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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