Rayhan Asat is one of the most vocal advocates today for the Uyghur people, her people, whose homeland in northwestern China is the scene of the Communist Party’s ongoing commission of what the United Nations says may be “crimes against humanity,” and what U.S. President Joseph Biden called a “genocide.” Among the roughly 1 million Turkic peoples detained, imprisoned, and forced into labor there — most of them Muslims — is Asat’s younger brother.
You’re responding to the accusation by joe Biden with a whataboutism. He labeled it a genocide, and you basically said whatabout American genocide.
You didn’t frame it as pointing out hypocritical commentary, you juxtaposed it to another crime to validate it.
There is a pretty simple solution to this, if you just acknowledged that the Chinese government is abusing the Uyghur people, then you could claim you were calling out hypocritical thoughts. By ignoring it completely, it seems as if you are excusing it via whataboutism.
I think that’s a pretty academically dishonest statement. If you preconditioned that with “the history of black people in America” you would have been a lot closer to the mark.
If we are comparing current affairs… despite a gross level of institutional racism, Black Americans have much more representation and rights than any Uyghur in China.
Again, this is the problem with whataboutism, you are trying to force an equivocation that just does not align. Americas history with racism is entirely different than China’s and comparing them to each other does nothing to clarifier either.
If you examine only contemporary history in America it minimizes the generational impact of institutional slavery and it’s after affects. Dividing up the institutional racism into historical and modern either downplays historical racism, or excuses modern racism. It needs to be examined as a continuous issue that has spanned and changed over a period of two to three hundred years.
It’s hard to say for sure, as the Chinese government has not really allowed any real investigation into the treatment of the Uyghur people. However, based on information the party has released themselves… It sure seems like they might be.
There are plenty of hyperbolic accusations made by American think tanks that I have no reason to believe. However, China’s own census data is fairly clear. In a time where china is massively investing in their western province, we can see a huge decrease in the Uyghur birth rate, while at the same a quite large influx of han from the east.
Pair that with the fact that they’re destroying important cultural landmarks, including places of worship… It would lead anyone capable of putting aside their own biases to question if a genocide is occuring.
I just don’t think you, or many western people really understand the importance of ethnic chauvinism in Asian societies. Even Mao foresaw the trouble ethnic policy was becoming in his own time.
“Judging from the mass of information on hand, the Central Committee holds that wherever there are minority nationalities the general rule is that there are problems calling for solution, and in some cases very serious ones. On the surface all is quiet, but actually there are some very serious problems. What has come to light in various places in the last two or three years shows that Han chauvinism exists almost everywhere. It will be very dangerous if we fail now to give timely education and resolutely overcome Han chauvinism in the Party and among the people. The problem in the relations between nationalities which reveals itself in the Party and among the people in many places is the existence of Han chauvinism to a serious degree and not just a matter of its vestiges.”