This is a large billboard in the city center of Kashgar (Xinjiang, China) with a message written in both Uyghur and Chinese saying "General Secretary Xi Jinping's heart is connected with those of the people of all of Xinjiang's nationalities" [rough translation]. It shows Xi Jinping posing with an adult woman in a suit and a large group of school-aged children in uniform, all of whom are (presumably) members of Xinjiang's non-Han ethnic groups (Taken by Kubilayaxun on August 19, 2018)
With books like White Fragility and How to Be An Antiracist topping the New York Times’s bestseller list, a large proportion of the country has been trained to believe that America is systemically racist. Às Boston University professor Ibram X. Kendi argues in How to Be an Antiracist, it is no longer acceptable for Americans to passively say that they are “not racist.” Rather, Kendi argues, it is important for individuals to become actively “anti-racist.” Part of being antiracist, according to critical race theorists, is acknowledging that race dominates in every aspect of American life. According to advocates of this view, internalized racism is to blame for significantly different legal and economic outcomes between whites and minority groups, despite for Asian Americans ranking highest along numerous socioeconomic metrics.
And it seems that corporations, media elites, and academics have all latched onto this collective narrative. As my colleague, Tyler Unrath, alluded to in his piece “Conservatives at a Crossroads,” woke corporations have taken a political stance against a Georgia election law which has been mislabeled as “voter suppression.” In fact, while I am writing this article, over 100 executives participated in a conference call to discuss ways to oppose similar election security laws being considered across the country. Similarly, it seems that academia has also jumped on the antiracist bandwagon, with Grinnell College donating $50,000 to Black Lives Matter. As reported by The Review, Cornell University is considering a three-pronged, Antiracism Initiative in April.
Americans are not the only ones to embrace the narrative of “systemic racism.” This has also caught the attention of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials. Despite credible reports suggesting that the CCP has forcibly detained over 1 million Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang, CCP officials have frequently used the narrative “systemic racism” to attack the United States. In response to accusations of forced labor being used to pick cotton in Xinjiang and the boycott that followed, Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying held up a picture of African American slaves before the Civil War picking cotton in the South. Similar media stunts were pulled at the United Nations, where Chinese deputy ambassador to the U.N. Dai Bing said during a Human Rights Council meeting that America’s history of systemic racism “does not give [it] the license to get on a high horse and tell other countries what to do.”
As the grandson of Korean War refugees, it is painful to see how my peers are unaware of the horrific situation in Xinjiang, but appear to be keenly aware of the painful moments in America’s history. Day in and day out, I hear my classmates talking about powerful and painful moments of police violence in America, but not a word about the cruel interrogation and mass torture inflicted on Uighur women. Activists on campus discuss equal access to reproductive health, while not even mentioning the plight of Uighur women who are forcibly sterilized. Health inequity and mistrust have come to the forefront of campus discourse during the pandemic, but I have not heard a single voice discussing the medical experimentation occurring in China’s concentration camps.
The lack of awareness on campus of the plight of the Uighurs is appalling, especially given the public’s rapid acceptance of antiracism. While Kendi, DiAngelo, and CCP officials want us to focus on America’s past and not its bright potential, I believe it is important for us Cornellians to focus on what is perhaps the biggest human rights crisis in our lifetime. Systemic racism is alive and well, for sure. Perhaps not in America, but most certainly in the concentration camps of Xinjiang, China.
CORRECTION – An earlier version of this article suggested that the University of Connecticut paid $20,000 for Robin DiAngelo to train administrators on implicit bias. The University of Connecticut, in an email to The Review, stated that it cancelled its contract with Robin DiAngelo.
