A hesitant post....

There was an article published a few days ago about how blacks and Mongolians are being banned from bars in Beijing during the Olympics. This was originally published by the South China Morning Post (a Hong Kong paper) and has since been refuted by a few sources. Basically, the story is that some bar owners said that officials from the Public Security Bureau in Beijing came around to their bars and asked them to sign pledges stating that they would not allow in blacks (drug dealers) or Mongolians (prostitutes) during the Olympics so that people didn't get the wrong impression of China.

Beijing authorities have said that they know nothing of this and no such ban has been issued and no such pledges signed. I believe that they would never be stupid enough to do anything so official and forward. I do believe, however, that some lower level police officers probably went to the bars and warned the bar owners to make sure that there were no black people in their clubs dealing during the Olympics.

The point of me writing this, though, is not to support or refute the article.. but to talk about the comments left on the article. (It's on the Huffington Post as well as a few other news sites) The comments infuriated and baffled me... They said things such as "This is all just a lie and is another example of the white man trying to keep black men away from Asian women." I'm sorry.... WHAT?! This is no way makes sense. The article was originally published by a Hong Kong publication, which has no white involvement... about Chinese people... and black people. You can throw your conspiracy theories at me that the white man rules the world and therefore this is a valid statement, but I will fight you on this and not buy into that belief. It is true that white people have an influence here, but I assure you that it is not to keep the blacks away from the Asian chicks.

It is true that there is a growing number of African drug dealers in Beijing, so the leap from black people to drug dealers is not completely unfounded, but it's still pretty ridiculous. In general, Chinese people are pretty racist (I've blogged about this before!) and this just takes it one step further. There are all sorts of accounts of racism in China, particularly against people of darker skin, and I wouldn't say that they're machinations of a white media. As time goes on and China grows more powerful, the white man is becoming more and more absent from China... just as he was a mere 30 years ago.

At any rate... I thought this was an interesting topic, though a bit frustrating. People draw weird connections between things that aren't necessarily connected. There are too many conspiracy theories for our own good.