The excerpt was taken from an interview Dr. Marketus Presswood, an assistant professor of history at Spelman College, did on Jan. 25, 2024 with the National Committee for U.S.-China Relations.
Marketus: I got to see myself not just as a black man in America, but just as a young man in the world, in China. When you’re somewhere else, you can reinvent yourself. You can experience who you are by yourself.
Interviewer: How did studying abroad in China influence you?
Marketus: I first studied in China, in Beijing, in 1997. I was the only black student in my program. I went on, it was CET academic programs, and I was one black student, only black student, a class of like, there were probably 50 students. That was not jarring. I mean, I was prepared for that. I was prepared for that experience, in a sense. But I didn’t know what to expect.
Like, you know, I had one semester of Chinese before that, so I didn’t, my Chinese wasn’t good. I could say hello, goodbye. I could probably order, mumbled my way through ordering food and trying to buy something in the shop. But my Chinese level at that time was really low. And until the end of the semester, it got, of course, a lot better.
But my experience, I felt a number of different things, right? One, there was definitely a curiosity from Chinese people towards, you know, my body, my, towards my blackness, rather. And I didn’t feel that it was virulent or that threatening at any point. It was kind of an innocuous, like, curiosity about who I was, where I was from. You know, people had a hard time imagining that I was from America. It was like, “No, you’re black. You got to be from Africa, right?”
You know, so this was a thing I would go out to, like, stores and the shopping malls. And when I would go out to a big store, inevitably large crowds would, like, form around me. And people were curious. And again, it never felt threatening. It never felt like someone was out to get me or hated me. But there were experiences where I felt like, okay, the experience of, you know, a white American and a black American are definitely different in China.
Ostensibly, it looks the same because people are kind of reacting to you the same way. Oh, they’re trying to touch your hair because it’s blond, or they’re trying to touch your hair because it’s, you know, you’re black. And some of those outside things are the same. But what I really understood later towards the end of my stay was that the difference was internal. There’s an internalization of the difference between black and white.
I had maybe three really good Chinese friends during my stay there that were really interested in me, really took…really sweet, kind people, right? That was definitely ingratiating. I really had a really good time with that and enjoyed that and loved them for that. But I don’t think that many people were as endearing or wanting to get to know me in the same way that they wanted to get to know my white classmates, right? I mean, it was almost a default was like, “Oh, yeah, we’re trying to get to know white people.” And that was because, you know, white Americans were seen as, you know, I’ll get educated, they’re coming from educated families or having money.
I mean, again, this is 1997 in China, right? There was a different sort of expectation or a different kind of thought process or tropes that they had for like whiteness. But as a black person, you know, I would always get these questions about my life and, you know, and poverty and all these other tropes about blackness that pop up, right? And I’m there and I’m trying to communicate the best I can, but I’m realizing like, huh, they have a very skewed opinion of blackness, right, and who I am and what I am and what I can do, what I can’t do, you know, my intellectual capacity and all these other things and your family life and if we have money or not.
That took me aback a little bit. I was a little bit jarred by that. And so I did notice that, that I didn’t have as much of an opportunity to really meet people or people to really meet me in the same way that some of my white colleagues did, right? And also being on study abroad with majority, like, white students, no one ever invited me to go to stuff, right? I had to really work hard to like inject myself in like activities and stuff, but no one ever said, “Hey, Marketus, let’s go.” I mean, I hung out with international students, had like really three really good Russian friends, Italian students. I was hanging out with people, you know, other than Americans, because the Americans, I mean, nobody was inviting me to go places and travel and stuff like that. And so I felt in some ways, a little isolated, right?
And then gaslighted about my experience, right? And things that, that I was going through. There was this one experience I had, I was with a Chinese American friend and we were out shopping and she had to get a pair of glasses. So we went to this glass, this eyeglass store and she was being fitted for glasses and things like that. So she had to go to a different room and the guy behind the counter made a comment and she just burst out laughing. And I was like, “What’s so funny?” And she said, “Oh, this man just said, ‘Is your thing following us?'” He referred to me as a thing.
And I was, I was upset with her for laughing, right? And, and I was like, “Hey, that’s not cool.” You know, that really stuck with me, right? That was a form of other-ization, right? Things like that would happen, right? Or I had a friend of a friend, Chinese friend of a friend who referred to me as a little black or Xiaohei, you know, which can have several different meanings, right? One, I was, I was a very small person. I was 160 pounds, you know, 5’10” when I was in college, I was super skinny. So, you know, I mean, Xiaohei could be a term of endearment if I knew you, you know, maybe, but it had some other more pejorative meanings that I, you know, that I wasn’t quite comfortable with that I learned, you know, later on.
So I started realizing and understanding that, oh, okay, there is a difference with blackness and whiteness. There is a certain privilege that comes with whiteness, you know, in China, and that may be receding now, right? You know, but, but there was definitely when I was there, there was a, you know, in the preceding years, because I’ve lived in China for, you know, for a long, for almost 12 years, right, 12, 13 years. And so, yes, there was this white privilege.
