Macguffined!

How Anti-Anti-Blackness Failed Asian-America.

In the hours and days following the attacks on the World Trade Center on September 11th 2001, President Bush was quick to separate Islamic belief from the actions of Muslim terrorists. Perpetrators of terrorist acts carried out in the name of Islam were, it was, and is, suggested, not acting in accordance with the true tenets of the faith. Additionally, the mainstream media largely supported this sentiment. The aim here was to guide society away from reprisals against Muslims and stave off anti-Muslim sentiment. Given America's history of racism, this political and media approach was quite remarkable.

It might be naive to think that our political/ruling classes simply and suddenly developed a conscience about racial and religious minorities that prompted this response. More likely, a combination of successful activism/lobbying by Muslim-American activists along with the need to avoid offending our oil-rich, Muslim allies around the world, led to this progressive-seeming reaction.

From an Asian-American perspective, these responses reveal what is possible for minorities to achieve politically. At the same time, it lays bare just how far Asian-Americans have yet to go to be considered an integral part of America. It is at times when America's other phobia - Sinophobia - rears its casual and normalized head that this contrast in attitudes becomes most starkly apparent.

Sinophobic sentiment is an issue that all Asian-Americans of East and South-East Asian descent need to be concerned about since casts a shadow of suspicion and hostility on Asians of all backgrounds and not just those of Chinese descent. Although politicians and the media scramble to assert the "American-ness" of Muslims in the aftermath of terrorist attacks, few, if any, take the time to reassure the Asian minority or the American majority of our Americaness during times of Sinophobic sentiment that is typically focused on alleged unscrupulous Chinese trade practices, claims of sneaky spying, sly intentions of conquest, as well as theft of technology.

So, how can we account for this disparity in the relative political and social empathy displayed by politicians and the media towards Muslims that is largely absent in its dialogue on Asians? The clear answer is that Muslim advocacy has embraced and pushed the interests of the Muslim community, succeeding in a relatively short period of time in positively changing how politicians and the media engage with, and describes them. By comparison, Asian-American advocacy has embraced a different strategy that leaves our community as a largely invisible non-entity who are given scant political consideration, and practically zero media empathy.

During the radical sixties, Asian-American activist groups were roundly criticized by Asian feminist factions for ignoring sexism within Asian organizations themselves. Many such feminists felt aggrieved at, apparently, being told that these issues should be placed on the back-burner and that feminists should "wait their turn" in the interests of the greater Asian-American good. Fast forward fifty years, and the Asian-American community faces a similar problem today: the "greater good" for Asians, we are informed, is in supporting the strategy of "centering anti-blackness" whilst placing Asian interests on  the back-burner.

Centering anti-blackness is a somewhat nebulous and - deliberately, perhaps - intangible notion. Not really comprised of many concrete, measurable goals, it seems to me to be more of an allusion to a kind of virtue ethics consisting simplistic, ad-hoc acts of "virtuous" centering anti-blackness behaviour, emphasizing the development of virtuous thought to this end.

This strategy places Asian interests on the back-burner by essentially denying the significance or severity of anti-Asian racism with the implicit reminder that "African-Americans have it worse!" Asian "advocacy", thus, pushes Asian-Americans into a falsely dichotomous position of either shutting up about Asian interests or be labeled as an unvirtuous anti-black racist. In other words Asian-American advocacy attempts to uphold the long defunct and never accurate notion of a black/white narrative to explain America's race woes.

Awkwardly, America has beaten Asian-American progressive racial trailblazers to the punch by several decades since the "righting" of anti-black wrongs has been central to much of American social policy since the nineteen-sixties. Securing the black vote is the priority of politicians at every election cycle, ensuring a commensurate black presence in all aspects of our society is considered a moral goal, and shooting of unarmed black men by the police is roundly centered in the media. That short list is indicative of a good degree of centering of black needs and the obstacles faced by black people.

This essentially means that Asian progressivism has been flogging a dead horse - the idea that we are achieving something that has already gone a very long way to being achieved (by black people themselves) and that to push Asian interests will, by definition, be an unvirtuous act of anti-blackness. Unfortunately for our virtuous friends, the success of Muslim activism in bringing Islamophobia to the social and cultural fore has obliterated the very premises of Asian progressive moral grandstanding.

Muslim advocates' success in bringing the concept of Islamophobia to the forefront of our political discussions, such that politicians are careful to clearly separate terrorist acts from Islam and Muslims, has expanded the scope of America's race dialogue beyond the archaic black/white narrative that Asian-American progressives insist upon. Even though "Muslim" is not a race, to all intents and purposes it is discussed in our society as though it is a race. This defining of Islamophobia in terms of race, itself, shows further evidence of how successful Muslim advocates have been in making the issue as relevant and significant as the issue of anti-blackness. I would even go so far as to say that America's race dialogue now, effectively, consists of a black/white/Muslim/Hispanic polychotomy with Asians silenced by their own activists.

Asian progressives have shaped our contribution to the race dialogue so that Asian voices are largely irrelevant except as mouth pieces screaming support safely from behind the dynamic activism of these other groups. Asian-American progressivism has largely undone the good work of previous generations of Asian-American activists by pushing an agenda of Asian submission to the black/white narrative that no other minority group seems to act in accordance with. Evidently, these other minority groups accept that the reality of America's race issues is that it has never - ever - been a black/white issue.

Even worse for our grandstanding friends on Asian-America's progressive left is that there is no indication that the success of Muslim advocacy has, or does, in any way detract from the interests of the black community - as has been suggested by the "centering anti-blackness" Asian activists who castigate other Asians for daring to speak for Asian interests. Surely, expanding the scope of America's race dialogue only weakens the power of white supremacy because it leaves less room for any outsider groups that can be harmed by it? Isn't the weakening of white supremacist power and thought a success for all people of colour?

Yet, it seems to me that this is exactly the place where Asian progressivism has led Asian-Americans. After, all, who would argue that anti-Asian stereotypes and mockery are still largely normalized in American culture, and that anti-Asian/China rhetoric is a significant detrimental factor in our society's conception of us as potentially treacherous permanent outsiders and foreigners? This represents an abject failure on the part of Asian progressivism.

Even as Presidents defend, propagate, and represent positive attitudes towards Islam and American-Muslims, at every opportunity, there are few, if any, equally glowing defenses of Asian-Americans in general, and Chinese-Americans in particular coming from any US politicians, at any level during times of high tension between the US and any Asian power. Just think about that for a minute: US Presidents are contributing to positive attitudes and media representation towards the Muslim minority - something that they don't even do for African-Americans. This is a clear indication that Muslim advocacy has succeeded in ways that Asian-American progressivism has not begun to conceive of as even a possibility.

Asian-Americans and Muslim-Americans share many similar experiences, such as originating from countries that have been on the receiving end of US military aggression, being subject to xenophobic ignorance, poor media representation, and being seen as potential fifth-columnists for foreign powers. Yet whilst Asian "advocacy" utilizes liberal media platforms to attack other Asians for being anti-black, privileged, misogynistic, and generally "in the way" of black advancement, Muslim advocacy seems to have actually striven to advocate for the interests of Muslims.

The result is that a Muslim minority of under 4 million are being positively represented in the media by US Presidents, in a surprising number of culturally popular TV shows, as well as a number of high-profile films featuring complex characters who challenge stereotypes. By contrast, Asian-Americans number nearly 20 million, and only two years ago, Hollywood racially mocked Asians live at the Oscars. An article from the "The Whisp" describes sixteen Muslim characters from film and TV who have been represented positively. I can barely think of a handful of positive, complex, representations of Asian characters in American film and television.

