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Oh, my people, my people.

Today my dad sent me this NPR report about Lou Jing, a Chinese and Black Shanghainese cuuuuuuuutiiiiieeeepiiiiiieeeeeeee who received a slew of racist backlash when she appeared on an “American Idol-style” show called Go! Oriental Angel.  Now first of all, I only say this from the deepest love arteries of my heart when I say that if there was ever a Chinese equivalent to The New Millennium Minstrel Show, it would probably be called Go! Oriental Angel.  Only in my homeland can a show title manage to be misogynistic, self-oppressive, and 90′s-era aZn pRyDe generic in just three words and a punctuation mark. Dammit.  Now they’re never gonna let me back in.

Although it should be no surprise to me that viewers of a show called Go! Oriental Angel might not be the most culturally sensitive people on the planet, as a person of Chinese descent, I was quite dismayed by this news story because of the blatant racism on not one, but two fronts.  Hark!

China as the culprits
Lou Jing was raised by her Chinese mother for the entirety of her life in China.  She’s hella Chinese, and way more Chinese than my constantly-mistaken-as-Filipino-with-a-Mexican-last-name ass.  However, when she appeared on the show, she was immediately dubbed the “chocolate angel” and “black pearl” and constantly referred to as so.  Once again, I give it up to my people for being able to make stereotypes sound delicious.  But what leaves a horrible taste in my mouth is the internet commentary that went as far as to call her “shameless” for showing her face on Chinese television.  And although there’s a slight chance that as opposed to being racist these people were actually taking a strict Asian parental stance (i.e. “you’re shameless for showing your face at this piano recital!”) chances are they were just being racist.  Perhaps Lou was in fact being shameless, because all the shame is obviously reserved for these bigots.

China as the victim
Now, with it being said that the comments about Lou are disgusting, intolerable, and should incinerate in Diyu, can I now just say fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck the American press for attributing these internet comments to China’s “social attitudes lagging far behind.” It’s the INTERNETS, you stupidiots!  Surely, when you use online bulletin comments as the cultural rubric for the entire Republic of China “lagging far behind,” you’re not referring to China “lagging far behind” the America whose YouTube commenters that had a bigot-fest when the black and Chinese fight on Muni broke out a couple of weeks ago, or the racist and homophobic picnic American internetlings went on during the Kanye/Swift moment and people can’t seem to get enough of. Stop using ignorant 13-year-old webnerds to disperse your China propaganda, you ignorant 43-year-old webnerds!!

Once again, I’m not defending anyone’s ignorance and I’m not saying that Chinese people can’t be racist because I definitely know we can be some ignorant dipshits at times.  But saying that racist web and media comments represent a general “lack of knowledge about racism” in all of China is like saying that a beauty pageant contestant’s inability to answer a geographical question represents a general lack of knowledge about location in all of America.  Because that’s obviously not the case.  America knows the world very good.

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