Chopstick Asians (China, Korea, Vietnam and Japan) have a fairly long history of valuing education and strong family structures.
The chopstick Asians are from Confucian cultures (I don’t think there is a philosophy out there that emphasizes family structures more than Confucianism) and they all had some form of imperial exam at some time or another to select government officials. Asian immigrants from other Asian cultures can struggle quite a bit.
Everything from the portmaster to the prime minister could be chosen in large part by the results of an imperial exam system. This exam frequently provided about the only method of social mobility in these societies. The exams weren’t always perfectly fair but for much of recorded history, they used an exam to determine who the wealthiest, most powerful, most respected members of society would be (other than the emperor). Chopstick Asians are born into cultures that value family and education; for most of American history blacks were born into the worst form of slavery, they couldn’t import more slaves so they bred them and sold off the children.
Its not like chopstick Asians come to this country, experience a shitload of racism and THEN decided to get our fucking act together and value family and education because it would help us overcome racism. Our culture has been around for thousands of years.
If you look at African immigrants, the culture can be very similar to Asian culture but its not exactly fair to expect the same of a group of people who have a culture that is only about 150 years old and developed in the shadow of Jim Crow for 100 of those years.
That doesn’t mean we can or should keep making excuses, but can we at least acknowledge that succeeding as a minority (especially a black of American Indian) is fucking hard and most white families would be in the same position as black families if they were born into the same world that the descendants of slaves are born into?
Egregious? Invidious? Are you sure? How about - for instance - the treatment of Koreans by the Chinese and Japanese? Or Turks and Greeks? Egyptians and Nubians? Or… Look how easily Cortez found allies in his conquest of South America. Different cultures have cordially hated and abused each other since the dawn of time.
It seems to me that it’s been business as usual; I hope that we are learning to be better.
This thread seals it. Next time Fox News or Breitbart have a story about the war on Christmas, the travails of white working class men, or the opioid epidemic in West Virginia, I will dismiss those stories with, “Why can’t those people be more like the Jews?”
I think to some extent we have to realize that we are not going to fix racism in time to do anyone alive today any good. I think we can further argue that to the extent that everyone strives to succeed despite racism, we will have an easier time fixing racism.
Fighting racism is a generational issue. To some extent you have to wait for the racists to die and try to raise a next generation with less racism. In the meantime, you should strive to succeed.
If you want to see which would make people better off ending racism or practicing jewish and asian family practices look at those black people who are doing the latter. The overall black poverty rate is 24% the poverty rate for married two earner black couples with children is 2%. On the other hand look at those who do not have to fight racism but do not practice jewish and asian family practices. The overall white poverty rate is 10% and for white families that are headed by a single mother the poverty rate is 30%.
From those statistics it seems obvious which would be more helpful to focus on.
This is based on an incorrect restatement of what I said, most noted by your reply “Yes, people should strive to succeed.” I did not ask “They should strive to succeed?” I asked “They should just strive to succeed despite them?” Of course none is just going to not strive to succeed. But if anyone claims that is all they need to do or should do or that those who have succeeded despite racist structures against them have somehow escaped/overcome these racist structures, then they are mistaken. And minorities have been done with waiting for decades; a common refrain of multiple threads of the Civil Rights Movement was “Freedom NOW!” and similar positions.
Can you please restate your answer to my questions with my clarification in mind?
Yes, people should strive to succeed despite their obstacles.
Lots of black people fuck up their own lives. Many fewer Jewish and Asian people do.
There is no need whatever for minorities to wait for anything - they can stop engaging in counter-productive activities right now, no matter what anyone else does.
I’m hoping he isn’t suggesting that it’s an either or situation as he states, but that sort of talk has been used for decades if not centuries to justify passivity on the part of minorities as well as the majority. “If they just tried harder, they’d overcome racism without [insert act the majority finds displeasing].”
Yes fighting racism itself is a generational issue, but that is no excuse for anyone, particularly those being most affected by it, to not demand and fight for the structural effects of racism to end immediately.
And yet doing so does not remove the structural impediments racism puts in their way or any other person’s way. It is also not a guarantee that they will magically overcome these obstacles or their hampering effects. Just saying “try harder” is removing the burden from those who created the impeding structures and those whose direct actions or passivity perpetuates them. “Try harder” has been used for ages to justify this shifting of the burden under the guise of tough love life advice or some other such thing.
What’s so bad about Shodan’s idea? As to “why should they have to when others don’t have to strive against such things” everyone has disadvantages and advantages. Why not strive to be the best that you can?
No question about it but those areas are few, far between, and less dangerous than say Bed-Stuy. The really bad Jewish areas are Chasidic but fortunately most of the violence among those rats of four legs is internecine.
There really aren’t many of those and most do slowly improve.
As I understand it, in a lot of the world the term, “Asian,” would encompass not only what we in the US term “Asian” (Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, etc) but also Indian, Sri Lankan, Bangladeshi, Pakistani, Nepalese, and so on. It’s a short-hand way of distinguishing one broad swath of “Asian” from another.