Just a completely random picture I found
For the most part, and we all know this, Chinese people are crazy. Chinese patrons will negotiate and bargain over a 50 cent sticker. Chinese families will go to the ends of the Earth to set up a dollar store. Heck, if the Army ever managed to find Bin Laden, I’m sure a Wang’s Noodle House will be around the corner of Osama’s cave.
Anyway, I’m working on a much longer article, and until then I need some filler stuff to avoid any appearance of being lazy.
In June 2008, the 200,000-odd Chinese people living in South Africa officially became black. Yup, you heard that right. Now to most of us, if we think of South Africa, the only words that come to mind are Apartheid and Nelson Mandela. The economically and socially dominant white population, although numerically smaller in relation to the population, towered over South African society. After colonialism, without troops for protection, the whites left in South Africa enacted apartheid. If you don’t know what apartheid is, think of Jim Crow times ten. Apartheid classified South Africans by their race and enforced a strict set of segregatory practices throughout the country.
Eventually anti-apartheid activists like Nelson Mandela managed to rid South Africa of racial segregation, at least in the law. For the most part, vestiges from the apartheid era remained prevalent and Black Africans continued to suffer from inequality.
In an effort to right the wrongs, the South African government passed the Broad-Based Economic Empowerment and the Employment Equity Acts to aid the impoverished.
Where do the Chinese stand in all of this?
Well during apartheid, the Chinese faced widespread discrimination as they fell under the “mixed race” classification. After the end of apartheid, legislation and initiatives aimed to close the gap treated Chinese as whites and for the most part left the Chinese out. Discriminated against during apartheid and receiving no post-apartheid balancing aid, this past June, the South African government reclassified Chinese in South Africa as Black.
Yup, there we have it. So my Chinese brothers, now we can say “Once you go Black, you don’t go back.”
Source: BBC
