‘Black self-serve’: the depreciation of blackness and racialized vision among Taiwanese netizens

Abstract

ABSTRACT While the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement was proliferating in the United States, the movement did not gain similar degrees of support in Taiwan. Instead, on social media there is even a term, ‘Black Self-serve,’ meaning that Black people always use race as an ‘excuse’ to demand whatever they want. Analyzing computer-mediated communication about blackness from the largest bulletin board system in Taiwan – PTT, this article highlights how and why Taiwanese netizens used the term ‘Black self-serve’ to accuse Black people of fighting for rights. Centering cultural processes of racialized vision and division, this article shows that the depreciation of blackness is deeply connected to Taiwanese navigation of its tenuous status along the racial hierarchy, sense of inferiority, colonization experience, cultural alienation, and the image of Black people as accomplices of anti-Asian racism – all are deeply embedded in systemic racism.