Why Don't Chinese Like Black People?

[Lu]

1 hour ago, XiaoXi said:

if you're black or Indian for example, in the USA you may be physically attacked due to your race, but these kinds of things are few and far between and the vast majority of people are against racism

You're missing something here, which is that there is a lot of space between 'everyone agrees racism is bad' and 'black people being beaten up', and many (most?) Western countries have a lot going on in that space: non-majority people being yelled at, having a disadvantage when looking for work, being profiled, being harrassed by the police, etc etc etc. This is the type of racism almost everyone who is a minority in their country has experienced. I agree that in China, more people are more willing to just out and say they don't like black people or they have X negative ideas about black people, and this is less acceptable in many Western countries. But minorities in Western countries will absolutely encounter people who are racist towards them, either openly or in a more subtle way.

[XiaoXi]

21 hours ago, Lu said:

I agree that in China, more people are more willing to just out and say they don't like black people or they have X negative ideas about black people, and this is less acceptable in many Western countries. But minorities in Western countries will absolutely encounter people who are racist towards them, either openly or in a more subtle way.

I never said it didn't happen in the west, I just said it's not the norm. You may encounter it with one of your jobs, from say one person at your work, but in China you'll encounter it with every job you do, from everyone at your work. I thought I'd made this point quite clear already.

 

I mean come on, China even had a nationwide broadcast tv advert with a black being cleaned 'white'. If racism wasn't so accepted by the general population then that could never happen. Conversely, in the west even the slightest degree of racism on tv has to go through a thousand filters...to the point we get political correctness gone mad. They're two polar opposite situations. And like I mentioned before, even my teacher in China told the class that black people were the worst race in the world. Can you imagine this happening in a western university with no repercussions?

 

21 hours ago, Lu said:

But minorities in Western countries will absolutely encounter people who are racist towards them, either openly or in a more subtle way.

Yes.....I'm pretty sure I didn't say racism was non existent in the west...

 

Quantity vs severity.

[Moshen]

I spent a year working in China in the 1980s, and I can contribute two anecdotes:

 

1)A very well-educated guy who worked in my office building who I became friendly with told me once, "Blue eyes make me feel afraid."  I have blue eyes.  I have no doubt he was telling me a true feeling.  I think that's a primitive, deep-down reaction to experiencing something different from everything in your experience up to that point.

 

2)When I traveled to the countryside with another young woman who had blue eyes and long blond hair, in the train stations peasants would encircle us and silently stare, three deep, as if we were animals in a zoo.  This was unsettling!  In some train stations a worker would take pity on us and escort us to a private room to wait for our train.

 

My experience was that the instinctive reaction of Chinese to something never before seen was never to admire it.  I know this doesn't directly speak to the question of why the Chinese have a more negative reaction to Black people than to White people.  Which they do.  But it contributes to the overall picture.

[Mijin]

I think I figured it out after reading this thread.

China is a very homogenous country and the small percentage of minorities live in quite separate communities that Han visit as tourists. The idea is cemented that your ethnicity determines how you live.

 

So, many african countries are poor therefore blacks are "poor people". It's not that different from the white supremacist thing expect here it's just ignorance. With supremacists they have to concede there are plenty of intelligent, successful black people who've contributed a lot, but they handwave them as "outliers".

[shBW]

In my opinion, this partially true because in recent times, this discrimination has considerably declined. While in China, most of Chinese who didn't like black people were uneducated ones who lack of a global perceptions for humanity.

Stereotypes are another reason. Media is responsible to let fragile minds know black people are "bad" because some black guys committed a crime or breached the law. I fully disagree with any kind of discrimination or segregation. We cannot stereotype anyone and much less based on media sensationalism. 

[cliveface96]

Not sure how relevant this is but did anyone see that article about the Chinese guy poisoning his black roommate in the US with thallium? What a cooked unit!