Dongdongqian丨Cheng Chunhua: From Jim Crow to Fu Manchu——How do you view the cultural symbols of racial discrimination in the United States?

　　China News Agency, Beijing, February 12. Question: From Jim Crow to Fu Manchu——How do you view the cultural symbols of racial discrimination in the United States?

　　AuthorCheng ChunhuaAssociate Professor of Minzu University of China

　　In September 2022, Kelly Smith, a scholar at Emory University in the United States, pointed out in "Jim Crow in a Mental Asylum" that after the Civil War, black people were more likely to be misdiagnosed as schizophrenic and isolated, and suffered multiple abuses, violence and coercion. labor.

On American social media, the "fox eyes" derived from the image of Fu Manchu once became a hot topic.

In 2013, an American car company advertised China as the "Land of Fu Manchuria".

American Peirce Semiotics believes that thought produces and interprets signs.

As cultural symbols born of racist ideas, Jim Crow and Fu Manchu have a long history and are stubborn and cunning.

Jim Crow symbols reflect the history of black blood and tears in the United States

　　Jim Crow is a black image of "troubadour" created by white actor Thomas Dartmouth Rice in 1830.

In English, "Crow" means "crow". The image has a black face, ragged clothes, a peculiar accent, and funny movements.

Rice's Jim Crow performance made the racist virus spread rapidly and provided the ideological and public opinion basis for the emergence of Jim Crow law.

　　Jim Crow laws refer to the legal or institutional tools used to implement racial segregation and discrimination against blacks in the United States from 1876 to 1975.

This law segregates blacks in education, tourism, transportation, living facilities and public places, and deprives blacks of their rights to vote, work, education, fair housing, and equal transportation.

The state apparatus became a tool for whites to suppress blacks and other minorities, and the Supreme Court's "separate but equal" rule in 1896 legalized the segregation of blacks.

Jim Crow even served as an inspiration for Nazi Germany.

　　Jim Crow symbols, laws, and policy systems have exacerbated racial contradictions in the economy and society, and have become signal flares for the genocide and cleansing of black people.

During the "Blood Summer" of 1919, there were at least 25 racial riots in the United States in which white veterans persecuted blacks.

In June 1921, the "Tulsa Race Massacre" in which white mobs bloodbathed "Black Wall Street" resulted in the killing of 300 black people and nearly 10,000 people were left homeless.

In 1918, US President Wilson admitted that at least 2,522 blacks were lynched between 1889 and 1918.

Biden acknowledged that "systemic racism" is a stain on America's soul.

　　In order to escape the racial oppression and violence under the Jim Crow Law and get rid of economic and educational difficulties, the "Great Black Migration Movement" appeared in the United States from 1916 to 1970, and more than 6 million blacks migrated from the South to the North.

Isabel Wilkerson pointed out in the book "A Warm Sun in a Foreign Land: A History of the Great American Migration" that the Great Migration reduced the proportion of blacks in the South from 90% in 1900 to 50% in 1970.

　　With the popularity of the civil rights movement, the explicit Jim Crow disappeared, but it mutated into an invisible discrimination that was difficult to prevent.

In August 2021, the Republican Party launched a highly difficult "Jim Crow 2.0" voting policy.

American scholar Michelle Alexander's book "The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness" regards mass incarceration as the "new Jim Crow".

From 1970 to 2007, the incarceration rate of black people nearly quadrupled, and the focus of control of black people in the United States changed from plantations and social segregation to prisons.

　　Saussure, a Swiss semiotic scholar, believed that language and culture are a collection of signs.

In the cultural symbol system of racial discrimination against African Americans, Jim Crow is a representative symbol form.

In addition to Jim Crow, there are other symbols of racial discrimination in the United States, including the submissive Uncle Tom, the black slave "Sambo" who is a mixed-race African-American and aboriginal, the obese and loud black nanny "Mummy", the plantation slave Ze P Cohen et al.

Fu Manchu symbol embodies American pride and prejudice against Asians

　　In 1913, the writer Arthur Henry Ward published the novel "The Mystery of Dr. Fu Manchu" under the pseudonym "Sax Roemer", in which he fabricated "squinting eyes, inverted brows, high cheekbones, goatee, thin bald head, author The "Chinese villain image" of "official robe" - Fu Manchu.

