9 ms·

The invisible struggle of the Asian American small-business owner

102 points by luu 6y ago

_fq4v 6y ago
Yeah, the other things Asian American small-business owners are subjected to is being the butt of violent inner-city riots supported by major political parties. Anyone who denies this has forgotten roof Koreans and the effects that the LA riots (and that the BLM riots today) are having on Asians. EDIT; people downvoting me need to see reality. This stuff is reported in Asian outlets all the time, but the American mainstream media will tell you sweet stories of Asian business owners 'supporting' BLM riots. You have to remember that these people, including my parents, have come from countries where it is normal to publicly say whatever you need to to appease the majority group. My mom and dad, like most Asians, will say whatever needs to be said to keep their family safe, even if they disagree. Americans do not understand Asian culture at all. https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1190650.shtml https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1190650.shtml https://www.npr.org/2015/04/30/403231749/baltimore-unrest-reveals-tensions-between-african-americans-and-asian-owned-busi https://www.npr.org/2015/04/30/403231749/baltimore-unrest-re... https://www.texasmonthly.com/news/black-lives-matter-billboard-houston-vietnamese-american-community/ https://www.texasmonthly.com/news/black-lives-matter-billboa...
- s5300 6y ago
  Yes the United States has been historically plagued by racial injustices. If you'd like more to be listed, consider the Tulsa Race Massacre and Seneca Village. Maybe the Trail of Tears. I don't see your great point in posting this. Hell, IIRC, the whole Cali gun ban thing is because a certain group of white people didn't like black people legally walking on the capital with guns. Imagine if they would've wanted to make an example out of roof Koreans as well.
- jwilber 6y ago
  What you wrote is extremely vague, charged, and lacking in nuance. Clarification would help anyone, especially since you’re apparently already prepared for, “anyone who denies this.” Which examples of anti-asian violence occurred during the BLM protests? Can you be specific? Which party was in power for both incidents you’ve mentioned? Why or why not does that matter? What effects are those having on Asians? Is there an increase/decrease in anti-asian crime? Looking forward to your response. Edit: Downvotes are fine, but consider that this post is merely asking for clarifications on a charged post and expressing no political opinions whatsoever.
  - beaverdrop 6y ago
    No, that's the thing. You, like many scientific materialists are asking for some study that shows you causality. The requirements of an IRB make it such that you most likely couldn't study this, and if you can, the timeliness of the study would lag 5-10 years behind usefulness. You only have to walk around Koreatown now to see this. The people who make the policy that govern lives are not waiting around for the IRP to approve the study. I suggest you attempt to experience the life, or talk to those who have, while waiting for links to studies that prescribe outcomes related to current events.
    - nendroid 6y ago
      I'm Asian, the guy didn't ask for a scientific study. He just asked for clarification which you did give in the second paragraph. Give him a break. Yeah asians are victims of racism, but that doesn't preclude other races from criticising a statement for being unclear. I would say to the parent parent poster that next time you can ask those questions without directly stating that the comment was: "extremely vague, charged, and lacking in nuance." Even though I agree that what you said is true, most humans are incapable of ingesting those words in an unbiased way and will likely misinterpret it as an insult. Ironically, the comment itself was "lacking in nuance."
    - jwilber 6y ago
      Ok account created 32 minutes ago . I’m not saying anything regarding general anti-Asian discrimination in America. (On that point, I agree with others in this thread: they face discrimination in education and tech jobs, among other places). But that’s not at all related to what I asked. I simply asked for clarification between BLM and anti-asian violence. I don’t need a peer-reviewed study. We don’t know each other’s political beliefs or life experiences. If you were asking about Trump rallies and anti-asian violence I’d ask the same thing.
- m0zg 6y ago
  > supported by major political parties Why plural? There's only one major party in the US that did not condemn the violent riots and looting. “They’re not gonna stop. And they should not.” -- Kamala Harris, VP candidate
  - ekianjo 6y ago
    A third party (libertarian) candidate also supported BLM and the riots.
  - jl6 6y ago
    Was she referring to protesting or rioting, or do you think the two are inseparable? Edit: never mind, I did my own googling. Looks like Kamala Harris did indeed condemn the rioters: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-harris-idUSKBN25N344 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-harris-idUSK... And the quote above was indeed referring to protesting, not rioting: https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/09/01/fact-check-kamala-harris-said-protests-arent-going-stop/5678687002/ https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/09/01/fact...
