IBARW 3: International racism

[oyceter]

keilexandra's post reminded me of a rant I've had brewing. (On a side note, this post isn't meant to argue with hers, as I completely agree with her post. Like yeloson says, "Where you stand with intersectionality is really about what you're looking for—are you looking for social justice for all of us? Or are you just looking for someone to pull their foot off your neck, without worrying about whose necks you may be standing on yourself?")

I was in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Shanghai for the past two months this summer, and I cannot even count the number of times I heard anti-black comments, from "Oh, that place is so unsafe, so many black people!" to "OMG she's dating a black person and it will RUIN HER LIFE!" Before ranting about how racist Chinese society is (and oh, it is) and having people once more use that as an example of how bad Chinese people are, I would like to note: where do people think this prejudice is coming from?

Obviously, there are not cities and cities in China and Taiwan filled with black people for the media to make histrionic reports about. Most TV shows in Taiwan don't have sassy black sidekicks or Magical Negroes. But turn on the TV, and what do you see but bad HBO action flicks with the black guy getting killed, or all-white TV shows from the US (and sometimes the UK, but mostly the US), or news on the New Yorker cover of Obama. I'm also guessing that when the West began to trade with China, the ideas of the skience of race were probably brought over as well, complete with the placement of Asians above black people and Native Americans in the hierarchy (but all below white people, of course).

Six hundred years of white colonialism leaves its mark, even on areas that have suffered relatively little when compared to others.

... which is not to excuse anti-black sentiment, because choosing to side with the oppressors, no matter what the incentives? Still made of lose.

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Comments

[oursin.livejournal.com]

Not to deny your point, because, certainly, internalisation of the standards of the colonisers, and even when resisted in any particular case, not always with radical challenges to basic concepts of the racialised hierarchy. But I also wonder if this also somehow bonded onto existing class/caste distinctions of paler (because spending more time indoors)/darker (peasants working in the fields) in colonised societies. Because those kinds of distinctions were certainly already in operation in e.g. the caste system in India when the Brits arrived.

[oyceter]

Well, I think that's part of it, but it's been so long since Western racial hierarchy has been imported that that's what's showing. I mean, there is a lot of "You must be paler! Do not tan!" going on, but the way it's thought of now is much more racialized than classisized (er, class-ized?). I.e. if someone's very dark, people say, "Oh, you look like a black person!" not "You look like a farmer/other classist remark."

It's also in how the prejudices against black people are different than ones from other darker-skinned people (mostly Indian and S.E. Asian right now) and how those prejudices precisely reflect back USian (and older, colonialist) prejudices and stereotypes about black people. And in comments about Oakland and Harlem and whatnot.

[hari-mirchi.livejournal.com]

Of course, the preference for lighter skin in India isn't entirely free of foreign influence. Before the British arrived, India was colonized by Persian invaders, who were much lighter-skinned than the existing population. (And no, I'm not talking about the myth of the Aryan invasion of 100 BCE -- I'm speaking of the Mughal empire beginning roughly 1500 CE) And the persian invaders, of course, had a history of warfare both with Greeks many many centuries before and with the Crusaders.