What is racism?

–by Gaven Li

We live in an extremely sensitive world. If people don’t use words like “black” or “colored” properly, they will be easily considered “racist.” I’ve been living in the United States as a Chinese student for about seventeen months and have met or heard many things that are a little “racist” but not hard to get over. So what is racism? In my very own opinion, racism is not the jokes that my friends often make about my eyes (sometime they are actually funny), or the fact that it took some teachers a year to stop calling me “Michael,” who is another male Chinese student in my grade. I don’t think these things are racist. They won’t even hurt my feelings.

The real racism is when mainstream media keeps conveying wrong messages to the audience that China is still a poor, rural country with uneducated people, while they never show the amazing changes China has made in the past thirty years. The real racism is the stereotype of “the smart Asian” or “the calculator,” without realizing how hard Chinese students study and how competitive it is to get into a good college in China. The real racism is claiming that “Chinese immigrants are taking over our land and our jobs,” while forgetting how European immigrants took land and livelihood from Native Americans two hundred years ago. The real racism is making fun of the Chinese internet blockade while praising the “freedom of speech” which was written in the U.S. Constitution while Edward Snowden has been hiding all over the world for three years. The real racism is laughing at China’s government system without even knowing anything about it, while the U.S. election system is about to let Mr. Donald Trump become the next president. The real racism is indignantly criticizing the child labor issues in China, while ignoring which country held slaves for two centuries.

Growing up in China, we are taught that the United States of America is an amazing country with liberty and democracy—Hollywood, New York, the NBA…it sounds a wonderful place. When I first came here, however, the one question that I was asked so many times was, “Do you eat dogs?” This really shocked me. I don’t know if it’s because of TV, newspapers, or the internet; it seems like most Americans’ knowledge and understanding of China is from the 1970’s. Even though I know the United States is probably so perfect that the people don’t necessarily want to learn too much about other countries, what really upsets me is the fact that so many people accept the wrong, misguided images of China or Chinese people without thinking or researching. The comic-strip caricature of the evil Fu Manchu, for example, was perpetuated by the media and politicians. I can live with all the racist jokes, but it is the disrespect and unfair judgement to my motherland that hurts me the most.

Because of cultural differences, Asian people usually don’t speak out for themselves or protest in public, but that doesn’t mean we don’t have feelings. I’m not pointing at anyone since most of my friends and teachers are nice to me and I really appreciate it. I’m just expressing how I feel about racism as portrayed in the media and internet. Indeed, Asians have small eyes, but they are big enough for us to see the unfairness and discrimination we are facing.