Dear Gossips,

We had some technical issues yesterday and we think we have it under control now but if you missed it, our opening yesterday was about HBO Max removing Gone With The Wind from its library and how Hollywood is reckoning with its past but also must interrogate its present. Like when is that Hattie McDaniel biopic going to happen? Writer Gesha-Marie Bland wrote a screenplay called Selznick’s Folly that was on the Black List a couple of years ago. You can listen to the “earmovie” here:

 

Great time to make this film, non? 

Anyway, we’re going to try and repost that article at some point but in the meantime, the way it ended was… watch Queen & Slim. 

Today, let’s continue with the hard sh-t. Variety published a piece yesterday by Josh Feola, “Chinese Rappers Are Chasing Clout Through Hip Hop Culture, So Why Don’t They Do More For Black Lives Matter”.

It’s about how certain Chinese artists who’ve profited from Black culture haven’t done much to condemn anti-Black racism – it’s a human rights issue, it should not be political, and since rap is a Black artform that rose out of oppression as a means of resistance and defiance, not acknowledging that struggle while profiting from it, especially now, is weak. This is a good read and, once again, it touches on the model minority myth I’ve been writing about recently as it relates to my own shortcomings as an ally: 

 

This is why racism is the ultimate villain. It wears so many masks. It can masquerade as poison fruit wrapped in a prize, especially for non-Black and non-Indigenous people of colour who taste proximity to whiteness and come back for more, thinking that it’ll be a limitless supply – a false freedom, because the truth is, they’re being used as tools, soldiers on the frontlines of white supremacy. Oppressed people are institutionalised to oppress.   

I’m Chinese. I can’t speak for all Chinese people but I have seen Chinese racism against the Black community, in a general sense and in my personal circles. Black people in China have never been treated fairly and this abuse has only escalated since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Chinese people often don’t attempt to smooth out their racist spikes and camouflage them through microaggressions, they are macroaggressors all the way. I grew up witnessing it. I have been a bystander to it. There is no way that it hasn’t shaped my view of Blackness. There are for sure times when that anti-Black bias has informed my behaviour, my language, my writing. And all of that has caused pain. I can’t apologise for all Chinese people but as a Chinese person, I am so very, very sorry. 

 

Josh Feola’s Variety article introduced me to Jamel Mims, “a bilingual Black American rapper who completed a Fulbright research project on Chinese hip-hop and frequently returns to China to perform”. Probably aren’t a lot of people who have that on their resumés. I’ve been checking out his work through his website. Here’s his Instagram post about anti-Asian xenophobia. He’s a Black man sticking up for Chinese people. More Chinese people should do the same for him. That includes ME. 

Jamel Mims, aka JAM NO PEANUT, raps in English and Mandarin. 

 

Yours in gossip,

Lainey