The Weaponization of Race And The Asian Model Minority Myth
From the Atlanta shootings to California’s Ethnic Studies Curriculum, Asians are caught in the crossfire of a cultural war, with the ascending progressive side seeking to inject traces of white supremacy into every situation to confirm their ideology.
Two days before the California Board of Education voted to adopt a revolutionary Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum, a delusional white man in my home state of Georgia shot and killed eight people including six women of Asian descent in three massage parlors. Some connect the two events, positing that they demonstrate the ruling elites’ pathological obsession with race, masqueraded as symbolic acts to help Asian Americans.
This addiction to examining all social issues through the prism of race is harmful as it seeks to legitimize a claimed victimhood into our already balkanized society, inaccurately depicting historical and current events, and deflecting from a genuine search for meaningful redress.
In both cases, Asians are caught in the crossfire of a cultural war, with the ascending progressive side seeking to inject traces of white supremacy into every situation to confirm their ideology.
While police are still at an early stage of investigating the motives behind Atlanta shootings, the Biden Administration has rushed to point finger at the damaging rhetoric of the prior administration scapegoating Asian Americans for the pandemic. CNN calls out racial identities of the shooter and victims in a bid to condemn “white supremacy.” Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms inserts herself into the ongoing investigation, claiming that race played a role in the attacks. Mayor Bottoms further argued: “In the same way African Americans across this country asked for support and we asked for people to stand with us over the summer, it’s important that people stand with our Asian brothers and sisters in the same way.”
How convenient! Ironically, CNN, along with most other progressive media outlets, has hesitated to report on the racial identities of perpetrators in other recent crimes targeting Asian Americans. Doing so would invalidate its confirmation bias; the attackers weren’t all white. Apparently, comprehensive reporting on the race of Asian attackers might force us to reflect differently upon the ramifications of last summer’s “racial reckoning,” and reflect upon the deeper issues of mental health, sex trafficking, distressed communities, and failing public education. In this ideological witch hunt for systemic racism, evidence of white supremacy is what counts. Woke America is invoking the term “model minority,” which connotes a form of control and predation by the whites upon Asian Americans’ economic successes and “tame nature.” According to this hijacked version of “model minority,” Asian Americans’ general success in achieving the American dream constitutes a dominant narrative that prevents Asians from joining other minority groups to pursue racial justice. In such a narrative, it can’t be conceded that Asians Americans might have their own agency, unrelated to whites, or to other minorities.
California’s Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum, aside from other glaring issues rooted in its foundational framework of critical race theory, also capitalizes on the “model minority myth” as a stereotype to highlight systemic oppression against Asians and a racial wedge between Asians and other people of color. Instead of celebrating best practices of many Asian Americans in defiance of historical marginalization, the ethnic studies curriculum points to ‘white adjacent’ power and privilege as the plausible explanation for Asian American success, stoking racial animosities and tensions.
The radical narrative caricatures Asian Americans’ reliance on hard-work, initiative, and emphasis on education, not as the agency of Asian Americans, but as the features of an oppressive system that strongarms Asian Americans into ‘white adjacency,’ separating them from other victim groups.
In the alternative universe of these anti-racism pundits, the collective condemnation of anti-Asian racism, rather than a commitment to public safety, is apparently the key to combating the rising wave of crimes against Asian Americans. With such virtue signaling, pundits hope that Asian Americans will join other oppressed people, defined solely on the basis of their race, in toppling what they label a repressive police apparatus and a racist culture. By the same token, race-obsessed proponents of California’s ethnic studies movement continue to pander the model minority notion, while propagating its ideological agenda aimed at dismantling what they term ‘white supremacist culture.’
Conflating an attack on Asian Americans with claims of ‘white supremacism’ and systemic racism is dangerous. It seeks to foster a victimhood mentality among all Americans of Asian descent, eroding social solidarity and trust. At a minimum, choking up all present and past injustices to racism, while proselytizing the model minority myth for Asians, is dishonest.
Harvard provides the best example, releasing a statement expressing outrage at the Atlanta shootings and affirming its steadfast commitment to battling “hatred and bigotry.” Yet Harvard to this day has refused to admit that it has used race in its admissions to unduly penalize Asian-American applicants, beyond what is necessary to achieve a critical mass of underrepresented minority groups or to satisfy any compelling government interest. The school systematically downgraded its Asian-American applicants, subjectively rating them low on personality traits, to enable admitting members of other racial groups less academically qualified. Progressives claim to oppose racism and discrimination, except when it doesn’t suit them.
The “Model minority” myth and other fictional narratives obscure and downplay the real, significant, and impactful accomplishments of Americans of Asian descent. These accomplishments explode the myth that systemic racism precludes advancement of racial minorities in America. Race-obsessed progressives can only cling to this narrative by diminishing the agency and accomplishments of Asian Americans.
Welcome to the wonderland of race-centric progressivism.
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Comments
Liberals has lumped all Asians together for years. Not once do we hear about the sex trade and slavery that these brothels engage in.
Yet not one peep of speculation on Samantha Josephson, Carter “Opie” Strange or the gruesome murder of Channon Christian and Chris Newsom.