    - m0zg 6y ago
      > do you think the two are inseparable? Yes, evidently, unless you arrest and prosecute the rioters and looters, which is something "progressive" DAs refuse to do. > did indeed condemn the rioters If you read the article, you will see that she did not. She said that they "should not be confised" with protesters, but did not condemn them explicitly. Nor could she condemn, because the official democratic narrative is that the protests are "fiery but peaceful", which they're anything but.
- lai 6y ago
  I share this same sentiment as a Chinese American and I wouldn't be surprised if other Asians rolled their eyes at the riots that took place. No one talks about the BS that Asians have to deal with let alone know about them (i.e. affirmative action + minor minority myth = discrimination towards Asians, discrimination/crime towards Asians by blacks), but we're not gonna whine about this because that's just not what we do, we carry on working hard and not succumbing to victim mentality (i.e. when was the last time you saw an ALM organization).
  - saagarjha 6y ago
    Asian people don’t make an “Asian Lives Matter” because they’re not regularly targeted by police. They do however tend to lead efforts against affirmative action programs because they tend to reduce the number of Asian Americans who qualify for things. Painting this as an issue of other minorities being whiny is not a very nice characterization.
    - dmingod666 6y ago
      Another way to look at it is, they cannot be nicely boxed into a big voting block, so they don't get campaigns that conveniently coincide with elections and fizzle out soon after.
    - _fq4v 6y ago
      Asians are regularly targeted by police. Brown skinned Indians often look arab and are subject to the same racial profilings. One need only look at history (hello bellingham riots) to see rampant violence against asians that typically goes ignored due to asian cultural pragmatism.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- aww_dang 6y ago
  Political reporting is primarily about shaping current events to fit a predefined narrative. Contrary evidence is cleaved from the story if it doesn't fit the agenda. It is hypocritical when the authors paint themselves as concerned with the plight of an identity category, but downplay negative outcomes when it contradicts their agenda. From my perspective this shows how little these supposedly compassionate voices actually care. They're simply exploiting the situation to score political points. This isn't unique to Asian-American identity politics. If you look you can find it across the entire spectrum of identity politics. The obvious solution in my view is to concern ourselves with the plight of individuals as individuals, not members of a specific tribe. Treating individuals equally was at the core of liberalism, but today it has been overtaken by philosophies that put membership in an identity category before the individual. The outcome is predictably divisive and toxic.
- TMWNN 6y ago
  > Yeah, the other things Asian American small-business owners are subjected to is being the butt of violent inner-city riots supported by major political parties. Indeed. Also from the 2015 Baltimore riots: "Looters Take Everything But a Family’s Pennies / Chinese store-owners and a soldier who fought in Afghanistan both return to find their hometown transformed into a war zone." https://np.reddit.com/r/news/comments/34cu4j/baltimore_looters_take_everything_but_a_familys/ https://np.reddit.com/r/news/comments/34cu4j/baltimore_loote...
Zaheer 6y ago
I appreciate these articles because it highlights how circumstances can change for a group of people at any moment. The old saying, "First they came for ... then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me" rings in my mind. It's important we highlight these struggles and do our part in supporting them... you might find yourself in a similar situation one day. With that I'd encourage folks to read more about BLM, Uighur concentration camps, Palestine, etc. Even if you feel powerless in stopping oppression the very least you could do is be aware and spread the word.
- PradeetPatel 6y ago
  I agree completely, as an Indian-American in the tech industry. I have experienced first hand discrimination against my technical and communication skills. One thing I have a lot of trouble grasping is that the Indian population is not represented in articles addressing discrimination against "Asians", despite being a part of Asia.
  - mssundaram 6y ago
    Namaskar. I have found most Americans don't see India as part of Asia for whatever reason.
    - gwd 6y ago
      > I have found most Americans don't see India as part of Asia for whatever reason. East Asians have a very different culture than Indians; it doesn't really make any sense to lump them together. Dropping the "East" from "East Asian" is just being a bit lazy (because honestly, it is kind of clunky).
  - nendroid 6y ago
