First let me break down the Acronyms. NRO stands for National Review Online. It is the online version of the conservative magazine. What am I doing reading the pages of the “enemy’s” literature? Understand thy opponent. APA stands for Asian Pacific Americans, a term often used as an umbrella group which includes Asian Pacific Islanders. What groups fall under APA? According to skeptical author John Derbyshire:
In the first place, it is instructive to look at what “API” (or the newer, more user-friendly “APA”) actually means. Asia stretches from the Suez Canal to the Bering Strait, and from the Arctic Ocean to the Coral Sea. Whatever “API” signifies, it is certainly not a race in either the biological or the social-construction sense. A Samoan has no more in common with an Iranian than he has with an Irishman; a Pakistani is further removed from a Korean on any given criterion — linguistic, cultural, religious, phenotypic, or genetic — than he is from a Norwegian. “API” is in fact a very odd category, even more absurdly artificial than “Hispanic.” The folk gathered thereunder have only this one common characteristic: They, or their recent forebears, hail from somewhere between Istanbul and Tahiti.
Now, what is the 80-20 plan? From their website:
80-20 is a national nonpartisan Political Action Committee dedicated to work for equality and justice for all Asian Americans.
We ask presidential candidates to commit themselves to equality and justice for Asian Americans by agreeing to do the following if elected president:
-Vigorously prosecute all cases of racial discrimination,
-Lift glass ceilings on the professional advancement of Asian Americans
-Appoint qualified Asian Americans to policy-making positions in the Judicial and
-Executive branches of the federal government
We ask fellow Asian Americans to join us in our declaration to WITHHOLD financial and other forms of support to any presidential PRIMARY candidates who fail to pledge his/her commitment to our request for equal justice in the workplace.
During the GENERAL presidential election, a different approach is taken. To be effective, we shall form a block-vote in favor of the presidential candidate of that political party that will have helped Asian Americans the most in achieving equal opportunity, during each Presidential term.
We believe that if we could vote 80% on behalf of our favored presidential candidate, we shall become a political force that cannot be ignored American politics.
The unstated implication in the above statement is that this group wants 80% of the APA community to vote for Kerry so as to be seen by the Republicans as a force as powerful as other ethnic voting blocs and thereby “gain equality”. How powerful? Derbyshire writes:
Here is the logic behind 80-20. Around 110 million Americans will vote in November. If my guess that 2.2 percent of these voters will be APIs is correct, that means about 2.4 million API votes. If half those votes were to go to candidate X and half to candidate Y, then X and Y would each get 1.2 million API votes. If, on the other hand, APIs were to vote as a bloc, with 80 percent voting for X and only 20 percent voting for Y, then X would get 1.92 million API votes while Y would get only 0.48 million — a difference of 1.44 million votes nationwide (60 percent of 2.4 million).
Now, any American presidential hopeful worth his salt would juggle chainsaws while standing in a pit of rattlesnakes with his hair on fire to win the favor of 1.44 million voters. This is especially true after the 2000 close photo-finish. And the outline analysis I have offered above does not even take into account regional weightings. Over half of APIs live in California, New York, or Hawaii. At the time of the 2000 census, three-quarters lived in just ten states, containing 47 percent of the U.S. population.
Needless to say, NRO commentator John Derbyshire does not like the 80-20 idea and starts making generalizations about immigrants to explain the psyche of Asian Americans, rather than attack the plan on its merits alone:
So what does the Democratic party offer APIs? To judge from the 80-20 Initiative website, the answer seems to be: victim status.
API is the new black, you see. This notion has more resonance with middle-class APIs than you might think. Both Chinese and Indian immigrants bring with them to the U.S. a profound sense of having been historically wronged: the Chinese by the “century of humiliation” (Opium Wars to WW2) at the hands of Western powers and Japan, the Indians likewise by a century under British imperialism. There is also, running through Chinese culture, a strong emotional tendency toward self-pity, illustrated by a high proportion of Chinese novels, movies, and TV shows, and noticeable even in ancient literary productions. This is fertile soil for the seeds of victimology.