Seems like the major networks cannot bring up the reason for the Asians demise may not have been completely racial, but more occupational. Perhaps they don’t want to acknowledge some massages result in a happy ending. An unskilled, uneducated young lady, speaking broken English can earn a living finishing off a rubdown. Mama San rules.
Most of those girls are virtual slaves…….
The following came from our school district in Wa. Note how they are running with the rub and tug murders as being race driven and are running with idea that any other attacks are being driven by Covid blame. This district is adjacent to the district (North Thurston) that stopped counting Asians as students of color because counting the Asian students brought the GPA and performance averages up too much.
Both districts adopted BLM in ed and celebrated BLM week the first week of Feb.
—copy/paste below.
Hello Olympia School District students, staff and families,
As many of you are aware, national and local media and enforcement agencies have been reporting for months now a rise in incidents of harassment and violence against people of Asian descent across the country and worldwide. The coronavirus pandemic has fueled some of this anti-Asian racism and xenophobia. Given the racial identity of the majority of the victims of the tragic spa killings earlier this week in the Atlanta area, anxiety and fear has escalated.
We recognize that some of our own students, staff, families and community members of Asian descent have been impacted. We stand with them and remain committed to eliminating racism in all forms and to creating a more equitable and safe learning environment for all. It is embedded in our Student Outcomes.
As state Superintendent of Public Instruction Chris Reykdal said in a statement yesterday, “In our state, every young person has the right to learn, every employee has the right to work, and every family member has the right to engage with our schools free from discrimination based on race, ethnicity, color, religion, national origin or home country, or other protected class status.”
Reykdal added that if a student, family member or school employee in Washington is facing teasing, bullying, harassment, violence, or other discrimination based on their protected class status, they should reach out to their school district’s Civil Rights Coordinator. In OSD, the Civil Rights Compliance Coordinator is the Executive Director of Human Resources. He may be reached at [email protected] or (360) 596-6185.
Students are also welcome to reach out to school-based supports including their teacher, counselor or principal.
We want to thank everyone for your continued efforts to create a community that works to eradicate injustice and honors and embraces all cultures.
I commend Dr. Wu’s article. Racializing every incident is a terrible thing, and will probably only divide and polarize the country more. Then again, I admit to doubting the wisdom of the “hate crime” category, for I can’t understand what a “love crime” would look like to save my soul.
Still, as a white man married to a Far Eastern woman and having “multiracial” sons, I’m aware that the USA is a wonderfully open society, that “our crowd” can open its doors and hearts to “others”, but I’ve also been made aware that racism still lurks, even though I’d dearly love to see someone distinguish everyone’s love of one’s own from a bad racism.
Kids have danced around us on the street pulling up the corners of their eyes and yammering at us in gibberish. When my son had an ordinary nosebleed in kindergarten, the local activists called me up that night to try to literally hector me into declaring my son to be the victim of a racist assault (I refused: both the teacher’s call and my son’s describing his day on the ride home meshed in describing a tyopical nosebleed). I’ve been called to the carpet by a middle school principal for having my son check two racial categories, and replying that I thought any law requiring us to be one and only one race was utter bollocks, and inviting the principal to think which parent he’d have his kid disown had he been in my shoes. Where I teach, I’ve had Chinese immigrant kids and colleagues come to cry on my shoulder about being targeted by black and Latin gangs (I know the language–and thought of that when I heard of the killing of Vicha Rattanapakdee). I’ve hear other teens explain how they’ve gotten a lot of guff for identifying as biracial (both black and white sides of the family accepting them) rather than one or the other.
Some of this, I realize, may well stem from well-meaning efforts to affirm “minority” status as legitimately part of the American mosaic, and zeal for ferreting out racial injustice. While I fully accept the nation’s uneven ethnic stew, and decry racism (as opposed to mere love of one’s own), I know that the wound persists. Otherwise,se people wouldn’t be picking at the scab.
BTW, having worked in immigration-related matters, I’ve wondered if the Atlanta murderer’s admitted sex addiction might not be a bigger motive. Sex workers have been brought into the USA both under cover of legal categories and via illegal human trafficking–much of the latter being either Asian or Latin American. I’ve heard of teenaged girls in my school who were raped by the coyotes while being brought illegally into the US. That’s something that should be looked at.
There is no progress in “progress”ivism.
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Unqualified monotonic change: one step forward, two steps backward.
The “Asians” will have the last laugh: China is just about running our nation (that b.s.. of Biden’s blustering, aside). In a few years, it will own it outright.
The vast majority of Asians in America are not Chinese and have absolutely no love for China. And many of the Chinese we do have are from Hong Kong and dislike China equally.
Good article.
Race division is the goal, divide and conquer
Diversity [dogma] (i.e. color judgments) breeds adversity.
“CNN, along with most other progressive media outlets, has hesitated to report on the racial identities of perpetrators in other recent crimes targeting Asian Americans. Doing so would invalidate its confirmation bias; the attackers weren’t all white.”
I’d be interested in scanning the actual data, to see exactly where it falls on the spectrum between “the attackers weren’t all white” and “all of the attackers weren’t white.”