Asian progressivism's hegemonic appropriation of Asian-America's voice in order to push an anti-anti-blackness agenda - which black activists have already been in doing, successfully, without our help - has failed our community. It has been replaced with a delusional Asian progressive narrative that asserts that Asians are willing and sneaky beneficiaries of white anti-blackness, and those who speak up for Asian interests are labeled as implicitly anti-black. Thus, Asian progressivism has set our community back decades, and been successful only in marginalizing Asian interests from the mainstream.

The success of Muslim advocacy has exposed the absurdity of these Asian progressive claims. It has shown that America's race dialogue has changed forever beyond the archaic confines of the black/white narrative. Furthermore, the success of Muslim advocacy has shown that moving beyond the black/white narrative and pushing the interests of any group that is not black, does no harm, whatsoever, to black interests. This means that the entire dialectic of Asian progressivism of the past few years has been based on rhetoric alone with no meaningful epistemology to support its claims.

Asian-America has been Macguffined.

Celeste Ng And Trumping The System

Asian Women's Get Out Of Jail Free Card.....

In the years following the end of the Second World War, thousands of Japanese War Brides were admitted to the United States as the spouses of American GIs returning from the Pacific War. Most of these women were married to Caucasian GIs - a phenomenon which spawned an unusual racial dynamic that saw many of these Japanese War Brides slot into a unique ethnic category that set them apart from other racial minorities but also from other Asian-Americans.

A dissertation by Masura Nakamura of the University of Minnesota explores how these women integrated into their new husbands' lives, society and culture, and reveals some intriguing insights into our present-day, Asian-American gendered racial experiences. Most significantly for this post, is the relationship between these War Bride newcomers to America and the existing Japanese-American community.

For the most part, this relationship was a fraught one - either largely non-existent due to War Brides being geographically isolated from other Japanese-Americans, or due to simple lack of commonality between the experiences of the two demographics if, or when they were living in proximity. According to Nakamura's dissertation, Japanese War Brides lived unique "de-racialized" lives when married to white GIs which saw them idealized as "proto-model minorities" for their acquiescence to unquestioning integration into white society. So thorough was this process, that many even adopted racist attitudes towards African-Americans and the Japanese women married to black GIs, often having nothing to do with them because of the race of their partner.

Prominent amongst these War Brides was an attitude of disdain for Japanese-Americans, whom they derided for not being more "Americanized".....

Some war brides, such as Mrs. F-19, criticized the Japanese Americans in Hawaii for more than their use of Japanese over English and generally condemned them for not being more American. She was in favor of Americanization, and like Mrs. F-17 thought Japanese Americans were backwards for not Americanizing more fully. (p.229)......As Mrs. F-19 succinctly stated, “I am married to an American and I want to become Americanized. When Iwas married to my husband, I made up my mind that I was going to be an American. I am willing to give up my Japanese background.” 

The severe racial discrimination experienced by earlier waves of Japanese immigrants that saw them racially segregated, blocked from integrating into mainstream American society, and marginalized them as second class citizens seems to have gone unnoticed by some of these War Brides. Even the internment of thousands of Japanese-Americans seems not to have given pause to consider the possibility that Japanese-Americans were not more Americanized due to America's efforts to keep them in a state of separateness. In short, Japanese-Americans, unlike "Mrs. F-19" were not given the opportunity to choose to achieve "Americanization" through their personal partnering with whiteness. 

This "privilege" of being able to choose American whiteness was only available to Asian women married to white men. Nakamura calls this process "racial coverture" - a reference to old English Common Law in which the rights and identity of a wife are subsumed by those of the husband. In this case, the Asiatic race of Japanese War Brides was subsumed by the whiteness of their white spouse, granting them rights and opportunities not available to any other racial minority group.

Thus, at a time when racial minorities were still criminalized under draconian Jim Crow era anti-miscegenation laws, thousands of Asian women were enjoying the privilege of full integration by "choosing Americanization" due to their marriages to white men. Even prior to this post-war mass migration of Asian War Brides, Asian women enjoyed privileges if they partnered white men.

Celeste Ng's recent article in "The Cut" echoed this same privilege induced tone deafness. While I share Ng's condemnation of the harassment she has experienced, her miscomprehension of a racial minority's experience other than her own - in this case Asian men - comes through loud and clear. Unlike other minority demographics, Asian women have historically had the option to "overcome" racial disadvantages through partnering with white men, so it seems natural that some Asian women may struggle to truly understand the nature of the "no-win" situation that some Asian men might feel. This would be especially true when it might directly challenge the implicit privileges their choices in life and love may offer them.

When Ng writes....

Asian men face long-standing stereotypes that they’re socially awkward, unmasculine, or sexually unattractive, and these perceptions often put them at a disadvantage, from academics to work to dating apps. From their posts, it’s clear that Asian men like those on AZNidentity believe they’re fighting a constant battle against a culture that’s out to get them.

.....she has revealed her lack of familiarity with Asian men's experiences. Some of Asian-America's most successful men have written about experiencing this feeling of unremitting cultural hostility that Ng casually dismisses as the domain of "Asian men like those on AZNIdentity". Here are some examples.....

.......there were times I thoroughly believed that no one wanted anything to do with me. I told myself that it was all a lie, but the structural emasculation of Asian men in all forms of media became a self-fulfilling prophecy that produced an actual abhorrence to Asian men in the real world. (Eddie Huang.).....

We’re simply interested in finding our identity, but when we look out to the world, all we can find is the lazy portrayal of the uni-dimensional, kung-fu fighting, smart, obedient, emasculated man or hyper-sexualized woman. The Model Minority. That sucks. (Ricky Yean - CEO).... 

No, I was a “chink”: A trope of an Asian man, a character I knew little about but had internalized, like many other Americans, as an emasculated nerd. I remember sitting in the back of my dad’s car one night crying and shaking as I told him that “no girl will ever like me because I’m Chinese.”.......In a place where Asian manhood had been obliterated, what I needed was someone to look up to. Someone who could understand my struggle and set an example. And my dad was not that person.......A white man couldn’t teach an Asian man about masculinity. Nor could the media, with its tokens and stereotypes.....(Zachary Schwartz, Journalist)

Last year, I read a book by Alex Tizon called Big Little Man: In Search of My Asian Self..... In the book, Tizon laments the representation of Asian men in popular media—or really, the lack thereof. He writes of Sex and the City: “Something like 2 million Asians live in the New York metropolitan area, but Asians hardly appear in the show at all—symbolic annihilation at its best.” Symbolic annihilation: the under-representation of a group of people, usually in media. Asian men rarely show up in TV or film. And when they do, they often are at best sexless nerds, and at worst offensive stereotypes.(Kevin Nguyen, journalist)

We realized that for all of Jeremy Lin’s accomplishments, we as Asians are still different, are still seen differently than other races by the vast majority of Americans................The truth is, racism toward Asians is treated differently in America than racism toward other ethnic groups. This is a truth all Asian Americans know. While the same racist may hold back terms he sees as off-limits toward other minorities, he will often not hesitate to call an Asian person a chink, as Jeremy Lin was referred to, or talk about that Asian person as if he must know karate, or call him Bruce Lee, or consider him weak or effeminate, or so on....(Matthew Salesses, author)

There are many more such testimonies in which successful Asian men describe this sense of being under siege by a hostile and racist culture. Surely, men such as CEO, Ricky Yean and well-regarded authors, like Matthew Salesses are not "bullies" like those "Asian men on AZNIdentity"? Clearly, Celeste Ng is wrong in her insinuation that these notions of a hostile culture are the delusions of unhinged Asian men.

Despite Ng's acknowledgement of the discrimination and dehumanizing stereotypes that Asian men face, it seems like mere dismissive lip-service. She writes...

