It's interesting to see others' perspective. There are plenty of Asians that don't identify with being Asian even when they have no mixed heritage. I know from a Western perspective they see that as a choice of who's best. But can't it be the other way around of the pespective that you just gave? Do they desire to be "white" because of perceived prejudice and discrimination against Asians? I have a friend I've known since we were kids. He married a Filipina and has two children. They don't look white but they say they're white and nothing else. Now why do they think that? Because I know the mother. Her mother told her to marry only white because she'll have a better life. That's not because Westerners will treat her better. It's all about status. Just like her kids see only in the superficialities of a child's perspective, it's better being white than Filipino because white people get treated better. They don't understand all the nuances and history so they have just plain honest perspective. They see whites treated better because society deems it so. So naturally they're going to want to be identified as white.
Plenty of self-hating Asians that will choose the West over their own ethnic heritage. It doesn't means the West treats people better. I believe they call that Stockholm Syndrome. Asians do well in the West. Is it becuase the West gives certain privileges that make Asians do well? Westerners would love to take credit that because Asians do well it's because they don't discriminate. What about the other minorities that aren't doing as well? If Asians are given privileges that turn into success, then that must mean Western society denies those privileges to other minorities that are not doing as well. And why is that? There's discrimination by race.
You're German, right? I have never been to Germany but reading the BBC world opinion poll every year, the Germans out of all the Western countries have the worst opinion of Chinese. I don't ever want to go to Germany. My perceptiion of Germany maybe wrong but the same can be said to suggest Chinese treat mix-raced race people worse so to say Bruce Lee chose to be Chinese because that went with the flow. I can note plenty of cases to say the same for Western society and how they discriminate. In the US it use to be if a white looking person just had one drop of African blood, they were considered black. That legacy lives on to this day. If you look ethnic, you are treated differently.
People can be married to another race. It doesn't mean they can't be racist. In the West it's more acceptable for a white man to be married out of his race than a white woman. That's because that's equivalent to one race conquering another by taking the spoils of war. They don't want vice versa happening. I know people like that. There were Jews in the ranks of Hitler's elite Nazi SS and he knew it. Does that make Hitler not anti-Semitic? My friend, who's white, told me about his landlord when he was in college who was African-American married to a hot blonde white woman who hated Asians. Is she not a racist? I know plenty of Asians that would be like Jewish collaborators in the Nazi death camps if they thought it would get them accepted by Westerners. Does that make it all right because it's Asians hating on other Asians? And that's why Hitler accepted people who were Jewish in the ranks of the Nazi SS because he saw their self-hatred as legitimizing what he believed about the Jews. If Jews would do this to their own, what he believed about them must be correct and therefore his final solution wasn't criminal to him.
Bruce Lee's time wasn't recent. He lived during a time of great overt racial strife in the West. Let's just say your angle were the case. What makes it stand out to say Chinese prejudice was worse than the West at the time to bring it up today when Bruce Lee's success was born from Western prejudice? Nothing really because the fact was back then they could care less about how the Chinese treated Bruce Lee. It was a non-subject. So it's disingenuous for any Westerner to bring up how Bruce Lee was treated by Chinese people because all Westerners back then saw Bruce Lee as 100% Chinese.
I know some are going to bring up how this infomation comes from his own daughter. A daughter that was a baby when he died and never knew her father. What's said about how Bruce Lee was affected by Chinese prejudice can be said the other way behind the motivation of Bruce Lee's daughter saying it today. Linda Lee Cadwell, the mother who reared her is white and she's more influenced by Western culture. For someone who's US career is riding off her father's legacy, she probably knows she won't score points by reminding Americans about how her father's success was motivated by Western racism. Again like I mentioned earlier, back then not many people outside Bruce Lee's circle knew that his mother was half-white. That kind of information today is taken granted of because this is the information age... something the world didn't have back then. So it didn't play a role against Bruce Lee life like its made out to which his success in Asia attests to. Bruce's success in Asia was the complete opposite of his experience in Hollywood. So to say Chinese prejudice troubled Bruce Lee's life more than from the West is unrealistic.
