Westerners are boxed in by language
that centres upon Race Prejudice as soon as they arrive in Hong Kong, though that could sometimes include Japan, China, South
Korea, and yes, every country on this planet has some forms of racism.
Why not write about the Racism in our
countries? Golly gee, maybe because a million books and academic papers and hot-line radio shows and television documentaries
have already trode that well-travelled ground.
I will centre this one-sided debate
- always wonderful when you are controlling both sides of the argument, though of course, the price of my writing, free,
is what I myself pay - upon specific words.
Paleface.
A local Hong Kong Star upon
being annoyed at his treatment by the new Disneyland on a special closed-to-celebrities day referred to the entire non-Chinese
population of Hong Kong as Paleface.
Not one person in this entire city
accused him of racism.
It is not so much that I would criticize
this person over what I regard as a trivial matter, and not worth myself getting into any debate over, the smallness of it,
but that I think of what members of government in America and Canada are permitted or not allowed to do.
I imagine for example a legislator from
Alabama or Georgia using a racist slur upon American blacks such as Negro, nigger, or darkie.
They would certainly be ruined in the
media, possibly asked to resign their position, and suffer economic losses.
And yet it is different when a Chinese
uses the word Paleface.
Why?
I hear imaginary voices, and my own
answers.
VOICE: Cause we do have paler faces.
Answer: Well, black people have darker
faces, yet darkie is not taken too well.
Voice: Well, Arielle, you know Whites
here exploited the Chinese, and were above them falsely in Colonial Asia, so bear with their resentment.
Answer: Do you really believe
the racism of Chinese is One Down, and not One Up Racism?
Big Nose.
Big Nose is frequently used in the Chinese
media to desribe Caucasians.
We can draw here a more exact and damning
metaphor between the anti-Semite's use of this exact same type of description to describe Jewish people for hundreds of years,
and the use of Chinese/Japanese/Korean's to describe Causcasians.
As far as I am concerned, this is the
exact same issue, problem, racial bias, and yet the Chinese are tolerated, and those who suggest something is wrong here are
laughed at as being overly sensitive, while again, imagine an American, Canadian, or Australian governmental official who
referred to the colour of skin or size of nose in mentioning blacks, Jews, or Asians.
Big Nose means more than Big Nose as
all repeated racist slights do. It means we have coarser facial features, something similar to the way many decades
ago black Americans had their fuller lips slighted, as signs of beig closer to a more primitive life form.
For those of you who are unread in Chinese
literature, there are actually references to a phrase
SWINGING ON TREES LIKE APES IN THE JUNGLE.
Before you hit the trigger, and falsely
think I am referring to blacks and whites, this was written by a Chinese woman writer on the Cultural revolution in reference
to a well-known saying that Chinese said then about WHITE EUROPEANS.
Our big Caucasian noses are coarser,
closer to the jungle, like our s-xuality as well.
Foreign devil, or Gweilo
The Racist Loop-de-loop around this
phrase is something that takes a few minutes to figure out, since a whole lot of Journalist Guys from round the world, who
decry race prejudice in other areas, just giggle and laugh about this down in their watering holes with their Asian girls.
They don't want to look like Wimpy Complainers,
and may feel a tad of that ole white liberal guilt about taking great jobs and cute girls away from the Local Guys, which
makes them accept these Insulting Pure Racist Names when I think younger and newer people on the scene should certainly analyse.
Is being called a Foreign Devil - and
to anyone raised on even a tad of spirituality/religion - Devil means a bad, and even evil human - not just as horribly racist
and unfair and unjust as being called a Money Grubbing Jew or a Lust Filled Black?
The hardy-har-har-ing over Foreign Devil
should begin some cooling down.
Joe told me my family isn't tacist like
some Chinese.
His mother and father, manual hotel
workers, referred to the Canadian people who took them in and gave them free hospitals, free schools, unionized jobs that
paid more than many store of office jobs - double time, over time, triple time on holidays - as
The Barbarians.
We are an younger, rawer people, the
peoples of Europe, America, Canada, and Australia, and that makes the difference of Chinese Racism something harder for us
to discern, for it is hidden, subtle, and completely non-evident once they travel to our own countries.
That many Chinese people truly and deeply
believe
The Chinese is superior to The White
on 3 counts
1. More Intelligent
Repeated sayings, such as We can always
fool The Foreigner, and scientific references to how well Chinese students do after emigrating to Canada and America in examinations
- yet in Britain, the Hong Kong Chinese students do less well, and that's because Britain had to accept citizens-by-right-of-birth.
Recall: How Whites used to talk about
Blacks
2. More Physically Attractive
Repeated use of phrases such as Big
Nose, and the Boy-are-you-ugly glances in Guangdong.
Recall: How Whites used to talk about
the hair and lips and skin of Blacks a long time ago.
3. Better Moral Character
This is an ambivalent area for me, as
I do respect so much how Chinese care for their older people, and how they refrain from excessive drinking and drugs, and
how good they are to siblings and friends who have fallen on hard times.
I think I am a fair person, and a fair
writer, though writing on volatile topics, as I try to see from a larger view.
Still, moral character if the third
area of Racism, and that the Chinese pride themselves on being hardworking and studious seems neither here nor there.
Poor people are over this planet are
forced to work hard, 7 days a week if their bosses call it like that.
That ain't moral character, as there
is no choice.
Students anywhere in the world who fall
asleep on their desks due to mechanical rote learning don't look particularly bright and alert to this teacher.
It is the area of s-xuality, which is
still part of moral character in racism debates, that there is a field of biases which cause me to
Recall: How Whites used to talk about
Blacks about their Jungle-y Side, and yes, when Chinese make comments about White Guys and Chinese girlfriends, if you listen
closely between the lines, the super-virility that those White Guys may either fancy for themselves as a myth, or be faintly
embarrassed by, that you hear Race Prejudice.
And the same type of Race Prejudice
that Whites once reserved for Blacks, they are too insulated by remnants of their own confidence, to see how powerful and
unquestioned, how tragically unquestioned, are the Race Biases of the world's largest population.