These harassers frequently brand me “self-hating” and accuse me of “hating Asian men” — because I have a white husband, and because of a tweet I posted years ago in which I acknowledged I wasn’t always attracted to Asian men......They have a valid complaint here: My tweet fed into those stereotypes that Asian men are unsexy, and when people pointed this out, I rethought my own biases. 

Ah, that tweet! The problem from my perspective is not that Ng's tweet revealed her lack of attraction to Asian men, or that she bought into stereotypes about them. The issue is the casual, off-the-cuff expression of racism. Ng finds that all Asian men look the same and that their "look" negates any curiosity about their personal qualities.

This sentiment plays into more sinister stereotypes - Asians as droll automatons, lacking any significant quality of character to differentiate any one individual from another. Ng seems unconscious of her unconscious propagation of a foundational dehumanizing stereotype that has existed in American culture as a by-product of the need in times of war to dehumanize your Asian enemy. Her lack of attraction for men like me is not a problem for me. Her clueless propagation of racist sentiment is.

Like some Japanese war Brides before her, Ng can't seem to understand why there is such a fuss about interracial marriage. Nor can she seem to gauge why it is such an issue for some racial minorities. The reason, I submit, could be that interracial partnering is something that Asian women have never really had to struggle to achieve. Despite the fact that modern-day Asian women fancy themselves as martyrs for the cause of interracial love, in truth (as herstory shows), Asian women have long been afforded the privilege of crossing the racial barrier to partner white men, while other minorities (including Asian men) have been criminalized for their interracial love choices. Anti-miscegenation laws have been ignored, and immigration laws perforated and changed to enable this to happen.

Far from being the heroic struggle for interracial love against all the odds that modern-day Asian feminists would like us all to believe, Asian women partnering white men is, in fact, one of the most glaring examples of the power of white male supremacist privilege. How else can we explain the ease with which harsh laws devised to inhibit racial mixing could so easily be ignored? The answer of course is that the racist white men in power at the time decided that they could ignore their own laws to their own benefit. Such is the power of white supremacy.

Of course some Asian women can't understand the anger that some Asian men might feel about interracial out-marriage - they have never really had to fight for the right to it and have had any obstacles to it waved away by those in power. This lies at the root of Asian-American inter-gender issues when it comes to out-marriage.

We are living in a kind of residual culture, an aftermath of a period in American history of cultural and legal white racial supremacy. Asian-Americans seem not to have explored how the effects of gendered historical racism affect our community for one very good reason. As partners for white men, Asian female cultural leaders have effectively become the voice of the Asian-American narrative. From that perspective, not much has changed for Asian women. Jim Crow and immigration laws were changed and bypassed to permit Asian women to marry into whiteness. This is why "Asian narratives" are largely dominated by depictions of Asian women and white men whilst Asian men are marginalized. This is also why the "Asian narratives" often seem more sympathetic to historical white power structures than to the Asian experience.

Our present-day culture reflects this history. The naturalness of Asian women with white men is the social and cultural by-product of this history. By the same token, the normalcy of casual dehumanization, emasculation, and marginalization of Asian men derives, ultimately from the draconian anti-miscegenation legislation and sentiment strictly applied to Asian men who have always been conceived of as irredeemably foreign threats. No surprise that some Asian women are left scratching their heads trying to comprehend what it is like to be marginalized culturally, socially, and sexually. They have always been afforded an avenue out of that. Asian men still live under the shadow of residual cultural anti-miscegenation sentiment.

The existences of Ng's article is itself an expression of this privilege. Asian men are long accustomed to Asian women spouting racist sentiment towards us, yet, how often do we see a mainstream publication giving Asian male writers the opportunity to call it out?

In summary, the root of the gender conflict in Asian-America derives from the vastly disparate histories and racial experiences each has faced, particularly on the subject of miscegenation. Whilst Asian men were strictly held to account for anti-miscegenation, Asian women were exempted in tens of thousands of cases. The repeal of draconian immigration and anti-miscegenation laws merely meant business as usual for Asian women who had long been allowed to circumvent them due to their white partners. White supremacy itself has been a get out of jail free card for Asian women.

Sadly, Ng's experiences of online bullying, are a reflection of this historical chasm in experiences, and probably explains why awareness of it seems lacking in her piece. Quite simply, the "Asian narratives" of the post anti-miscegenation/exclusionary immigration period ignores this disparity of historical experience and instead focuses on the happiness of Asian women and their saviour white partners. Asian men are invisible in their own historical narratives, and the discrimination they experienced erased. This is why Asian women seemed to have been able to more easily "move on" past the history of racism that affected Asian-Americans in the past. The groundwork for this was already laid for them, thanks to the power of white supremacy to define race according to its own needs and desires.

The question is, how do Asian men "move on" from this history and its continuing cultural aftereffects without an honest acknowledgement of it?

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.

When Racists Love You More Than The Liberals.

The SPLC And Eliot Roger.

It's been a good few years since white/Asian mixed-race mass-murderer, Eliot Roger, went on a killing spree that resulted in the deaths of six people. Known as the Isla Vista killings, the tragedy exposed some of the deep-rooted schisms that have long divided Asian-Americans. Despite the fact that Roger had disdain for Asian men, the incident was co-opted by some Asian feminists who pushed the assertion of an implicit sickness with "Asian masculinity" as one of the causative factors for his actions

In the real world, Roger's primary role model for masculinity was his Caucasian father, and his thoughts on Asian masculinity were derisive. How these factors turned Roger into an example of Asian male misogyny is a mystery. 

What became clear in the aftermath of the case is that Roger's racist attitudes towards Asian men were downplayed by both the mainstream, and our own largely, useless, twitter/blogger Asian "activists". This is unsurprising as I have always maintained that Asian progressive activism seeks to stifle Asian progress, limit race dialogue to a black/white binary, and stigmatize Asian men as implicitly racist upholders of white supremacy. No wonder mainstream America is empowered to maintain its racist representations of Asian men since even our own activists obfuscate the facts to push an agenda.

It came as no surprise to me, then, when an article recently appeared in the journal of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) that defined Eliot Roger as the first "Alt-Right" killer whose actions were driven by an adherence to white nationalist ideology. The SPLC  is a legal organization, started in the early nineteen-seventies, that advocates for victims of racial prejudice. One of its tasks is the monitoring of hate groups and extremists. Despite its credentials as a bulwark against hate crimes, the SPLC's report on Roger's "Alt-Right" leanings is, ironically, itself an example how liberals and leftists incubate anti-Asian attitudes.

Of course, I did not personally know Eliot Roger. I never met him, and I have no idea what it feels like to have the kind of embarrassment and shame about being Asian that he apparently had. I have no comprehension of Roger's hatred for other Asian men, nor have I had difficulty interacting with the opposite sex as Roger is reported to have experienced. Despite all of this, I know Roger very well because I know what it is like to be an Asian man whose cultural identity is erased from the society you live in.

Roger would have grown up in an American cultural setting in which Asian men are depicted as pathetic losers who fail at romance due to our physical repulsiveness, and fail as men because of mental and physical weaknesses. Asian men almost always lose - because we are the bad guys - and if we win, it is mostly as peripheral characters in a team of much stronger white men. At every turn, Roger would have been met with negative portrayals of Asian men. Television, film, literature, news media and even children's books would have shown Asian men in extremely negative ways. If not as absurd caricatures, then as the subject of xenophobic white fantasies of brutal beatings or mass killings of Asian enemies.

Roger, like all Asian men, lived in a culture in which he was taught through casual media racism that being an Asian man made you worthy entirely of violent aggression or relentless mockery. It is, largely, the left-leaning liberal media that propagates this dehumanizing anti-Asian male racism, although some of these negative portrayals would have originated with other Asian-Americans whose creative output marginalizes Asian men or offhandedly demeans them.

