The problem isn’t China, it’s white people

I’m sorry white people, but it’s not China’s fault. It’s you. Your own arrogance, stupidity, and ignorance are getting you and everyone else killed.

Right now China has nearly zero cases and the western world has hundreds of thousands. Whenever they did it, they did something, while places like the US and UK are still casting blame. As if political blame does anything against a virus.

So what if China is to blame? What if China stands up in front of the UN and says ‘our bad’? Does that bring back the dead? Does that bring back the jobs and lives that have been destroyed? Does that bring back the doctors, nurses, and cleaners sacrificed to thunderous applause? Blaming China doesn’t even lead anywhere, except away from the mirror, where you should be looking.

And what should you be looking at? At the racism and empire that got you to these heights, and the ignorance and arrogance that kept you from ever looking down.

What Asia Did

Whatever the Chinese government said, on January 23rd they locked down an entire city. This was visible from space. This was a pretty clear warning, and East Asian countries immediately snapped into action.

Every neighboring country — from Thailand to Vietnam to Taiwan to South Korea — now has less than 1,000 deaths total. They had the same warning and in many cases more difficult relationships with China, but they still managed to fight back COVID-19 without blaming anyone. Because blaming anyone doesn’t do anything.

Wherever it comes from, whatever the next country did, you just have to take action and fight it yourself. Poor countries like Vietnam and even Senegal have figured this out, but the trillion-dollar empires of the west have drones for brains. They only understand bombing defenseless brown people, or picking on helpless refugees. In the face of an actual threat, they’re like paper tigers, folding under the slightest pressure.

After relentlessly framing China as an enemy, the west is then asking why their enemy didn’t save them. It’s meaningless and only feeds the pointless resentment that got them in trouble in the first place.

If the west was unable to learn from China, they could have still learned from a dozen other countries. But still, they remained arrogant. They remain arrogant to this day.

Computer-Modeled White People

Instead of looking to East Asia or even to Europe, countries like the US and the UK debated over ancient, undocumented computer models. They preferred to learn from computer-modeled white people over real Asian deaths. Over even real Italian deaths. Over even real New York deaths. That is the power of hubris, and that is the self-destruction they wrought upon themselves.

Instead of just learning from Asia and acting fast, the west dithered and debated into tens of thousands of casualties and, ultimately, much higher costs and economic damages. While Asian countries are now opening up, western countries are still protesting against themselves, and getting more and more hopelessly behind.

And they still can’t see. They still want a white savior.

Instead of looking to Korea, with 240 dead, Western media points to Germany, with over 4,600 deaths. This would be considered a complete catastrophe anywhere outside of Christendom, but Angela Merkel is now the great white hope, graded on a bloody curve.

Memes now imply that white women are the secret weapon, ignoring the preparation and hard work across much of the south. It’s not just East Asia, the Indian state of Kerala and even many parts of Africa have better responses, but no one looks there. Because they don’t want to see. It’s like a photo where the dark people just get underexposed. We’re just invisible.

The west has risen so far in empire that they forgot to look down, or even to the side. They call themselves the developed world, but that’s just not true anymore. They’re just an empire in decline, and now wholesale collapse, and it’s because they stopped learning. Their fatal sin has been pride.

In fact, it is Europe more than China that is responsible for spreading coronavirus around the world, especially to America. The empire infected itself, but they can’t see that, because they don’t want to.

The Whataboutery

I won’t even get into whether China should have done more. Everyone should have done more. China took 42 days from their first case to a lockdown, but Germany took 55 and the UK 53. The US still has no coherent national response. China sucks, but they were at least able to react, and react decisively. They at least didn’t debate killing their grandparents. Hubris seems more implacable than the worst authoritarianism.

Blaming the WHO, which is stuck between all these idiots, is even more reprehensible, but the US is going there as well.

Again, no responsible country is making these attacks against countries and institutions. They’re attacking the virus. It is only the West looking so desperately for someone to blame, because they cannot look bear to look in the mirror, at what they have become.

But Not All White People…

And yes, I said white people. The fact is that white nationalist leaders like Trump in America and Boris Johnson in the UK have had the most disastrous responses. And you can include Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil. Even the more benign leadership of Europe and places like Sweden have been undone by their quieter hubris, which is ultimately bound up in race and power.

To the white people in the formerly dominant west, the problem isn’t China or anyone else. The problem is you. And yes I’m saying all of you, because it’s a Medium post, and because it’s not just the outward racists. It’s the fact that these people get elected, get laundered by the press, that they are a structural problem with your societies and not just a few bad apples.

The refusal to see, to listen or learn anything from the rest of the world is endemic to the west. The years of slipping into easy blame of minorities or easy wars against poor brown people in places you’ve never seen. The easy fear of terrorism, and its misidentification as Muslim or brown. Even liberal white people are placated by the few minorities in your midst, ignoring the global apartheid that keeps most of the world outside, or oppressed as ‘illegals’ in your home.

The west is now just a bunch of failed states wearing Gucci belts, which are of course made in China. The pants are now down, the empire has no clothes and people are dying. And you are democracies. You can’t blame China and you can’t even just blame your governments and be done with it. At some point, it comes down to the racism and empire and arrogance that has propped up white power for decades, and the uncommon cold that’s bringing it all down.