South Africa
Darryl Accone
Chinese South Africans never got their due, said Darryl Accone in the Johannesburg Mail & Guardian. Chinese have been in this country since 1658, when the Dutch brought over Chinese laborers. Three successive waves of immigration—the Cantonese in the 19th century, the Taiwanese in the 1970s, and mainland Chinese now—have added up to a robust and diverse Chinese population. But this population, of which I am a member, has always been oppressed. Under apartheid, we were classed variously as nonwhite, colored, or non–European—groups that enjoyed a higher status than blacks but still a much lower one than whites. Chinese couldn’t marry outside their race and were confined to certain locations and trades. Yet 18 years after the end of apartheid, the government still won’t grant “previously disadvantaged” status to South African Chinese. We are the only nonwhite group to be shut out of the employment quota system. In this rainbow of a country, we are still seen as the “Yellow Peril.” The persistence of “stereotypes and ignorance” isn’t worthy of the new South Africa.
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