The liberal SPLC's report takes none of this into account. In fact, it completely erases this experience by, literally, white-washing Roger so that his motivations can be neatly shoehorned into the umbrella of the black/white race dichotomy, and the left/right narrative. It says this about Roger...

But Atchison wasn’t the first to fit the profile of alt-right killer—that morbid milestone belongs to Elliot Rodger, the 22-year-old who in 2014 killed seven in Isla Vista, California, after uploading a sprawling manifesto filled with hatred of young women and interracial couples...Including Rodger’s murderous rampage there have been at least 13 alt-right related fatal episodes...

It goes on....

Rodger left behind a sprawling 107,000-word manifesto titled, “My Twisted World: The Story of Elliot Rodger,” which contained passages lamenting his inability to find a girlfriend, expressing extreme misogyny and various racist positions including disgust for interracial couples (despite the fact that he was multi-racial himself).....“How could an inferior, ugly black boy be able to get a white girl and not me? I am beautiful, and I am half white myself,” Rodger wrote. “I am descended from British aristocracy. He is descended from slaves.”

We should recall that Roger stabbed his three Asian male roommates to death and mutilated their bodies in an act of savage hatred, railed against "ugly" Asian men being with white girls, and saw himself as superior to full-blooded Asian men. Yet, the SPLC report saw fit to view Roger's racism solely from the perspective of his anti-black tirades. What the SPLC has done is to whitewash  the anti-Asian racism Roger would have been subject to, and blackwash his racism so that his actions can be neatly defined in terms of the black/white dichotomy. The experiences of anti-Asian media racism that may have informed Roger's alienation and fueled his hatred of Asian men have been erased by the SPLC.

In its zeal to paint Roger as just another killer driven by white nationalist fervour, the SPLC has absolved liberal racism of its culpability in creating the monster that Roger became. In fact, I would suggest that Roger found himself pushed to the fringes of society - and into the sphere of white nationalism - precisely because casual liberal media racism denies Asian men a positive American cultural identity. There was no celebrated and beloved cultural Asian-American figure that Roger could look to and say to himself, "that is the Asian-American who best represents my aspirations, inspiration, and character". Asian men don't fit into America's cultural narratives except, largely, in the most demeaning and dehumanizing ways. Perhaps the casual violence that the liberal media likes to depict being inflicted on Asian men fueled Roger's violent fantasies - his mutilation of his three Asian roommates merely mirrors pervasive film and television images of Asian men being brutally killed en masse by white heroes.

Roger's case raises some difficult questions about how media representation of Asian men affects our community. Some Asian-American anti-blackness reactivists chide their own community for over-inflating the issue of poor media representation. Yet, the Isla Vista killings raises the intriguing possibility of a line of causation between racist stereotypes of Asian men, and an act of violence in society. If media racism is creating a sociocultural environment in which Asian men are marginalized and alienated to the point of murderous nihilism, then that is surely a major social issue?

By ignoring Roger's hatred of Asians the SPLC renders it invisible, diminishes its significance, and, in the process, is complicit in the propagation of a dismissive attitude towards casual anti-Asian racism. Yet, the organization defines a hate group as follows....

The Southern Poverty Law Center defines a hate group as an organization that – based on its official statements or principles, the statements of its leaders, or its activities – has beliefs or practices that attack or malign an entire class of people, typically for their immutable characteristics.

This definition describes the liberal media - particularly the liberal "creative"media - that routinely, and casually produces depictions of Asian men that dehumanize, and malign us for our supposed immutable characteristics. If Eliot Roger hated Asian men to the point of murder, it is because our society and culture fosters such attitudes. Roger shows that cultural emasculation of Asian men can have tragic real world consequences.

There is an important distinction that has to be made here. Roger's actions were not the product of his Asian-ness, they were the product of our racist culture's representations of his Asian-ness. His alienation and murderous rage should be viewed as the outcome of casual anti-Asian racism that has become the normative manner of conceptualizing Asian men. I would agree that participating in white nationalist ideology was a factor in Roger's actions, the question is, how and why did he end up there?

The SPLC suggests that he was merely seduced by white nationalism. Asian progressive activists and feminists suggest that he was the product of a toxic masculinity unique to Asian-American men. Both groups ignore the likelihood that gendered, Asian male targeted media racism alienated him to such a point that he grew to hate being part Asian and chose to adopt the most extreme white nationalist culture. There was simply no cultural narrative that he would have found sympathetic to his racial background, so he chose one that would. Ironically, he seemed to have found more acceptance for his Asian-ness amongst a bunch of racist losers that would have done from mainstream culture. That, to me, is indicative of a major social ill.

Whoops They Did It Again!

Same Ole Same Ole.

Yes, it has happened again! Asian-America has experienced yet another Groundhog Day moment in which we are once again treated to what amounts to an Asian-American progressive deflection of attention away from white supremacist violence onto an imagined culpability of Asian immigrants.

Following the events in Charlottesville last year, in which a white-supremacist rammed his car into a crowd of left wing protesters, killing one of them, I knew that it would only be a matter of days before an Asian progressive supporter of white supremacy would show up, making the world safe for white nationalism.

Of course, a mainstream liberal publication provides the platform for this transparent deflection of attention away from white racism. Writing in the Huffington Post, apparently progressive, and possible useful idiot, Jezzika Chung penned this  remarkable piece that seems to play on xenophobic suspicions of incomprehensible Asian languages spreading malign ideas to the detriment of white liberalism.

The piece starts as follows...

Anti-blackness in the Asian American community is not a discreet, whispered sentiment. It’s a blatant belief that’s been engrained into many immigrant minds —  something force fed to us as children of immigrants as we attempt to integrate into American culture, where anti-blackness and white supremacy ideals are also rampant.

This is news to me. But, maybe the piece will provide substantial evidence for this dramatic claim? Let's see....

When Asian immigrants leave their home countries to come to America, often to escape poverty or tyrannical regimes, they’re often faced with the concept of race for the first time. 

Really? During the pro-Peter Liang protests by Chinese immigrants, they seemed to show a far more nuanced comprehension of America's racial issues than the "woke" progressives who maligned them. Well, maybe the piece will provide substantial evidence for this dramatic claim? Let's see....

Growing up, I often attributed my mom’s erratic behaviors to her being naive and gullible. She treated articles she read as holy scripture, shunning anything that was forbidden by the obscure newspapers she got at the Korean market. Many times, the literature she read perpetuated problematic ideas of other minorities, especially black people. As I became older, I realized that this impressionable mindset comes from an intense desire to survive in a country that functions on rules and customs unfamiliar to the ones in their former cultures.

Well, no, no evidence so far. Maybe I need to read some more? Hmmmm....

As Asian immigrants work toward building successes in a foreign environment, they begin taking cues from the people they see as most successful. Because America’s historical oppression of people of color, these people are usually white. To many Asian Americans, whiteness often becomes equated to success, and all the elements that have been conditioned to come with the paradigms of whiteness. 

Was that a bait and switch? Did Jezzika just set me up for an avalanche of new, never before seen evidence proving these dramatic claims, but then change the subject? I think, yes, that is exactly what happened.

Maybe it's obvious that taking "cues from people they see as most successful" in order to work towards success is implicitly anti-black? Not to me. There happen to be quite a few successful liberals that Asian immigrants could be taking cues from, yet Jezzika's article suggests that it is apparently primarily successful white racists that Asian immigrants choose to learn from. If this is true, it is a point that raises all kinds of awkward questions that require investigation. Of primary interest is, why are "anti-black" sentiments from successful, and apparently, racist, white Americans filtering through to Asian immigrants with poor English, rather than those values of successful white liberals that are so beloved of Asian progressives?

