Posted on 02/23/2012 10:58:01 AM PST by presidio9
Though Eugene Robinson, Pulitzer-winning columnist for The Washington Post, is a serious and highly sophisticated man, I was disappointed by a recent column in which he compared the United States and China.
In eloquent terms, Robinson asserted that the Chinese, right now, look more unsentimentally at their problems and are not bluffing the world about taking them on, no matter how large, intimidating and deeply dug in by custom they might be.
Robinson suggests the Chinese seem to be addressing their most important natural resource, which is their population, as we are not as proven by the depressingly shallow nature of American political arguments.
Fair enough, as far as it goes.
But Robinson does not mention something about China something that an honest assessment of its strengths and weaknesses should not ignore.
For at least 20 years, I have heard stories from Americans who speak Mandarin, have traveled to the Asian country and have tales about Chinese bigotry against black Americans and Africans.
Yet this reality is barely whispered in our diverse media circus.
I have no doubt there are thousands upon thousands of decent Chinese and Chinese-Americans who, having known the sting of prejudice themselves, harbor no ill will toward African-Americans. But lets not deny a stubborn cultural problem when it is staring us in the face.
Here are examples of what I have been told.
One Irish-American friend fell in love with Chinese culture and learned Mandarin. Often in New Yorks Chinatown, he heard this answer when Chinese New Yorkers were asked by those from the mainland what New York was like: Fine. But too many black people.
A friend who does business in China and travels there at least six times a year was questioned by a Chinese cab driver who claimed that Chinese people were amazed that George W. Bush had chosen Condoleezza Rice to represent America to the world.
Why? Because she is black, quite an embarrassment; it dishonors your country, was the cab drivers answer.
Another frequent business traveler to China was recently in a Hong Kong bar with college-educated, upper class, very successful men who were supposedly well-educated.
After a few drinks, one said to him upon seeing a black person on the bars television, They need to wash more. That is why people do not like them. When it was explained that black people are not that color because they are not clean, there was a nodding silence followed a bit later by, I still think they need to wash more.
These are just stray anecdotes, you say? Well, I invite and hope to encounter some defenders of Chinese adherence to transcendent humanitarian beliefs.
I actually expect to hear nothing other than accusations of supposed black American paranoia.
Robinson and others are right when they call out the dog whistles of disguised racial bitterness by Republican candidates trying slyly to draw the votes of Southern rednecks. Racism is real in America, and it frequently hides in code words.
But lets be clear: A broad admiration for certain facets of Chinese culture ought not conceal the fact that bad racial attitudes there may be at least as pervasive as they are in the United States.
There are those who would have us assess individuals not as being human types, but as being examples of what were told to genetically expect from a given ethnic group.
That is an impulse that all of us across skin tones, ethnic cultures and political systems must continually expose and fight.
The only group of people with a bigger racist streak are Native Americans.
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Do the Feather-Indians have any particular racial group it doesnt like, or is it anyone who is not F-I?
He was gaijin, you see.
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The Japanese feel above anyone who is non-Japanese. I run into that attitude occasionally when we travel.
But Im serious, yeah. But there is the really funny part being able to speak Japanese made them MORE suspicious of me..!!
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A friend of mine who was particularly facile with languages worked for a company in the eighties that had Japanese investors. They brought their own engineers. My friend taught himself Japanese quickly, and just listened. No one in the company knew that he understood the converations and asides the Japanese spoke. He became particularly good at anticpating the concerns of the new investors. LOL
"Misunderstanding" on both sides, dummy. We're all made in the same Big Guy's image.
There are 130mm practicing Christians in China. That’s more than we have here in the good-old God-fearing USA. Do with that information as you wish. Just thought you should know.
The tradional usage of the term "gaijin" is a cross between "barbarian" and "not human."
Good.
A paradox is it not. That oppression can create faith while freedom oppresses it. Ill turn that around. People who are oppressed need real freedom, not just the freedom of doing what they feel like doing.
Good for the Christians, but what does that have to do with my comments about the rudeness towards tourists shown by the average Chinese? By no means do I hate the Chinese. In fact, one of my favorite college profs came from Hong Kong. I'm sure he 's more typical of the average Chinese, but the fact remains the Chinese people as a whole have to treat their tourists better. I'm not the first person to make that statement, you can find similar comments about Chinese incivility towards foreigners on many tourist forums. I was shocked when my bro and his wife related the stories about the rudeness of the Chinese. Hopefully, as more tourists enter China and more Chinese tour other countries, things will change for the better.
“barbarian” and “not human.”
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Most tribes feel that way about the “other.”
Perhaps it would be the pinnicle of sophistication not to?
Consider that, for somebody who has lived in the "Chinatown" section of any major city, a large percentage of the blacks they've met are of the "inner city" flavor.
Oh sure, I get it. You know the truth and everyone else’s perceptions are “misunderstandings”.
You think you are being uniquely wise and noble.
I think you are being a vainglorious tool of the leftists, helping them to destroy civilization and doing so in a way that is utterly commonplace.
There is almost no one I have more contempt for than the one who tells arrogant lies about race relations in America while preening self-righteously.
As a result of your vanity you have fallen for the most obvious and yet most poisonous trick in the whole commie book.
You are a complete and utter disgrace to humankind.
“All who are made to be compassionate in the place of the cruel
In the end are made to be cruel in the place of the compassionate”
http://www.rishon-rishon.com/archives/044412.php
Why would a Chinese person who emigrated from Hong Kong and became a college professor be more typical of the average Chinese than are a bunch of Chinese people that someone ran across at random while traveling in China? Being a professor and emigrating are atypical and not average in any country. This man must have been exceptional in many ways or else he'd still be in Hong Kong and he wouldn't be a professor.
As it happens, in San Francisco Chinese folks live all over town, not just in Chinatown. There are large middle-class residential neighborhoods where the plurality of residents are of Chinese ancestry, and there are Chinese people on the streets, in the shops, on the buses, and in the schools throughout S.F. Whatever it is that Chinese folks in S.F. think generally about black folks living here, it is not skewed by their having only limited exposure to the city’s residents.
Because what my brother and his wife said about the national Chinese shocked me. It was contrary to the impression I got from meeting people of Chinese extraction in the U.S. who were nice and polite. It intrigued me and made me curious as to why many of the national Chinese should be so rude. My older brother took R and R in Taiwan during the Vietnam War and loved it. Then why should the mainland Chinese act differently towards foreigners than the Taiwanese Chinese? Why the rude behavior? Is it the result of sixty years under communism or authoritarian regimes? I’d like to know.
Because I reminded you that we are all made in God's image?
Wow.
Because you lie constantly.
Attacks on Asians Highlight New Racial Tensions
Tammy Tan, the executive director of the Asian Pacific American Community Center, watched as Chinese leaders took up the megaphone to vent their fury in lilting Cantonese tones.
But something hung in midair, unspoken.
We recommend our staff not to say it, Ms. Tan said, looking over the crowd. We dont want to escalate with African-Americans, so we dont say it. Then she turned and faced a reporter. But it is racial, she said. Thats fact.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/02/us/02sfcrime.html?pagewanted=all
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