As Lyndon B. Johnson once said, "If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you."
this post was submitted on 16 Aug 2023
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They're really pulling an America, aren't they?
People need to feel some sort of pride in their lives. Traditionally this has been pride in their accomplishments or their contributions to the community or to society.
But in today's hyper capitalist society, what is there to be proud of? Most jobs are a single redundant cog in the wheel and one's absence either wouldn't be noticed or quickly backfilled. And we spend the weekends doing the chores we couldn't get done during the week, or just existing and recovering, so we don't have the time previous generations had to contribute as a member of society, go to our clubs or church gatherings and bring a potluck meal or whatever.
So in an absence of pride based on accomplishments, people sometimes turn to pride based on identity - there's no criteria to meet, you were simply born and you can be proud of that. And that can be twisted and mutated into a feeling of superiority over people who aren't the same identity as you.
A widely shared type of video, created by Africa-based Chinese social media influencers, portrays Africans as impoverished and dependent, while Chinese people – often the content creators themselves – are shown as wealthy saviors who provide them with jobs, housing, food, and money.
Another common type of racist content reviewed denigrates interracial relationships. Black people married to Chinese people are accused of “contaminating” and threatening the Chinese race. Perceived relationships between Black men and Chinese women are particularly vilified.
This isn't just China, it crops up everywhere in different forms, and it's distressing on all fronts because it speaks to a failure to address a critical need of society - the ability for people to meaningfully contribute and feel accomplished.
This hits pretty hard. Looking at the bigger picture is depressing: what the fuck is humanity’s end goal? Because it looks like it’s the heat death of the planet, all so a bunch of narcissistic fucks can pretend they’re royalty, and lord it over the rest of us who weren’t as lucky and see stepping on others for your own desires as cruel and morally reprehensible.
Note that their treatment on Chinese social media platforms aren't that bad. At least on Bilibili (which is the largest equivalent to YouTube; all other Chinese video platforms have deranged fanbases, are a lot more streaming oriented, and have 90s or longer of pre-roll ads compared with Bilibili which is way more user content oriented (but still more streaming oriented than YouTube) and has no ads in the video player), searching "Africa" leads to government propaganda; for searching "black people" (note that in Chinese this phrase can be a singular noun, a plural noun or an adjective), I counted the following results from the first page:
For content produced by black people or reuploads of these, there was 1 mayor cosplaying as some naruto character 9 singing (3 from some "BLACKSWAN" group) 1 doctor who practices chinese medicine depicted as noble 5 models (3 of which on "Anok Yai") 3 sketches 2 reaction videos on Chinese videos 1 etika 1 first responder 1 karen
For content that was produced by 3rd parties, there were 7 on sports 1 on "black people taking over france and china"? 1 on a black person in a K-pop group 1 of excerpts of a kinda sexual animation called "Axel in Harlem" 1 on greeting gestures 1 on why you shouldn't be racist against black people 2 on actors 1 of a Chinese woman explaining why she romantically loves black people 1 on nelson mandela 1 postively covering interracial relationships 1 on a meme 1 on abroad black students studying in the soviet union abusing women and suffering consequences
In summary there were 4 negative depictions, 7 interlinked with Chinese/Asian topics, and 32 positive others
Also, all types of Chinese social media platforms are only kinda less awful than their pre-Musk English counterparts, so this might be quite a bit better than the rest of the Chinese internet
Totally anecdotal, but I teach at an international school and I have many Chinese students who have talked about this with me. They say this attitude is present throughout advertising as well. They very frequently mention this ad
Maybe a big asteroid will hit the planet soon and we can all just call it a wrap. Almost feels like it would be a small comfort to go out in the style of a 90's action thriller apocalypse. Apologies for being doomy, but Christ, everyone everywhere just fucking sucks. Thanks for sharing this, I'm not sure I would have let myself believe it existed otherwise.
I'm kind of sad this got 6 upvotes. You're right, lots of people do suck, but there are also a lot of people in the world trying to do good (some right here on Beehaw even). They just don't get the attention they deserve because doomscrolling and negative news gets more clicks and interactions.
Also an asteroid would also wipe off a lot of other non-human species on the planet, and honestly they don't deserve that.
Oh look another race of color hating another race of color. So dumb
You know, saying that everyone except caucasians are “people of color” itself reeks of inherent racism.
Racism is quite common in the world. It always has been. It’s just that in most of our history our out-groups were still local so racism didn’t manifest.
Right now we’re at a point in the human journey where we see people of different races quite often, but we don’t interact often enough that it is no longer relevant for anyone. It’s improving.
A lot of the caucasian centric discussion about race comes from the fact that a lot of english speaking websites are centered and focuses around the anglosphere.
What is and isnt white varies from location to location in parts of the world where that matters. So you have people who would be decidedly light skinned but black in the Caribbean argue their whiteness, but as soon as they immigrate to the US that's out the window. Likewise latin americans can create a racial hierarchy and given the literal european descent of many of them there is a case to have here, but put them in the united states and then they suddenly turn not white. In fact a puerto rican independence revolutionary leader got his first taste of 2nd hand citizenship when having to travel through the Jim Crow south and found that despite being an ivy league educated white boy back home, he was colored in the states.
But context matters more than anything else. Its why for example an american immigrant family may feel as if their culture is being appropriated when white people start stealing it, but members of that ethnicity living in their home country might find it endearing and cute to see.