Asians on-Africans: A shaky relationship built on sand

By LaBode Obanor

In recent years, there has been an awkward economic romance between two continents, namely, Asia and Africa. The dominant Asian nation, China, has made a huge footprint in Africa, exemplified by its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), meant to finance infrastructure and loan/credit extension program to help African governments fund their revenue deficient budgets. Many African government find this attention intoxicating and succumb willingly to the dictates of the Chinese government. Many independent observers have concluded that the relationship is hardly symbiotic.

Other Asian countries, like Singapore, India, South Korea have increased their presence in Africa, too, via bilateral trade agreements and, foreign direct investments. Consider an emblematic example involving Senegal. Businesses in India are forging ties in commercial vehicle transportation, exportation of phosphoric acid and training of Senegalese technicians and professionals and in supporting projects in rice, cotton, solar energy and new information technologies. This is merely the tip of the iceberg: According to the world body, Asian/Africa relationships reflect a broad trend engulfing both continents Asia sees Africa as a nesting ground for its nouveau skills lush with a potential windfall.

Beyond the economic relationship between the two continents, there is a toxicity in the dynamics in the Asian treatment of people from Africa, one marked by outright hostility. This sentiments dates back to the 1980s, in Nanjing China, when an angry mob besieged a university campus known for admitting foreign students. A mob descended on foreigners, primarily students who are of African descent in wide scale destructions. The brutal incident caused over 130 African students to flee for their lives and took refuge at a train station amid chants of “Down with the black devils” as the mob marched through the streets.

Since the global condemnation of the Nanjiing incident, the Chinese authorities have tried to depict itself as a tolerant society by covering widespread racial biases among its people. Notwithstanding this effort, racism is even more overt, blatantly flaunted on television and other media outlets. So, when a Chinese mall security, in open view, excluded black patrons from entering or when signs are held, saying in English, “black people are not allowed to enter the restaurant,” it is seen as normal and acceptable behavior and conducted in an unabashed manner.

To date, this intolerable behavior has been shrouded in secrecy and cover up. However, following the emergence of smart phones and ability to record events, acts of intolerance have been exposed to the world.
In 2016, the whole world watched with utter horror, a laundry detergent advertisement aired on Chinese television which depicted blackness as dirt that needed to be laundered to a white skin. When the owner of the detergent was questioned about the advertisement, his response was, “he did not realize it was racist until it was pointed out to him.”

China anti-black sentiment is quite rampant and practiced with impunity. Indeed, the average Chinese is oblivious of the physiological injury being wrought on blacks. Further evidence of this found on billboards, in magazines, and museums walls, with images portraying black people as animals or metaphors for filth. Certainly, anti-black disposition has sadly been mainstreamed in the modern Chinese society.

More recently in the Guangzhou region, a state with the largest concentration of Africans, black residents have been subjected to discriminatory practices amid widespread coronavirus pandemic. From compulsory and needless testings, indiscriminate and mandatory quarantines, to denial of hotel accommodations or forced evictions from their homes without cause.

China is not alone in its discriminating practices. Other Asian nations follow these practices as well. For example, in South Korea, racial disharmony has ruptured to blatant, unconcealed proportions. Hostilities on Africans range from bizarre looks while walking on the street, shopping in the supermarket or eating in restaurants as if the black body is a thing, or a plague that must be avoided, to verbal disparagement, discrimination at work places, job refusals or sexual assaults. The Korean Herald, South Korea’s largest English language daily newspaper once reported that, Korean racism against Africans is based on a Korean supremacist attitude of looking down on migrants from poorer, particularly those located in Africa.

Sam Okyere, a Ghanaian TV personality, once told HuffPost in 2017 about an incident that happened to him in a South Korean subway. A Korean woman would not let him take a seat. According to Okyere, she said “What is a black bastard like you doing in Korea? Go back to your country.” What hurt more was that the other Korean people just sat there and watched. It made me wonder if Koreans just watch foreigners without helping them in difficult situations,” Okyere said. The Koreans have perfected what the Chinese began.

Here, In the United States, anti-blackness in the Asian communities have reached a tipping point, despite the enormous contribution blacks have made in supporting Asian-owned businesses, So, when Asian American police officer, Tou Thao, of the Minneapolis Police Department watched-and stood by, then prevented others from intervening as life was being sucked out of a black African American man, George Floyd, by fellow officer, this revealed the deep-seated, extreme anti-black racism Asians have for the black people.

So, whenever the Asian and African continents metaphorically collide, consider whether those inhabiting the latter are allowing themselves to be willfully exploited. And this must stop.

LaBode Obanor is a legal schoolar and financial expert at Banor Associates LLC in New York
obanorel@gmail.com