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Caveat: no archive link and I'm not about to start paying the new Yorker to tell me how the world works, so might be missing context. Hibino, I'm gonna guess,

Caveat: no archive link and I'm not about to start paying the new Yorker to tell me how the world works, so might be missing context. Hibino, I'm gonna guess, is Japanese. The jokes don't seem like their punching down at Jose (the fictional Filipino). They seem to be saying; "no matter how hard Jose seems to work, nobody is ever impressed because they assume he's either getting handouts or his job is easy". My take, like the parent comment, is that this is a joke on the admissions office, and the systemic racism in such institutions - not at the expense of Asians (esp. since the one sending the joke was Asian to begin with).

steveBK123 4y ago
This isn't the defense you think it is. Asians can be racist & discriminatory towards other Asians. Japanese & Filipinos having something of a history no less..
bradleyjg 4y ago
My take, like the parent comment, is that this is a joke on the admissions office, and the systemic racism in such institutions - not at the expense of Asians (esp. since the one sending the joke was Asian to begin with). If the Dean of Admissions and a government official with detailed knowledge of Harvard’s admissions process both privately believe that Harvard illegally discriminates on the basis of race, that seems extremely probative in a trial on that exact issue.
- pksebben 4y ago
  Oh, for sure. I will be the last person on earth to come to the defense of an institution like this - I think that frequently, it's our social structures that are pathological before it's specific individuals. People, on balance, are not all so racist, bigoted, short-sighted, greedy, selfish, etc. (with glaring outliers, ofc). Institutions are more often than not some, if not all, of these things. It's almost as if we encode the worst of ourselves in these social contracts and give them everlasting life. As a sibling comment mentioned, it's also entirely possible for Hibino to be discriminatory himself. It just feels a little like there's not quite enough information to hang him specifically.

steveBK123 4y ago

This isn't the defense you think it is. Asians can be racist & discriminatory towards other Asians. Japanese & Filipinos having something of a history no less..

bradleyjg 4y ago

My take, like the parent comment, is that this is a joke on the admissions office, and the systemic racism in such institutions - not at the expense of Asians (esp. since the one sending the joke was Asian to begin with). If the Dean of Admissions and a government official with detailed knowledge of Harvard’s admissions process both privately believe that Harvard illegally discriminates on the basis of race, that seems extremely probative in a trial on that exact issue.

pksebben 4y ago
Oh, for sure. I will be the last person on earth to come to the defense of an institution like this - I think that frequently, it's our social structures that are pathological before it's specific individuals. People, on balance, are not all so racist, bigoted, short-sighted, greedy, selfish, etc. (with glaring outliers, ofc). Institutions are more often than not some, if not all, of these things. It's almost as if we encode the worst of ourselves in these social contracts and give them everlasting life. As a sibling comment mentioned, it's also entirely possible for Hibino to be discriminatory himself. It just feels a little like there's not quite enough information to hang him specifically.