So, two weeks ago, there was a bit of a row between media personalities Steve Harvey and Eddie Huang. As usual, I found out about these celebrity foibles from reading Steve Sailer’s Unz column after the dust settled. However, seeing that this was a delightful example of “intersectionality” devolving into its typical contest, I took a greater interest in it than usual (however, not so great an interest that I upended my writing to pump out a column about it—I already had a duology of columns planned, and I wasn’t going to upend those works of genius).
So, now that I have some time, let’s go over what this was all about:
Steve Harvey’s show had a segment in which he mocks various books on dating and relationships, one of which was a book titled “How to date a white woman”, and written for Asian men. Harvey pauses, allowing the audience to, presumably laugh at the ridiculousness of this book. Then he continues, saying that the book could be only one page long: “ ‘Excuse me, do you like Asian men?’ ‘No.’ ‘Thank you.’ ”
Apparently, Mr. Huang took this as more than just a lame joke, and he penned a somewhat whiny op-ed about it. In reading that op-ed, I had several questions—however, of course, being that I’m simultaneously (half) Asian and a writer in this corner of the internet, my questions are undoubtedly “badthink”. The main question being:
Why exactly is the “model minority” status Asians have a bad thing, Mr. Huang?
I’ve seen this statement a lot, from college lectures to diversity training seminars at my day job, and I’ve never really received a concrete explanation as to why this is bad.
Statistically speaking, yes, Asian-Americans are in some ways superior to the white majority population, at least in terms of quantifiable metrics: they make more money, have higher educational attainment, and commit fewer crimes than white Americans, and of course they commit a lot less crime than the non-Asian minorities that you’re not supposed to know commit the majority of violent crimes in the United States. And…this is supposed to be a bad thing, somehow?
Frankly, I think it’s something to be proud of—the fact that Asian Americans could overcome the (allegedly) overwhelming amounts of systemic white racism to be not only equal, but superior to the “vile majority population”. Almost as if America is a meritocracy that has, in fact, overcome its past prejudice and…oh, wait.
Now, perhaps, you start to see the problem with the “model minority”: it reveals that minorities aren’t hamstrung by anything but themselves.
The answer is that if there is a model minority, which is to say “a minority better than the majority”, it debunks all the nonsense about “invisible knapsacks” and “white privilege” and it means we have to judge each ethnicity individually on their collective merits. And we can’t have that!
So, instead, we form the “rainbow coalition”, which as far as I can tell means “all the minorities have to band together and hate the ‘evil white man'”.
As a side note, this desire to turn all against whitey seems to be why in recent years Professional Asians have been trying to make the murder of Vincent Chin into “our” Emmet Till or Matthew Shephard, even though Asians are not victimized so often in interracial attacks (in fact, white people are victimized the most in interracial attacks, and blacks attack Asians quite a lot), to say nothing of the endless bleating about the Chinese Exclusion Act or the internment camps, neither of which offend me much for reasons I have elaborated upon elsewhere
A further reading of the article reveals what this is all really about, a thesis that I also used in the last linked article:
The recent outgrowth of Asian Social Justice basically boils down to sexual frustration amongst Asian men.
As a (partial) Asian man who has struggled with this in the past, I say: I reject your social justice bleating, Mr. Huang, just as I reject your latching onto a black culture that victimizes your people a hell of a lot more than the white culture you hate so much. If you’re so angry, Asian men, use your fabled ability to knuckle down and study and study ways to make yourself into stronger, more sexual, and more masculine men. Stop whining about the smug white nerds taking “your women”, and take what you want with both hands.
Or keep allying with NAMs who despise you for proving their “Structural racism” crap wrong. The choice is yours.
