More microaggressions: the fine line between IR and racism in Ron Paul’s ad
Remember this commercial by Citizens Against Government Waste using sinophobia to reinforce the point? Here’s another one, by Ron Paul:
This is to a much lesser extent than the Chinese Professor ad, but both advertisements appeal to the natural instinct towards sinophobia to communicate a point that is unrelated to the Chinese. For CAGW, the message was, “If we don’t get our act together, America could lose to other threats… like China” and for this ad, the message is, “Our military invasion in other lands is offensive to natives and not what the people want… just imagine if China was on our land.” The advertisement also mentions Russia, appealing to the Soviet-era fearmongering. In cases like this, the comments are often split as to whether using China as the “other” is racist or not. The fact is, there is a very unclear distinction in whether comments like these are “racist” or not. That is where the realm of microaggressions lie.
In this advertisement, there is a heavy presupposition of international relations that goes into choosing China for the “What if” question. For the advertisement to be effective, it has to be a country whose potential is daunting to Americans and represents a possible, real challenge. That happens to be China, whose economic power, military number, and unclear political objectives are all areas that makes American foreign policy a little nervous. From a policy perspective, that’s reasonable and probably inevitable in order for this ad to be as effective as it was.
But think a little deeper: why do we fear those other countries? Within America, why do we fear those of another origin? It is the underlying xenophobia and occasional isolationist tendencies that flare up in times of economic and political crisis that motivates countries’ foreign policy to retreat further into its shell, to build legal or physical walls to keep out immigrants, to discourage a cosmopolitan population in order to keep out those with different origins or practices. That is, the fact that an advertisement like this is designed to send chills up its viewers’ spines means that it is already reaching an audience that shudders at the thought of having foreigners (with military power) in their midst. [This is a uniquely American privilege, because in so many other countries, that is exactly the situation.]
The appeal to the audience’s intrinsic fear of foreigners, especially the Chinese, is a microaggression. Though not overtly intended to appeal against racism towards Chinese, it still draws on fears pertaining to the Chinese – their particular political situation, military potential, economic potential, etc – to homogenize the entire country and its government as one “other” to fear. That behavior, which may be necessary at times from America’s foreign policy perspective, unfortunately reinforces these views in the people and projects itself at a local level to innocent people who have nothing to do with foreign policy: the six-year old Chinese boy going into first grade, only to meet a hostile room full of classmates whose parents have internalized the Chinese threat and express it, either overtly or covertly, in their daily lives. I’m not saying that this is completely unfounded and totally racist. The “microaggression” in this is quite oblique in comparison to so much of the media that’s out there (um, see Alexandra Wallace) and most of the video is not spent dwelling on the “Chinese threat.” But as a country that is exempt from the military occupation that is described in the video, I expect a higher standard on par with the greater privileges this country is afforded.