One clue to this dilemma might be gleaned from an industry that is one of the most unashamedly liberal bastions of whiteness: the film and television industry. Now since the entertainment industry seems to have one of the highest saturations of white liberals espousing white liberal values who are pervasively visible and accessible in propagating their views, one might expect that RACIST(!!!) and gullible Asian immigrants would to some large degree adopt these liberal values in their own lives. According to Jezzika and several other Asian progressives, this isn't the case. The question is why?

To me, the answer seems pretty straight forward. Asian immigrants are the minority that liberals - particularly Asian liberals - love to hate. Asian immigrants are the minority whom liberals have decided it is okay to hate, mock, ridicule, and deride in any number of ways. Accents, food, mannerisms, and racial characteristics are all fair game for the extremely influential - and largely liberal - media machine that is the film and television industry. What is it about these racist, anti-Asian attitudes that would inspire new Asian immigrants to adopt them? Thankfully, Asian immigrants don't seem to carry the same self-denigrating shame about themselves that Asian progressives exhibit.

Furthermore, Jezzika implies a lack of liberal reading material available to Asian immigrants in their native languages that could, perhaps, sway their thinking to a more liberal persuasion. The problem here is that, contrary to the apparent sentiments of Asian progressives, Asian immigrants are not stupid, and do not lack agency. Most likely, they, like most human beings (they are human after all, aren't they?) have the capacity to recognize when they are being held in low esteem by the people they are being urged to learn moral lessons from about racial tolerance.

After all, why would anyone waste their time reading materials from people whose most high profile, and self-righteous, representatives are complicit in a culture of anti-Asianism? It could well be that Asian immigrants are gravitating to the side of the political spectrum that appears slightly less hypocritical about race and tolerance. Of course, if there is a lack of liberal reading materials available to Asian immigrants in their own language, it could simply mean that liberals have no interest in reaching out to Asian immigrants. If the Right is reaching out to Asians, but the Left is ignoring them, even as the liberal media machine mocks them, is it any surprise that Asian immigrants might choose the options that appears to be the friendlier face?

Of course, this all presumes that there actually is a significant pattern of behaviour amongst Asian immigrants that veers towards "anti-blackness". These claims are never reasonably substantiated by grandstanding Asian  progressives.

In short, Jezzika has written a hit piece in which she targets Asian immigrants who will probably never be given a chance in a liberal publication to answer any accusations leveled at them. She has made completely unsubstantiated claims about racist attitudes within an entire immigrant community, has implied a studied knowledge of deep psychological states of Asian immigrants, most of whom she cannot possibly know, and has asserted a knowledge of a common pattern of behvaviour and motivation amongst a diverse number of individuals. All of this based on the alleged actions of her mother and not on any reasonable study carried out under customary standards of academic rigour.

In effect, Jezzika has dehumanized Asian immigrants, and represented them as unthinking followers of a powerful outside stimulus, incapable of reasoning to the contrary, or learning directly from their environment, and who are all driven by exactly the same goals.

It doesn't take a genius to notice the pattern and timing that is going on here. As I have written before, every single time there have been high-profile incidences of anti-black racism perpetrated by white Americans, the liberal media always produces an Asian progressive who will deflect the conversation away from white racism and onto alleged racism in Asian-American communities. It is one of the few opportunities that Asians are afforded for  mainstream media exposure, and most often, it is used to attack Asian immigrants.

Perhaps Asian progressives need to take note of this and stop providing the escape route for American racism in the popular media? This is by and far a more potent assistance for the perpetuation of white supremacy than any anonymous, broken English Asian immigrant could ever provide. 

White Racists, Asian Women.

Asian Women's Complicity In Anti-Blackness

The human psyche is an amazing thing - the more reality slaps you in the face with facts that challenge your worldview, the more intellectual back-flips you perform to avoid recognizing it. A great example of this can be found in an article that appeared in the New York Times a few days ago. Written by freelance journalist, Audrea Lim, the piece seems to explore every angle of its subject, except for the actual crux of the issue.

Titled "The Alt-Right’s Asian Fetish", the article explores the explosive and bizarre niche subject of white supremacist men and their fetish for Asian women. The rambling piece demonstrates the chimeric nature of Asian progressive thought and perfectly illustrates how Asian progressives talk a lot but say very little.

Describing alt-right, white nationalists as "confused", Lim goes on to explain away their attraction for Asian women by citing the two catch-all phenomena that progressives use to define the Asian experience: the model minority myth and the subservience and hypersexualization of Asian women. With the former, Lim suggests - without evidence - that model minority assimilation has made Asians acceptable to white racial purists, even though there is little evidence of a pattern in which white people who embrace the model minority stereotype are also likely to be racist towards other minorities.

What Lim is trying to say with the latter argument is unclear - she never really shows how stereotypes of Asian women's subservience and hypersexualization relates to the issue at all. Most likely, Lim is merely trying to suggest that Asian women who choose complicity in white nationalism are actually victims. More on that later.

The main issue here is that if Lim has to dredge up and regurgitate the model minority myth myth and hypersexualization of Asian women to explain white supremacist thought and action, then she has most likely not understood the meaning of "white supremacy". At its most simple, white supremacy is the belief that white people are superior such that they have the right to dominance over other races. That in itself explains why there is no confusion in white supremacists having an Asian fetish - it is right because white is right. Thus, white supremacists' Asian fetish can most appropriately be explained by the ideology of white supremacy itself, not by some fanciful allusion to Asian racial stereotypes. No racial myths about Asian need apply here.

Where Lim goes even more horribly awry is that she fails to ask the most important question of all: why are Asian women choosing to partner with racists? Why are they choosing complicity in white nationalism and anti-blackness?

Lim deals with this awkward fact by ignoring it. Rather, she implies that Asian women who support white supremacists are somehow victims who just can't make the right choices for all the confusing things that society believes about them. Implying a lack of agency on the part of Asian women, Lim infantilizes them - they simply can't act right because it's just too hard to make a decent moral choice about a dreamy white supremacist and their oh, so forceful racial theories. Lim seems to view Asian women as confused bimbos who can't distinguish a racist from a white Silicon valley tech nerd.

Oddly enough, infantilization of non-whites was one of the core concepts of white supremacist thought that justified slavery and colonialism. It's hard to argue against white supremacy when you seem to be reinforcing their core beliefs.

At least Lim did not try to blame Asian men and their patriarchal cultures for producing women too dumb - or morally bankrupt - to understand the ramifications of racist thought. But, maybe the problem is that Asian women that partner white supremacists are seldom held accountable for their choices by other Asian women. Lim certainly doesn't seem to think they are accountable, and I'm yet to see any of the usual Asian twitter progressives issuing even perfunctory condemnation of said women. What we are witnessing here is Asian female privilege in action in which, just like white men, they are afforded every possible excuse to justify racist behaviour.

No other minority demographic is afforded this privilege. The uncomfortable truth here is that white nationalists pursue and attain Asian female partners simply because they know they can, and that there are some Asian women who are very willing to partner white racists. There's no mystery about it.

YouTube Creators for Change: Natalie Tran | White Male Asian Female

A Missed Opportunity.

There is a YouTube video by Australian YouTube star, Natalie Tran, that has been making the rounds in Asian cyberspace recently in which she exposed the cyber hate that she receives due to her being in a relationship with a white man.

Here's the video.....

 

Although Tran's documentary is certainly well-intentioned, and has received some considerable praise, I can't help but feel disappointed.

At the beginning of the documentary Tran shows us some examples of the abusive comments she receives, and declares that ...

...just to add salt to the wound, a lot of these comments come from fellow Asians.....these comments are pretty common. A lot of other Asian women who date Caucasian men, and have some kind of presence online, also receive a lot of these comments as well.....

