Here is one of the exceptions to the rule in China involving the marriage of a Black African to a Chinese Lady. We have our own similar happy Success Story involving our own blogger, Bren, who has already helped CLM take a giant leap forward in overcoming ethnic prejudices.
Part 1 of this series drew some very cogent comments, some coated in anger or frustration, some in empathy and one in shame, and since writing the first draft of this article I have reviewed those comments and amended it accordingly. I’m going to first point out what I think the statistics I gave in part 1 do tell us, then discuss my own personal experience in China, discuss why anger does not belong in this discussion and briefly discuss why there is such a bias as apparently exists. There will be a part 3 in which I will conclude our (CLM’s) thoughts on the subject and describe what we feel might be done to help address the issue (if anything).
Initial Analysis
First let me point out the following:
My little “poll” says nothing about the vast majority of Chinese, it speaks only to Chinese female members of CLM, who have already expressed an interest in meeting and dating foreigners. However, it seems obvious that the percentage of anti foreigner bias will be much higher in the population at large than among a small percentage of the population that has specifically indicated a desire to meet foreigners.
42% of these 100 Chinese women (those who chose no preference) showed no favoritism of any ethnicity and no prejudice against any ethnicity whatsoever.
African, Afro American, Indian and Middle Eastern all fared pretty much equally and (unfortunately) low on the preferences of the remaining 58 Chinese women.
Caucasian, Asian and Hispanic Latino are strongly favoured in that order.
Mixed Race and Other also are highly chosen but I’m unable to place any meaning on either of those choices, at least as related to this discussion.
Other Islanders fared better than the bottom groups but not a lot better. However, I’m not sure I really understand what “Other Islanders” even means and who is included in this group, and I’m even less sure that most Chinese women do.
Summarizing the stats I’ve provided, which I beg everyone to remember are extremely limited and far from conclusive, I suggest it is fair to say that
1. With a few rare exceptions, roughly 50% of our Chinese lady members are not biased by virtue of ethnicity and 50% are. I might add that the reason I am saying “by ethnicity” and not by “skin colour” is that the same bias as is demonstrated against Africans, Afro-Americans and Indians (persons of black or dark skin colour) is also demonstrated identically against Middle Easterners (people of white or light skin colour).
2. Of the 50% who are biased that bias favours Caucasians (whites), Asians and Hispanic Latinos (also basically whites).
All of this is somewhat confused by the fact that “Caucasian” is not technically a reference to skin colour but just the same is probably more often than not understood by people to refer to “white” people.
Personal Anecdotes
Having said that let me next describe some of my personal experiences in the matter since arriving in China. In doing so, please let me say that there is no room for anger in this discussion, even though some of what I will describe is bound to stir anger in many of you, especially those who are the subject of the bias we’re discussing. I will get into why anger is out of place further along in these articles.
9 years ago when I arrived and was living in Shenzhen, China, I was being stared at constantly because so many people there were rural Chinese who had come to the city to find construction work. There was never a moment when there wasn't at least one pair of eyes glued to me. At that time Shenzhen was about 10 million people of whom about 4,000 were white and about 4 were black so I cannot imagine what those 4 guys were going through. It was so rare to see a black person in Shenzhen, where the percentage of foreigners is very high compared to most Chinese cities, that when I saw one on the street it was all I could do not to stare like the Chinese were staring, I was so curious as to what had brought them to China.
I actually met 3 of them and became sort of friends with one. He was the DJ in a large Crowne Plaza Dance Bar, and is now managing the same type of bar in the Intercontinental Hotel. I can tell you that once the Chinese (and everyone else) came to know him they all loved him, he was a great guy. The other one was a real medical Doctor and fairly quiet and reserved and I think he got pretty tired of the staring. The third was a guy pretending to be a medical Doctor. It was instantly obvious to me that he was not a Doctor because he had no real medical knowledge at all, but he probably was getting by with the Chinese who would not have recognized the obvious signs. He was not trying to “practice medicine” but was using this faked accreditation to help him at his real “profession” which was selling medical equipment and supplies to hospitals and the like. All 3 were Afro-American. In my first 2 years in China I met no black Africans.
