Opinion: Time to address racial prejudice

By Christine Laskowski

I recently read an article in The Times about the growing number of Tanzanian women seeking Chinese men there.

The article touches on the lengths many will go through to land a Chinese husband, noting those that will apply skin-lightening creams because they believe it will better their chances. On the other hand, Chinese nationals were often marrying local women to bypass restrictions placed on foreigners that would hamper their ability to do business. But more importantly, although I felt not very effectively, the article used these issues in order to present an even larger, less sexualized issue - that of China's growing presence in Africa, and conversely, Africa's growing presence in China.

The relationship between China and the continent is dynamic, and not as recent as many believe. And in terms of ideological alliances and the fluctuating global economy, no other country's relationship tells the tale between China and Africa like Tanzania. Tanzania's post-independence president, Julius Nyerere, interested in creating the new nation under a socialist system, developed the tenets of "Ujamaa" or "African Socialism."

In the 1950s and 60s, when many countries were winning their independence from Western powers, this budding relationship between socialist nations not only made sense, but was deemed crucial. In his speech at the plenary session of the Afro-Asian Conference in 1955 in Bandung, Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai emphasized China's own personal struggle toward development in a world dominated by Western and Soviet hegemony.

China did a great deal to help Tanzania develop. The TAZARA Railway, which extends from the Tanzanian port city of Dar es Salaam to Kapiri Mposhi in Zambia was completed in 1976 and stands as one of China's greatest development legacies on the continent.

While China's assistance to Tanzania and other African nations continued to grow, nothing captured it quite like the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) in 2006, when the heads of 45 African nations came to Beijing in order to form new strategic partnerships between China and their home countries.

Today Chinese nationals can be found living and conducting business in almost every corner of the continent, from the remote to the metropolitan, and so too can the nationals from most African nations in China.

Yet with all the aid and the discussion of "brotherhood" and "cooperation," surprisingly often the attitudes of Chinese toward Africans I've witnessed while in China have been prejudiced, and I feel it is something that should be addressed.

I've been in cabs where taxi drivers, after watching an African walk past, asked whether they bathe. Some Chinese landlords also said they were reluctant to rent property to Africans. I've seen Africans be denied work as musicians for performances because it was believed that clients would not like it.

I want to be careful about generalizing Chinese attitudes toward Africans, because it certainly does not apply to all. However, it does appear that even those who do not share those sentiments feel very casually about those who do, and that is dangerous.

I feel it is about time that the racial hierarchy that exists in China be acknowledged because that is the first and most important step to dismantle it and the negative stereotyping that all too often accompanies it, and to be reminded of the spirit in which China's relations with Africa developed, vis-a-vis a likeness born of shared experience, and apply them here.