Considering the global spread of COVID-19, it’s odd that Chinese people are discriminating against Africans on the basis that African immigrants might create a second wave of infections in China. In fact, 90% of new COVID-19 infections imported to China are from Chinese passport holders. Not only that, but Wuhan, the capital city of the Hubei province in China, is where the COVID-19 pandemic began. Consistent cover-ups by the Chinese government from the beginning of the pandemic beget a widespread belief that China’s government is suppressing statistics that reveal the true scale of the spread in China. Meanwhile, Africa has the lowest infection rate of any continent in the world. So why the sudden surge of anti-Black violence in China?

The reason is because anti-Blackness is a panacea for non-Black people of color when trying to mitigate the pain of racism against themselves. The Chinese have lost face by China being the epicenter of the worst global pandemic in a century, and there has been an uptick in Anti-Asian violence in the West, specifically targeting people who appear to be East Asian. Using the balm of anti-Blackness is how the Chinese are seeking to soothe themselves and regain their global standing.

Non-Black people of color have long deluded themselves that their plights against White supremacy are not so bad because they’re not Black. This despite Western imperialist invasions of Brown countries, trade wars against East Asian countries, and xenophobic border policies that target Latin American and Middle Eastern immigrants. African and Caribbean countries, though they are also facing struggles with neo-imperialism, have not in the post-colonial period been invaded, and neither are they the target of trade wars. Black people are not the majority in America’s migrant concentration camps nor is the fear of Blackness undergirding Europe’s Islamophobic nationalism.

Despite evidence to the contrary, non-Black people of color feel they’re better positioned than Black people because the model of White supremacy that is taught to them places White people at the top, non-Black people of color in the middle, and Black people at the bottom. Indigenous peoples are quite tellingly erased in this model. The three pillars of White supremacy as theorized by Andrea Smith is in fact a better model for understanding how White supremacy situates people of color and Indigenous people.

One pillar is the logic that Black people are inherently enslavable. Black people, according to this logic, are reduced to their physical form. From the trans-Atlantic slave trade to sharecropping to the modern prison-industrial complex, White people have been obsessed with controlling the Black body in order to exploit it for the physical needs of Whiteness, whether that need is for cheap manual labour, or for sports and entertainment. This logic undergirds White capitalism. It tells people that as long as they’re not Black, they can escape the commodification of their bodies as property of capital. This logic teaches non-Black people of colour to be grateful for their relative positioning within White capitalism, since at least they’re not dehumanized slaves to be consumed. At least White police are not thirsty for their blood, nor hungry for their bodies.

The second pillar is that of genocide and colonialism against Indigenous people. The logic of genocide is to persistently erase Indigenous people in settler nations, in order for White people to lay rightful claim to vanquished lands, and continue their appropriation of Indigenous spirituality and culture.

The third pillar is that of Orientalism and war. It marks non-Black people of color as permanent foreigners, however long they and their families have been in Western countries. As these foreign cultures and civilizations pose a threat to the stability of White civilization, they must be neutralized through war, and suppressed using domestic policies, particularly in terms of immigration.

Whiteness is upheld by these three pillars. No pillar can be removed if White supremacy is to stay afloat. Yet non-Black people of colour believe that they can ascend to Whiteness through their anti-Blackness and sycophantic echoing of the tenets of Whiteness. Part of this belief stems from the oft repeated myth that European Jews, Italians, and the Irish ascended to Whiteness in the early 20th century. Anti-Semitic policies, discrimination and violence, and nativist xenophobia targeting Italians and the Irish that used anti-Black comparisons, were widespread in North America. However Italians, Irish and European Jews were viewed as White. Despite this, Whiteness has not spared Jews from continued anti-Semitic persecution in the 20th and 21st century.

The path forward to White immigrant assimilation in Western countries has always been quite simple: a willingness to discard their native culture, and an eagerness to enact anti-Black violence, and Indigenous erasure. Non-Black immigrants’ aspiration for Whiteness, or at the very least their acceptance as citizens in Western countries, is modeled on this. The irony is that many of the rights that Non-Black people of color have under the law to be treated as equal citizens are because of the civil rights movements that were led by Black people. Non-Black people have not only availed themselves of these rights, but they’ve been willing accomplices in undermining further race-based civil rights.

The model minority myth was devised by White supremacists in the mid-20th century to quash arguments that Black people’s low socioeconomic status was unrelated to racist oppression. Policies were put into place to relax immigration laws for Asian immigrants, and allow Asians to achieve higher socioeconomic status. Propaganda and policy reinforced one another. Portraying Asians as successful because of their work ethic, educational prioritization, and compliance allows White supremacy to cement the pillar that depicts Black people as merely beasts of burden without civilization or higher brain functioning, while also cementing the pillar of Orientalism that creates a narrative of Asians constituting a formidable threat to White civilization.

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, which originated in China, has brought White civilization to a halt, Orientalist violence has increased. The Chinese, wary of losing their coveted status as model minorities on the global scale, are therefore responding with increased anti-Blackness. They are following a time-old narrative: to appease the fury of the White Gods, Black people must be sacrificed.

The irony is that in the history of racism, Non-Black racial minorities perpetuating anti-Blackness doesn’t gain them equality with Whiteness or a reprieve from White violence. Americans didn’t suddenly stop invading oil-rich, Brown countries because of anti-Blackness in the Middle East. Europeans wouldn’t suddenly become accepting of traditional Muslim garb if they knew of Islam’s history of anti-Blackness. Americans haven’t stopped deporting Latin Americans because of their similar history of slavery and anti-Blackness. Anti-Blackness performed by Chinese people won’t stop White racists who are angry about the COVID-19 pandemic from targeting people that look East Asian.

Part of the cognitive dissonance that Han Chinese have around race and their standing, is because the Han believe that they’re also white. Through the recent persecution of Muslim Uighurs, they’re mimicking Whiteness’ Islamophobic war on terrorism. China’s imperialist ventures in Africa, are an attempt to match Europe’s neo-colonial dominion in Africa.

Indigenous and Black people have long understood our antagonistic position in regards to Whiteness, and that Black and Indigenous people don’t operate in silos. Supporting each other is in all of our best interest when it comes to dismantling the pillars of White supremacy so it collapses. Will the COVID-19 pandemic finally make Chinese people understand they can’t hide behind the pillar of anti-Blackness? That Whiteness will never be granted to them? That the proximity to Whiteness is just a carrot that the model minority myth dangles, always just out of reach? If anything, the surge of Anti-Asian violence in Western countries illustrates the pillar of Orientalism and war in action by showing how quickly model minorities can become targets of xenophobic violence. Or will the Chinese continue to deny the truth of where White supremacy situates them and always has? The Chinese can never hope to defeat White supremacy or even match it, if they can’t even face their shortcomings honestly without the use of Black people as a scapegoat.

Modern Chinese Medicine: Anti-Blackness | by Millie Boella | Medium