Since then there has been a growing concentration of blacks in China, but it is still miniscule compared to the presence of whites. Recently, since China started to really “court” the African nations, there has been a surge in the numbers of black Africans to come to China. When I moved to Guangzhou roughly 2 years ago I was startled by the number of black people I saw on the streets, which was far more than in Shenzhen, even though those cities are only an hour train ride apart. Guangzhou has by far the longest history of dealings with foreigners of any Chinese city, because for hundreds of years foreigners were only allowed access to trade n China through Guangzhou. This changed in the mid-1800’s as a result of the Opium Wars. For those who are not familiar with it, Guangzhou was for hundreds of years mistakenly referred to as Canton by the British, Americans and anyone else who would listen to them.
In Guangzhou there is a very large contingent of Africans who are there for easy access to trade. Guangzhou is the capital of the “pirate” trade in China for fake everything, and that helps explain why it is so favoured by Africans and many other third world nations as the place for trade. The available supply of electronic equipment, clothing and especially mobile phones in Guangzhou at extremely favourable prices is incredible.
Since moving to Hangzhou I note that the percentage of foreigners here who are black is much lower than Guangzhou, but they are not absent. I frequently see them on the street, in Bars and restaurants, etc. I’ve yet to meet one, but, unlike my single years in Shenzhen, I rarely get out, rarely socialize, and frankly I’ve only met one white person here, other than persons who have come to visit me from overseas. That number includes 1 black friend and 2 white friends.
While in Guangzhou I did “witness” several instances of clear racial prejudice involving my Afro-American friend who visited us several times while he was here on business. It was obvious to us (my wife and I) that he was not treated with any courtesy whatsoever. However, this treatment improved considerably once my wife found a nonchalant way (in Chinese) to inform the taxi driver, waitress or other Chinese person involved that he was “an American”. On one occasion however, racial prejudice of a mind numbing degree raised its head, when my friend was coming from the airport and called to get my wife to give the taxi driver instructions to our home. I immediately knew something was amiss because when the she took the phone to speak to the driver she quickly exploded in fury. Even in though she was speaking in Chinese, I knew that I was happy not to be that taxi driver.
It turned out that he said to her words to the effect of “which zoo do you want me to deliver this animal to?”.
She wanted to go downstairs to greet the taxi and strangle the driver, but I decided that would simply cause a lot of pain and embarrassment to my friend. So I went down to meet him and found an opportunity to lean into the cab and say, in my very faltering Mandarin to a guy who probably spoke only Cantonese, “chow ni” (f**k you). Perhaps wrongly to this day I have not informed my friend, who is a proud and sensitive man, of this unbelievable insult to him.
On another occasion in Hangzhou as my wife and this same black friend were walking down the street a woman working in a small open street shop called out to my wife that she should be ashamed to be seen with such trash, but frankly she seemed to be referring equally to both my friend and me so we cannot attribute this to a bias against black people. This woman spoke very poor Mandarin and was obviously (to my wife) from a rural area and not originally from Hangzhou.
Other non-China experiences I have which give me some feel for people of other ethnicities include doing a great deal of legal work for a Native Canadian “Indian” Band, which is somewhat akin to working for a mini-third world nation, and spending 8 months in Conakry, Guinea, Africa on behalf of a large Chinese construction company trying to exchange construction of infrastructure for raw materials such as iron and copper ore. In the case of the Indian Band and the people of Conakry, I came to know that the population of both were generally really wonderful, happy and giving people, in spite of the intense poverty they lived in. I would estimate that roughly 10% of the population were “bad” people and 90% were “good” people.
I would attribute that same rough division of good and bad among white Canadians or Americans, black Canadians or Americans, and among Chinese. I don’t doubt that similar percentages are the norm in all place, cultures, races and ethnicities. It is always the case that the actions of the few bad actors affects the perceptions of their entire group. All the clichés apply – “we are tarred by the same brush”, “one bad apple ruins the lot”, “one spoiled fish offs the barrel”, yada, yada, yada.