In Romer's eyes, Fu Manchu is the anthropomorphic incarnation of the "Yellow Peril", and the yellow race it represents is the chief culprit of all misfortunes in the Western world.

"The Mystery of Dr. Fu Manchu" has sold millions of copies and been translated into more than 10 languages. It and other similar novels have spread in more than 30 countries in Europe, America and Asia, inciting and consuming Chinese suspicion, Sinophobia, and black Chinese trends.

The Fu Manchu symbol embodies the pride and prejudice against Asians in the United States.

　　Romer's six "Dr. Fu Manchu" novels have been derived into many American movies and animations, evolved from text symbols to multimedia symbols, rendered and enhanced by Hollywood movies for decades, and have far-reaching influence.

To this day, the image of Chinese in Hollywood movies is still influenced by "Fu Manchu", and Chinatown is portrayed as a place where gangsters are rampant and drugs are rampant.

The goatee of the pirate Sao Feng in "Pirates of the Caribbean 3" in 2007 is a legacy of Fu Manchu.

　　Symbols such as Fu Manchu, the Boxers, the sick man of East Asia, and women with bound feet all have the color of "yellow peril theory".

American writer Jack London's "Unprecedented Invasion" and other works advocate the "China Threat Theory", slandering the Chinese as an "inferior nation", and advocating "genocide" against the Chinese to eliminate the "yellow peril".

　　With the introduction of the civil rights movement and related affirmative action bills, racial discrimination faced legal and public opinion risks and became more hidden.

Through name changes, costume changes, and skin changes, American racial discrimination works have been recreated and refurbished to create other images that discriminate against Asians.

The images of "Shang Qi" in the 2021 movie "Shang Qi and the Legend of the Ten Rings" also retain Fu Manchu factors such as squinting eyes.

　　Anti-Asian cultural symbols fuel hatred and persecution of Asians.

In 1871, 500 white mobs massacred 18 Chinese in Los Angeles.

Beth Lew-Williams (Beth Lew-Williams), a professor of history at Harvard University, pointed out that between 1885 and 1887, there were 86 killings of Chinese in the United States and more than 168 expulsions of Chinese.

From 1863 to 1869, Chinese workers built the Pacific Railway in the United States. During World War I, more than 100,000 Chinese coolies dug trenches for the Allied Powers, suffering heavy casualties and shedding blood and tears.

The 1882 "Chinese Exclusion Act" instigated anti-China waves, and now the United States has introduced the so-called "Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act", trying to repeat the same trick.

Actors dressed as Chinese railroad laborers perform on stage at an event commemorating the 150th anniversary of the U.S. Pacific Interstate Railroad in Salt Lake City.

Photo by Liu Guanguan

　　According to the statistics of Stop AAPI Hate, from March 19, 2020 to December 31, 2021, the United States received a total of 10,905 incidents of discrimination and hatred against Asian-Pacific Americans, of which Chinese Americans received the most hatred (42.8%) .

In May 2021, Biden admitted that anti-Asian prejudice, xenophobia, racism and nativism are deeply rooted in the United States. During the new crown epidemic, anti-Asian atrocities increased, casting a shadow of fear and sadness on many Asian-Pacific communities.

The Mechanism Logic of Cultural Symbols of American Racial Discrimination

　　Jim Crow and Fu Manchu are the tip of the iceberg of racial discrimination and persecution, and the mechanism behind it is to maintain the internal and external order and interests of "white supremacy".

　　First, the need to maintain "white supremacy" and "white rule".

"White supremacists" implement a "carrot and stick" strategy of "wearing high hats" and "painting grimaces" on ethnic minorities, creating images of loyal servants and devils.

Yuri Lotman, a representative of the Tartu-Moscow School of Semiotics, believes that the semiotic field is the carrier of national culture and the space for the existence and activity of signs.

The reason why cultural symbols such as Jim Crow and Fu Manchu breed and spread is because they grew up in the cultural and ecological soil of American racist society.

