When riots broke out in the U.S. city of Baltimore in May 2015, the reaction across the Chinese social web was sadly predictable as Internet users posted countless anti-black racist comments. However, what was interesting about their posts is how there is seemingly a growing conflation of African-Americans and African migrants in the minds of Chinese netizens. Now that China is home to tens of thousands of African immigrants, those racist comments morphed into xenophobia.
Media
05.06.15
Online Reaction to Baltimore Protests Reveals Much About Chinese Tension with African Immigrants
Viola Rothschild is a Fulbright Scholar at the Institute of African Studies at Zhejiang Normal University. She posted a commentary on Foreign Policy magazine’s website that focused on the increasingly complex racism that is expressed online towards blacks (both from the U.S. and Africa). Viola joins Eric and Cobus to discuss her observations about China’s complex relationship with multiculturalism and how it’s manifested online.
Recommendations
- “A Minority in the Middle Kingdom: My Experience Being Black in China,” Marketus Presswood, Tea Leaf Nation, July 17, 2013