In both cases of working among native Canadians and working among black Africans of Guinea, I was constantly treated to a barrage of bigotry expressed by some (but a minority) of members of all other ethnicities. And in both cases I watched as countless opportunities to dramatically improve the lives of the general population were thwarted by the incredible personal greed of the persons in power. That is to say their own leaders were pocketing all the money and letting their citizens literally starve.
Misplaced Anger
As a member of one of the groups experiencing the bias we’re discussing, or as a witness who is feeling wounded on their behalf, I strongly urge you to drop all anger you are feeling over the prejudices you are encountering on CLM or elsewhere in China. Anger can only arise if you have no understanding of what leads to these prejudices, no comprehension of Chinese culture and history, and no ability to understand and forgive persons for mistaken beliefs. That is not to say you won’t feel hurt and be angry. Of course you will. My first reaction whenever I encounter bigotry is to feel pain for the victim (be that me or someone else) and anger at the offender. But that anger is both useless and ignorant, and it is also somewhat prejudicial as well. To feel that “Chinese are prejudiced against my ethnicity so therefore Chinese are bad” is a form of bigotry in itself.
We cannot assume that Chinese know the history of American slavery, which they do not. We cannot assume that they are aware of the many racial and ethnic wars that have occurred throughout the world, which they are not. For almost the entire history of China it has been a closed society, oblivious to the cultures and ethnicities outside its boundaries, and largely oblivious to even the minority cultures and ethnicities within its boundaries.
China has always been and still remains, in the eyes of the majority of Chinese, the “middle kingdom” – that place that lays half way between heaven and earth. Much as America has developed the sense over the past century that there is “America” and there is “the rest of the world”, China has always had that sense of self, that misplaced sense of superiority. For Chinese there has always been “China” and there has always been “the rest of the world”.
I would venture to guess that the majority of Chinese who live outside the major cities have yet to lay eyes on a “white” person, and the percentage of Chinese who have never seen a “black” person has to be over 90% still. The reason that “white people” have made a minor breakthrough is because we have been present as traders for hundreds of years (including Hispanic Latinos in the form of the Portuguese) and as Missionaries on behalf of our God and lastly by a growing presence on the Television screens, the movie screens, the internet and the broadcast airwaves within China.
The question we need to address here is not how we can change the perceptions in China (which we cannot change) but what can we do among our own small community on CLM to address the issue and to hopefully create an atmosphere in which everyone is equally welcome and equally to be considered as a potential mate based upon his or her personal characteristics and not on his or her ethnic background or skin colour.
I for one was pleasantly surprised that the statistics I found were not as skewed as I expected against certain ethnicities or in favour of others. That 50% of our Chinese women members are expressing no ethnic prejudices has to be light years ahead of the total population. Now let's gently open the eyes of the other 50% and set an example for China and the rest of the world.
Next blog I will discuss how I think we can improve on that 50% greatly and, over time, turn CLM into a truly open community, but it requires more than the enlightenment of the Chinese ladies, it requires the enlightenment of each and every one of us.
Meanwhile I welcome your suggestions on this point, and I will attempt to find time to provide responses to member comments in the coming few days.