And this is not to say that every Chinese person believes in, adheres to, follows like this anti-blackness, but everyone understands it, right? Everyone knows that it exists, right? And so I’ve had several experiences when I was there, it was like, whoa, that was, that was pretty shocking, right? But I’ve also had wonderful friendships, you know, work relationships with, with many Chinese people who, you know, didn’t feel that way. And so, yeah, but it is there, you know, it’s definitely there.
My brother told me this one story when he was working for an English company in Beijing. And part of the assignment for the day was if you could be anyone else in the world, who would you be? And so everyone in the classroom was saying, I want to be this person, this person, this person. Some of them were Chinese. Some of them were like famous white people. And then there was one guy who said, “I would want to be Michael Jordan.” And the class was like, “Huh, what? But he’s black.” You know, like, like, like, why would you want to like be black? Like, you know, so there was this sort of like group acknowledgement of blackness. And it was something that they didn’t want to be, right?
There is this difference even today, you know, that we have to acknowledge. It’s a little bit disconcerting and disingenuous that the Chinese government officially says that racism doesn’t exist in China, because that’s not true. And I would love for them to start to just to deal with their own biases of you want to call it racism, I can call it that, towards like, you know, darker skin people within that country, because it’s there, right? It’s there. I don’t think it should deter students from going. Because you experience that here in America, right?
But I think that it’s something that needs to be worked on, resolved, addressed, in the same way that we’re still trying to work on, you know, our problems with race relations in this country, right? There is no panacea, but, but it’s something that we have to engage with, right?
Interviewer: What makes study abroad a valuable experience?
Marketus: Study abroad is crucial, because we have to have one-to-one contacts between people of various different groups and culture, right? That’s the only way to move forward, right? We have to really get to know and understand who we are, individually, as a group, as a culture, as a people, and it can only really happen… I mean, there’s sort of educational things that you can do at universities, at high schools, at elementary schools. But I think the key is really getting people together to see that they have more in common than the things that they differ on, right?
So study abroad helps with this, right? It really helps once you’re out of your own country. And for me, what it did for me was that it allowed me to see myself out of my own cultural milieu. I was out of my own environment. And I got to see myself not just as a black man in America, but just as a young man in the world, in China, without the interference of the racial hierarchy, the racial dynamics, and all of the static that you have to deal with on a quotidian basis when you’re living in your own country.
When you’re somewhere else, nobody knows you. You can reinvent yourself. You have time to breathe and experience who you are by yourself. And that’s very rewarding and refreshing. And that’s what happens with study abroad. I mean, it’s an elixir. I mean, I wasn’t a great student undergrad my initial two, three years, but when I got back from study abroad, it seemed that everything had clicked for me. I realized why I was doing this. I had so much more energy and excitement about my classes and about what I was doing and my purpose in life. It just rejuvenated me and energized me.
I became a better student that second half of my undergraduate career that helped propel me to the master’s degree, to the Ph.D. I do credit study abroad with that. So I recommend that all students have a study abroad experience, even if it’s just for the summer. But if you can get a semester program, go on a semester program, that will be life-changing, especially for students who are first-generation college students. I was a first-gen student undergrad and that was life-changing for me.
Interviewer: How can institutions encourage study abroad for American students of diverse backgrounds?
Marketus: There needs to be a lot, a lot more money allocated to study abroad, right? I thought the 100,000 Strong project was a good initiative, but there was no money behind it. So for first-gen students, they need money not only for the program to study abroad and while they’re there in the country, they may even need a little bit of money for when they get back, right? Because they’re probably working a part-time job, paying rent, taking care of themselves. They’re going to need some like, what do I do when I get home? I’m going to have to have some money to cushion me until I get my next check, right, or until school starts back again and work-study. So there are all these hidden costs with study abroad for first-gen students that need to be addressed.
And then another thing is that representation is important. There’s one organization now, Student Teens of Color Abroad, that’s a person of color is actually running an organization and taking high school students to different countries, right? And that’s commendable. We need 10, 20 more of those, right? In doing this, it doesn’t mean that that’s anathema to what study abroad is about — broadening horizons, getting people around different cultural groups.
There is a need for the HBCU. There is a need for the Hispanic-serving institution. This doesn’t mean that the students who attend HBCUs or Hispanic-serving institutions are somehow cloistered or themselves away from other people or segregated themselves from other people. It’s actually the exact opposite. It’s that they need a specific space to thrive in, to be able to do some of these things, to get their feet wet. And then they can go out there into the world and relate with anyone and be just as good and to deal with anyone, engage with anyone in the world.
We need to look at those institutions and those students who, you know, they may not have a 3.5 or 3.8 GPA. They may be borderline 3.0, 2.8, 2.7, whatever, but those students still deserve a chance and an opportunity. They’re still very deserving. And I would argue that an experience like study abroad will help put things in perspective for them and propel them to be not just better students, but more globally-minded citizens.
Lastly, I just say that we need government, we need private enterprises to donate and give money to this endeavor. It’s not just for personal reasons, but it’s also national security stuff. There are a number of reasons why we want our citizens to be more globally minded, to have linguistic skills that not only serve our country, but can be used to help maintain peace throughout the world. We need that.
