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.

• Intl. Blog Against Racism Week 3


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Comments

Re: chuuuuuuuuurch!

[oyceter]

Argh, I know! I was just reading Saiyuki Reload, and oh, Minekura, I love you, but I have problems with Gat, the large, preternaturally strong, nearly silent, very stoic NDN. I mean, seriously!

Re: chuuuuuuuuurch!

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

Heh, whereas I adore Gat because at this point, my expectations for Indian characters in comics are very low, and he exceeds them quite handily. He doesn't speak broken English (well, broken Japanese -- I understand he speaks Kansai-ben like Hazel since they're both "Western", but I've been told his grammar is quite correct); he's not an innately skilled tracker, or a mystical shaman sort spouting off about nature. He's exoticized to an extent -- but really no more so than Hazel, and his random fringe-and-feathers visual cues, while generic, aren't all that much more unplaceably generic-stereotype than Hazel's random Western-priest getup. Even his dreads, while I'm sure it's probably just Minekura picking a hairstyle that she thinks looks cool -- in my personal fanon I like to justify that by having him be Black Indian, since you see those characters in manga, Western comics, etc. even less, so that gives me a happy little buzz (even if her shading in the color artbook pics sometimes makes them look more like really tight sausage curls...)

In a more realistic setting, he might bug me a lot more, but in the Minekura-verse where even "China" and "India" seem to be very deliberate cultural pastiches, it doesn't bother me as much because all the characters to some extent are coming from a similarly pastiched background. But really, a lot of it comes down to just being so damn happy that she's not going for the usual uber-stereotyped accoutrements of the Plains nations -- no tipis, no warbonnets -- and by keeping it all so vague and generic, she manages to avoid the oh-so-common groaners of slapping together elements from totally different cultures. Plenty of Western media still haven't gotten past that "what, tipis and totem poles don't go together?" stage, so when someone working from an even further remove doesn't go to that sort of "all NDNs were one monolothic culture" point, it's kind of a refreshing change of pace...

Re: chuuuuuuuuurch!

[oyceter]

*nods* Hee, the joys of low expectations? I know, seriously, when I see a Chinese person in manga who isn't in a mandarin collar, I nearly fall over rejoicing!

I mostly want Gat to have more character development... I mean, I think we're getting hints of it in Reload 8, though OK I am still a little annoyed that he is the protector of the white guy! On the other hand, at least it's clearly not the white guy saving the world, since Hazel's method of doing so is, uh, questionable to say the least ;).