From: ipser@solomon.technet.sg (Ed Ipser)
Subject: Racist Oppression in America
Organization: National University of Singapore
Date: Mon, 14 Sep 1992 03:45:44 GMT



  Mything the Point
  by Thomas W. Hazlett

  Have you ever marveled at those successful members of disadvantaged
  minority groups, those who have somehow surmounted large odds to make it
  big in America? Aha, you disgusting bigot! You just can't control your
  primordal racist impulse to minimize institutional oppression. Why you
  must harbor the soul of a Nazi.

    Such a lashing is very close to what kept readers of the world-famous
  Washington Post from sitting down for several days this summer. In a
  remarkable jounalistic episode of "Don't move, or I'll shoot," Post
  subscribers were bombarded with this front-page news last June: "Myth of
  Model Minority Haunts Asian Americans: Stereotype Eclipses Group's 
  Problems."

    This gem lands a politically correct sucker punch: Just when patriotic
  Americans might be feeling good about seeing discriminated-against
  nonwhites being rewarded for their pluck and persistence with a median
  family income (for all Asian-Americans) 19 percent above the general
  population's, they are laid cold with a haymaker on the tradegy of "model
  minority" status.

    Of couse, Asian success in White America is a bit more fearsome to Anglo
  sociologists than it is to wealthy suburbanites named Kim, Singh, or
  Tanaka. The Yellow Peril is fearsome to rabble rousers of the right for
  genetic reasons and to ideologues of the left for tactical ones. American
  (or Hong Kong) capitalism must not be given credit for transforming poor
  yellow into bright green. That would unsnap the dogmatic link between
  "white racism" and "free enterprise" and make government look klutzy.
  Federal aid has done so little for Asians (outside of that generous
  housing program for Japanese-Americans during World War II) while heaping
  largesse on far less financially successful groups.

    Native Americans, for instance, have had billions spent in their name by
  their very own U.S. goverment department for the past 100 years. Yet they
  come in dead last in just about every measure of economic or social
  status. Could lead the unsophisticated to spot a dangerously suggestive
  correlation.

    The Post marshaled an impressive array of facts to dismiss this
  silliness. The crack investigative journalists at the paper found that
  "while there are many Asian Americans far above the U.S. median, many also
  fall far below it." Unbelievable! I trust they held the presses after
  unearthing this late-breaking news: Asians both above *and* below the
  national average! (Apparently, the boys and girls of Lake Woebegone --
  all above the average -- are now the national norm. Their disappointment
  level will be be way above the mean!)

    A professor of Asian-American studies at Wesleyan informed us that "the
  'mythology of success' has been an enormous disservice to Asian Americans
  who find this characterization does not at all reflect their own
  experience." This prompted the Post to comment, "Critics say the 
  stereotype not only ignores the plight of those who don't fit, it
  overstates the acheivements of Asian Americans.... Worse, they say, it
  exposes Asian Americans to resentment and racial hostility and exacts a
  heavy tool in the stress it places on many who can't live up to those
  high expectations."

    If we intimidate and humiliate the Asians, at least we pay them well for
  their decimation. Asian-American families make, at the median, 18 percent
  more than whites, double the income of blacks. But recent Asian immigrants
  who are just beginning to work bring the Asians' numbers way down. The
  more-established Japanese-Americans, for example boast a median family
  income 37 percent above that of the U.S. population as a whole.

    But don't you dare, honky boy, think of this as "success." That would be
  "insulting and condescending," said the Post, "especially when an Asian-
  American small grocery store owner is hailed as a great success where a
  similarly well educated white would be thought of as a failure." You
  people (as Ross Perot would say) probably thought Asians needed role
  models, but these pseudo-heroes are simply used for making whites 
  comfortable about racist oppression.

    Such perverse constructions of ethnic-studies scholarship thrill pale
  audiences, titillating white guilt (just as angry black rap music is
  overwhelmngly sold to white teenagers). Manipulating Caucasian hopes and
  fears is good clean sport, safely removed from the difficult and
  consequential business of devising workable, innovative ways of helping
  disadvantaged minorities up the economic ladder. Putting whitey in the
  spotlight as a clumsy, awkward socioeconomic stage performer gives the
  entire community something to gawk at and more: instant proof of the
  ongoing existence of, if not lynch squads, racial insensitivity.

    As Shelby Steele has so neatly delineated, identifying the existence of
  injustice grants the victims entitlement coupons payable by their 
  oppressors. Empowerment via victimization is public-policy gold in them
  thar hills. I just hope -- for *their* sake -- that other minority groups
  don't become wealthy like Asians. Because rising incomes could, for
  instance, tragically lead to the "myth of black success." And then white
  taxpayers will simply ignore the plight of Africans. There goes the
  neighborhood block grant.

    But not to worry. Given the sophisticated design of our current array
  of social programs and our time-tested system of welfare dependency, I
  believe that the poor and disadvantaged are pretty well out of harm's way.



Interestingly enough, there is another group which outperforms the median
white American: immigrant Africans. According to Dennis Kimbro it is
"because when these folks come here, they see this country as one big
candy store! They just walk in and help themselves to all the candy!"

But don't expect to see that fact in a Washington Post headline anytime
soon. It raises far too many unpleasant questions.



Reprinted without permission from:
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