ideals" promoted by Mao included the mass murder of tens of millions of Chinese and almost thirty years of terror and poverty, from the Great Leap Forward through the Cultural Revolution. Not even a single mention or nod to this in the paragraph, which would have you believe that a mass murderer who gave lip service to the US civil rights movement is preferable to a man who brought a billion people out of darkness. One might even call such a view - that all that matters is a person's professed attitude towards a black American - culturally imperialist. As the author notes in passing, post-Deng China is substantively doing a lot more for people of African origin via trade than Maoist China ever did. But all that matters are the "past ideals". A modern expression of the modern American religion: thou shalt not be saved through works, only through lip service towards MLK alone.
- pradocchia 13y ago
  The passage you quote seems fairly neutral to me, and you appear to bring more baggage to the conversation than the author himself. There was in fact a qualitative change in popular Chinese outlook from Mao to Deng, never mind the damage Mao inflicted on the country. China became more materialistic, less ideological, less idealistic. White people were associated with rich and powerful western nations, so their prestige increased. Black people were associated with poor African nations, so their prestige decreased. This was independent of any preferences for light and delicate features. And I think this was one of the author's points, that shifts in popular outlook have affected Chinese perceptions of black people. What might once have been an asset (perception of shared suffering under capitalist/imperialist oppression) is now a liability ("we're poor but not as poor as you!").
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
munificent 13y ago
creating a vacuum of knowledge, drawing in stereotypes and prejudice That's a beautiful turn of phrase.
j_s 13y ago
See also: "You'll never be Chinese" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4366203 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4366203
pessimizer 13y ago
I've been asking for this for years, but if anybody can come up with a method (website?) for me to figure out how black people are seen in different countries and regions, that would help me a lot. Seems like the only way to tell is to fly somewhere, then find out that your experience there is not going to be like your friend's was. Racist heatmaps?
- VladRussian2 13y ago
  "how black people are seen" - i don't think it can be answered by one number on the scale from 1 to 10. For example, Russians are pretty racist, nationalistic chauvinistic, antisemitic ... you name it, basically Equal Opportunity Haters ... and there are a lot of disrespectful jokes about black people as well. On the other side - we drank a lot with the black students we had at our University and at other places and the girls liked them as well. >then find out that your experience there is not going to be like your friend's was. yep, he may be a cool guy and you're a party pooper or vise verse :)
  - auctiontheory 13y ago
    Reminds me of this old joke: A CIA spy is on his first day scouting Moscow. Fluent in Russian, he is confident of blending into the crowd. First, he stops at a store to get an apple. The lady there gives him a big smile, "Morning Mr American, how can I help you?" Shocked, he quietly buys an apple. Next stop, an old lady on a park bench. "Morning ma'am, can I have the time please?" "Sure, Mr American, it's 9.15." He's really worried. Is his disguise that thin? He meets a cop and asks directions. Having received the usual "Certainly Mr American, it's the third block on your left," he asks, "Excuse me, how do you know I'm from the US?" "That's easy," replies the policeman, "you're black."
    - VladRussian2 13y ago
      Yep, many years ago a friend who just moved to VA near Langley was a bit surprised seeing first time a couple of black guys in suits shopping in specialized Russian food store and speaking perfect Russian :)
peter303 13y ago
For me living in China as a white American student in the 1980s was to wake up to minority prejudice. That is to be treated different, sometimes better, sometimes worse than native Chinese. Its something I had not felt in the US. An amusing thing was is that I could understand what people would say about me in public because they assumed most foreigners did not understand Chinese. Or to visit a tourist site and read the prices in English ten times higher than in Chinese.
beachstartup 13y ago
i'm an american and i'm not white, or black. at some point you have to just stop giving a shit what other people think of your race/skin color.

56 points by patrick-james 13y ago

Not to minimize the overall message, to be fair, those students would probably would complain about a ethnic Chinese English teacher.

yapcguy 13y ago
Just like how non-Chinese expats in Hong Kong get higher salaries and packages including housing allowance, whereas oversea born Chinese are treated as locals despite being expats.

olalonde 13y ago

I live in China and there is indeed still some racism towards black and even asian people. A black English teacher in China will have a much lower salary then a white person for example (though this is also true of English teachers who are asian). As crazy as it sounds, schools will often prefer to hire a white teacher who is not a native speaker to a black/asian teacher who is a native speaker.

lambdasquirrel 13y ago
You see some of the opposite here in America. For some reason or another, people tend to prefer an Asian-looking kung fu teacher to a Caucasian or African-American one. The present-day East Asian cultures have become strangely obsessed with image. There was one Taiwanese pop star, I think her name was Jolin or something, she's rumored to have had 3 different plastic surgeries in the last however many years, and come out looking quite different in each one. It's supposedly kind of scandalous now in Korea, when a husband and wife marry and then the kids turn out looking nothing like the parents.
- noname123 13y ago
  > when a husband and wife marry and then the kids turn out looking nothing like the parents. Doesn't seem like a bad thing, just means that there should a good market for plastic surgery for the next generation.
  - cm2012 13y ago
    Yeah, I'm not sure what the common 20-something intellectual culture has with plastic surgery. We're all assigned a certain level of genetic prettiness at birth, out of our control (as measured by how people perceive you, facial symmetry, etc.) Isn't plastic surgery a great equalizer?
    - kalleboo 13y ago
      It's not an equalizer if not everyone can afford it, instead it creates an even larger gap between the haves and the have-nots.