    It's just a nomenclature thing. Genetically your people are more similar to people from Europe then the "asians" the article refers to. The article uses the word "asian" but technically the article is just referring to people who have certain facial features that are similar to people from China, Japan, Korea, Vietnam... etc. You are asian yes, but in terms of facial features you are in a very separate category than the previous countries I mentioned. I'm not sure what is the proper term here. I've seen the terms "mongoloid" and "oriental" used to refer to my people but I've also seen things written about how these terms are dated and considered to be insulting. I have found no other word to refer to "asians" the way the article refers to "asians." It's strange that it's so hard to find a term here as there is a very clear cut category here. Whatever... it's just words. I would respond to your query and say that "mongoloids" have a very different experience with racism in the US than Indian people due to a multitude of factors one of them being that most Indians already know English. Qualitatively speaking, in the software world Indians are easily dominating that arena over "mongoloids" so it's a completely different experience. Whatever hardships Indian people are going through would imho warrant a completely separate article to cover that topic.
rayiner 6y ago
The problem with articles like this—apart from the politically constructed racial category of “Asian”—is that there is no support for anything apart from a lot of narrative and a few anecdotes. Asians have by a good margin the lowest covid death rate of any race, despite being much more likely to live in hard hit urban areas: https://www.apmresearchlab.org/covid/deaths-by-race https://www.apmresearchlab.org/covid/deaths-by-race The article’s discussion of the “model minority” stereotype is also a clumsy attempt at racialization. The article points to low-income Asian groups like Burmese. But those groups aren’t poor because they’re Asian, they’re poor because they’re economic immigrants and often refugees. Burmese, in particular, are the most recent major Asian immigrant group. 85% of Burmese Americans are first-generation immigrants, while 80% of Japanese Americans are native born. Less than half of Burmese Americans speak English fluently. But Japanese Americans were also predominantly economic migrants at one point. The important question the article overlooks is income mobility. Asian kids raised in the bottom quantile of income have by far the highest income mobility of any group. 27% will end up in the top quantile by adult hood—almost double the rate for white kids. There is no reason to believe that the Burmese will be any different than say the Vietnamese. Large scale Vietnamese refugee immigration mainly occurred from 1975-2000. As a result, most Vietnamese Americans have been here 20+ years. In that time, Vietnamese Americans have achieved economic parity with whites: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ethnic_groups_in_the_United_States_by_household_income https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ethnic_groups_in_the_U.... So have Laotians and Cambodians, who immigrated, mostly as refugees, around that same time period. I can’t help but feel like articles like this are an attempt to racialize Asians and make them identify as a marginalized minority group, instead of as individuals who are in the process of achieving upward mobility. Calling the long-standing economic trends a “myth” is borderline deceptive and risky. Clearly something is working. But if you make people think that it isn’t working, you might inadvertently break it.
- john_moscow 6y ago
  >Asians have by a good margin the lowest covid death rate of any race COVID deaths correlate a lot with obesity, that is very low among Asians.
  - 6y ago
wombatmobile 6y ago
I'm having difficulty parsing TFA. "The most stubborn misconception about this population is that its members can be uniformly measured at all. A population of 20 million strong, representing more than 50 distinct ethnic groups, Asian Americans have some of the widest variances in corporate success, education, and income." OK, so how then do we get a coherent article about the plight of Asian American small-business owners? Are there not a multitude of experiences? Or is the article saying there is a common vector e.g. racial discrimination that affects all Asian-American small businesses even though they have diverse resources, experiences, distribution and successes? Do non-Asian-American small businesses contend with similar headwinds to Asian American small businesses? I'm not criticising TFA or disputing any data it presents - just trying to get a handle on what it is saying.
john_moscow 6y ago
It's almost like the media is deliberately choosing a divisive angle at every problem. COVID impacts small businesses regardless of their owners' race or gender or sexual preference. It's a perfect "common enemy" that would normally help people unite. Like finding and sharing clever ways of reducing transmission while running your shop, or moving as many things as possible online. But nope, this wouldn't get as many clicks as forcing people to clash over their differences instead of working together in search of a common solution. Divide-and-conquer in action.
- the-dude 6y ago
  Identity politics is divide and conquer. Mind boggling.
- deleted 6y ago
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- Consultant32452 6y ago
