White is Right in China
Zahra Baitie, a student from Ghana, brilliantly chronicled her yearlong stay in China for The Atlantic and labeled it an “ordeal” because she said she was often the topic of conversations among Chinese people on the trains and was so viewed as strange that citizens took her photo everywhere she went. She wrote that a Chinese woman said to her: “Excuse me, if I may be so bold to ask, in your country do people consider black skin beautiful?” I responded: “Of course they do and to be honest I wish I were darker.” She was … aghast at my response and said, “I would never have thought that in my lifetime I would hear someone say all you’ve said. So you really don’t want to become lighter skinned? In China, we believe the whiter your complexion is the more beautiful you are and there are many ways to achieve this.” Additionally, there were people “rubbing my skin to see if it was dirt or pigment.”