cloudwizard 13y ago

I grew up on the Canadian Prairie. The only black people in the entire city were part of the professional football team. At school, the few black kids were tall and very athletic. It may be a stereotype but it was real in my city.

shef_hauwanga 13y ago
Are you certain that you knew every black student at your school or just the popular ones? If there are few blacks it makes sense that the ones you'd notice would be tall and athletic as these are qualities that tend to engender popularity for school children. Did you conduct a formal or even semi-formal survey? I've heard similar suggestions to this before and they rarely conform to reality. This sounds more likely to be a case of conformation bias.
- philwelch 13y ago
  When you go to a school with very few black people, noticing one is already surprising enough that you won't miss many through confirmation bias.

temphn 13y ago

This author has an incredibly solipsistic worldview: Mao issued another statement of support in April 1968 after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. But despite these expressions of support, there is scant evidence to prove Mao or any other Chinese political leader at the time would have been willing to align themselves actively with the Civil Rights Movement. In fact, Chinese foreign policy in the 1960s mirrored much of that of the West, due in part to the Sino-Soviet split and the coming détente with the U.S. After the deaths of Mao and Zhou Enlai, the era of alignment with the developing world and oppressed peoples gave way to Deng Xiaoping's pragmatic plan for economic development epitomized by his statement, "To get rich is glorious." From the 80s to the present, this new mantra has fueled a single-minded devotion to the pursuit of wealth, leaving little room for concern with past ideals. The "past ideals" promoted by Mao included the mass murder of tens of millions of Chinese and almost thirty years of terror and poverty, from the Great Leap Forward through the Cultural Revolution. Not even a single mention or nod to this in the paragraph, which would have you believe that a mass murderer who gave lip service to the US civil rights movement is preferable to a man who brought a billion people out of darkness. One might even call such a view - that all that matters is a person's professed attitude towards a black American - culturally imperialist. As the author notes in passing, post-Deng China is substantively doing a lot more for people of African origin via trade than Maoist China ever did. But all that matters are the "past ideals". A modern expression of the modern American religion: thou shalt not be saved through works, only through lip service towards MLK alone.

pradocchia 13y ago
The passage you quote seems fairly neutral to me, and you appear to bring more baggage to the conversation than the author himself. There was in fact a qualitative change in popular Chinese outlook from Mao to Deng, never mind the damage Mao inflicted on the country. China became more materialistic, less ideological, less idealistic. White people were associated with rich and powerful western nations, so their prestige increased. Black people were associated with poor African nations, so their prestige decreased. This was independent of any preferences for light and delicate features. And I think this was one of the author's points, that shifts in popular outlook have affected Chinese perceptions of black people. What might once have been an asset (perception of shared suffering under capitalist/imperialist oppression) is now a liability ("we're poor but not as poor as you!").

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

munificent 13y ago

creating a vacuum of knowledge, drawing in stereotypes and prejudice That's a beautiful turn of phrase.

j_s 13y ago

See also: "You'll never be Chinese" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4366203 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4366203

pessimizer 13y ago

I've been asking for this for years, but if anybody can come up with a method (website?) for me to figure out how black people are seen in different countries and regions, that would help me a lot. Seems like the only way to tell is to fly somewhere, then find out that your experience there is not going to be like your friend's was. Racist heatmaps?

VladRussian2 13y ago
"how black people are seen" - i don't think it can be answered by one number on the scale from 1 to 10. For example, Russians are pretty racist, nationalistic chauvinistic, antisemitic ... you name it, basically Equal Opportunity Haters ... and there are a lot of disrespectful jokes about black people as well. On the other side - we drank a lot with the black students we had at our University and at other places and the girls liked them as well. >then find out that your experience there is not going to be like your friend's was. yep, he may be a cool guy and you're a party pooper or vise verse :)
- auctiontheory 13y ago
  Reminds me of this old joke: A CIA spy is on his first day scouting Moscow. Fluent in Russian, he is confident of blending into the crowd. First, he stops at a store to get an apple. The lady there gives him a big smile, "Morning Mr American, how can I help you?" Shocked, he quietly buys an apple. Next stop, an old lady on a park bench. "Morning ma'am, can I have the time please?" "Sure, Mr American, it's 9.15." He's really worried. Is his disguise that thin? He meets a cop and asks directions. Having received the usual "Certainly Mr American, it's the third block on your left," he asks, "Excuse me, how do you know I'm from the US?" "That's easy," replies the policeman, "you're black."
  - VladRussian2 13y ago
    Yep, many years ago a friend who just moved to VA near Langley was a bit surprised seeing first time a couple of black guys in suits shopping in specialized Russian food store and speaking perfect Russian :)

peter303 13y ago

For me living in China as a white American student in the 1980s was to wake up to minority prejudice. That is to be treated different, sometimes better, sometimes worse than native Chinese. Its something I had not felt in the US. An amusing thing was is that I could understand what people would say about me in public because they assumed most foreigners did not understand Chinese. Or to visit a tourist site and read the prices in English ten times higher than in Chinese.

beachstartup 13y ago

i'm an american and i'm not white, or black. at some point you have to just stop giving a shit what other people think of your race/skin color.