  We're in the midst of the largest transfer of wealth in the history of mankind. We destroyed small businesses but Wal-Mart/Amazon is making money hand over fist, not to mention the trillions in bailout/spending while John Q Public got a couple thousand bucks. If you want to pull something like that off it's best if you can keep the low status people arguing about masks and melanin.
  - oblio 6y ago
    Facebook and Google also destroyed small, local newspapers, magazines and generally local advertising places. All this revenue is siphoned from around the world so that it can be hoarded in offshore tax havens and not even taxed in the US. At least, if you rob us blind in the rest of the world, have the decency to do something useful with the money :-)
    - Consultant32452 6y ago
      They're doing their part by keeping us angry about melanin, masks, and pronouns. The more "sophisticated" among us will chatter on about which political party will be taking point position in the wealth transfer, but that's all we get. It's grifting season and every politically connected business has a role to play.
deleted 6y ago
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aaron695 6y ago
> Roy Kim knew back in December that something had changed. I feel like it's a clown land. No one except a few people around the world knew anything might be up in December. The first death was reported in January. But Vox can't challenge an Asian restaurant owner over a timeline because of white privilege I assume.
smabie 6y ago
It's unfortunate that people read articles like this, but it's more unfortunate that people write them in the first place. Moreover, I don't really believe the primary sources in this article.
NalNezumi 6y ago
I would've liked if people recognized more about the "social" struggles Asians face in America (and Europe) rather than the economical one, since this is not invisible but rather very visible, just that people don't notice it. Which means everyone as individuals can do more about these issues... The way media & entertainment propagate the normalization of still making fun of Asians[1], affect not only Asians in America but also in Europe. (We in Europe have this weird self-perception that racism is more of an US thing, and the only resemblance of that here is either Nazis or Islamophobia.) People might not realize this but it does have a quite deep historical root [4] One thing about the article though. Not so surprising that the (elderly) Asian Americans have low trust for the government when the government track record to them is: * the Asians were the first to be targeted by explicit ethnic/national immigration ban[2] * American citizen who married Asian could lose their citizenship[3]. * Yellow Peril[4] * and now, disguised as good-will, through Affirmative action actively creating disadvantage to enter higher education. (or higher positions) [1] https://newrepublic.com/article/131631/still-okay-make-fun-asians https://newrepublic.com/article/131631/still-okay-make-fun-a... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Exclusion_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Exclusion_Act [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interracial_marriage_in_the_United_States#Asian_and_White https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interracial_marriage_in_the_Un... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_Peril https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_Peril
awerawerawrjhui 6y ago
> the use of racist terms like “China virus” has also grown I will convert to Scientology before I accept that it's "racist" to refer to a disease by its place of geographical origin.
- 3131s 6y ago
  It's a stupid term. Why would you choose this unspecific, uninformative name for a virus instead of its actual name? Hmm...
  - thoughtstheseus 6y ago
    “Wuhan Virus” for example conveys information not apparent when calling it a coronavirus.
  - raverbashing 6y ago
    Spanish Flu? Though yes, it's a stupid name (Wuhan Virus would be "ok-ish" in my opinion though - if we didn't know which virus it was)
  - awerawerawrjhui 6y ago
    Spanish Flu Hong Kong Flu West Nile Virus German Measles Guinea Worm Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever Lyme Disease (named after Lyme, Connecticut) Ross River Fever Omsk Hemorrhagic Fever (named after Omsk, Russia) Ebola (named after the Ebola River) Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Zika (named after the Zika Forest, Uganda) Japanese Encephalitis Marburg Virus Disease (named after Marburg, Germany)
    - oblio 6y ago
      You will notice that most of those names don't come from people living in that place and frequently those diseases were actively named to denigrate the locals. Or they're not named in recent times, but instead in times when using slurs was a leisure activity. Plus the egregious case of the "Spanish" flu that might have originated in the US but Spain was unlucky to be talking openly about it.
deleted 6y ago
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known 6y ago
Indian diaspora is running an Organized mafia in USA https://www.petition2congress.com/20324/expel-indian-americans-from-usa https://www.petition2congress.com/20324/expel-indian-america...

