Asian Progressives Shooting Themselves In The Foot.....

...Again!.

As readers will know, I have come to view our recent crop of Asian progressives as tragically comedic bumblers who stumble through political and social issues with tired and worn rhetoric that achieves little for the cause of progressivism in general, and absolutely nothing for Asian-Americans in particular. Asian progressives are the model minority for liberal racism, given over to attacking other Asians (typically Asian immigrants) in "liberal" publications whenever white racism rears its ugly head in our communities. They also strive to promote policies of institutional racism that target Asians only.

One of the main areas where Asian progressives are most virulently anti-Asian is on the issue of affirmative action. More specifically, Asian progressivism has taken the stance that there are simply too many Asians in American colleges and that it is morally doubleplusgood  to use any means necessary to get them replaced by African-Americans. Strangely, many of these champions of college diversity seem to have received Ivy League educations themselves, but conveniently didn't realize that it was racist for them to do so until after they graduated. It's only racist for other Asian-Americans to attend the Ivy League after Asian progressives have reaped the benefits of these institutions.

A recent article written in "Vox" magazine by Alvin Chang investigates Asian-American migrants' attitudes to affirmative action, and how hapless Asians - gormless Chinese migrants specifically - are being "used" to limit black enrollment in America's colleges. The spirit of the article is that Asian immigrant outsiders are having their gullibility and Asiatic, self-serving single-mindedness taken advantage of by white supremacists in order to keep blacks out of America's universities.

I say "white supremacists", but I'm at a loss when it comes to understanding why white supremacists in higher education would strive to maintain a college admissions system that doesn't seem to particularly ensure that whites remain supreme within the system. Rather, Asian-Americans have become a dominant presence in America's colleges, making this generation of white supremacists some of the most inept extremists the world has ever seen.

Chang tries - and fails - to disprove the charge that there appears to be anti-Asian bias in the college admissions process. Whilst - insidiously - downplaying anti-Asian racism in general, he makes an assertion that seems to put him at odds with other Asian progressives who are pushing for greater limits on Asian-American advancement. In support of his feeling that anti-Asian bias should be permitted in the admissions process, he says this...

This story, of racial bonuses and penalties due to affirmative action, has created an internal tension for Asian Americans: Many of us know race-conscious policies are necessary to remedy systemic racism. 

Here, Chang asserts that getting Asians out, and Latinos and African-Americans into elite colleges is necessary to remedy systemic racism. It goes without saying that as an Asian progressive, Chang avoids substantiating his claim. Yet, worse still, a new study by progressive Asians, Jennifer Lee and Karthik Ramakrishnan, as explained in this LA Times article, destroys Chang's assertion. Citing their own research, the progressive duo reveal their findings.....

Our research has shown that Asian Americans often define success as being the high school valedictorian, attending an elite university and pursuing a career in medicine, law, science or engineering. And there is at least one clear reason for the emphasis on prestige: Elite credentials are seen as a safeguard against discrimination in the labor market.

So, just like progressives, Asian-American immigrants view a college education - particularly from an elite college - as necessary to remedy systemic racism and discrimination. Yet, both progressive Asians and their Asian immigrant nemeses are wrong since according to Lee and Ramakrishnan....

.....there is also growing evidence that this faith in elite credentials may be misplaced.

Sounds bad for blacks and Asians. Maybe both groups should abandon higher education altogether since a college degree - apparently - doesn't actually remedy systemic racism? It gets worse for Chang whose downplaying of anti-Asian racism get destroyed by facts....

A recent report on leadership diversity at top technology companies found that Asian Americans are the racial group least likely to be promoted into managerial and executive ranks. White men and women are twice as likely as Asians to hold executive positions. And while white women are breaking through the glass ceiling, Asian women are not.......Asian Americans also fall behind in earnings. College-educated, U.S.-born Asian men earn 8% less than white men. Although Asian American women are likely to earn as much as white women, they are less likely to be in a management role.

Seems as though Asian immigrants aren't being as shrilly irrational about anti-Asian discrimination as Chang would have us believe. Yet, even though an elite college education should predict certain life outcomes (but doesn't if you are Asian) Asian progressives - as should be completely expected - see this as the fault of Asians themselves.....

But our research also indicates that Asian Americans are less likely than white and black Americans to engage in civic activity, which is strongly correlated with corporate leadership........According to the Current Population Survey, 17.9% of Asian Americans engage in volunteerism, compared to 26.4% of whites and 19.3% of blacks. Our analysis of the 2016 National Asian American Survey shows that only 59% of Asian Americans make charitable contributions, compared to 68% of whites and 65% of blacks. This lack of engagement outside of work is handicapping Asian Americans in their careers.

As you can see, what we have here is Asian progressive "framing" at work. Although, the nine percentage points difference between white and Asian charitable contributions is not really that significant, our Asian progressive researchers "frame" the findings as a "lack" of engagement on the part of Asian-Americans. No, really, a difference of nine percentage points in charitable contributions does not explain the significant discrimination Lee and Ramakrishnan acknowledge Asians face in the workplace.