There is also the appeal of socialism. We think of East and South Asian immigrants as vigorously entrepreneurial, and indeed many are. There is, however, a strong counter-current running deep in both cultures. In Confucian China and those nations influenced by Confucianism, the dream of every capable young man and the entire object of the educational system was, for two thousand years, to get a government job. (Confucius himself spent his whole life seeking state employment.) Statism was not such a force in pre-modern India, but that country only recently emerged from a half-century of Fabian socialism, and the appeal of state employment must still be strong among many Indians.
I don’t completely disagree with Derbyshire about the manner in which the 80-20 idea is pitched to the APA community. It does make use of victim status more than it needs to in my opinion. There are plenty of other valid reasons that Asians might want to break 80-20 than the ones given on the website. To subtlety equate our struggles with those of other minorities is not entirely fair. If anything, we should be breaking 80-20 on specific policy issues. However, Derbyshire for some incomprehensible reason decides to end with the following threat?? (I don’t know what else to call it).
A split of the order of 80-20, as desired by the API activists, would, I believe, be a very bad sign for the country. The U.S. electorate already has one racial bloc voting 90-10 for Democrats. If we were to acquire another such, even a pseudo-racial bloc like the APIs, voting 80-20, the thought might begin to occur to the 69 percent of Americans who are un-black, un-Hispanic, and un-API that they might try an 80-20 strategy themselves. Let’s see: 69 percent of 110 million is 75.9 million; 60 percent of that is 45.5 million. Now that is a voting bloc.
In making this last statement he is implying that whites (maybe identifying with a new victim status) would vote Republican as a bloc, thereby overpowering the rest of the “victims.” Any point he was trying to make was lost on me upon reading that, and could serve to drive me into the arms of the 80-20 initiative.
after they hug you, they can hold me too, abhi. that last quote had me muttering, “what a jackass”. america is not this lame. it’s hard enough to get AAs to be adhesive, how the hell are you going to put together the “bigger bloc”. most americans don’t care about this shit (i.e. how AAs are voting). only we elites do. it’s bush vs kerry IMO, not “bloc vs bloc”.
oh, and that bullshit about chinese art proving a proclivity towards pity…so i guess kathakali proves a proclivity for malayalees to wear too much make-up? asinine. i grew up in SF. all of my friends were chinese, and i was happy to watch their films, listen to their music, go to the Asian Art museum, etc. there are movies that deal with sad phenomena, but so what? the correlation is nowhere near as strong as the amreekan western genre and our propensity to act like foreign policy cowboys. let me tell you, if there was any pity party, i was the planner, not them. good post, AT.
p.s. i don’t know any bitter brown people who are nursing a post-colonial agenda, either. nor do i know a single uncle who even tilts towards socialism. they are all greedy (sometimes godless) capitalists and they’re loving it. brown as victim? maybe during the college admissions process, but that would push us towards Reps not Dems. wtf?
Funny how a secondary part of Derbyshire’s response has seems to have generated more ire on your part than APA’s shameless victim vote block pandering…
FWIW, I do know at least a couple of auntie / uncle’s whose solid Democrat votes are motivated by their view of Republicans as the “White Power” party… In most cases they see this subconciously, but in at least a couple rather overtly…. I do think that there is some post-colonialism wound up there.
Socialism? That’s a tough one to prove. I don’t think it goes by name BUT, I do think there’s a strong thread of “intellectual elitism” which does, alas, tend to correlate… (e.g. performance in school is more important / indicative of virtue than performance in the real world, etc.)
0) You may not know, but Derbyshire has a Chinese ancestry wife and two hapa kids. He’s not a racist in any typical sense. He doesn’t want his kids to be taken up by this phenomenon.
1) See my followup here, if you wish.
