Illustration: Liu Rui/GT

Recently, Netflix released a trailer for a series called "Dear White People." The dialogue was very short.



"Dear white people, here's a list of acceptable Halloween costumes: pirate, slutty nurse, any of our first 43 presidents. Top of the list of unacceptable costumes: me."



That's it. It was a 30-second video that contained two sentences of dialogue on the topic of Halloween costumes and blackface.



The reaction was pure outrage by many white Americans. As I am writing, one Youtube video from the official Netflix account already has over 400,000 dislikes. The comments range from cancelling Netflix subscriptions to dismissing the issue as "race bating" and even using Asians to attack other races.



It is a common racist tactic to dismiss the legitimate issues African Americans face by pointing to Asian Americans who don't have the same issues.



First, this simply brushes away African American issues. Second, it makes African Americans resent Asians because we are being brought up to attack them. Third, these racists couldn't care less about actual Asian American issues despite pretending to admire us when attacking African Americans. Chinese must not be blind to what is happening. What appears to be praise is much more insidious.



It would be foolish to dismiss the impact of Donald Trump's presidency and his supporters in all of this. There's no question that many white supremacists gravitated towards him and his administration, ie, the whole "Alt Right" fiasco.



Whether they truly represent Trump's movement is a discussion for another time. What is clear, however, is that since Trump became president, white supremacists have become much bolder and more open.



ThinkProgress has been tracking hate crimes since Trump's election. They found over 250 documented incidents since November. They "only tracked occurrences targeted against individuals or communities ... did not cite the numerous instances of vague but unmistakably hateful speech scrawled in public places across the country" and "required accounts to be backed up by a news article, a police report, or an original investigation by ThinkProgress." The point here isn't so much whether this is right or wrong, but that Chinese, both in the US and around the world, should be aware this is happening.



There are growing numbers of white Americans who aren't coping with race relations very well. From their point of view, the Netflix series is "white guilt" and they are sick of it. Sick enough to throw a fit over two sentences about blackface, which most people can agree is, in fact, racist. This is not just about African Americans. The hostility won't subside toward Chinese in the US, including international students with Chinese citizenship.



Unfortunately, Chinese are not accustomed to picking up the indicators of racism partly due to the fact that many Chinese look at the West through very undeserved rose-colored lenses. We can see this in numerous examples.



Günther Oettinger used racial slurs against Chinese as his way to motivate Germans. Mission Australia's youth survey revealed almost a third of young people experienced unfair treatment or discrimination based on their race with those speaking Cantonese or Mandarin among the most targeted. Xixi Bi was beaten to death by her British boyfriend, Jordan Matthews.



Chinese Americans held a large rally in Philadelphia to protest against being targeted in armed robberies. Al Jazeera made a short documentary on Jun Wang, who lives in Chicago and teaches Chinese in the US about gun protection. These and many other examples show the difference between the West of Chinese imagination and how it really is. Many preconceptions are outdated. Some Chinese had all kinds of uninformed views of the US and democracy. Then, Trump was elected and cracks started to show in the facade.



Chinese media have a central role in alleviating the ignorance. There are monumental issues in the US, in politics, crime, rights, racism and etc. Chinese go or are sent to the US without knowing what the culture and people are really like.



The consequences, both mentally and culturally, are not widely understood in China, particularly by the parents.



White Americans are becoming increasingly fed up with topics of racism despite never really confronting their sins in the first place, much less making amends for them. Thus, it is important for Chinese to understand what is quickly becoming the average American psyche.



In the past, it may have been worth pointing out the Western hypocrisy to a self-righteous zealot. Today, pointing out the fact that the US is the last one who should be judging in regards to morals or conduct is going to fall on deaf ears. You will be dealing with outright racists more frequently.



Any Chinese who deal with Americans need to be aware of these changes and adapt to them. Pretending nothing is going on isn't going to accomplish anything.



The author is a writer from KultureMedia, a media watchdog on behalf of Asian Americans. opinion@globaltimes.com.cn Follow us on Twitter at @GTopinion