Fu Manchu has become an iconic cultural symbol of Sinophobia and anti-Chinese in the United States. It has long-term psychological influence and cognitive induction on the people, embodying social (cultural) Darwinism, colonialism and racism.

　　Second, interest groups cater to the conservative “white supremacist” market.

Hollywood and other interest groups use Jim Crow and Fu Manchu as a profit code to cater to the low-level interests of white racism, to gain political benefits and box office benefits.

Jim Crow and other cultural symbols of racial discrimination base white entertainment and pride on black pain, in order to cater to the political needs of the authorities and meet the economic needs of relevant interest groups.

Romer and others formed an industrial chain and interest chain of "black Chinese" by using Fu Manchu's "sick literature" as a means.

The output routines of racial discrimination symbols mainly include monkeys and Jim Crow-style "simulation", Fu Manchu-style "demonization", and Charlie Chen-style "skeletonization".

The shapers of racial discrimination symbols adopt cunning fictional methods, which can be tacitly understood by the audience, and it is difficult for the discriminated object to legally defend their rights for a long time, which hurts people invisible and worry-free, and makes a lot of money.

Many years later, interest groups still profit from Fu Manchu. In 1985, the American Fu Manchu rock band was established. In 2019, Pang Qi Cigar launched Fu Manchu cigars.

　　Third, the need to maintain white culture and world hegemony.

Edward Said pointed out in the book "Orientalism" that Orientalism is a form of racism, which exaggerates the differences between East and West with foreignness and barbarism, and measures the East with Western yardsticks.

The rise and fall of cultural symbols of racial discrimination such as Fu Manchu are closely related to the internal affairs of the United States and the need to seize hegemony.

The rise of Fu Manchu films in the United States coincided with the prevalence of the Monroe Doctrine in the 1930s. The United States blamed the Chinese for problems such as unemployment and economic depression.

In the 1970s, Sino-US relations broke the ice, and images such as Fu Manchu gave way to kung fu images such as Bruce Lee.

Since 2017, Sino-US relations have deteriorated. American racial populists have incited hatred against Asians and immigrants, and advocated the "China Threat Theory" to maintain white hegemony in the world.

Bronze statue of Bruce Lee.

Photo by Li Zhihua

　　It is easy to eliminate cultural symbols of racial discrimination, but it is difficult to get rid of discrimination and discrimination in people's hearts. The road to psychological and cultural equality has a long way to go.

The elimination of stereotypes and symbols of discrimination against ethnic minorities should not rely on the mercy of white people, but the ethnic minorities should continue to fight and wash away their stigma.

Ethnic minorities should work together to break white hegemony and change the embarrassment that their roles, discourse and culture are replaced by whites.

On May 25, 2020, Freud, an African-American, was violently enforced by police in Minneapolis and died.

The incident triggered a wave of large-scale protests against racism in the United States.

At the place where Floyd was "kneeled down" by the police, a commemorative garden has been spontaneously formed by the people.

Photo by Chen Mengtong

　　Aristotle pointed out that language culture is the expression symbol of mental impression.

Under the situation of a century of changes and the rise of the east and the decline of the west, it is necessary to promote the disenchantment of Orientalism and Western centralism.

There is no distinction between Eastern and Western cultures. The arrogant and narrow-minded West should reflect on itself, respect Eastern culture, and promote cultural exchanges and mutual learning between Eastern and Western civilizations.

(over)

About the Author:

　　Cheng Chunhua is currently an associate professor at the School of Ethnology and Sociology (Chinese Academy of Ethnic Theory and Ethnic Policy), Minzu University of China.

He also serves as a director of the Chinese Ethnic Policy Research Association, an invited researcher of the World Socialist Research Center of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, and an expert in the evaluation system of Guangming.com's ideological and theoretical articles.

His research focuses on ethnic issues, energy and economic nationalism in the U.S., Russia, and Eurasia.

Presided over a number of national social science funds, provincial and ministerial level projects, authored a number of monographs such as "Economic Nationalism" and "China's Overseas Interests", and published academic papers in "Political Science Research", "People's Daily", "Guangming Daily" and other journals. Hundred articles.