Neither of these points sit well. The second point is problematic because the implication is that Asian women are somehow uniquely afflicted by this kind of cyber bullying. In fact, there is ample documented evidence that all but proves that any woman of any race with an online presence who dates interracially will be targeted because of it. Plus, because the internet can be anonymous, it is almost impossible to actually identify anyone who posts comments on any site, so we generally have no way of knowing if the people leaving hate comments are actually Asian.

Tran's first point is more intriguing.

According to Tran "a lot" - but not all - of these hate comments are from "fellow" Asians, which makes me wonder why she chose to focus only on seeking answers to why Asians would be attacking her in this way? Is Asian opposition to her personal dating choices somehow a greater crime than, let's say, white opposition? If so, why? Sure, she feels that it is "adding insult to injury" when Asians attack her in this way, but why she feels this isn't clear. If she is suggesting that Asian hate comments are more hurtful because they are a betrayal of some kind of solidarity amongst Asians, then this merely exposes a huge irony that I will expound upon a little later.

During Tran's interview of Asian-American dating coach, JT Tran, he stated that Asian men leave hate comments because of their life-experiences. Although, overall, JT did a great job of describing some of the issues faced by Asian men, I would argue that there is more nuance to the relationship between Asian men's experiences and online vitriol - which I will discuss later. For most Asian men, the racism we experience, and the anger it fosters, motivates us to strive for success and accomplishment in many different areas of life and in no way drives us to become cyber-bullies. The point was overly simplistic, and merely reinforced the the stereotype of loser Asian guys leaving bitter comments on Asian websites.

More significantly, juxtaposing Tran's dating issues with the racism Asian men face creates an implicit relegation of Asian men's experiences to a mere sub-context of Asian female dating choices. The gender-specific racism that Asian men experience deserves to be a significant part of Asian-American thought and dialogue in its own right and not as something that gets spoken about only when it negatively affects Asian women's dating choices. Sadly, we just don't see many investigative documentaries that focus solely on anti-Asian male racism in America. This is the irony of Tran's apparent sense of betrayal that Asians are leaving hate comments: our "community" is a mere apparition when it comes to Asian men's experiences that only appears as part of an apologetic for interracial dating.

There is another irony that is worth noting: Asian men's complaints about culturally induced difficulties in dating are routinely dismissed - mostly by Asian progressives - yet, when an Asian woman experiences opposition to her dating choices, we get a documentary about it. This, perhaps, is another example of how "community" is a poor choice of word.

Furthermore, there is an implicit (although, perhaps, unintentional) shifting of the burden of responsibility to explain the actions of a few Asian commenters onto the entire community of Asian men. It does not logically follow that Asian men would be able to explain the online anti-social behaviour of other Asian men just because they are Asian men. It is the job and expertise of psychologists and behaviourists to explain behaviour and psychological states - particularly when it comes to anti-social behaviour on the internet. It was certainly appropriate to ask Asian men to describe Asian men's anger and experiences, but not to explain the behaviour of online trolls.

There are a number of factors that researchers have discovered contribute to online trolling. These include, a sense of no accountability due to anonymity, desensitization due to a general toxic internet environment, and a lack of consequences. Interestingly, other studies suggest that the general tone of other comments on an issue contributes to trolling behaviour. The ramifications of this highlights the most glaring problem with Tran's investigation: there is a cycle of vicious online commentary between Asian men and women that mutually demeans each other that Tran did not address.

The nature of the sometimes vitriolic dialogue between Asian men and women could be driving hate comments and might not necessarily be the result of anti-Asian male racism Asian men experience in their daily lives. It is mere presumption that those who leave hate comments are actually responding from a place personal pain -  they could merely be responding to anti-Asian male comments left by Asian women on an existing or previous thread .

Instead of an un-nuanced assertion that Asian men's anger about their experiences leads to trolling, it would be more accurate for Tran to have noticed that the hate comments she receives are merely part of an ongoing online dialogue between some Asian men and women that is mutually hateful. In other words, based on research, Asian men who troll Tran, are likely to be embroiled in the cycle of hate comments to which some Asian women seem happy to contribute. This means that the hate directed at Tran is merely a by-product of an online situation created by both Asian men and Asian women. It would have been nice for Tran to have investigated this - significant - aspect of the story. I would have liked to have seen Tran cornering Asian women and asking them why other Asian women leave hate comments about Asian men that contribute to the toxic environment of mutual distrust that is a major causative factor in the hate comments Tran receives about her relationship.

To summarize, Tran's documentary missed the point by not addressing the online environment of mutual disdain and hostility that has been created by some Asian women and men. The hate comments she receives seem to me to be most likely a reflection of this environment than an outcome of how Asian men are likely to react to anti-Asian male racism. By failing to seek answers to why some Asian women post anti-Asian male tweets, write demeaning news articles about Asian men, or generally show disdain for Asian men's humanity, Tran's documentary shed scant light on the issue she was investigating. 

Worse In Asia...Because Asians.

The "Us Too" Affliction.....

It has come as no surprise to me that the recent revelations coming out of ultra-liberal, yet, unapologetically, anti-Asian Hollywood exposes a culture of abuse and sexual exploitation of both vulnerable women, and even men, over a period of decades. The man at the center of these revelations, producer, Harvey Weinstein, has been exposed as an alleged serial molester/rapist, who allegedly used his power and influence to make or break the careers of women in the industry to allegedly satisfy his allegedly perverse sexual appetite.

Yet, as I have come to expect, almost as soon as this story broke, up steps an Asian-American focused article that seemed to exist merely to imply that the West isn't that bad since - as we all know - Asia is always much worse. The article appears in an Asian-American online magazine called "Resonate" which purports to be a...

.....news, entertainment and blogging website that provides writers with a platform to discuss topics that strongly resonate amongst East Asian communities in the West. 

Hmmm.

Also on the "About" page, you can find the following statements....

The representation of East Asians is unreasonably disproportionate within politics, the film industry, music industry and the media in general. For example, when East Asians are represented in the film, they are often represented through takeaway owners or martial artists.

....and....

‘Resonate’ actively encourages positive representation in the media by making your voice heard by delivering interesting articles from your own perspectives to actively engage wider audiences.

Instead of a piece that conforms to the stated aims of the publication to represent Asians more roundly, the article actually does the opposite and relies on old tropes of backward Asian deference to authority to racially stereotype Asians as passive. 

The Resonate article reports that.....

Asia’s “conservative attitude towards sex” and “fear of consequences” prevent abuse victims in the Asian entertainment business from coming forward.

..and that....

it was “highly unlikely” that Asian actresses “will come forward in the way that their Western counterparts have” like the Harvey Weinstein scandal.

To be fair, the piece is quoting an article from Variety, written by Hong Kong journalist, Vivienne Chow, which actually makes the melodramatic (but unsubstantiated) claim that Asian actresses don't come forward [like their western counterparts] for fear of jeopardizing the lives of their families. As if that was not enough, yet another article appeared, this time on the YOMYOMF site that also cited the same Variety piece. YOMYOMF is another Asian-American interest site that also wants to improve representation of Asians in the media

Whilst I don't challenge the claim that there may be some alleged abuses going on in the "Asian" film industry, the problem here is the Variety piece's assertion that western culture has somehow displayed a more open or healthy response to allegations against Harvey Weinstein, and the abuses he is alleged to have inflicted on several women. The truth seems to be a little more complicated.

As we have now learned, Wienstein's actions seem to have been well known throughout the industry, amid allegations that some of Hollywood's A-list actors, directors, and producers had knowledge of the issue but chose to do nothing about the alleged abuses, or even actively worked to prevent Weinstein from being exposed. Sadly, dozens of female and male victims were ignored, or, for reasons of not wanting to hurt their careers, remained largely silent.