Once again, you did an outstanding analysis and through your observations, we can learn about how the Chinese society reacts towards foreigners. I made very clear my personal feelings about racism in your previous article about the subject. I simply detest, abhor, loathe racism, that I consider sheer ignorance, evil and even an insult to God Himself, that created us all. Somehow I feel that in part, the cause of this is that China for so long was isolated from the rest of the world, that they would not see people from other racial groups. They allowed the Portuguese to settle for a while in Macaw because the Portuguese are basically traders by nature. One of the peoples that formed the Portuguese nation were the Phoenicians, that were buyers and sellers and their ships have been everywhere doing business, truly "floating bazars" ( an by accident discovered how to make glass, a very useful thing). Curiously, in the Philippines, which have been exposed a lot to foreigners, I have been to places and situations when I felt I was the center of attention, perhaps due to my height and my pinkish French skin (I would rather have dark skin if I had the choice). I take pride of having friends of all colors, all nationalities, every conceivable background. With each of them, I learned something. I also take pride of having had girl friends of simply friends, from a very dark beautiful, very tall Brazilian girl child of African parents, to Jewish, Muslims, Asians, all kinds. I am a people's person and my natural approach towards people, is respect and courtesy. In my clinic in Rio de Janeiro, I had the opportunity to see patients from top Brazilian models, to simple people and all received exactly the same treatment, respect and courtesy. Social status means nothing to me. You can have a person from the top of the social Pyramid, that is rude and obnoxious and a simple person that is a first class human being. I am at the right place at the right time. I also take pride of having dual citizenship, Brazilian and Canadian, and in both countries, racism is not tolerated, Thanks God. Specially in Rio and Toronto, cities that I love, i feel joy that we have people from all over the world. Both, Canada and Brazil are countries that have large numbers of immigrants and both, Toronto and Rio welcome foreigners regardless of their ethnicity, color of the skin, religion etc. (which make these two cities so special). To be tolerant, kind and respectful towards others, is a signal of maturity. I don't say this trying to throw gasoline in the fire or stir controversy, but is a well known fact that the only community in Brazil that usually do not marry Brazilians of other racial groups, are the descendants of Japanese. We have a very large, immense colony of Japanese in the South of Brazil. The Nisseis, and Sanseis (children and grandchildren of Japanese) usually marry a Japanese or a descendant of Japanese. This was my first deception in my love life. When I was a young man, I had a Japanese GF and we liked each other a lot. One day, she told me crying that she was not allowed to see me anymore, her father would never accept that she would marry a person that had not Japanese blood. I was shocked. The father actually sent her to Tokyo to marry a Japanese guy she had never seen before in her life, an arranged marriage. Your comments about this idiot cab driver, reminds me of a documentary that I saw about the Japanese occupation of China in WW II, when I heard one of the most shocking things in my life. It is a well known fact that the Japanese consider themselves superior to all other Asians, actually, superior to all other human beings. Humbleness is not one of their qualities. But in the documentary, they mentioned that Japanese officers would decapitate Chinese men with their Samurai swords, because they did not believe the Chinese could bleed, they did not consider the Chinese humans. What about that for stupidity in the highest degree? I know is utopia, but I wish we could all sit in the same table, share a real good meal and be real friends.
Being chinese, and lived in the west for 20 years I do know
what consitute some of the
understanding
i guess the basis of a chinese woman view is not to date
but to get married ------- so she viewed a black man
not that great to be married to
from this a sense of "hostility" somehow get generated
or just bad vib
culturally, black is a just "evil " as red is joy
so a black man is interpreted as evil
acceptance-- most of us want to be socially accepted
by other so for a chinese lady to be in the arm of a black man
is an insult to her family -- this is wrong but unforturnately true
Some of my best friend are African but i am not going to date
an African lady not i am prejudiced but i am too weak and too frail
--- joking but this is true
none of the british soldier married to malaysian after years in asian
i do not think there is a solution to all this
dating and marriage is always a meeting of minds and body
and bigotry and prejudice would take thousand of years
of education to get rid of
i still remember one of friend is a doctor in physics
but the janitor of the class still call him a chinaman
so we tend to judge other by their exernal appearance
the better education the more prejudice and more ego
most of the time we went to tout to our friend how '
beautiful or how rich our spouse to ---- show off
marriage and dating is to find to seek a soulmate
or life partner
in this quest, all our latent bigotry or prejudice would surface
and if there is no respect no relation can last
in history there would be brutality
and bigotry
i do find some of comment interesting by ozcanberra
--most of the people in taiwan would argue the opposite
Mao is a henchman and a murderer while Dala Lama is a kind Buddha
inrecarnated ---- in Taipei
I am from canada but i am chinese so i did find his comment
, just say unfounded
I agree 100% with John
as i am from Toronto
I have dual citizen
HongkOng and taipei
if we treat all human as human then we would be at peace
with ourselves
i have travelled and lived all over the world
so i can say
it take time to break some barrier
and it take open mind andopen heart to view