2) Look, he’s just talking about political reality. The fact is that the more racial bloc politics are pushed, the more whites become a minority, and the more mass Hispanic immigration continues – the more whites are also going to vote as a racial bloc. Fundamentally racial minority blocs have one purpose: scapegoat whites for the problems of blacks & Hispanics, and take the tax dollars of whites and Asians. That is the MO of Jesse Jackson, La Raza, etc. Racism is, unfortunately, a natural human phenomenon – for both nonwhites & whites – and can only be kept in check by a lot of media & political shaming/duct tape.
That would be a sad fate for the country if it came to pass, but it’s the natural consequence of ethnic balkanization. Whites are about 69% right now and given current immigration policy, that fraction is dropping rapidly. In California they’re below 50%. When confronted with openly racist bloc voting against them, yeah, eventually they’re going to respond in kind. At some point even the media isn’t going to be able to maintain the legitimacy of a double standard when Hispanics outnumber whites in California yet are able to talk about “La Raza” explicitly.
I mean, when even Asian Americans – who are wealthier & better educated than whites on average – start whining about victimization and scapegoating whites for their own failures, yes, you will see increased resentment. If I have to phrase it in terms that will appeal to Marxist sensibilities, consider the reaction of all those whites making $30000 per year yet told they’re “oppressors” by hateful ethnic activists who make much more money than them. Human nature is human nature.
I’ve distilled GC for y’all:
vinod- no, actually all of it generated ire. i don’t see us as victims, at all. i think america has given my family unlimited opportunity, and i don’t see the logic in railing against a “whitey” who had nothing to do w/the colonial retards who oppressed my ancestors A LONG TIME AGO.
i don’t see any race of americans as victims today. it would be one thing to channel your rage over slavery in to political activism…or to use your grandfather’s sorrow at anti-miscegenation laws to fuel your passion for whatever, but that’s a whole different way of “dwelling” on the past. sorry i didn’t emphasize that, for your commenting pleasure. 😉
i was being sarcastic when i said that i wanted a hug, and i was agreeing with abhi about being turned off by the article. you should know by now that i’m neither a republican nor a democrat. i don’t think we need to ask politicians about “glass ceilings”, most of 80-20 makes my eyes roll and this article makes them roll harder (fertile soil for victimology?) . i’m an equal opportunity hater. i hate everyone. 🙂
gc- i actually never said he was a racist. i have just NEVER seen chinese art make my chinese peers feel like sad victims, that’s all. thanks for the background information on Derbyshire. 🙂
i’m dismissive of voter-balkanization, sorry. in my imperfect experience running and participating in campaigns, it’s hard enough getting people to show up and vote, period, but to coordinate vast blocs of different races? G-d-fearing republicans are the easiest people to get to the polls. i wasn’t surprised at this; in class after political science class, we learned that whites are more likely to vote.
personally, this is so yawn-inducing to me. dearest amreeka, let’s focus on policy not pigeon-holes. perhaps i am talking out of an indelicate aperture, but NONE of my many asian friends want or need to play the victim, and THAT, dearest 3V and GC, is where my “ire” really comes from.
I’ve distilled GC for y’all:
typical sophistry. when you can’t actually rebut on the facts, you resort to this. I note you haven’t contested any of my points. Let me distill them down for you:
1) When whites become a minority and/or every other ethnic bloc votes along racial lines – against whites – then whites will also vote along racial lines.
2) For wealthy Asians to complain about white privilege is untowards, and will breed resentment – particularly among the white working class.
3) In practice, the cry of “discrimination” – which translates to “let’s scapegoat whites” – is like God for ethnic activists. It’s used to justify everything – testing gaps, income disparities, etc. This is ludicrous given that most of these gaps are observed internationally. And I know you don’t really believe that “discrimination” is the reason for LA’s Eses or African American SAT scores.
