tasteslikecoconutandmetal:

I’m not sure if all versions released in China cut out Finn scenes, but I lived in a VERY mono-ethnic city (over 99% Han Chinese), and they were very proudly anti-black, so I’m not surprised that that province cut out a lot of his scenes/lines.

The scenes they cut were ones where he mainly appeared alone, as well as scenes where they would cut out some of his lines to make him appear less important. I also don’t remember seeing him hug Rey when he helps rescue her towards the end. I mostly remember that it left me feeling confused. Like, I could tell that the movie was missing something, that something had been edited. It wasn’t until I downloaded a Korean (? I think?) bootleg version of the movie that I was able to confirm that a lot of Finn’s scenes had been cut.

Again, I wish I could say that I was surprised, but I saw a lot of racist, anti-black shit going on in China that really saddened/disturbed me, as well as a creepy fetish and preoccupation with white people. There were restaurants with black face pictures on the walls. A black friend of mine was deported because his presence was “too frightening” (he was 6′5″ and 300 lbs which apparently made him a threat to public safety). Black people and even non-black Africans were banned from certain jobs (such as teaching English). My roommate (who was African American) was constantly belittled and called “dirty” by Chinese people. One time a woman grabbed my roommate’s arm and pointed out her skin to her child saying, “see? they don’t wash. that’s why their skin is black.” Honestly, I could go on and on with stories like that, stories of my black friends’ experiences in China, but there are too many to list here.

I’m white, so my experience in China was vastly different from that of my roommate’s or my other black friends. On the whole, I had a lot of fun in China and I met a lot of wonderful people, and I don’t want anyone reading this to think that I hate Chinese people or think they’re all racist. But there IS a prevalent culture of anti-blackness in China, at least in some of the smaller cities, that goes unchecked because there is no impetus for them to change their ways. In the West, even though we have our own myriad issues with racism, we have a system that (at least in theory) holds us accountable for our racist words and actions. That system doesn’t exist in China.

Ugh I can see it all too well. It’s in line with what I see in Korea as well, although we’ve learned to be a little sneakier about it and at least we didn’t cut Finn’s scenes (today in the realm of low bars…) Antiblackness in Asia is really serious–like in India there were actual mobs against African residents and a hit movie had villains in blackface–and it needs to be discussed more.