Ironically, this fear of, and deference to, authority displayed by both victims of Weinstein and those around him who lied on his behalf, or those who simply knew what was going on but refused to speak up, runs counter to the image portrayed by Hollywood - and tightly interwoven into the fabric of western cultures - of the western maverick individual who lives to swim against the current and push against the grain. To be clear, I am not blaming the victims here in any way, and my point will become clearer later in the piece. Yet, it is a pity that the Variety "exposé" on the Asian film industry seems to do just that - imply fault on the part of Asian victims of sexual violence.

The point is that Asians have been stereotyped - by the media, especially Hollywood - for years as naturally subservient to authority. We are supposedly from cultures that produce weak individuals with hive mentalities who are unwilling to stand up to injustice, or authority, and who definitely would not speak up for themselves, or others, as individuals. Oh, we're money driven, too.

Sadly, the Variety article seems to play upon these tropes, implying a different cultural mentality that restricts the ability of Asians to speak out against injustice whilst also implying that a greater courage exists amongst westerners to do just that. It doesn't take an epic feat of observation to notice that this simply did not happen in Hollywood, and that there was clear deference to authority amongst those who were not victims but who knew, but also amongst the victims who, for whatever reason, chose to stay in line and not come forward.

The Variety article was written by a Hong Kong journalist who may not know, or care, about the nuances of racist stereotypes in the western media. The YOMYOMF and Resonate platforms that both carried the story should know better. With the stated aim of improving representation of Asians in our culture, it seems oddly cursory that there would be an uncritical re-posting of an article that plays upon racial stereotypes that form the basis for poor representation of Asians in the media. Surely, the first step in improving representation for Asians would be to be capable of recognizing the stereotypes that lie at the root of it?

A deeper issue here is that not only does the Variety piece play into negative stereotypes of Asians, it seems to uphold the positive, overbearing stereotype of Caucasians as dynamic, fearless, individuals who brazenly speak out against injustice. Staying silent for decades is not dynamic individualism, nor is it brazenly anti-authority. Again, YOMYOMF and Resonate should recognize this principle at work here as part of their stated aim to improve representation for Asians - racist stereotypes of Asians are merely the worst traits of Caucasians projected onto others. So far, I've seen few examples of brazen Hollywood individuals having made a stand against Weinstein - or the numerous others of his ilk. In fact, no one that knew came forward on behalf of the victims for decades even though it is alleged that his actions were well known throughout the industry. Hardly a shining example of maverick individualism pushing hard against authority.

Hair Is Anti-Black.....

Jerry's Dreads.....

Just when I thought that Asian-American progressivism couldn't get more mundanely absurd, a new source of angst has arisen over Jeremy Lin's racial offense of Donning Dreadlocks While Asian. The kerfuffle started when former NBA player, Kenyon Martin, voiced racially insensitive criticism of Lin's dreadlocks, seeming to take offense that Lin had a "black" hairstyle.

Lin's response was classy....

Hey man, it’s all good. You definitely don’t have to like my hair and [are] definitely entitled to your opinion.......Actually I [am] legit grateful [for] you sharin it [to be honest]. At the end of the day, I appreciate that I have dreads and you have Chinese tattoos [because] I think its a sign of respect......And I think as minorities, the more that we appreciate each other’s cultures, the more we influence mainstream society. Thanks for everything you did for the Nets and hoops…had your poster up on my wall growin up.

Martin subsequently did some backtracking - of sorts - but true to form, and as predictable as an Asian anti-white supremacy, anti-anti-blackness crusader who only dates white dudes, a grandstanding Asian progressive gets pulled from the anus of the white liberal media to spout meaningless rhetoric that lacks any logical cohesion or consistent train of thought.

Published in the ever more seemingly anti-Asian, xenophobic, liberal news site, the Huffington Post, Asian, Jessica Prois, and a black colleague, Lily Workneh join forces to enlighten us on the wrongness of Lin's hair and his response to Martin's attack.

The article's gist can be summed up by the following excerpts...

Neither of their actions ― culturally appropriating tattoos or dreads ― were signs of “respect.".......Yet there’s a certain reality that belies the accord the two reached: There’s a false equivalency in saying Chinese tattoos on a black man and dreadlocks on a Chinese-American man are the same type of offense...........................But borrowing a cultural marker like dreadlocks, which embody both joy and struggle unique to the black community, is not the same as having a Chinese tattoo, a symbol that doesn’t carry the same weight of oppression. Yes, appropriating Chinese culture through a tattoo is exoticizing and insensitive. But the the act of putting on and taking off dreadlocks ― which are related to the systematic economic and social oppression of a racial group ― demonstrates a greater level of disregard. 

What we have here is a failure to present any logically reasoned points in an article that makes sweeping assertions without offering any meaningful supporting argument. There are a couple of points forming the premise of the piece, which I have read as follows.....

1. The use of dreadlocks by a non-black person is more heinous than Chinese letter tattoos on a non-Chinese.
2. Dreadlocks are an embodiment of a political and social struggle unique to the African-American community.

The first point reflects the paucity of critical thinking exhibited by modern-day progressives in general and Asian-American progressives in particular. The assertion that wearing dreadlocks or sporting Chinese character tattoos are "offenses" is itself problematic, but the claim of a qualitative hierarchy in the severity of these supposed offenses is merely a subjective opinion elevated to an objective fact by virtue of mere assertion. The second point is a textbook example of irony.

The claim that dreadlocks somehow "belong" to black culture is simply untrue and ignorant. This is what the article says....

Dreadlocks, which are essentially twisted locks of hair, are more than just a hairstyle. They have become symbolic of blackness and black culture and while some wear them for aesthetic reasons, others can have a deep cultural and spiritual connection to them. The style itself is widely worn by many Rastafarians, a religious movement bred in Jamaica, and, for some among them, it can represent a resistance to Western or Euro-centric hairstyles while honoring their roots. 

Although it is true that dreadlocks have "become symbolic of blackness and black culture", how this argument supports the notions that Lin committed some kind of offense is not clear, since the article doesn't explain its claim. A key word here is "become". A simple google search of the term "dreadlocks" would have revealed that members of human societies have been dreading their hair for millennia and that this style has never been exclusive to black people.

Statues, hundreds of years old, exist of Buddha sporting what look like cornrows and dreadlocks, and an easy to find Wikipedia entry provides a brief overview of the use, and significance of, dreadlocks across diverse cultures throughout the ages. Of course, African cultures have used dreadlocks for thousands of years and for longer than there has even been such concepts as "Africa" or "Europe".

The irony here is that to give ownership of this practice to one specific group, existing at one particular time in history to symbolize their specific and unique experience dispossesses these other groups of their history and experience and excludes them from their own cultural rights. This process is only possible because of an attitude of Euro/western-centric primacy, made possible by an overbearing western media and culture whose influence is a residual outcome of colonialism.

This is a classic case of colonial appropriation that attempts to artificially give one group hegemonic ownership of a cultural practice that has diverse origins and arose independently across different cultures. While the use of dreadlocks has pre-dated the idea of the west, Europe, and Jamaica, it is merely by virtue of the fact that the use of dreads amongst Caribbean blacks in the west in modern times that makes it possible to claim ownership of this practice. It is because of the power of the western media and an overbearing culture that this idea of dreads rightfully belonging uniquely to black westerners exists. 

I can almost see the funny side to all of this - Western media power is utilized to dispossess numerous cultures of their historical cultural practice and give hegemonic ownership of said practice, all to promote the narrative of an oppressed group using a hairstyle as a symbol to resist hegemonic cultural ownership of their bodies and culture. You can't make this stuff up.

