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The China Adventures of Arielle Gabriel

Racism Is Many Places, Including Asia

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.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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