All the more radical, then, when they placed Tara ahead of Michelle at the 1998 Olympics, leading some of the old school observers to speculate whether racism trumped tradition.
That's a pretty provocative turn of phrase from your keyboard, Mathman.
As much as I would like to believe it's not true, I'm wondering whether racism does enter into figure skating judging, consciously or not. Figure skating was primarily a "white" sport since its inception, and skaters like Michelle Kwan didn't fit the mold. Now the top female skaters are Korean and Japanese, and that seems to make some people unhappy, too. But I think being ethnically Chinese may be a particular burden, maybe because people tend to think of Korea and Japan as modern & democratic, and China as poor and backwards and somehow scary. I'm starting to wonder if this may be part of why a talented young skater like Caroline, who's a nice person besides, gets such a disproportionate amount of criticism and venom. This board is relatively civil, but even so I read comments like "anyone on the podium please, just to keep Caroline off of it"; or "I don't like so and so skater, but I'm glad she beat out Caroline". There may be a few other skaters that are generally unpopular, but that's often due to the judges systematically giving them scores higher than what fans expect. In Caroline's case, she's never been the judges' pet. She's always had to earn every single point, and should count herself lucky if points don't get deducted randomly.
I was quite shocked when I read this Wikipedia article on the long history of legalized racial discrimination against ethnic Chinese:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Exclusion_Act
The Chinese Exclusion Act, which lasted from 1882 to 1943, banned all ethnic Chinese immigrants regardless of nationality (with very few special exceptions), banned those already living in the US (many with green cards) from ever becoming US citizens, stripped US citizens of their citizenship if they married an ethnic Chinese person. And in the state of California, the law banning marriage between Chinese and Whites wasn't repealed until 1948. No significant amount of Chinese immigration (since 1882) occurred until the Immigration Act of 1965, which allowed the quota on Chinese immigrants per year (only 105, even after repeal of the Chinese Exclusion Act) to rise. The Chinese Exclusion Act was the first to restrict free immigration into the U.S., and there has been no other comparable long-term prohibition of immigration or naturalization in the US targeted at a specific ethnic group.
Even today, Chapter 7 of Title 8 (Aliens and Nationality) of the United States Code is headed, "Exclusion of Chinese." It is the only chapter out of Title 8 that specifically refers to an ethnic group or nationality.
Given its long history, it can't be because of the Communist government (which only took over in 1949, after the repeal of the Chinese Exclusion Act, interestingly), or the later cold war.
So what I want to know is: why were the Chinese particularly feared/abhorred for so long in this country? And how can we be sure that those ancient prejudices aren't still persisting in and affecting modern-day society?
(It may be that neither Michelle nor Caroline's problems have anything to do with being ethnically Chinese -- although I do remember the newspaper headlines saying "American beats Kwan for Olympic Gold".) But I would like to know the answers to those last questions anyway.)