102 points by luu 6y ago

Yeah, the other things Asian American small-business owners are subjected to is being the butt of violent inner-city riots supported by major political parties. Anyone who denies this has forgotten roof Koreans and the effects that the LA riots (and that the BLM riots today) are having on Asians. EDIT; people downvoting me need to see reality. This stuff is reported in Asian outlets all the time, but the American mainstream media will tell you sweet stories of Asian business owners 'supporting' BLM riots. You have to remember that these people, including my parents, have come from countries where it is normal to publicly say whatever you need to to appease the majority group. My mom and dad, like most Asians, will say whatever needs to be said to keep their family safe, even if they disagree. Americans do not understand Asian culture at all. https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1190650.shtml https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1190650.shtml https://www.npr.org/2015/04/30/403231749/baltimore-unrest-reveals-tensions-between-african-americans-and-asian-owned-busi https://www.npr.org/2015/04/30/403231749/baltimore-unrest-re... https://www.texasmonthly.com/news/black-lives-matter-billboard-houston-vietnamese-american-community/ https://www.texasmonthly.com/news/black-lives-matter-billboa...

s5300 6y ago
Yes the United States has been historically plagued by racial injustices. If you'd like more to be listed, consider the Tulsa Race Massacre and Seneca Village. Maybe the Trail of Tears. I don't see your great point in posting this. Hell, IIRC, the whole Cali gun ban thing is because a certain group of white people didn't like black people legally walking on the capital with guns. Imagine if they would've wanted to make an example out of roof Koreans as well.
jwilber 6y ago
What you wrote is extremely vague, charged, and lacking in nuance. Clarification would help anyone, especially since you’re apparently already prepared for, “anyone who denies this.” Which examples of anti-asian violence occurred during the BLM protests? Can you be specific? Which party was in power for both incidents you’ve mentioned? Why or why not does that matter? What effects are those having on Asians? Is there an increase/decrease in anti-asian crime? Looking forward to your response. Edit: Downvotes are fine, but consider that this post is merely asking for clarifications on a charged post and expressing no political opinions whatsoever.
- beaverdrop 6y ago
  No, that's the thing. You, like many scientific materialists are asking for some study that shows you causality. The requirements of an IRB make it such that you most likely couldn't study this, and if you can, the timeliness of the study would lag 5-10 years behind usefulness. You only have to walk around Koreatown now to see this. The people who make the policy that govern lives are not waiting around for the IRP to approve the study. I suggest you attempt to experience the life, or talk to those who have, while waiting for links to studies that prescribe outcomes related to current events.
  - nendroid 6y ago
    I'm Asian, the guy didn't ask for a scientific study. He just asked for clarification which you did give in the second paragraph. Give him a break. Yeah asians are victims of racism, but that doesn't preclude other races from criticising a statement for being unclear. I would say to the parent parent poster that next time you can ask those questions without directly stating that the comment was: "extremely vague, charged, and lacking in nuance." Even though I agree that what you said is true, most humans are incapable of ingesting those words in an unbiased way and will likely misinterpret it as an insult. Ironically, the comment itself was "lacking in nuance."
  - jwilber 6y ago
    Ok account created 32 minutes ago . I’m not saying anything regarding general anti-Asian discrimination in America. (On that point, I agree with others in this thread: they face discrimination in education and tech jobs, among other places). But that’s not at all related to what I asked. I simply asked for clarification between BLM and anti-asian violence. I don’t need a peer-reviewed study. We don’t know each other’s political beliefs or life experiences. If you were asking about Trump rallies and anti-asian violence I’d ask the same thing.
m0zg 6y ago
> supported by major political parties Why plural? There's only one major party in the US that did not condemn the violent riots and looting. “They’re not gonna stop. And they should not.” -- Kamala Harris, VP candidate
- ekianjo 6y ago
  A third party (libertarian) candidate also supported BLM and the riots.
- jl6 6y ago
