An Asian’s Take On David Bowie’s “China Girl”

If this is against anti-Asian racism, it sure doesn’t feel like it

It started, as many discussions do, with a social media post.

In the days after six Asian women (and two non-Asian victims) were murdered in the Atlanta area by a white shooter, America and the media’s attention focused, for perhaps the first time in my life, on anti-Asian racism in the United States and the 150% spike in anti-Asian hate crimes caused by Donald Trump. So I posted this on Facebook and Twitter:

If you’ve never heard “China Girl” (which was a top ten hit for David Bowie in 1983) or seen the video (which won Best Male Video at the MTV Video Awards), you can watch it below.

A friend of mine who is white, very progressive, and several years older than I (and a big David Bowie fan), disagreed with my take on both Bowie and “China Girl”. “It’s a bit more complicated than that” her reply…