By Adam Peng ’17, Perspectives Section Editor
Recently, Air China’s monthly inflight magazine , the Wings of China, included the following words in the passage of Tips from Air China about traveling in London, “London is generally a safe place to travel, however precautions are needed when entering areas mainly populated by Indians, Pakistanis and black people. We advise tourists not to go out alone at night, and females always are to be accompanied by another person when traveling.”
Such comment was reported by a CNBC journalist, and caused a great amount of protest in London. Two members of Britain’s Parliament demanded apology from Chinese Ambassadors to UK and deletion of the magazine. On Sep. 8th, Air China, admitting such comments can cause misunderstanding, withdrew all the magazines and apologized for the inappropriate language used in the passage, claiming that Air China has always been respecting of all customs and cultures, and has employees from all over the world, and that the magazines on the plane don’t represent the opinions of Air China.
However, that is not the end of the story. This event caused huge controversy in the Chinese community. As UK media criticized Air China, the Chinese newspaper Global Times posted an article stating that “While criticizing Air China, the UK has spent 2 million pounds building huge walls stopping refugees across from the strait”, pointing out Britain’s hypocrisy on the matter. The Telegraph agreed -“‘It is absolutely the truth,” said one comment on Sina Weibo. “Let the people who oppose this take a walk in those dangerous areas in middle of night..
While western media is calling it “blatantly racist”, I realize the essential long-existing difference between our understanding of racism and the American and European understanding of racism that caused such controversy between the two cultures. Despite the seemingly sincere apology from Air China, it is clear to many Chinese people that all they wanted to do was to get rid of the “troublesome” Western reporters who thought themselves as a symbol of justice.
Our differences, I suppose, arise from our understanding of sectional, or complete racism and racism against individuals. Over the years, many events and cases have happened in Western world, making sectional racism a common theme; many who accuse others of being “racist” when they feel offended even though it is not really the case of racism. In America, I have never heard any one saying, “Chinese people are bad, or Indian people are bad”, but people do make racist jokes, from time to time. I have clearly heard someone saying “I hate Asians” right into my face once. Perhaps he took that as a casual joke, but to me, that is just as hurtful as people saying “All Chinese people are weak nerds”.
On the other hand, in Asia, just like what people said in response to Weibo, we know some words can be racist and can deeply hurt people’s feelings, but we have to say them, not in public, but to our families to protect them from danger. At the same time, we respect every individual regardless of his or her racial identity. If you go to a bar in a big city of China in the midnight, you will find white people, black people, and Chinese people hanging out together and being friendly. Surprisingly, foreigners can be more welcomed than native people. And that is the way people in our country demonstrate our respect and belief of equality to other races.
I remember a public service advertisement that I saw years ago, entitled “No one is born to be racist”. It indicates that most racism is taught, and that we should teach our children to never treat people differently according to their race. However, differences between people definitely exist. We just need to avoid stereotypes towards Asian people such as “they are bad at sports” and “only work on math all day”, because those stereotypes are not true.
To me, frankly, I think there is no difference between racism towards individuals and racism towards groups of people. They are both problems that we need to get rid of eventually from our society. And let’s face it; we can all be racist, even though we don’t really want to admit it. But racism is something has to be self-realized and worked on instead of pointing into each other’s face saying, “You are so racist”. Such internal mental transformation is the real solution to the problem of racism overtime that needs to be discovered and sincerely enforced on our new selves.
sources：
http://www.npr.org/2016/09/08/493073565/racial-slur-in-air-china-magazine-sparks-anger
http://money.cnn.com/2016/09/08/news/companies/air-china-magazine-article-london-racism/
picture source:
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/sep/07/air-china-inflight-mag-condemned-for-raci