You and Abhi are making a strong claim: namely, that when every ethnic/racial group in the country is voting along bloc lines, and when those racial blocs (particularly the Hispanic & Asian ones) grow larger and institutionalize victimology, that whites will refrain from doing so. You really think they’re going to continue to remain apologetic when they’re scapegoated incessantly. Do you really believe that?
Mentioning the name of a minority org is inherently racist
Please translate “La Raza”.
Your comment contained farcical statements. I highlighted them.
Disagree.
Grant #1:
They already do (see Jindal election, mutterings about the Lieberman candidacy).
Grant #3, that activists sometimes cry wolf on discrimination. And?
Since GC & I are of a similar opinion, lemme toss up one more distilled position –
4) The Cure for racism is often worse than the racism
Ethnic balkanization, squashing individual initiative, reliance upon the nanny state, vote gaming, rent seeking activist leaders, rent seeking politicians, rival responses, introducing the clumsy hand of govt into private affairs, etc.
Thomas Sowell (he’s Black!) wrote a fantastic book about some of this – Affirmative Action Around the World:
An Empirical Study.
May I make a slightly related and different point? Ok. I’ll go ahead then 🙂
I’ve noticed that other South Asians (or desis or APA or whatever) that I interact have different ideas of what constitutes discrimination. I mean, there are the obvious examples that no one can argue about: one of the NPR stories that Abhi linked to earlier talked about an incident in which store windows were smashed and racist slogans sprayed on the walls of a store owned by an immigrant from India.
But other areas are more problematic. I remember during my medical training hearing other physicians trained in India complaining about discrimination in the workplace. I trained in the US. Many of the physicians who come from India are excellent; all are not. The training in the two countries is not always comparable. One of the main reasons is that students in this country go to med school after college rather than directly after high school, as in India (which is what happened with my ex but I’m not sure if that is for everyone). I felt really uncomfortable in those situations because while I sympathized with those guys, the truth is, some of them were not very good. Not good at all, really. But they perceived their reprimands as racism. As someone more ‘established’, what should I have done? I made myself sort of unpopular by telling them what I thought (work harder, I said. Learn the local lingo, learn the skills that are considered important here. It was not a comfortable experience). I still don’t know if I did the right thing. Maybe I should have just kept my mouth shut (ha, fat chance of that). AND FINALLY, I AM NOT SAYING INDIAN DOCTORS TRAINED IN INDIA ARE NOT GOOD DOCTORS. Please don’t misinterpret this comment.
Those who have made it are the most effective agent of action for those who haven’t. In fact, it’s negligent at best and immoral at worst to not prepare the way for those coming after you.
This bespeaks of misplaced priorities. Exactly why should South Asian Americans care more about the plight of potential future immigrants than that of other Americans, who are our fellow citizens right now? SAs have unprecedented opportunity in the US. There is no glass ceiling for Indians. We are present at the highest levels of academica, business, media, etc. “Discrimination” is a nonissue when our per-capita median income is more than 150% of the national average. It’s like Jewish American girls who complain they’re oppressed. I know you have your perspective on the issue, but I hope you can agree that it looks ludicrous from the outside when Harvard and Stanford grads have convinced themselves that whitey is keeping them down.
The US’ economic strength lies in the fact that it has a market dominant majority rather than a market dominant minority. If you read no other link, I strongly recommend you read the preceding one. Amy Chua at Yale has written perhaps the most important poli-sci book of the 21st century, on the phenomenon of “market dominant minorities”: groups like the Malaysian Chinese, Kenyan Indians, and European Jews pre WW2 that succeed economically and thereby arouse resentment & violence from the surrounding majority population. Vinod has also reviewed the book here, and see Parker and GNXP.
When “tolerance” means merit blind immigration, socialism, racial preferences, and racially tinged redistributive taxation, it is not a source of economic strength.
