[quote=“PLAYER101”]I don’t live in Taiwan anymore, but I did for several years. Maybe I am the first black person to respond to this thread. Not sure. The OP has his own opinion and view about his own situation, but as a person of color when people make comments like the MIT did, well it kinda hits you in the face. When I lived in Taiwan a girl I was dating would sometimes say, “I don’t like Thai people.” I would always ask her why? The answer was usually silly or lacking any logic and I would point that out to her. Not try to force her to change, but express why I did not agree and to help them think about it. Thinking about social values is not the norm in Taiwan as many of you know. It takes time, but I would never force it on people there just shine a light on it. I figured it was not my problem but theirs.
The light skin is more beautiful is a value question. Taiwanese learn this in their history, literature and it is drummed into their heads on TV commercials. In 2002 I remember a black friend and his Taiwanese wife had a kid and people went gaga over the baby. They thought he was the cutest thingin the planet. Until they see and experience things up close people have these ideas stuck in their heads and its pretty sad. Blame the media or whomever you want for the brainwashing. It’s probably worse for darker Taiwanese girls in the south. Oh, and yes if the black dude made NBA type money or had a $1.9 million dollar house in California colorblindness starts to magically take hold. Value system. 
Now some folks don’t understand that the color issue affects you in other ways. Like trying to get a job, being afraid of you etc. Or even having a job and people doubting your abilty based on pigment. So if someone says they don’t have anything against people of color they are fooling themselves. If you polled people on who they’d like to teach them in regards to color were given what would the answers be? Why? I had to gradually prove to people in Taiwan I could do the job or be trustworthy, sometimes it was very frustrating, but most of them came around. The main problem is ignorance like anywhere. In Taiwan discrimination is kept on the low. The media avoids it and people would rather watch action flicks or read comics than focus on the issues (overwork). It is getting better (been back a few times) but there is still a long way to go.[/quote]
Exactly the kind of perspective this thread needed. Thanks for your post. I have some Taiwanese friends and, for some reason, I always got annoyed by their distaste for Korean people even though Korea shares so much of its pop culture and industries with Taiwan. I’m also puzzled by the Taiwanese love for Japanese people and Japan in general, which persists even though Japan brutally oppressed Taiwanese people. Not that they should hate the Japanese, but why hate Koreans?
And yes, they look down on all those with darker skin, not just those with African descent… Indian, Southeast Asian, you name it… if it’s dark, it’s underdeveloped. And they assume if a person hails from an underdeveloped place, and their skin represents this, then that must mean they’re physically and mentally inferior too, or at least that is the logic that some argue. However, I have never heard this rationalization from a Taiwanese (though I have from a mainlander, so go figure). And I still believe for most, it doesn’t go beyond a preference for paler skin colors. Not that this is acceptable, but at least it isn’t violent or hostile.
I also want to thank PLAYER101 for not going in and taking a side right away, which probably would’ve been all too easy. Your stepping in in this manner made me appreciate the sensitivities of some of the other participants in this thread. I have only two black “friends” in Taiwan, one from Burkina Faso, the other from the South of the US, and they have very different opinions on the matter. Both of them have Taiwanese girlfriends, actually, but one of them swears he has never heard of or noticed any racism beyond that of the US. The other says he gets stared at every day. I tell him “So do I”, but there might be more to it in his case. That may have as much to do with the fact that he’s like 6 foot 4 inches as it does his “color”, though.
I think the worst example of racism I’ve encountered in Taiwanese is that some language schools will NOT hire black people. That offended me. That’s the most offended I’ve been on the subject of race, and it left me a bit jaded to be honest. Still, I don’t blame the Taiwanese culture for this, really, because this level of racism persists, albeit in the back of people’s minds and not in professional businesses, just as strongly where I come from (the United States). That doesn’t excuse it; it’s still a problem, but one that cannot be solved easily. As such, I tend to put this kind of thing on the back-burner when I come across it. Possibly, I would have a different approach if I were black, but then again, maybe I wouldn’t. I’m not the kind of person that likes to make waves with people that I need the cooperation of. Shallow? Wrong? Maybe, but my MIL’s “racism” is benign, and understandable; she totally lacks education beyond that of a 6th grade level, and her niece married a black man living in Dubai, and now she never comes back to visit… She even didn’t show up or call for Chinese New Year. Once again, that’s no excuse, but I digress…
Anyway, I have had some time to cool down and think about my own position, and perhaps I shouldn’t have said that I “laughed” in the first place, but actually explained more about my internal reaction. First of all it was more of a cynical smirk, but more importantly, I just want to make clear that, if I didn’t “smirk”, I certainly wouldn’t have done anything else. It was just my way of expressing discomfort, an awkward reflex (doesn’t anyone else laugh when they’re slightly uncomfortable), but it did amuse me because I had come to expect backward thinking from her Mom… at that time I didn’t like her much, but later on we had come to understand each other better. In that way, I kind of saw a comment like this coming, so to speak. Anyway, she’s no devil, and I have no doubt that if I were black, I’d be able to convince her that I was suitable for her daughter. What I failed to make clear before was that I believed her statement to be an excusatory one, meant to show acceptance of me in a roundabout way without actually saying “He’s ideal for my daughter” directly. I don’t even think there was much meaning behind it at all, as far as racism went. I probably lost a few people there, but for those of you who get my meaning, great.
I want to apologize to everyone for dragging you in and becoming particularly defensive as the conversation went on. I understand that most of you are like me, and you simply won’t quit until you’ve made your point. Well, I failed to make a good one to most of you, but I hope that you can all understand that I meant no ill-will toward any of you (nor any race 
). I don’t think that my MIL needed defending, actually, but that I just have seen similar racism back home and in other Western countries featured quite openly, where it has oppressed many more and much more deeply than it does here. In that, I found hypocrisy and, yes, self-righteousness in some cases, and I still don’t entirely back away from this stance. Still, I respect that you are stepping away from your own country’s racial politics and historical background to take a stand for what you believe is right, here and now. When I got defensive, I went off on unnecessary tangents that this thread would do better to forget.
That ends, I hope, this chapter of the thread, though perhaps other issues shall arise in the future worth discussing or debating. The researcher in me would love to hear more from black people who’ve had to live in Taiwan and deal with this kind of thing on a daily basis. Anyway, that’s it for me for the moment! Maybe I’ll make an edit later if I think I forgot something.
:bravo:
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? Also we deal with it through the media, conversation and even sometimes out the public much more than they do. Maybe because we have to sometimes. Anyway, good luck in Taiwan.