It is no secret that many Asian immigrants harbor racist attitudes toward African Americans and Latinos. What is less noticed is that Asian American community activists are ignoring the problem, doing nothing proactive to deal with immigrant racial intolerance. There is a plethora of missed opportunities.
Many immigrant entrepreneurs are unwilling to hire black employees.
In too many cases, the activists themselves have unhealthy attitudes. The Asian activists compound the problem by absolving the immigrants of blame for their racist attitudes. The immigrants, we are told, pick up racist views from the American media. Yet this is at odds with the fact that Asian immigrant prejudice toward African Americans and Latinos is more widespread and at a higher intensity than amoug U.S. natives. Quynh Tran, in her Stanford University study of Vietnamese immigrant high school students, found that students who grew up in the United States were less prejudiced toward blacks than were students who immigrated at a later age.