Now, of course I agree that taking the best scientists in the world is very important to US economic success. You won’t get any argument from me on that score. Where I disagree from you is that:
a) I don’t think continuing racial activism is necessary to have the world’s best scientists come to the US. Maybe it was necessary in the 60’s, but not today. Racial preferences today are in fact anti-merit, as seen by the term of art: “underrepresented” minorities. Those are the ones who can’t compete on average in the market/academy, as opposed to us – the “overrepresented” minorities.
b) Racial activism in fact means EEOC lawsuits against Chinese and Indian entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley for having less than the quota- mandated number of employees. Read about it:
That is the typical result of angry ethnic leftism. Asian Americans who vote for the left are voting against both their economic interest and that of the country’s. You think your minority status is going to protect you from an EEOC lawsuit? No way – charges of “discrimination”, totally unmoored from reality – with considerable financial costs – can and will be levelled against you unless you dance to the EEOC’s quota-mongering tune.
And what happens if the nation becomes 30% Hispanic rather than 12%? “Tolerance” in this case translates into 30% quotas (make that 42% if you add in blacks), and tell me how that boosts economic efficiency?
Let me sum up:
1) You grant points #1 and #3.
2) In granting point #1, you have not acknowledged that whites can become more polarized along racial lines. In 2000 whites voted for Republicans by only a 54%-46% margin. Continuing Hispanic immigration + the possibility of Asian block voting will make those numbers more skewed, with highly negative consequences. Do you disagree?
3) You do not grant point #2 from a moral aspect, but you will probably agree that regardless of the arguments you voice, Joe Sixpack is going to be annoyed by someone making much more money than him complaining about how Joe is oppressing him. Usually said person is asking for laws and or taxes to be passed to remediate Joe Sixpack’s perceived oppressive behavior. Needless to say, Joe is not going to vote for that person.
I got a solution, it’s from Bullworth…”the solution to racial equality is that everybody f*** everybody till were all the same color”. Of course this would lead to the problem of the angry ethnic leftism bastards
But I love it anyways, I get Dinish D’souza lite from Vinod and O’reilly(with dash of Dobbs) lite from GC.
Doesn’t the idea of voting as a block run counter to our Indian upbringing? After all, Indians back in India feel no automatic kinship with their fellow Indians. A BJP hardliner will call a Congress Party supporter a “P-Sec” while the Congress Party will charge the BJP member as a “chaddi.” And that is just one example, the number of differences and conflicts among Indians are too numerous to list here. And you honestly think we can forget all that and forge a common political view with folks from China, Korea, Vietnam, Thailand, etc?
Secondly, arguing against the 80-20 idea does not imply that racism does not exist. But discriminating based upon race, ethnicity, or religion is not the preserve of white people – again, our Indian heritage is replete with some of the most inventive slurs coined by humans.
For those interested in preserving our group interests, let me ask this – how many here on this board have been the victim of a violent crime in America? Of that subgroup, in how many cases was the assailant a white person? In how many cases was the assailant a person of color? How many Indian cabbies have been shot by a white passenger? It seems that the left is more interested in going after the imaginary crimes of a John Ashcroft than defending the safety of low class cabbies.
Now, look farther afield to other countries that have sizable Indian populations. Let’s compare UK and Canada against Fiji and Kenya – in which two countries are Indians more likely to face hostility from the ethnic majority? If Western nations such as the US did not exist, the plight of the Indian diaspora would be far worse. Indians suffer more discrimination and “hate crimes” at the hands of other brown people than whites.
Incidentally, while Derbyshire can be hyperbolic at times, and his homophobia is hard to stomach, he has written positively about India and Indian immigrants. Two such instances are attached:
“An Insanely Bad Idea” “Today in the east end of London, youths from Pakistani families and youths from Bangladeshi families still fight pitched street battles, while youths from Indian families drive by in their Porsches, on their way home to the suburbs from their jobs as stockbrokers in the city.”
“All I Want for Christmas”
“As a frequent writer on matters Chinese, I get called in whenever China is in the news for any reason. I sometimes like to stir things up at these meetings by saying: “You know, you’re all obsessing about the wrong country. China’s a no-hoper, and will be until they get themselves democracy. The real Asian power of the 21st century will be India.”
