“ In my impression, black people, especially Africans, are not clean enough... To be frank, I just feel black people are too black. Definitely, I wouldn’t consider having a black guy as my boyfriend even if he were rich.”
A black friend of mine in Maryland stumbled across this quote a couple days ago, and when I first read it, I figured it was from 40, 50, 60 years ago, at least, and that it was said by some stuck-up white girl who’s family still believed that the Confederacy had won the war.
Turns out, it was a quote from Sunday’s Washington Post. And the quote came from Chen Juan, a secretary in Beijing.
I was floored.
Because of President Obama’s travel to Asia, the Washington Post article that this quote came from was examining race and racism in China and what it means that we have a black president traveling there. According to the article, many Chinese citizens believe that Obama’s election was either a “fluke” or okay because his mother was white.
I had not expected to read that. Worse yet, the article implied that racism in China might be the U.S.’s fault.
In the U.S., public schools teach our own history of racism in hopes that we will avoid past mistakes. We learn about the small steps we have taken forward in order to show us that change can occur and improvements can be made. But we hardly ever learn about racism in other countries or about how our current mistakes, our current racism, are influencing other countries.
According to the Nov. 15 Washington Post article, Sherwood Hu, a Shanghai-based filmmaker, said, “Before the Cultural Revolution, China considered black people our brothers and white people our enemies.”
What changed? The U.S. spilled our mistakes into their culture.
The Post article continued:
“The kind of prejudice you see now really happened with the economic growth,” said Hung Huang, a Beijing-based fashion magazine publisher and host of “Straight Talk,” a nightly current affairs talk show. “The Chinese worshiped the West, and for Chinese people, ‘the West’ is white people.’”
TV shows, advertising and movies made in the U.S. utilize white people a majority of the time, especially in positions of power or success. The media seems to idolize white families with old money, like the Hiltons. This is the image of ourselves that we are sending overseas. Even our presidents have been white up until the last election. The Chinese so associate white skin with success and wealth that the skin-whitening industry is “a $100 million-a-year business.”
But does Obama’s election help to correct these irrational prejudices that we have spread? Apparently not. The Washington Post article read:
“China’s most recent annual report on the United States’ human rights record in 2008, released in February, made no mention of Obama’s historic election. But it said, ‘In the United States, racial discrimination prevails in every aspect of social life.’
‘Black people and other minorities live at the bottom of the American society,’ the report said. ‘There is serious racial hostility in the United States.’”
The U.S. isn’t known for exports. In fact, we import most of our stuff from China, India, Japan, Honduras, etc. But it seems we do have one export that has taken hold in all of these places: discrimination against people with black skin.
Ervin Brandon, a black travel writer, spent some time studying Japanese culture and wrote on his Web site “The Japanese tend to idolize whites over any other group of people. This is evident in their advertisements, magazines, and even in their much-cherished animations. I knew better than to ask why there aren’t many black characters in their animations, but I did often ask why most of the characters look white instead of Japanese.”
Brandon went on to point out that they view blacks as entertainers, criminals and victims of oppression with no strong cultural values. He writes, “To hear such views was no shock to me because they are the same images and ideas that the media continues to perpetuate and feed, about blacks, to the world.”
India’s social hierarchy also places blacks at the bottom. Horen Tudu, a U.S. researcher and writer, said in an article on iamcolourful.com that this is “a conscious effort on the part of Indians to disconnect themselves with the indigenous black people of the Indian subcontinent and their African heritage. “They want to remove the whole image of themselves from anything that is non-Caucasian.”
In 2005, Honduras finally elected a president who vowed to address the rampant racism in their nation. Currently, blacks only live in specific communities there. Often, they are intimidated away from where they would like to live by having their homes burned down or their livestock killed.
These nations are all industrializing, trying to get ahead economically, and the only example of how to do this is the Western world. So they look to our culture, trying to figure out what exactly we did right, copying us in their attempts to succeed.
What have we done?
What kind of example have we set for them?
Now, don’t misunderstand me. I do not believe that the U.S. is a respected role model to rest of the world. To think this would be arrogant and stupid. We are most definitely not beloved and revered by all. However, we do possess some influence, and we need to use it well.
Maybe it is me being naïve, but I believe we have the intellect to conquer such things as racism. We can set a better example than we have so far. If we accept differences, show that different cultures are wonderful things, that all skin colors are beautiful, then we will have truly taken a step forward. And we need to make this acceptance visible, so that other nations can see this step.
