MapPorn
Chinese map published in the wake of Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination in 1968, purporting to show sites of African American rebellions.
Discussion
The Chinese Communist Party came to power in 1949 after fighting a decades long revolution. In the 1960’s the country was undergoing a Cultural Revolution, with the party propaganda machine pushing the necessity of maintaining a revolutionary attitude. Chinese “news” stories about a “negro rebellion” in America are just a part of this narrative.
Context regardless, if uprising = rebellion, the map is accurate.
The word on this map is neither uprising or rebellion. It just says "anti-violence fight", and strangely not a single mention of "rights". Probably that's the language most Chinese people can understand and relate to, at that time.
“negro rebellion”
Why is this in quotes? There's no Chinese equivalent word to that, the words for other races can be directly translated to either "white/black/brown person" or "white/black/brown devil".
People in China AND the american south believed that map.
Ah yes, the famous Okanogan, Washington African American Rebellion.
Real missed opportunities there
The least diverse society being critical of the most diverse.
They’re not diverse in the sense that they’re all “Chinese” but China has their own lot of different ethnic groups and ethnic strife. Even away from Tibet and East Turkmenistan.
I heard a joke once that the 5 Stars on the Chinese flag symbolize the most important races in the Party’s eyes; The Han, the Han, the Han, the Han, and the Han.
Still hypocritical pricks we can agree.
They’re communists; hypocrisy is part of the job description
It’s interesting to see how different societies have ‘cultural blindspots’ due to their different historical experiences and narratives.
To the Chinese who are operating from an experience of repeated cycles of civil war and foreign conflict for much of the last century- the experience of African Americans destroying property looks like a prelude to an mass uprising.
By contrast, Americans at the time often described events where African Americans destroyed property as riots- which downplayed the political dimension of the events. For an American society that largely bought into the narrative that Black people were content with the status quo, it was difficult to conceive of mass disorder as being anything other than mass disorder.
So the White Americans thought Blacks were ok with segregation?
A decent chunk of the usual suspects today think black Americans were better off under slavery, and think the confederates were the good guys.
Even more to this day think the problem with segregation was the inequality, not the seperation that made the inequality inevitable.
People will deluded themselves into all sorts of things to avoid coming to the conclusion they're monsters.
There are black scholars that think segregation was better as well. It's not unfounded either, some areas failed during integration and some black communities that were thriving just got destroyed.
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Can you explain this part for me.
Your use of past tense in the final paragraph is interesting.
Lol, it's just Chinese propaganda....
This is a great take. I also like the word “rebellion” in this context. We should call the civil rights movement the civil rights rebellion.