The Way Some In China View Blacks

Some will argue that the more things change the more things will stay the same. While life in America and in Africa has improved for many people of color, the changes have not come to enough people to change the way many in the world including some in China view Black people.

While President Obama made his first trip to China, many in China will have an opportunity to think about their feeling about racial discrimination in their own country and around the world.

Hung Huang, a Beijing-based fashion magazine publisher and host of "Straight Talk," a nightly current affairs talk show shares some interesting views believed held by some in China. "The Chinese worshiped the West, and for Chinese people, 'the West' is white people."

Hung, 48, said her generation was "taught world history in a way that black people were oppressed, they were slaves, and we haven't seen any sign of success since. The African countries are still poor, and blacks [in America] still live in inner cities." Hung noted that Chinese racial prejudices extend to the country's own minority groups, including Tibetans and Uighurs -- or anyone who is not ethnically Han Chinese.

The view of African Americans as poor and oppressed fits into the official narrative of the United States as a place of glaring inequalities. China's most recent annual report on the United States' human rights record in 2008, released in February, made no mention of Obama's historic election. But it said, "In the United States, racial discrimination prevails in every aspect of social life."

"Black people and other minorities live at the bottom of the American society," the report said. "There is serious racial hostility in the United States."