WTF China: Beijing Bans Black from Bars

[chibimermaid]

My dad sent this to me:

Blacks banned from bars during the Olympics? BY NSENGA BURTON

Comments

[headhouse]

Hm. All the google links to the South China Morning Post's stories are 404, and search of the website for Tom Miller's articles doesn't include anything like the one that's being cited, nor does a search for any of the keywords ("ban" "blacks" "beijing" "bars"). So either they're trying to minimize the bad publicity for China, or they're trying to minimize the fact that they screwed up.

I'm seeing lots of posts that cast doubt on the original story, suggesting that it was either bad reporting or a bad translation (the characters for "gangster" being literally translated as "black association," for instance) or a combination of both.

Time Blog link

A few eyewitness reporting links from a blogger on the ground in Beijing:

http://www.beijingboyce.com/2008/07/18/um-really-scmp-claims-beijing-to-ban-blacks-mongolians-at-bars/
http://www.beijingboyce.com/2008/07/18/um-really-update-on-scmp-story/
http://www.beijingboyce.com/2008/07/19/um-really-update-on-scmp-story-ii/
http://www.beijingboyce.com/2008/07/20/sanlitun-saturday-night-blacks-enjoy-drinks-play-pool-apparently-await-ban/

I'm thinking that Tom Miller did some bad reporting, and then Nsenga Burton (along with a lot of other writers) took it and ran with it withought doing any factchecking, because it's a sensational story.

My take (which could be entirely wrong): Chinese people can be as racist as anyone else, but I don't think the people who craft the official policies and positions, and are conscious of the world's attention upon them, would be dumb or heavy-handed enough to do something like ban Kobe Bryant from Beijing's nightlife. And if officially sanctioned racism like banning blacks from bars was a policy, it would've been in place long before the olympics, and the story would've been about lifting the ban, not suddenly enacting it.