The Patriot Post® · Will Asian Americans Trade Success for Solidarity?

It is no secret that Democrats in general, and the Biden administration in particular, are determined to balkanize America as a means of attaining unassailable power. Their biggest hammer is “systemic racism,” a contemptible effort manifest in terms of the historically fraudulent 1619 Project and Critical Race Theory agendas being promulgated in both the private and public sectors throughout the nation. In short, that agenda comes down to all whites being “privileged” and all minorities being “victimized.” That both assumptions are racist to the core is only relevant in terms of maintenance: The systemic racism lie must be repeated often enough so it becomes the truth, and minority groups must be continually convinced they have no hope unless they vote for bigger government controlled by Democrats. What if one minority group refuses to play along?

Following the election of several George Soros-funded, soft-on-crime district attorneys, and leftist-led efforts to defund police and eliminate cash bail — even as “mostly peaceful protests” were “intensifying” into full-blown riots — the inevitable happened: Crime rates across America soared.

In cities like New York, Portland, Minneapolis, Chicago, Seattle, Philadelphia, and Los Angeles, double- and triple-digit increases in violent crimes have afflicted people of all races, as more and more Democrat-controlled cities inch closer and closer to anarchy.

Yet even as everyone is affected, Democrats and their media allies have recently focused predominantly on crimes committed against Asians. These included stories about the stabbing of two elderly Asian women in San Francisco, two Asian women attacked with cinder block in Baltimore, an Asian woman attacked with a hammer in New York, a couple assaulted by a teen in Washington state, and a host of others.

Moreover, the media are more than willing to paint a largely misleading picture regarding this uptick in violence. “Anti-Asian hate crime jumps 1,900 percent,” stated a September 24, 2020, headline in the Queens Chronicle.

Reality check? One attack against Asians in 2019 increased to 20 attacks in 2020. By comparison, there were 60 hate crimes perpetrated against Jews. NBC News plays the same game, noting that New York City had a 223% increase — from 13 hate crimes in the first quarter of 2020 to 42 in the same period this year.

Who’s to blame? “Many attribute the 2020 uptick to the xenophobic rhetoric of [Joe] Biden’s predecessor; former President [Donald] Trump repeatedly referred to COVID-19 as ‘the China virus,’ blaming the country for the pandemic,” Time Magazine columnist Cady Lang asserts. And the Daily Mail cites a Pew Research study that contends one-fifth of Asians “believed the rise in hate crimes was directly related to former President Donald Trump and his rhetoric on China.”

That the virus did originate in China, which lied about it repeatedly and has never been held even remotely accountable for the carnage? That four-fifths of Asians don’t buy the Trump-hate crime connection? That nearly 90% of so-called hate crimes consisted of verbal attacks or shunning? That black Americans commit a higher proportion of hate crimes against Asians than do whites?

According to Santa Clara County professor Sherry Wang, Asians’ reluctance to report such racist incidents “are reflections of the wider effect that white supremacy has on both Asian American communities and black communities.”

In other words, even when Asians are attacked by blacks, it’s still the fault of white people.

And in case Asians don’t buy into the message that they are victims of white supremacy, “racial justice educator” Bianca Mabute-Louie asserts their economic success relative to every other group of Americans, including whites, is really a “model minority myth.” According to Mabute-Louie, this myth was promulgated during the Civil Rights era as a means of undercutting racial justice movements, because it dares to suggest that Asian Americans are more successful than other ethnic minorities because of hard work, education and inherently law-abiding natures, and thus creates a false impression that Asians don’t experience racial discrimination. Lok Siu, an associate professor of Asian American and Asian Diaspora Studies at UC-Berkeley, takes another tack, insisting there’s “a bamboo ceiling that prevents Asian Americans from actually achieving full equity with white Americans.”

Equity? Columnist Andrew Sullivan eviscerates the equity vs. equality scam. “Asians are targeted by elite leftists, who actively discriminate against them in higher education, and attempt to dismantle the merit-based schools where Asian-American students succeed — precisely and only because too many Asians are attending,” he asserts.

Sullivan is right. In New York City, merit test-based admission to the city’s eight highly selective high schools is being eliminated in favor of “equity” because Asians dominated the admissions process. California’s Department of Education is creating a new mathematics framework aimed at discouraging gifted students from enrolling in accelerated classes, and the school board at highly rated Lowell High School in San Francisco has proposed to replace a grades-based admissions system with a random lottery.

Ivy League colleges are playing the same games. Highly qualified Asian applicants are denied entry to these schools, courtesy of assertions that such qualifications are only part of a “holistic” approach they take to determine which students can be admitted. Thus at Harvard, other minority high-schoolers with mid-range SAT scores of approximately 1100 were sent a recruitment letter, while Asian men and women were required to score 1350 and 1380, respectively, to receive the same letter.

In a better nation, this would be seen as the rank discrimination against Asians — and excellence — it truly is. In this one, the systemic racism narrative must be maintained.

And if Asians suffer disproportionately because of it? Progressives continue dividing Asians — against each other. “Asians now surpass blacks as the racial and ethnic group with the highest level of income inequality,” CNN reported in 2018, citing a Pew Research Center study.

That income disparity has increased in every ethnic group? As CNN further noted, “72% of Indian adults have a bachelor’s degree, but only 9% of Bhutanese adults do. The median household income of Indians is $100,000, but it’s only $36,000 among the Burmese.”

Does that make Indians “privileged” and Burmese and Bhutanese “victims”? Will Democrats and the Biden administration attempt to highlight such distinctions in their ongoing effort to divide all Americans against one another?

In April, Senate Democrats defeated an amendment to the “COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act” from Senate Republicans that would have barred federal funding “for any institution of higher education that discriminates against Asian Americans in recruitment, applicant review, or admissions.” Democrat Senator Mazie Hirono called it a “cynical attack” on universities that seek to “increase diversity.”

Nothing is more cynical than the race-based attempt to eliminate excellence and sell it as diversity. Above all else, decent Americans of every race should see these machinations for what they really are: An abhorrent effort to maintain the systemic racism narrative by bringing Asian Americans down, not raising other minorities up.

Are a majority of Asians ready to embrace race-based victimhood? How about government-sponsored mediocrity for the sake of solidarity? People who can succeed on their own have no need for such pernicious nonsense.

And Democrats know it — much to their ongoing consternation.