Saturday, February 3, 2018

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.