A recent CNN.com feature titled “Growing up Black in China” offered a personal account of how Lou Jing (娄婧), a former reality show contestant with an African-American father, is dealing with the racial controversy she sparked this summer.
Lou was thrust into China’s national spotlight while competing on the show “Go! Oriental Angel” (加油！东方天使) due to her dark brown skin, which obviously made her stand out from the other girls. Lou, who is only 20 years old, told CNN her experience on the “American Idol”-style program was the first time in her life that she felt different.
She has never met her father, so she considers herself completely Chinese. She had a normal childhood with friends who accepted her and even tried to console her when she began to question why she was darker.
[Jessica Johnson]
Lou definitely needed that comfort again when malicious and hateful comments concerning her mixed parentage were spewed over the internet.
Since the social construction of race that we have formulated in the West is relatively new to China, Lou’s ordeal on “Go! Oriental Angel” provides an interesting analysis of how the Chinese are tackling racial issues as their country has become more diverse. China’s economic rise has resulted in more foreigners moving into cities and a greater influence of American popular culture. I’ve learned more about this cultural shift from my Chinese students in the pop culture and English composition classes I’ve taught.
My pop culture course examines racial and gender themes in American music, film and television, and my Chinese students have been extremely interested in cultural similarities along gender lines, but have been reluctant to talk about race. In one of my class discussions on music and reality shows this year, they did not mention their country’s reaction to Lou, but pointed out the experience of Li Yuchun, a 2005 contestant on another “Idol”-like show called “Super Girl,” later renamed “Happy Girls.”
The disapproval that many Chinese expressed towards Li centered on her boyish appearance – she sported short, spiked hair and wore no makeup. My students stressed that Li’s popularity challenged China’s “conventional gender norms” and prompted former Minister of Culture Liu Zhongde to criticize “Super Girls” as “poison for youth” and “a disgrace to art.”
Although many Chinese were uncomfortable with Li’s tomboyish look, she won the “Super Girl” competition and gained a huge following among younger viewers.
From what I’ve read so far about Lou, it will take some Chinese a little longer to accept her. One of the racial similarities in China and America that is evident from Lou’s experience on “Go! Oriental Angel” is that the dominant physical characteristics of individuals with mixed heritage determine how they are racially classified. Because of her dark skin, Lou will never be accepted by some Chinese as completely Chinese.
In America, people with African American and white parentage often choose to label themselves according to the racial group they most resemble. For example, actress Halle Berry, whose mother is white, has explained that it was easier for her to identify herself as black due to how she looks. Her decision was most likely based on the fact that when people have tried to step out of the rigid racial boxes we’ve constructed in America, the reaction is often one of ridicule and scorn.
When Tiger Woods called himself a “Cablinasian” – a contraction of Caucasian, black, American Indian and Asian – on “Oprah” 12 years ago after winning his first Masters golf tournament, he attempted to highlight his Asian and African American heritage. Yet, many blacks thought Woods was ashamed of his skin color and accused him of downplaying his influence on black children. Woods’ current marital scandal has resulted in what some consider a racially indifferent response from African Americans.
China’s racial issues are not as complex as ours since the country is mostly a homogenous population. However, as Lou’s story has broadened the discussion on race, it will be interesting to see how issues of multiculturalism are addressed in the future.
My Chinese students did eventually share with me that prejudice in China is rooted in class achievement in addition to ethnic background, so as the nation begins to grapple with the latter, they will have to examine what it really means to be Chinese today.
• Jessica Johnson, a 1987 graduate of Clarke Central High School, is a correspondent for the Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch and an adjunct professor at Columbus State Community College.
bron: www.onlineathens.com [26-12-2009]
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We of Wocview know that this issue is highly debated by Chinese netizens, and therefore we did some research and compiled a comprehensive but indepth summary of different viewpoints.
Chinese netizens critisized Lou Jing (娄婧) for 5 reasons:
1) Her mother, a Shanghainese-Chinese woman had a sexual relation with an African-American, and got abandoned when she got pregnant. Which adds to an existing stereotype of African or dark tinted people, and implicates sideways to her mother’s poor choice of men or even loose morals. (Strangely enough; if her father was Caucasian this would have been considered normal). There is however another report which says: Lou Jing was the result of an illicit affair she had with an African-American man some 20 years ago. Ms Lou’s mother, who is a Shanghainese and known only as Madam Lou, said her Chinese husband divorced her when he found their newborn looked African instead of Chinese.
2) To conceive before marriage and give a birth to the child who has no father is considered disgraceful in China. Besides, there is a Chinese proverb: 家丑不可外扬 (do not spill out the shame of your family to outside), but yet Lou Jing told the public of her family in a tv-show, and that her intention was to find her father. This announcement outraged many Chinese, who think she is shameless and want to boost her popularity by such an action to get more votes. Whether this is a misunderstanding or not, only Lou Jing knows.
3) Once she said: “my father is an American, not an African”, this sentence makes many people think she looks down on the Africans, and her makes moral quality suspicious. Maybe she just thought to be an American is better to be an African, who knows…
4) Some people are skeptical about her origin, because if her father is an American, she could easily get the US nationality. Why did she opt to stay in China? A few people even speculate that her father fits perfectly in the stereotype of an irresponsible African man, but she pretends to have an American father just for showing off.
5) Many Chinese netizens also dislike the notion that foreigners consider Chinese women an “easy catch”. And this case proves once more that not only the “white devils” (Laowai), but also black people get an easy shot at Chinese women, who are known for applying a “double standard” when it comes to non-Chinese vs Chinese partners. Where the latter one clearly suffers in having a hard time finding a partner where the man-woman ratio in China is very bad from a male perspective. Many Chinese netizens critisize the lack of self respect of Chinese girls when it comes down to the choice of a foreign partner compared to a Chinese one.
Another part of the netizens do think that Lou Jing is treated too harshly. For a little girl to endure so much criticism, while most of the blame should have gone to her mother. Even so, the racial discomfort about foreigners is only verbal, hate crimes/attacks based on race never happen in China. You never see a Chinese guy attacking a foreigner just because his skin color is different, while these sort of hate crimes happens daily in for example America, Australia, Germany, the Netherlands and England.
