Who is the racist of political correctness?

There is always a question haunting in my mind: whether English ever eat turtle, at least in history. The question was raised after I read a commentary last year. In that article, the writer scornfully ended that he would not like go to a country of tortoise-eater. I have to say it totally undermined Chinese appetite for deliciousness. Actually they only eat the turtle, not tortoise. They are absolutely dissimilar tastes.

But to eat the turtle is not the Chinese or other East Asian privilege. In his Hard Time about 19th century intention between capitalist and miner, Dickens painted the upstart of Bounderby’s dream in such words “turtle soup and version of golden spoon”. It sounds that the turtle was the rising upper class’s favourite in Victorian era. Thanks to Heston in Channel 4. His programme confirmed my assumption recently. In his experimental chef show of Heston’s Victorian Feast”, he reconstructed a typical Victorian dinner according to an archived menu, the turtle was the delicious option in the table.

The selective amnesia about turtle meat would sometimes lead the misunderstanding and confliction amongst cultures. There is an example in China’s cyberspace this week. It is a stir triggered by a cartoon about evolution from apes to future human amongst various areas. In this satire picture, to African, the evolution ends as an anthropoid. And the destination of Chinese is a crab with three luxury watches. In Mandarin, the crab is homophonic to harmonious, the contemporary political slogan. And the three luxury watches implied the today CCP’s politics strategy, named three representative theory. Representative is identically pronounced as “to wear a watch” in Mandarin.

To a normal Chinese, the cartoon deems to be extremely satire about Chinese censorship. However, Custer, an English blogger from South Africa and in China, stamped racism to this picture and regarded it offensive politics correctness. He Caitou, who is a famous Chinese blogger and posted this picture on his own blog originally, refuted scornfully Custer’s commentary in his blog yesterday. This debate has attracted lots of comments and posters in both blogs.

Of course Custer’s opinion is constructive and friendly; moreover, it is not wrong to claim the racism is a bad social behaviour and politics incorrectness today. But the hidden problem is how Chinese think about the racial issues and whether they are aware of the linkage between racial issues and political correctness, as if which had been really established social issues in contemporary China.

Unfortunately, political correctness is rarely one failed case of the massive imported western ideas to China. I still remember it was first to read this word from a magazine more than nine years ago. In the following years, it failed to be popular as democracy, soft power or other keywords. Officially, in China, we have to admit some political tattoos which play as the roles of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named as racism in western nations. But few label them with the term of political correctness. To Chinese, racism seems to be an issue beyond political correctness. You are very easy to find some funny stereotypes and negative jokes about black man in China. As turtle to Chinese, the sort of discrimination mostly is based on the stereotype from folk media, it is different from racism to the western, which is rooted in the brutal slave trade and colonial past.

Dr. Ferguson commented that, in Victorian era, British Empire was unsatisfied with the goal of just ruling this world, instead, redefine it. Today the allegation of racism has been established as a universal political correctness, ironically by these previous colonial nations. It can be regarded as the extension of British Empire’s narrative. It is supposed to introduced acceptably and prevail in post-colonialised countries.

Unluckily, it is not fit to Chinese context. Initially, as China has never colonized and treated brutally Africa like main European countries, the accusation of racism would not inspire Chinese guilt as ex-conical countries like UK, Spain, German and France. More importantly, China has either been colonized as India or most Asia-Africa-Latin American countries. Therefore, Chinese are lack of sympathy for the colonial memory and experience. The seemly hint of racism left to Chinese might be the war of Sino-Japan, or the faded history from late Qing dynasty. However, these miserable past emphasises Chinese that “lagging behind leaves one vulnerable to attacks.” It did not drive anti-racism to be a prevailing civil campaign in China.

The controversy in this week’s cyberspace reminds that China has come to a vanishing boundary world: globalisation. The dilemma is that Chinese is adopting a language system defined by English and subject itself to an Anglo-Atlantic predominated context. This is not only of racism, but more.