More problematic is that there is no reason to believe that this statistic is connected to issues of discrimination in pay and leadership disparities described by the LA Times piece. How do we know that those who face discrimination are those who are the ones who are also not engaging in civic volunteering? Despite the juxtaposition of findings with the facts of anti-Asian bias in the workplace, Lee and Ramakrishnan have "framed" the article to insinuate Asian civic inertia as causation. But that's how Asian progressives roll.

Funnily enough, the difference between Asian and black/Latino volunteer rates is negligible, but of course, our researchers do not seem to conclude that college enrollment of these two groups is affected by this as it supposedly affects Asian enrollment. This is because blaming minorities for their own apparent inability to get ahead is racist...except when you are talking about Asians.

Of course, Lee and Ramakrishnan ignore the most significant ramification of their study: if an elite education does not remedy systemic racism, then affirmative action is a pointless and meaningless policy goal that merely discriminates against Asians, and offers no discernible institutional benefit to Latinos and blacks.

Racism With Benefits.....

Chloe Bennet And Logan Paul.

Recent revelations that one of Asian-America's high-profile critics of Hollywood anti-Asian racism is in a relationship with a media figure whose work has been criticized for its anti-Asian racist content have come as no surprise to me. It's hard to ever be surprised by Asian-American progressive ludicrousness. Of course, I'm talking about Chloe Bennet and her dreamy, blonde bombshell beau, Logan Paul.

Having gained some publicity for decrying anti-Asian racism in Hollywood, it came as a bolt from the blue when Bennet rekindled her relationship with Paul, whose YouTube content has been criticized for being racially insensitive, and, sometimes outright racist, towards Asians. There is some mystery around why Bennet would date someone whose work exemplifies the kind of casual media depictions of Asians that propagate popular racist stereotypes which contribute to the limited scope of Asian roles and representation that she has publicly decried. When people inquired - via Twitter - why she was dating Paul, Bennet's response was......

“Cause he’s kind, creative, funny, vibrantly curious about life, weird as fuck in all the best ways, a big dork, and he’s one of my best friends. It doesn’t make sense to a lot of people, but it doesn’t have too. He’s changed my life for the better and I’ve done the same for him.”

....also known as...."he's dreamy!!"

If only the purveyors of racist content looked more like Hitler and less like Hitler's Ubermensch. That being said, the way things seems to be heading, I'm not entirely sure some Asian women would not be able to find the good qualities in a Hitler look/act-alike and date him anyway. Maybe the phenomenon is an Asian feminist version of the Christian sentiment of "hating the sin, NOT the sinner!" in which Bennet hates the racism but not the racist, although I haven't seen much evidence of Bennet actually hating on the racism.

All of this aside, Bennet's dating choice brings to the fore the decades-old Asian-American gender conflict - specifically the matter of disparate high out-marriage/dating rates of Asian-American women, and how that plays into gender-specific anti-Asian racism in America.

In previous posts I have illustrated the gender-specific nature of anti-Asian racism in America, highlighting the unique place of privilege that Asian women seem to have been given in white society. History tells us that even as US immigration laws severely restricted - to a mere handful - general Asian migration into the country, tens of thousands of Asian women were allowed to by-pass these restrictions by virtue of being "war brides" of, largely, white G.Is. During the early part of the 20th Century, white women who married Asian men were forced to forego their citizenship status whilst white men who married Asian women were not similarly disenfranchised.

During the internment of the Japanese during WWII, white women with Japanese spouses were forced to enter the camps with their husbands or be separated from their children and face the break-up of their families. Japanese women with white husbands were not required to leave their homes, or families and were permitted to remain outside the camps. Finally, famed African-American activist for the repeal of anti-miscegenation laws, Mildred Loving, was dragged from her bed by the Virginia police  in the middle of the night and jailed because she broke the law by being married to a white man. Yet, Asian war-brides in Virginia were free to live openly with their white husbands.

As these examples suggest, Asian women have been afforded a unique place of racial privilege throughout Asian-America's history. The magnitude of this privileging is such that we could reasonably say that they had been afforded their own racial category separate from, and above, other Asians and minorities. Laws and racist social norms had been put aside to permit the existence of this privileged racial position in which your race is basically altered to circumvent racial restrictions. That is, as long as you are partnered with a white man.

Like these many thousands of white-partnered Asian women before her, Chloe Bennet has the opportunity to ignore racialization and racism by partnering with a purveyor of it. Even her own stated principles of decrying media racism that limits roles for Asian actors seem to have gone out the window since she is dating someone who propagates the very popular racist stereotypes that the media wants to disseminate.

This is why the gendered racism that characterizes the Asian-Americans experience needs to be at the centre of our dialogue on race. This unique racial category afforded to Asian women precludes any attempts to forge an Asian-American political identity since it seems impossible to do so when large segments of your community choose partners who promote, or who are sympathetic to racist Asian stereotypes. Some of these women are even open about their own racist attitudes towards Asian men and seem to view us as a different species, let alone a different race.

Interestingly, Logan Paul's racist content seems to mainly target Asian men which may be why Chloe Bennet is able to be more forgiving of it. Regardless, Bennet's dating choice is merely more evidence of the chasm in racial identity between Asian men and women, but also of the privileged status enjoyed by Asian women who seem to see no conflict between the racist beliefs of their white male partners and their own racial minority status.