  Was she referring to protesting or rioting, or do you think the two are inseparable? Edit: never mind, I did my own googling. Looks like Kamala Harris did indeed condemn the rioters: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-harris-idUSKBN25N344 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-harris-idUSK... And the quote above was indeed referring to protesting, not rioting: https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/09/01/fact-check-kamala-harris-said-protests-arent-going-stop/5678687002/ https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/09/01/fact...
  - m0zg 6y ago
    > do you think the two are inseparable? Yes, evidently, unless you arrest and prosecute the rioters and looters, which is something "progressive" DAs refuse to do. > did indeed condemn the rioters If you read the article, you will see that she did not. She said that they "should not be confised" with protesters, but did not condemn them explicitly. Nor could she condemn, because the official democratic narrative is that the protests are "fiery but peaceful", which they're anything but.
lai 6y ago
I share this same sentiment as a Chinese American and I wouldn't be surprised if other Asians rolled their eyes at the riots that took place. No one talks about the BS that Asians have to deal with let alone know about them (i.e. affirmative action + minor minority myth = discrimination towards Asians, discrimination/crime towards Asians by blacks), but we're not gonna whine about this because that's just not what we do, we carry on working hard and not succumbing to victim mentality (i.e. when was the last time you saw an ALM organization).
- saagarjha 6y ago
  Asian people don’t make an “Asian Lives Matter” because they’re not regularly targeted by police. They do however tend to lead efforts against affirmative action programs because they tend to reduce the number of Asian Americans who qualify for things. Painting this as an issue of other minorities being whiny is not a very nice characterization.
  - dmingod666 6y ago
    Another way to look at it is, they cannot be nicely boxed into a big voting block, so they don't get campaigns that conveniently coincide with elections and fizzle out soon after.
  - _fq4v 6y ago
    Asians are regularly targeted by police. Brown skinned Indians often look arab and are subject to the same racial profilings. One need only look at history (hello bellingham riots) to see rampant violence against asians that typically goes ignored due to asian cultural pragmatism.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
aww_dang 6y ago
Political reporting is primarily about shaping current events to fit a predefined narrative. Contrary evidence is cleaved from the story if it doesn't fit the agenda. It is hypocritical when the authors paint themselves as concerned with the plight of an identity category, but downplay negative outcomes when it contradicts their agenda. From my perspective this shows how little these supposedly compassionate voices actually care. They're simply exploiting the situation to score political points. This isn't unique to Asian-American identity politics. If you look you can find it across the entire spectrum of identity politics. The obvious solution in my view is to concern ourselves with the plight of individuals as individuals, not members of a specific tribe. Treating individuals equally was at the core of liberalism, but today it has been overtaken by philosophies that put membership in an identity category before the individual. The outcome is predictably divisive and toxic.
TMWNN 6y ago
> Yeah, the other things Asian American small-business owners are subjected to is being the butt of violent inner-city riots supported by major political parties. Indeed. Also from the 2015 Baltimore riots: "Looters Take Everything But a Family’s Pennies / Chinese store-owners and a soldier who fought in Afghanistan both return to find their hometown transformed into a war zone." https://np.reddit.com/r/news/comments/34cu4j/baltimore_looters_take_everything_but_a_familys/ https://np.reddit.com/r/news/comments/34cu4j/baltimore_loote...

Zaheer 6y ago

I appreciate these articles because it highlights how circumstances can change for a group of people at any moment. The old saying, "First they came for ... then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me" rings in my mind. It's important we highlight these struggles and do our part in supporting them... you might find yourself in a similar situation one day. With that I'd encourage folks to read more about BLM, Uighur concentration camps, Palestine, etc. Even if you feel powerless in stopping oppression the very least you could do is be aware and spread the word.