Probably the best essay that describes how Indians are not Asian was written by Sadanad Dhume: Indian-American: “Asian” in America means Chang, not Chakravarti, Kong, not Kumar
The last article is a bit dated, particularly the bit about Indian-Americans not forging a common identity, which I think we have done better at since 1998. Although we risk losing that by falling for this South Asian identity nonsense. But that is a rant for another time.
Sorry for the repeat postings. And it looks like the hyperlinks did not go through. Here are the URLs for the articles I cited.
http://www.nationalreview.com/derbyshire/derbyshire062102.asp http://www.nationalreview.com/weekend/books/books-symposiumprint120101.html http://www.himalmag.com/98Dec/indian.htm
But I love it anyways, I get Dinish D’souza lite from Vinod and O’reilly(with dash of Dobbs) lite from GC.
It’s funny how the supposedly racially enlightened are usually colossally ignorant, and often grammatically challenged to boot. (I’ll leave you to figure it out…)
Sluggo, you & Manish are peas in a pod. You don’t actually have any arguments – so you fall back on (misspelled) comparisons and empty movie quotes. Somehow, “f***ing ’till we’re all the same color” hasn’t done wonders for either Mexico or Brazil’s economy. I doubt it will be a panacea in the American context, given that racial preferences are present in Brazil as well (where the definition of black is much more socially constructed than in the US).
That’s not to say I’m against intermarriage (obviously I’m not), but rather that proposing it as a solution to the problems outlined above is foolishness. Latin America has massive race problems, and intermarriage has done nothing to solve them.
GC, I’ll use the same excuse that Limbaugh and O’reilly use when they are held accountable for their demagogic rhetoric: “Hey come on, it’s just entertainment. Don’t you have a sense of humor. You conservatives are always taking things out of context.” Lol
Alright, alrightÂ…IÂ’ll cogitate some formative thoughts and essay them into sentence form for you; and try to be grammatical at the same time……”for me to poop on, I kid I kid”. Sorry It’s so long, I hope you enjoy it.
Abhi: In making this last statement he is implying that whites (maybe identifying with a new victim status) would vote Republican as a bloc, thereby overpowering the rest of the “victims.”
I think that this has already happened during the 70s with conservative movement. I think they were quite idealistic in the beginning but it seems those goals were abrogated for ideological purposes in the last two decades.
Dave Neiwert
“Every close observer of the political right in the past decade is well aware that the ascension of the “conservative movement” has been largely fueled by a handful of billionaires who have poured large chunks of their fortunes into a bevy of right-wing think tanks, non-profit foundations and various “nonpartisan” organizations whose raison d’etre has been to promote various conservative causes.”
Scaife and Conservatives
“In the mid-70s, conservative corporations, foundations and politicians organized to reclaim power after 40 years of Democratic government. The result of this well-funded political and media machine was the Reagan Revolution, culminating in Republic control of Congress in 1994. One of the machineÂ’s most important leaders is Richard Mellon Scaife, the billionaire who is financing nearly all the scandals that engulf President Clinton.”
George Bush’s Pioneer’s and Ranger’s
Site1 Site2
“Rangers are an elite class of fundraisers created for the 2004 election cycle who have bundled at least $200,000 for the Bush campaign. Pioneers are those who have pledged to gather $100,000. For the 2004 campaign, there are 221 Rangers and 323 Pioneers, so far. In the 2000 campaign, 550 fundraisers signed up to be Pioneers, and at least 241 of them reached their goal.”
Federalist Society
“[Ken] Starr and the OIC benefited enormously from the efforts of a network of well-placed lawyers who, like Starr and other Republican luminaries, are members of, or linked to, the Federalist Society. Most of the self-styled “elves” who helped Linda Tripp¹s tapes find their way into Kenneth Starr¹s hands had links to the Society. And without the elves¹ handiwork plus the leaks, coaching, and sheer brainpower contributed by the extended Federalist network, Starr¹s investigation might never have gotten out of the blocks.”
