Multiculturalism and the cultural politics of racism in Hong Kong

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article examines a new element in the cultural politics of multicultural Hong Kong, namely the emergence of racism towards ethnic and other minorities in on-line discussion forums. To gauge the extent of this problem, we examined 2,918 on-line reader commentaries about the 249 news articles on ethnic minorities published by the South China Morning Post (SCMP) between 2012–2018. A discourse analysis found that racist and racialized discourses pervade these commentaries. While our data are from Hong Kong, our study has international implications. The publication of racist commentaries on news articles legitimizes and institutionalizes a culture of racism that, we propose, acts as a potent form of racist public pedagogy. Nevertheless, shedding light on this problem opens up new possibilities for multicultural interventions in policy and education in Hong Kong and beyond.