PradeetPatel 6y ago
I agree completely, as an Indian-American in the tech industry. I have experienced first hand discrimination against my technical and communication skills. One thing I have a lot of trouble grasping is that the Indian population is not represented in articles addressing discrimination against "Asians", despite being a part of Asia.
- mssundaram 6y ago
  Namaskar. I have found most Americans don't see India as part of Asia for whatever reason.
  - gwd 6y ago
    > I have found most Americans don't see India as part of Asia for whatever reason. East Asians have a very different culture than Indians; it doesn't really make any sense to lump them together. Dropping the "East" from "East Asian" is just being a bit lazy (because honestly, it is kind of clunky).
- nendroid 6y ago
  It's just a nomenclature thing. Genetically your people are more similar to people from Europe then the "asians" the article refers to. The article uses the word "asian" but technically the article is just referring to people who have certain facial features that are similar to people from China, Japan, Korea, Vietnam... etc. You are asian yes, but in terms of facial features you are in a very separate category than the previous countries I mentioned. I'm not sure what is the proper term here. I've seen the terms "mongoloid" and "oriental" used to refer to my people but I've also seen things written about how these terms are dated and considered to be insulting. I have found no other word to refer to "asians" the way the article refers to "asians." It's strange that it's so hard to find a term here as there is a very clear cut category here. Whatever... it's just words. I would respond to your query and say that "mongoloids" have a very different experience with racism in the US than Indian people due to a multitude of factors one of them being that most Indians already know English. Qualitatively speaking, in the software world Indians are easily dominating that arena over "mongoloids" so it's a completely different experience. Whatever hardships Indian people are going through would imho warrant a completely separate article to cover that topic.

rayiner 6y ago

The problem with articles like this—apart from the politically constructed racial category of “Asian”—is that there is no support for anything apart from a lot of narrative and a few anecdotes. Asians have by a good margin the lowest covid death rate of any race, despite being much more likely to live in hard hit urban areas: https://www.apmresearchlab.org/covid/deaths-by-race https://www.apmresearchlab.org/covid/deaths-by-race The article’s discussion of the “model minority” stereotype is also a clumsy attempt at racialization. The article points to low-income Asian groups like Burmese. But those groups aren’t poor because they’re Asian, they’re poor because they’re economic immigrants and often refugees. Burmese, in particular, are the most recent major Asian immigrant group. 85% of Burmese Americans are first-generation immigrants, while 80% of Japanese Americans are native born. Less than half of Burmese Americans speak English fluently. But Japanese Americans were also predominantly economic migrants at one point. The important question the article overlooks is income mobility. Asian kids raised in the bottom quantile of income have by far the highest income mobility of any group. 27% will end up in the top quantile by adult hood—almost double the rate for white kids. There is no reason to believe that the Burmese will be any different than say the Vietnamese. Large scale Vietnamese refugee immigration mainly occurred from 1975-2000. As a result, most Vietnamese Americans have been here 20+ years. In that time, Vietnamese Americans have achieved economic parity with whites: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ethnic_groups_in_the_United_States_by_household_income https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ethnic_groups_in_the_U.... So have Laotians and Cambodians, who immigrated, mostly as refugees, around that same time period. I can’t help but feel like articles like this are an attempt to racialize Asians and make them identify as a marginalized minority group, instead of as individuals who are in the process of achieving upward mobility. Calling the long-standing economic trends a “myth” is borderline deceptive and risky. Clearly something is working. But if you make people think that it isn’t working, you might inadvertently break it.

john_moscow 6y ago
>Asians have by a good margin the lowest covid death rate of any race COVID deaths correlate a lot with obesity, that is very low among Asians.
- 6y ago

wombatmobile 6y ago

I'm having difficulty parsing TFA. "The most stubborn misconception about this population is that its members can be uniformly measured at all. A population of 20 million strong, representing more than 50 distinct ethnic groups, Asian Americans have some of the widest variances in corporate success, education, and income." OK, so how then do we get a coherent article about the plight of Asian American small-business owners? Are there not a multitude of experiences? Or is the article saying there is a common vector e.g. racial discrimination that affects all Asian-American small businesses even though they have diverse resources, experiences, distribution and successes? Do non-Asian-American small businesses contend with similar headwinds to Asian American small businesses? I'm not criticising TFA or disputing any data it presents - just trying to get a handle on what it is saying.

john_moscow 6y ago

It's almost like the media is deliberately choosing a divisive angle at every problem. COVID impacts small businesses regardless of their owners' race or gender or sexual preference. It's a perfect "common enemy" that would normally help people unite. Like finding and sharing clever ways of reducing transmission while running your shop, or moving as many things as possible online. But nope, this wouldn't get as many clicks as forcing people to clash over their differences instead of working together in search of a common solution. Divide-and-conquer in action.

