I am not bad-tempered enough to do this justice

[nancylebov]

I listen to NPR a lot--I count on the station to report on horrors, but not to horrify me itself.

However, today's Here and Now inspired me to send the following email:

12:20 AM, June 26:

The interviewer was talking about China. She just said (approximately), "Imagine when 900 million people acquire inner lives and stop walking in lockstep." They've always had inner lives.

If your interviewer didn't notice until she was told the story of a suicidal prostitute, it's an astonishing blind spot.

Full disclosure: The sound on my computer doesn't work, so I quoted from memory, but I'm pretty sure I got it right.

It gets worse: I didn't realize until I started putting this post together that the man being interviewed (Rob Gifford, author of "China Road: A Journey into the Future of a Rising Power") who'd also been astonished by the story from the prostitute into realizing that Chinese people have inner lives, was an NPR reporter.

Yes, I know racism exists--I just didn't realize it was quite that pervasive, nor was I expecting to hear such an example of blatant stupidity on NPR.

Please do my homework. Could someone with a functioning soundcard check on whether I got the gist of the quotes right?

Comments

[perigee.livejournal.com]

Oh, it's all right. We Chinese have always known you honkeys aren't human or anything. :)

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

That's awfully white of you. :)

[cucumberseed.livejournal.com]

Thanks for bringing this up. I am very bad tempered and though I can't do it justice, either, I'll give it a shot.

[mneme]

Hmm. While it's really, really, stupid, I can't but wonder if it's provincialism rather than (in addition to?) racism -- failing to realize how much of a rich and varied history "monolithic" China truly has.

[redbird]

It doesn't matter whether you're looking at all of China as one thing or as many things: imagine someone suddenly noting "the people of Hainan have inner lives" or saying "imagine when three million Chicagoans acquire inner lives."

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

I don't know what definition of racism you're using. It was certainly a matter of culturally-induced stupidity rather than malice.

People can certainly be ignorant of history, but this is a wild ignorance of the present. How could the Chinese have managed to change their society so much in recent years without having inner lives?

[mneme]

Obviously, they were brainwashed by the communist thought-machine. :P

I'm not sure what form of racism I'm using either -- since it's hard of me to conceive of someone saying in all seriousness, "this culture is composed of people with no inner lives".

What I'm not sure of is assuming someone is prone to thinking this way, whether it's more likely when tarring all of China as "The Monolithic Empire" (or whatever) than, say, "The Cowardly French" or "The Rude Americans".

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

Assuming my memory is accurate, no one said or thought consciously "This culture is composed of people with no inner lives". Instead, it was was a background assumption for the interviewer and interviewee until a Chinese woman told an emotionally charged story which matched a standard American idea of how people are.

[wordweaverlynn.livejournal.com]

Is it a rich and varied history that gives people inner lives? Or being a human with experiences, sensations, and emotions?

I think the default assumption here is that the Chinese don't have inner lives, because if they did, they would make their outer lives match the Western ideal. And I call that racist as well as ethnocentric.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

mnemex can speak for himself, but I think he meant that a rich and varied history should give outsiders a clue that it was created by people with inner lives.

I'm pretty sure you guessed it backwards in your second paragraph. One of the people on the radio said something about having previously thought that everyone [in China] only had economic motivations. I think what happened was that the old "teeming masses" cliche got overlaid with the leftist idea that a market economy doesn't involve thought and emotion.

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

Sigh. This post made me realize how relaxing it has been not to read LJ for two weeks, so that I have missed all the stupidity and cruelty that the widely read and well-informed people on my f-list dig up that I might otherwise have missed. Mind you, I wouldn't want to live this way--well, I might want to on a certain level, but I wouldn't do it--but it sure has been relaxing.

And on NPR, too. Sigh.

[fallenpegasus]

NPR reporters don't think that rank and file Republicans, church going Christians, and rural dwellers of fly-over states have inner lives. Believing that Chinese peasents don't is not a big surprise.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

I think they meant *all* Chinese, not just Chinese peasants, which makes it worse.

I don't think what I heard was typical of NPR, but it was an extraordinary failure of both good sense and PC on the part of the speakers.

Do you have specific examples for your first paragraph?

Even believing that people are wrong, wrong, wrong isn't the same as believing that they don't have inner lives. IIRC, reporting about the groups you list isn't quite so bad as that, but I'll try to keep an ear out.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

May I link to this?

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

Thanks for asking. Yes, on one condition--the sound on my computer isn't working, so I haven't been able to check that what I remember hearing was as bad as I thought it was.

http://www.here-now.org/shows/2007/06/20070626_2.asp

If you check it and find that I got it right, it's fine with me if you link.