I see your points, but I don't agree. Bruce Lee was of mixed descend that did include German and Han Chinese and I have not a clue what his children are doing. I informed myself with a paperback about his biography because I admire the man and his achievements. He grew up in a society where he learned to hide the German part and he moved to try his hand at winning recognition in a society that ridiculed and despised his Chinese heritage. He married a woman of seemingly Anglo-American ancestry and had children with her. At the top of that he not only turned the tables viewing the Chinese martial capabilities and establishing Chinese influenced stunt choreography as mainstream media and central element of the popular US action films, he became a legend with many people across all races, nations, religions, whatever admiring him and striving to learn from him. That's a story.
As to racially prejudiced portraits, the Germans are quite fed up with the Nazi role and being ridiculed for their strong rolling "R". The Chinese have a major problem learning to pronounce the "R" other than like an "L". Both letters are very similar in shaping with the tongue, but in Europe they are heard like a difference between day and night. So a Chinese who not only speaks with a perfect "R", but with the most resounding German rolling "R" is quite a shock for stereotypes.
Like in every society, including the current Chinese culture, there are prejudices. This can be pro-European and believe me, for a European this can include the strangest things to imagine. In German the term "Mandelauge" for the epicanthic fold is associated with beautiful, including the conservative tabloid "Bild". The Chinese trying to emulate Europeans, because they think these are better, are just about as racist as the guys looking down upon other races. Unfortunately, I know of no history or culture where this human trait did not exist. This explicitly includes the Chinese, who also always had their racists.
The whole problem of China having to catch up to the West can be seen as a result of inflated racism and disinterest in developments in other parts of the world. So the racism between these Chinese and the "Southern Barbarians" was mutual, but one side had more firepower and extracted the money, the other side didn't. Add to this that the military superior side was on their paths to glory in WWI and WWII with over the top "racial differences science", then you get the picture.
Ever since, China has switched from a European point of view from one extreme to another, while Europe struggles with suppressing and expressing racism (politically correct) without feeling that they are on the same old warpath again. Looking closer at racism, you'll notice that it has much to do with creating a perfect society that will be stagnant and perfect forever. It's an absolute idea that mistakes outward cultural expressions with genetic heritage.
To end each and every racism debate, take a look at animal breeding, their achievements and trade offs in animal health. Up to date that's the best cure to pseudo-genetic racial prejudices that in essence are about culture.
This issue you seem to overlook because you only view interaction between cultures. Within each and every racist culture in history the racism does just as well alienate parts of their own society and culture as inferior. These are often less wealthy people or members of a different religious denomiation, be it Irish Catholics or Jews. Racism is one of the most effective tools people have invented to stabilize massive income and wealth inequality by a binding narrative of fear and aggression. It's like mobbing in order to demonstrate power and enhance the social binding to the powerful mobber at the expense of the health and feelings weaker humans in that game. Nazi Germany was created by and protected rich guys (against attempts to close the income difference that were distorted into Communist extremism pictures), who were greedy and wanted more, killing the Jews and other "less than perfect humans" was just an expression of greed to get all material value out of meaningless human life that had no place in the perfect order they wanted to create.
As for the "White" countries, the bloodline emphasis on white or not white was about consumption of a rare import, women from Europe and even better women from a valued European country (Europe has a shifting value ranking within) or best from the home country and from a wealthy and renown family. This expensive to maintain human import had to be fed with all stuff she had or wished to have in Europe. In return, obtaining such a trophy wife raised the status and all these countries are associated with a great degree of social inequality and with timocratic rule (often of plantation owners). The timocratic rule was, as usual, feudalised by heritage emphasis in which the imported women themselves played a major role, because it gave them their luxuries. This whole trophy wife issue is a kind of hidden prostitution and in order to maintain it and hide the too blatant truth, a whole plethora of racial theory and race value were constructed around it. If you were a prostitute, won't you do the same to defend your turf?
Current antipathy for Chinese has to do with perceived disrespect for German intellectual property. It's a widespread feeling that the competition between Germany and China is illegally rigged by the Chinese and that costs hard working family fathers their jobs. The good feelings steam from the long positive connection of both cultures and a lot of people do learn Chinese. The Chinese tower
has for centuries been one of the most important sights of Munich, one of the major cities of Germany.