the-dude 6y ago
Identity politics is divide and conquer. Mind boggling.
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Consultant32452 6y ago
We're in the midst of the largest transfer of wealth in the history of mankind. We destroyed small businesses but Wal-Mart/Amazon is making money hand over fist, not to mention the trillions in bailout/spending while John Q Public got a couple thousand bucks. If you want to pull something like that off it's best if you can keep the low status people arguing about masks and melanin.
- oblio 6y ago
  Facebook and Google also destroyed small, local newspapers, magazines and generally local advertising places. All this revenue is siphoned from around the world so that it can be hoarded in offshore tax havens and not even taxed in the US. At least, if you rob us blind in the rest of the world, have the decency to do something useful with the money :-)
  - Consultant32452 6y ago
    They're doing their part by keeping us angry about melanin, masks, and pronouns. The more "sophisticated" among us will chatter on about which political party will be taking point position in the wealth transfer, but that's all we get. It's grifting season and every politically connected business has a role to play.

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aaron695 6y ago

> Roy Kim knew back in December that something had changed. I feel like it's a clown land. No one except a few people around the world knew anything might be up in December. The first death was reported in January. But Vox can't challenge an Asian restaurant owner over a timeline because of white privilege I assume.

smabie 6y ago

It's unfortunate that people read articles like this, but it's more unfortunate that people write them in the first place. Moreover, I don't really believe the primary sources in this article.

NalNezumi 6y ago

I would've liked if people recognized more about the "social" struggles Asians face in America (and Europe) rather than the economical one, since this is not invisible but rather very visible, just that people don't notice it. Which means everyone as individuals can do more about these issues... The way media & entertainment propagate the normalization of still making fun of Asians[1], affect not only Asians in America but also in Europe. (We in Europe have this weird self-perception that racism is more of an US thing, and the only resemblance of that here is either Nazis or Islamophobia.) People might not realize this but it does have a quite deep historical root [4] One thing about the article though. Not so surprising that the (elderly) Asian Americans have low trust for the government when the government track record to them is: * the Asians were the first to be targeted by explicit ethnic/national immigration ban[2] * American citizen who married Asian could lose their citizenship[3]. * Yellow Peril[4] * and now, disguised as good-will, through Affirmative action actively creating disadvantage to enter higher education. (or higher positions) [1] https://newrepublic.com/article/131631/still-okay-make-fun-asians https://newrepublic.com/article/131631/still-okay-make-fun-a... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Exclusion_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Exclusion_Act [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interracial_marriage_in_the_United_States#Asian_and_White https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interracial_marriage_in_the_Un... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_Peril https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_Peril

awerawerawrjhui 6y ago

> the use of racist terms like “China virus” has also grown I will convert to Scientology before I accept that it's "racist" to refer to a disease by its place of geographical origin.

3131s 6y ago
It's a stupid term. Why would you choose this unspecific, uninformative name for a virus instead of its actual name? Hmm...
- thoughtstheseus 6y ago
  “Wuhan Virus” for example conveys information not apparent when calling it a coronavirus.
- raverbashing 6y ago
  Spanish Flu? Though yes, it's a stupid name (Wuhan Virus would be "ok-ish" in my opinion though - if we didn't know which virus it was)
- awerawerawrjhui 6y ago
  Spanish Flu Hong Kong Flu West Nile Virus German Measles Guinea Worm Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever Lyme Disease (named after Lyme, Connecticut) Ross River Fever Omsk Hemorrhagic Fever (named after Omsk, Russia) Ebola (named after the Ebola River) Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Zika (named after the Zika Forest, Uganda) Japanese Encephalitis Marburg Virus Disease (named after Marburg, Germany)
  - oblio 6y ago
    You will notice that most of those names don't come from people living in that place and frequently those diseases were actively named to denigrate the locals. Or they're not named in recent times, but instead in times when using slurs was a leisure activity. Plus the egregious case of the "Spanish" flu that might have originated in the US but Spain was unlucky to be talking openly about it.

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known 6y ago

Indian diaspora is running an Organized mafia in USA https://www.petition2congress.com/20324/expel-indian-americans-from-usa https://www.petition2congress.com/20324/expel-indian-america...