Vinod: Funny how a secondary part of Derbyshire’s response has seems to have generated more ire on your part than APA’s shameless victim vote block pandering.
What group hasn’t used the “victim block” to gain votes? Just look at the 90’s with shrilling of conservatives supposedly not having a voice anywhere (and this straw man is still going on). Other examples: NOW or the NAACP.
FWIW, I do know at least a couple of auntie / uncle’s whose solid Democrat votes are motivated by their view of Republicans as the “White Power” party… In most cases they see this subconciously, but in at least a couple rather overtly…. I do think that there is some post-colonialism wound up there.
There are otherÂ’s that think that exact opposite of this; my father loves Bush, even though he knows intimately how Medicare/Medicad has been destroyed by the current administration. The reason for this is Image — the Bush camp presents an image of who Bush is, not what he does or how he does it; I have see this behavior in India as well (and other countries) — women have ascended to power both in Afghanistan and India, and they could only do it because they came from a certain level of society and as such had an image — I guess the closest I can could come to describing it is like royalty.
Socialism? That’s a tough one to prove. I don’t think it goes by name BUT, I do think there’s a strong thread of “intellectual elitism” which does, alas, tend to correlate… (e.g. performance in school is more important / indicative of virtue than performance in the real world, etc.)
I kind of agree on this, but I don’t think Derbyshire understands the Chinese societies. These societies became stagnant but not because they employed socialist style agendas, but wanted to preserve homgenous static society. And in the instance “intellectual elitism” in India – I can say this may have been truer about 15 years ago, but the huge middle class that has been rising in the last decade kind of reduces that argument.
Thomas Sowell (he’s Black!) wrote a fantastic book about some of this – Affirmative Action Around the World: An Empirical Study.
So if Affirmative Action is evaluated (and allegedly denounced? I haven’t read the book) by a Black person then it legitimizes whatever argument is made? Isn’t using the “ethnicity” of the author incorret?
GC: Look, he’s just talking about political reality. The fact is that the more racial bloc politics are pushed, the more whites become a minority, and the more mass Hispanic immigration continues – the more whites are also going to vote as a racial bloc. Fundamentally racial minority blocs have one purpose: scapegoat whites for the problems of blacks & Hispanics, and take the tax dollars of whites and Asians. That is the MO of Jesse Jackson, La Raza, etc. Racism is, unfortunately, a natural human phenomenon – for both nonwhites & whites – and can only be kept in check by a lot of media & political shaming/duct tape.
What makes you think “racial bloc politics” haven’t been around for the last 300 years in America(or that matter in any other country)? Irish? German? Italian? Jews? Some ethnic pac info.
See my statements for Abhi. A good number of white (in my thinking whites are more Anglo/saxon/protestant makeup) people thought they were ideological minority in the 70s and decided to change that using victim mentality and their own form of “racial bloc politics”. Besides what makes up “whites”? Are Jews whites? Polish? Italians? Greeks? You essentially destroy your own argument by your last statement “Racism is, unfortunately, a natural human phenomenon – for both nonwhites & whites”.
I mean, when even Asian Americans – who are wealthier & better educated than whites on average – start whining about victimization and scapegoating whites for their own failures, yes, you will see increased resentment. If I have to phrase it in terms that will appeal to Marxist sensibilities, consider the reaction of all those whites making $30000 per year yet told they’re “oppressors” by hateful ethnic activists who make much more money than them. Human nature is human nature.
See above, I think there are many whites as a minority (still wtf does this mean) who have felt resentment for the last 2-3 decades. GC it’s interesting how you denounced me for falling “back on (misspelled) comparisons and empty movie quotes”, but you typically use the same argumentative method of brushing our replies with broadest stroke of “liberalism” and using those keywords: elite, elitism, Marxism, etc. I don’t doubt, that when diaspora of Indians began in the 60s and early 70s, a majority of them were highly educated; but I can claim I have good number of family members who are NOT wealthier and better educated, and as far as I can tell no one has told me they hate whitey..at least not yet (much like Anna’s reply).