The HuffPo article exemplifies the reasons I can't get behind Asian progressivism, even though I consider myself liberal. There are simply major flaws in Asian progressive thinking due to an intellectually lazy reductionist pursuit of a black/white narrative to explain America's racial issues. Poor reasoning, flouting of logical thinking to avoid addressing facts that conflict with the narrative, all characterize progressive commentary, and I just have a general sense that Asian progressivism is driven by a fear of stepping outside the black/white dichotomy of the race dialogue, to the detriment of an autonomous Asian voice.

Pois and Workneh could so easily have conducted a simple internet search to learn that dreadlocks are a hairstyle that have spiritual, political, and stylistic significance for numerous cultures throughout history. Instead, they opted to stoke the flames of racial tension by claiming that Jeremy Lin had committed a racial offense because he chose to style his hair a certain way.

The article's authors, perhaps, did not notice that the interaction between Martin and Lin was, actually, of a mundane tone that ended with what seemed to be an acknowledgement of mutual respect, and an agreement of respect for each other's space and right to have an opinion that the other disagrees with. But, the article merely reinforces my observation that when it comes to promoting an Asian identity or point of view, Asian progressivism has little to say of value, and is, thus, largely irrelevant - even when it comes to a subject as mundane as a hairstyle.

Aside from the article's lack of basic research about the subject, the piece exhibits the same, tired, droning, lecturing, poorly reasoned style that is common to the vast majority of Asian progressive commentaries in the mainstream liberal media. Worse still, the article illustrates the most significant problem of the Asian progressive movement: an unwillingness, or inability, to uphold the voice of Americans of Asian descent. Asian progressivism can't even muster the courage, or intellectual nous, to make a stand for an Asian-American even concerning the mundane act of choosing a hairstyle.

The Asianization Of Donald trump

The Media Is Still Not Our Friend......

I came across an interesting article on the fact-checking site, Snopes, that examined various claims made in the media about Donald Trump's actions/behaviour since he began his run for Presidential office. Despite stating numerous disclaimers of its author's opposition to Trump (Snopes does have a someone leftist lean), the piece is nevertheless mostly exemplary as a model for unbiased reporting. What's interesting is that the article describes biased and hostile media reports and portrayals of President Trump that are based caricatures. Caricature are often used to establish and propagate stereotypes.

The article says this....

This article is intended as a neutral, reliable analysis of the lies, false allegations and misleading claims made about and against Donald Trump since his inauguration in January 2017. We’ve attempted to strip away the hyperbole, name-calling and generalizations, and examine the patterns and trends at work: what characterizes these lies and exaggerations, the effect they have, what might explain them. 

We pay particular attention to selected examples — claims that have gained prominence among the mainstream opposition to Trump, revealing much about the methods, priorities, and tone of that opposition, and illustrating how this movement both cultivates and plays off a number of caricatures of the 45th President and at times falls prey to a handful of identifiable and repeated errors of thought.

The highlighted part of the second paragraph, above, is noteworthy: the hostile media plays off and cultivates caricatures of Trump to publish untruths or half-truths that cast a negative light on his presidency, morality, and character.

The piece goes on to outline the caricatures utilized by the mainstream media to shape, foster, and propagate negative attitudes towards Trump.....

Broadly speaking, most of the falsehoods levelled against Trump fall into one or more of four categories, each of them drawing from and feeding into four public personas inhabited by the President.  They are: 

• Donald Trump: International Embarrassment
• Trump the Tyrant
• Donald Trump: Bully baby
• Trump the Buffoon. 

Some of these claims are downright fake, entirely fabricated by unreliable or dubious web sites and presented as satire, or otherwise blatantly false. But the rest — some of which have gained significant traction and credibility from otherwise serious people and organizations — provide a fascinating insight into the tactics and preoccupations of the broad anti-Trump movement known as “the Resistance,” whether they were created by critics of the President or merely shared by them.

....there's something eerily familiar about about all of this. With each bullet point above, we could substitute the word "Asians" for the word "Trump" and the article would be unintentionally providing an uncannily accurate description of how Asians (particularly Asian men) are portrayed in the media.

It is routine to see Asian men portrayed as misogynistic tyrants who bully helpless Asian women (as popularized by the Joy Luck Club) and whose masculinities are lampooned as buffoonery. From internationally embarrassing Chinese ghost cities to mockery of Chinese and Japanese tourists, and from supposedly poor quality products to Asia's sometimes imitative engagement with western culture, Asia and its people are generally portrayed as an embarrassing imitation of western sophistication and rational comportment.

All of these Asian portrayals play off caricatures cultivated or propagated across the spectrum of America's media from comedy, light entertainment, movies, literature, and television, to current events programming and news reporting. The media has even ridiculed Trump about the size of his penis. They really hate this guy almost as much as they seem to hate Asian guys!

The key difference here is that Trump's race is not the motivating factor in how the media portrays him. The media is responding to Trump as an individual whose actions and words have rubbed many people the wrong way. Consequently, reporting on Trump is often emotional (i.e. irrational), hostile, suspicious, often paranoid, and uncompromisingly one-sided in its misrepresentations of him. Yet, this is precisely the way the media - including, and, perhaps, particularly, the liberal media - misrepresents Asia and Asian men.

This phenomenon further cements my belief that liberals and the liberal media are unreliable allies, fickle and dishonest, but most problematic of all, politically biased such that it cannot be trusted to report objective news about Asians, nor can entertainment media be trusted to divest itself from propagating racist stereotypes of them. My conclusion here is that Asian commentary at this time - if it is to be taken seriously - needs to highlight the implicit dishonesty of the liberal media regardless of whether it is talking about Trump or Asian men. At least we know where we stand with Trump, the media on the other hand, claims to be "liberal" on one side of its mouth whilst giving platforms and credence to those who spout casual anti-Asian racism on the other.

This uncomfortable truth is a huge slap in the face for those in Asian-American reactivism who suggest that our concerns about media representation and portrayals are somehow overblown. The fact that the media has successfully - so far - managed to galvanize widespread opposition, overlook and "re-frame" leftist violence, and successfully propagate admitted lies to disrupt the world's most powerful politician, shows just how significant the issue of media representation is for Asian-Americans. Obviously, some of our self-righteous friends in Asian progressive fantasy land can't imagine just how significant a role the media can play in the democratic process. More on that in an upcoming post.

We have to remember that an unbiased media is hugely significant for any democratic society. If it makes things up and becomes politicized and biased, the effect of this misinformation is that democracy becomes dysfunctional. When media reporting and representation strategies are based on caricaturing and stereotyping of Trump that is designed to foster abuse and hostility towards him rather than honestly inform people of his statements and actions, that takes away our ability to make informed decisions about our democracy.

If media reporting and representation strategies - that are based on caricaturing and stereotyping -  targets an ethnic minority with few means or opportunities of responding, that becomes a repression. Sadly, Asian men are the prime targets for liberal media racism - of course, Asian re-activism has no thoughts on that.

The article continues...

Generally speaking, we discovered that they are characterized and driven by four types of errors of thought: 

• Alarmism
• A lack of historical context or awareness
• Cherry-picking of evidence (especially visual evidence)
• A failure to adhere to Occam’s Razor — the common-sense understanding that the simplest explanation for an event or behavior is the most likely. 

Infused throughout almost all these claims, behind their successful dissemination, is confirmation bias: the fuel that drives the spread of all propaganda and false or misleading claims among otherwise sensible and skeptical people. Confirmation bias is the tendency to look for, find, remember and share information that confirms the beliefs we already have, and the tendency to dismiss, ignore and forget information that contradicts those beliefs. It is one of the keys to why clever people, on all sides of every disagreement, sometimes believe stupid things that aren’t true.

And there you have it - an accurate description of the nature of media representation of Asian men. I don't support Trump, but in all consciousness, I cannot give my acquiescence to media strategies that are casually turned on Asian men. The enemy of my enemy, is definitely not my friend in this case.