A slight difference in color doesn’t change the fact that we are all still human.
It’s time we started to show that to the rest of the world.
Heidi Garvin is a sophomore Political Science major. Reach her at heidigarvin@dailynebraskan.com.
24 comments
September 2001: “The government lied about inventing the HIV virus as a means of genocide against people of color. The government lied.”
September 2001: “We bombed Hiroshima. We bombed Nagasaki. And we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon and we never batted an eye.”
September 2001: “We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because of stuff we have done overseas is now brought back into our own backyard. America is chickens coming home to roost.”
April 2003: “The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes three-strike laws and wants them to sing God Bless America. No! No No! God d---n America … for killing innocent people. God d--n America for threatening citizens as less than humans. God d--n America as long as she tries to act like she is God and supreme.”
December 2007: “Barack knows what it means living in a country and a culture that is controlled by rich, white people. Hillary would never know that.”
December 2007: “Hillary ain’t never been called a n---r. Hillary has never had a people defined as a non-person.”
Jan. 13, 2008: “Hillary is married to Bill, and Bill has been good to us. No he ain’t! Bill did us, just like he did Monica Lewinsky. He was riding dirty.”
“Fact number one: We’ve got more black men in prison than there are in college. … Fact number two: Racism is how this country was founded and how this country is still run.”
"You cannot do terrorism on other people and expect it never to come back on you."
“We are deeply involved in the importing of drugs, the exporting of guns and the training of professional killers. … We believe in white supremacy and black inferiority and believe it more than we believe in God. … We conducted radiation experiments on our own people. … We care nothing about human life if the ends justify the means. And … And … And! God! Has got! To be sick! Of this sh--t!”
"To say “I am a Christian” is not enough. Why? Because the Christianity of the slaveholder is not the Christianity of the slave. The God to whom the slaveholders pray as they ride on the decks of the slave ship is not the God to whom the enslaved are praying as they ride beneath the decks on that slave ship."
"We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon, and we never batted an eye," Wright said. "We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought right back to our own front yards. America's chickens are coming home to roost."
“Barack knows what it means to be a black man to be living in a country and a culture that is controlled by rich white people. Hillary can never know that. Hillary ain't never been called a n-----."
Wright married Barack and his wife Michelle. He baptized Barack’s two daughters and has been Obama’s pastor for more than twenty years. He is even credited in Barack’s book, The Audacity of Hope, and the title actually came from one of Wright’s sermons.
How about the man Wright holds in great esteem Louis Farrakhan. For nearly 30 years, Louis Farrakhan has marked himself a notable figure on the extremist scene by making hateful statements targeting Jews, whites and homosexuals.
Farrakhan’s bigoted and anti-Semitic rhetoric has included statements calling whites “blue eyed devils” and Jews “bloodsuckers” that controlled the slave trade, the government, the media and various Black individuals and organizations. In 2006, he blamed Jews and Israel for the war in Iraq, for controlling Hollywood and for promoting what he considers immorality during his February Saviours' Day address in Chicago.
In a 2007 interview with Arabic-language television news network Al Jazeera, Farrakhan accused Jews of anti-Semitism, charging that “The real anti-Semites are those who came out of Europe and settled in Palestine, and now they call themselves the true Jews, when in fact, they converted to Judaism.”
Racism will never end in this country. There are to many people profiting from the victim industry and to many people who use it as a means to misrepresent and disparage the country they hate and fail to understand. People like Barack Obama, Jerimiah Wrigtht, Louis Farakan, and Justin
* If Senator Nelson votes to move the Democrats’ health care bill forward, he is voting to raise Nebraskans’ health care costs, taxes, and premiums, all while cutting Medicare for the 270,435 beneficiaries in the state.
* The taxpayers of Nebraska can see through these parliamentary procedure games. They don’t want a flip flopper.
* Nebraskans want someone to keep the government from coming between them and their doctor.
"Now, don’t misunderstand me. I do not believe that the U.S. is a respected role model to rest of the world. To think this would be arrogant and stupid. We are most definitely not beloved and revered by all. However, we do possess some influence, and we need to use it well."And I have one question, how many people who are commenting on this column have actually READ THE WASHINGTON POST ARTICLE she is referring to? She is talking about what the Washington Post has done research on. Why don't you comment on their article?I'm proud to have someone working at my school trying to bring a different side to the story; trying to open other's mind; and utilizing her right to free speech and press.