When whites become a minority and/or every other ethnic bloc votes along racial lines – against whites – then whites will also vote along racial lines
Whites already are minority (again I what’s the definition of a white minority?) in many parts of America. Ethnic blocs already vote along racial lines, for example: blacks, Jews, and Cubans.
In practice, the cry of “discrimination” – which translates to “let’s scapegoat whites” – is like God for ethnic activists. It’s used to justify everything – testing gaps, income disparities, etc. This is ludicrous given that most of these gaps are observed internationally. And I know you don’t really believe that “discrimination” is the reason for LA’s Eses or African American SAT scores
Dude, I think youÂ’re really reaching here; itÂ’s not even in the mandate for the APA. YouÂ’re using generalizations that are constantly reused by think tanks like AEI. Even they use the same arguments as above (testing gaps, etc) to promote their agendas.
That is the typical result of angry ethnic leftism.
Wow! That’s a great quote! What’s an example of “angry ethnic conservatism”?
Rush Limbaugh, Bill OÂ’reilly, Sean Hannity, Eva Von Zahn, The Beltway Boys, Brit Hume, Tony Snow, Juan Williams, Mara Liason, John McLaughlin, Chris Mathews, G. Gordon Liddy, Laura Schlesinger, Michael Medved,Sam Donaldson,Cokie Roberts, George Stephanoplous,George Will, Bob Scheiffer, Tim Russert, John Hockenberry, Ollie North,Robert Novak, Paul Weyrich, Brian Williams,Wolf Blitzer, Bill Schneider,Candy Crowley,John Stossel, Howie Kurtz, Barbara Olson, Ann Coulter, Laura Ingraham, Peggy Noonan, Andrew Sullivan, William Safire, Enron, Halliburton,I got mine, see you later , http://www.townhall.com, http://www.worldnet.daily, Con Think tanks
Oh wait I know: Send me that’s some “angry ethnic conservatism”
Gee they all seem so white…
GC: I am a born skeptic; I donÂ’t believe someone just because they write it well, in some newspaper, or magazines or tv. I would still look it up to judge for myself. I often argue about things I donÂ’t believe in just for the sake of arguing – a lot of people get mad. But I think this may explain more. LetÂ’s get into a little bit of existentialism: If you were to look at dollar bill would it be worth anything if no one else believed in it? No, of course not, it would just be a piece of paper. Our ability to believe and rationalize (anything) is our gift and our curse. In recorded human history (whatÂ’s that like, 5000 years) have pretty much done the same stuff to and for each other; for example, Euripides play the The Trojan Women is still a relevant essay on the horrors of war, even today. What does this mean? We do the same shit over and over and over and over and over and over againÂ…nobody learnsÂ…societyÂ’s come and go, people come and goÂ…whatÂ’s the point. You would think IÂ’m a fatalist or nihilist, but IÂ’m not ; and that’s why I find life ridiculous, my gift and my curse.
It’s funny how the supposedly racially enlightened are usually colossally ignorant, and often grammatically challenged to boot. (I’ll leave you to figure it out…)
According to your bio your cognitively enlightenedÂ…so why is it that you couldnÂ’t figure out my joke? and thatÂ’s why itÂ’s funny for me to poop on you. I kid, I kid.
Crap, and I had such nice formatting. Sorry.
sluggo, the above is fairly difficult to read (and I know that messing up HTML often clips large chunks of text). i will reply in detail if you have a version you’ll go with.
I should tell you that a) I’m not a fan of O’Reilly or Limbaugh and b) I’m definitely not a fan of AEI and the neocons and c) I’m not a fan of pseudocon Bush either. My view on this election is very Aliens vs. Predator: “whoever wins, we lose”.