Hey, folks… especially @LSLGuy:
I’ll hope you’ll forgive me for leaving only a single reply here and then hopping back out of The Pit. Not because I’m trying to ignore you. I just don’t like to spend my online time on interpersonal arguments. I didn’t even know I was pitted until someone quoted this post in another topic.
If you haven’t written me off completely and would be open to a conversation, I would be happy to continue discussing the ideologies/ideas themselves in the other forums or by DM if there’s anything you want to personally talk to me about. Just not in The Pit, where things can too easily escalate out of hand. I respect a lot of the posters here, you (@LSLGuy) high among them, and I don’t want this to become a personal fight.
For clarity: I am not angry, resentful, or white. Kron is right, ethnically I would usually be considered Chinese (though it’s really Taiwanese, if you ask me). Legally, I am American. Culturally, I’m American + Taiwanese + a little bit of Chinese + Japanese (broadly “East Asian”) + a few things borrowed from the other cultures I’ve experienced and lived in.
Mostly this just means that much of my life exists at the intersection of two or more cultures, and so I tend to have my own, perhaps odd, views of them that don’t necessarily fit into neat mainstream US buckets. It’s the result of both my own lived experiences, plus the witnessing of others experiencing racism from and towards different groups: white on black, Asian on white, Asian on black, white-on-Latino, Latino-on-white, etc. It’s never really simple, in my experience, but so much of our cultural discourse today tries to make it seem that way.
For the record, I am not a white supremacist (they wouldn’t even let me in the door), nor an Asian one, for that matter. I’m also not MAGA or conservative. I don’t think white people are superior. I don’t think any people are superior. I don’t think the US is superior. I think the US is on a terribly flawed path.
I posted that opinion not because I’m white and angry, but because I’m not white and I’m saddened and frankly quite scared by what the US has become.
I see the ICE raids and think about the Chinese exclusion camps and ask myself, “When will it be my turn?” I don’t think your average DHS grunt is going to question much the difference between Taiwanese and Chinese. And US citizenship means nothing when emotions run high enough. Believe me, I don’t want to live in a fascist ethnostate.
To that end, I posted what I did because I want to discuss it and dissect it and debate it and understand it better — maybe find some glimmer of hope therein, see if there’s any common ground at all to be found (with the people whose views and values I do not share).
And because this is the Dope, I also want (and expect) it be torn apart and forensically examined and debated and refuted as necessary. I’ve been wrong many times on the Dope before, and I’d be happy to be wrong again.
I just didn’t expect it to become personal. And I’m sorry if I wasn’t clearer about that.
To be crystal clear: I do not hold those values. I am interested in discussing them, but that does not mean I believe in them. It’s not just a matter of playing devil’s advocate for argument’s sake; it’s part of trying to understand why the country I lived in for the last two decades suddenly turned onto such a violent and hateful trajectory. Of wanting to understand how my nice white friends and neighbors suddenly went from “normal” to “hardcore MAGA” within the span of a few months.
I have many thoughts about that which I hope discuss in the other threads, but the short version is this: I think mostly they are the victims of capitalism, not so much “whiteness”, but that there is perhaps a tiny kernel of truth in their feeling of being “replaced” by people who are not like them — and I say that because I myself have the beneficiary of racial programs and scholarships, etc. that have benefited me at the expense of white friends or classmates, so I know situations like that do happen. That doesn’t discount in any way, shape, or form the US history of slavery and settler colonialism. It just means that there are white people who feel “left behind” in some way, just as there are people of other ethnicities who feel that way.
That tiny kernel was then weaponized by the MAGA machine and turned into a rallying cry. I’m trying to suss out more precisely which is which, the tiny kernel from the blatant propaganda. I’m very interested in the “Does White Culture Exist?” thread and will participate there soon. I want to understand it better. None of this is a simple situation to me, and I think it is worth discussing and analyzing. I have my opinions on it, sure, but I also want to hear others’ thoughts.
I didn’t think this was a personal matter. I don’t fault you for making it one — certainly an out-of-context reading of my post could make it seem pro-white-supremacy — and I’m sorry for not having preemptively prefaced my post to make that clearer.
Of course you and anyone else are welcome to hold your own opinions of me, but I’d prefer not to be thought of as an angry white man. “Ignorant Asian man spewing nonsense” is fine, I suppose 
In my own defense, though, for whatever it’s worth… I consider myself quite left-leaning. Economically I’m a card-carrying socialist; I’ve donated thousands of dollars to the campaigns of left-leaning women candidates of color. In the US this would put me somewhere between “far-left radical” and “communist terrorist”. I’ve been interrogated in a secret jail cell by the Secret Service for my anti-Trump ramblings (elsewhere, not on the Dope).
Culturally, though, I’m merely center-left: strongly pro-gay, pro-feminist, pro-trans, pro-environment, pro-science, pro-abortion, but at the same time, more wishy-washy about gun control, affirmative action, religion, etc. There is no bucket that neatly encompasses all this. I just don’t think it’s a simple, neat little line to begin with.
I have my messy, nuanced opinions. And I am sometimes simply, plainly, wrong — and that’s OK, and I’m always happy to be corrected. I’d be happy to discuss those thoughts and ideas more in the other threads outside The Pit, and for them to be torn apart and refuted. But I hope you’ll forgive me for not wanting to spend more time in The Pit in particular. This one post was emotionally exhausting enough to write.
I do really respect you, though, no matter what you think of me, and I hope you will contribute your thoughts in the other threads. (hajario and ParallelLines and others too.)