{"id":169762,"date":"2014-03-03T18:46:53","date_gmt":"2014-03-04T02:46:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/?p=169762"},"modified":"2021-09-14T21:21:21","modified_gmt":"2021-09-15T04:21:21","slug":"racist-farewell-ambassador-gary-locke","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/2014\/03\/racist-farewell-ambassador-gary-locke\/","title":{"rendered":"A Racist Farewell to Ambassador Gary Locke"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.chinafile.com\/racist-farewell-outgoing-us-ambassador-gary-locke\"><strong>At ChinaFile, a range of scholars and other observers discuss<\/strong><\/a> the <a href=\"http:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/2014\/02\/china-news-service-calls-gary-locke-banana\/\">racist critiques directed at outgoing\u00a0U.S. Ambassador Gary Locke in a critique published by China News Service<\/a>. The article followed Locke&#8217;s farewell conference, at which he gave <a href=\"http:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/2014\/02\/gary-locke-stresses-human-rights-china-farewell-speech\/\">a speech stressing human rights and\u00a0freedom of speech<\/a>. The conversation at ChinaFile includes Baidu&#8217;s Kaiser Kuo, Hyeon-Ju Rho of Asian Americans Advancing Justice, Sidney Rittenberg, Columbia University&#8217;s Andrew J. Nathan, China Daily&#8217;s Chen Weihua, and Fudan University&#8217;s Shen Dingli.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>Kaiser Kuo:<\/strong> [\u2026] In the context of this\u00a0regrettable editorial, which was as subtle as a barking doberman, \u201cbanana man\u201d was meant with unmistakable malice\u2014that Locke is a \u201crace traitor\u201d who lacks the political loyalty to the Chinese nation that his blood should somehow confer. This is of course naive nonsense, and the patent ridiculousness of that phrase should have been obvious even to a writer totally unfamiliar with the complexities of the American discourse on race. But while there will be many Chinese\u2014indeed, already have been many\u2014who will object to the editorial\u2019s broadsides against Ambassador Locke, I suspect they\u2019ll focus much more on the irony that state media would call out Gary Locke for living well but projecting everyman simplicity rather than on the \u201cbanana\u201d comment, as many American commentators have. The expectation that anyone with a Chinese phenotype will have a \u201cChinese heart\u201d to match, even at multiple generations of remove, is widespread in Chinese society. The plasticity of identity in multiethnic societies\u2014that what you \u201cowe\u201d the race or the old country as, say, an American is entirely up to you\u2014is still a fairly alien concept for most Chinese. We see this at work in the way Chinese law enforcement treats naturalized Chinese with U.S., Canadian, or Australian citizenship. It reminds us of the truth in what the late\u00a0Lucian Pye\u00a0said about China\u2019s fundamentally civilizational notion of\u00a0itself. [\u2026]<\/p>\n<p><strong>Hyeon-Ju Rho:<\/strong> Calling an Asian-American person a banana means, of course, that he is yellow on the outside, but white at the core. The banana critique suggests something interesting about the Chinese reaction to Gary Locke. Initially many thought that he might be easier to deal with than his predecessors because he was \u201cone of us.\u201d Disappointment set in when\u2014surprise, surprise\u2014Ambassador Locke stood firm in representing U.S.\u00a0interests. [\u2026] [<a href=\"http:\/\/www.chinafile.com\/racist-farewell-outgoing-us-ambassador-gary-locke\"><strong>Source<\/strong><\/a>]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Chen Weihua argues that the article should not be taken as representative of the Chinese people, government, or even the China News Service. At Bloomberg View,\u00a0though, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bloombergview.com\/articles\/2014-03-02\/china-gives-u-s-ambassador-a-racist-sendoff\"><strong>Adam Minter writes that although most Chinese might well reject it, &#8220;CNS isn\u2019t writing from the fringe, entirely&#8221;<\/strong><\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>[\u2026] From the moment that Locke was announced as the U.S. ambassador in 2011, he\u2019s been the subject of considerable, racially-oriented curiosity. This is predictable: in China, successful \u201coverseas\u201d Chinese &#8212; anyone from an athlete such as Houston Rockets guard\u00a0Jeremy Lin\u00a0to an author such as Tiger Mother defender Amy Chua &#8212; generates pride, media coverage and an irresistible tendency to take credit. (Lin has been called the \u201cPride of Zhejiang,\u201d referring to his grandmother\u2019s ancestral province in China &#8212; though he\u2019s a Taiwanese American.)<\/p>\n<p>[\u2026]\u00a0It\u2019s surely the case that CNS has not been alone among Chinese in thinking that Locke is a traitor to his race. But even among the government officials who might feel that they\u2019re most justified in believing so, few if any would dare to make the claim in a public forum, for fear of being ridiculed as low-rent race-baiters. Unfortunately, China\u2019s second-largest newswire &#8212; and the Communist Party propaganda officials who manage its content &#8212; lack their sense of shame. [<a href=\"http:\/\/www.bloombergview.com\/articles\/2014-03-02\/china-gives-u-s-ambassador-a-racist-sendoff\"><strong>Source<\/strong><\/a>]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>At ChinaFile, a range of scholars and other observers discuss the racist critiques directed at outgoing\u00a0U.S. Ambassador Gary Locke in a critique published by China News Service. The article followed Locke&#8217;s farewell conference, at which he gave a speech stressing human rights and\u00a0freedom of speech. The conversation at ChinaFile includes Baidu&#8217;s Kaiser Kuo, Hyeon-Ju Rho [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1088,"featured_media":169763,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[116,14744,14745,14746,100,5],"tags":[14622,1369,7774,1282,7702,6379],"class_list":["post-169762","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world","category-level-2-article","category-level-3-article","category-level-4-article","category-politics","category-society","tag-ambassador-to-china","tag-diplomacy","tag-gary-locke","tag-racism","tag-us-relations","tag-united-states","et-has-post-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v24.1 (Yoast SEO v24.1) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>A Racist Farewell to Ambassador Gary Locke<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"http:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/2014\/03\/racist-farewell-ambassador-gary-locke\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"A Racist Farewell to Ambassador Gary Locke\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"At ChinaFile, a range of scholars and other observers discuss the racist critiques directed at outgoing\u00a0U.S. Ambassador Gary Locke in a critique published by China News Service. The article followed Locke&#8217;s farewell conference, at which he gave a speech stressing human rights and\u00a0freedom of speech. The conversation at ChinaFile includes Baidu&#8217;s Kaiser Kuo, Hyeon-Ju Rho [&hellip;]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"http:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/2014\/03\/racist-farewell-ambassador-gary-locke\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"China Digital Times (CDT)\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/ChinaDigitalTimes\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2014-03-04T02:46:53+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2021-09-15T04:21:21+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/loc.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"620\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"413\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Grace\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@cdt\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@cdt\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Grace\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"http:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/2014\/03\/racist-farewell-ambassador-gary-locke\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"http:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/2014\/03\/racist-farewell-ambassador-gary-locke\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Grace\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/#\/schema\/person\/c528efa816f4f8e766bc112a5d478256\"},\"headline\":\"A Racist Farewell to Ambassador Gary Locke\",\"datePublished\":\"2014-03-04T02:46:53+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2021-09-15T04:21:21+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"http:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/2014\/03\/racist-farewell-ambassador-gary-locke\/\"},\"wordCount\":615,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"http:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/2014\/03\/racist-farewell-ambassador-gary-locke\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/loc.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"Ambassador to China\",\"diplomacy\",\"Gary Locke\",\"racism\",\"U.S. relations\",\"United States\"],\"articleSection\":[\"China &amp; 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