Chinese And Blacks And Asian Americans

Some Chinese Americans I know passed this article on to me.  They were angry about anti-black racism by fellow Chinese in the US - particularly those from Mainland China.  From China-Gate:

"警察杀人应受谴责。但是，如果有华人因此同情黑人，那将是东郭先生和狼。
来源: 鲁迅九 于 2020-06-02 09:17:36 [档案] [博客] [旧帖] [给我悄悄话] 本文已被阅读： 4339 次 (1450 bytes)
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被示威者点燃的中餐馆
　　甚至有一名担任外卖送货员的中国留学生也成为了示威者的攻击对象，头部严重受伤，脑内积水，双眼框骨折，一度生命垂危。
　　黑人是最愿意攻击华人或者中国留学生的，他们一旦愤怒、不开心，需要发泄时，华人往往就成为他们攻击的对象。在之前的疫情期间，很多华人及中国留学生都受到了黑人的攻击：
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因为华人佩戴口罩，一名黑人在车厢内连续击打他头部40多拳
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一名黑人将硫酸倒入一名出来倒垃圾的华人女性头部，导致伤势严重
　黑人面对白人时，显得非常的可怜，懦弱，但当他们面对华人或者中国留学生时，就是另外的嘴脸了。

　　
I asked them to translate and then compared their translation of this to Google's and they agreed that the Google Translate version was good.

"The police should be condemned for killing. However, if there are Chinese who sympathize with black people, it will be Mr. Dong Guo* and the wolf.

　　Even a Chinese student who was a takeaway deliveryman became the target of the demonstrators' attack. He was seriously injured in the head, hydrocephalus in his brain, fracture of both eye frames, and his life was in danger.
　　 Black people are the most willing to attack Chinese or Chinese students. Once they are angry, unhappy, and need to vent, Chinese often become the target of their attack. During the previous epidemic, many Chinese and Chinese students were attacked by black people:
Because the Chinese were wearing masks, a black man hit him with more than 40 punches in the head
A black man poured sulfuric acid into the head of a Chinese woman who came out and dumped garbage, causing serious injuries
　 Black people look very pitiful and cowardly when facing white people, but when they face Chinese or Chinese students, they are different."

*"The term Mr. Dongguo (Dōngguō Xiānshēng) has now become a Chinese idiom for a naive person who gets into trouble through being softhearted to evil" people.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wolf_of_Zhongshan

The friend who sent this to me was very upset and wanted to report to someone about this racism being spread via one of the most popular American Chinese language online newspapers.

I really wasn't sure what to do with this.  What was my role as a white American to make this point?  My experiences in China showed me the one seemingly universal national prejudice of Chinese was against Japanese.  One can understand the rationale behind that - the resentment of how viciously Japanese soldiers slaughtered Chinese during WW II.  One can say that was 70 years ago, but Chinese will report that the Japanese have never apologized and still honor their WW II soldiers without acknowledging their barbarity towards Chinese.  I only met a few African students in China and they felt they were not treated well.

Then today I saw this article:   Asian-American Anti-Black racism - My fellow Asian Americans, we must address the anti-Blackness rampant in our community which raised this issue for me again.  With this second article, I decided to post on this topic.  But it's a slightly different topic.  It reminds me that there are layers and layers here.  The top article - I was told - is aimed at Chinese born Chinese living in the US.  This second article is more broadly aimed at Asian-Americans, presumably, many if not most whom, were been born in the United States.

And a further layer in all this are people like the University of Alaska Anchorage's Dr. EJR David, a Filipino-American who came to discover (and then eventually to write about) his own mental colonization as a Filipino, while living among Alaska Natives in what was then called Barrow, Alaska.  He frequently points out that brown Asians tend to be forgotten when people talk about Asian-Americans, a term, he argues, generally means East Asian Americans.

So consider this post a heads-up.  I'm just calling attention to something going on that probably is not on the radar of most white Americans and only understood from specific view points by many Asian-Americans as the second article suggests.  And I really can only guess that only those African-Americans who have contact with Asian-Americans think much about these issues.  I don't recall the issue coming up in the Netflix series Dear White People, though Wikipedia says there was an 'Asian' character - Ikumi - in Season 1 Episode 5.

And that's not even mentioning African born blacks living in the US and their own views on American whites and blacks.  (See for instance, Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.)

My experiences living in Germany, Thailand, and China is that there are many forms of racism or other prejudices based on skin color, religion, nationality all around the world.  One of the key differences between other places and the US, is that the US is one of the few places which has ideals about equality for everyone that are regularly taught in schools, and which are recited and have been believed to generally prevail by the white majority.   Even if those ideals aren't practiced.  And now we have a president who is demonstrating for the world the hypocrisy we've been living.

And ironically, it's led to a higher level of awareness and  discussion than this nation has ever had.