Modern Chinese Medicine: Anti-Blackness
Epidemic prevention personnel carry out checks in Guangzhou on April 7, 2020, South China Post
Considering the global spread of COVID-19, it’s odd that Chinese people are discriminating against Africans on the basis that African immigrants might create a second wave of infections in China. In fact, 90% of new COVID-19 infections imported to China are from Chinese passport holders. Not only that, but Wuhan, the capital city of the Hubei province in China, is where the COVID-19 pandemic began. Consistent cover-ups by the Chinese government from the beginning of the pandemic beget a widespread belief that China’s government is suppressing statistics that reveal the true scale of the spread in China. Meanwhile, Africa has the lowest infection rate of any continent in the world. So why the sudden surge of anti-Black violence in China?
The reason is because anti-Blackness is a panacea for non-Black people of color when trying to mitigate the pain of racism against themselves. The Chinese have lost face by China being the epicenter of the worst global pandemic in a century, and there has been an uptick in Anti-Asian violence in the West, specifically targeting people who appear to be East Asian. Using the balm of anti-Blackness is how the Chinese are seeking to soothe themselves and regain their global standing.
Non-Black people of color have long deluded themselves that their plights against White supremacy are not so bad because they’re not Black. This despite Western imperialist invasions of Brown countries, trade wars against East Asian countries, and xenophobic border policies that target Latin American and Middle Eastern immigrants. African and Caribbean countries, though they are also facing struggles with neo-imperialism, have not in the post-colonial period been invaded, and neither are they the target of trade wars. Black people are not the majority in America’s migrant concentration camps nor is the fear of Blackness undergirding Europe’s Islamophobic nationalism.
https://medium.com/@milliemwihaki/modern-chinese-medicine-anti-blackness-848902c803af
