"Asian guys in my show? Not gonna happen!"

[Sommerswerd]

It seems to be related to how soccer fans feel about "their" teams.

Yes exactly. I think that is a great example. Waving around a Manchester-United flag shows that you are praising and simultaneously sharing in the glory of the team's legacy. You like the team, you approve of what the team has done and what they represent... in this case winning numerous championships, or having particular players, or being better than Liverpool, whatever. Similarly, waving the Confederate battle flag shows you admire the Confederacy and what they represented and/or you are praising/sharing in their glory and legacy.

Um, your points are all over the place. In one of those posts, you said no one would take "serious action". I dunno about you, but the range of "serious action" that people can take is pretty big. By excluding all serious action, you're really suggesting that this issue is not important.

OK now you're taking things I posted out of context and being needlessly argumentative. You're trying to start an argument with me in every thread now. I'm not going to continue with this.

Well I can pick up the ball for NovaKart if he is withdrawing from the debate, as I think he raised a valid point. I am skeptical of the idea that Asians feel deeply oppressed by Asian stereotypes but forego complaining about them due to some "racial-commitment" to silence. It is more likely (as NovaKart alluded to) that the reason Asians do not resist the stereotypes is because they see many of them as more beneficial than harmful, or trivial in nature. Why waste energy resisting or protesting a stereotype that has a minimal or trivial economic impact? or, even more so, a stereotype that has a net beneficial impact?

 

[Crackerbox]

Link to video.
School of Rock
Does this look like a beneficial stereotype? Asian as supernerd. Asian as socially isolated.

The other Asian stereotype is the Yellow Peril, one that is hostile to Western Civilization and causes loss of Western identity. One that cannot be trusted. One that is uiltimately evil and alien.

Beneficial my butt.

There are so many of these, that most people have become desensitized to the stereotype and just assume that's what Asians are.



Link to video.

The reality is the Japanese-Americans were among the most decorated as a corpus in WW2. There were cases of the US Army hurling this regiment against impossible odds, losing 800 of them to save 200 white Americans. They were super-patriots, fierce fighters, sacrificed all for the USA, but most got the Congressional Medal of Honor posthumously. This despite coming from a concentration camp, losing all of their assets, not being allowed to be citizens, etc.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/442nd_Infantry_Regiment_(United_States)
"The 442nd Regimental Combat Team of the United States Army was a fighting unit composed almost entirely of American soldiers of Japanese ancestry who fought in World War II, despite the fact that many of their families were subject to internment. Beginning in 1944, the regiment fought primarily in Europe during World War II,[2] in particular Italy, southern France, and Germany. The 442nd Regiment was the most decorated unit for its size and length of service in the history of American warfare.[3] The 4,000 men who initially came in April 1943 had to be replaced nearly 2.5 times. In total, about 14,000 men served, earning 9,486 Purple Hearts. The unit was awarded eight Presidential Unit Citations (5 earned in one month).[4]:201 Twenty-one of its members were awarded Medals of Honor.[2] Its motto was "Go for Broke"."

Asians make up the largest pool of intellectual talent in the USA, but are spin-doctored into their education being detrimental! The depiction of Asian males on tv and film is NOTHING like reality.

 

[aelf]

No I've made my position very clear. You have an ax to grind with me over an argument we had in another thread and you continue to start arguments with me over petty nuances. I told you I would not be drawn into bickering with you. I'm ending this discussion, on my part anyway, in this thread and any future ones. Best of luck to you.

Well, that's a convenient excuse.

Well I can pick up the ball for NovaKart if he is withdrawing from the debate, as I think he raised a valid point. I am skeptical of the idea that Asians feel deeply oppressed by Asian stereotypes but forego complaining about them due to some "racial-commitment" to silence. It is more likely (as NovaKart alluded to) that the reason Asians do not resist the stereotypes is because they see many of them as more beneficial than harmful, or trivial in nature. Why waste energy resisting or protesting a stereotype that has a minimal or trivial economic impact? or, even more so, a stereotype that has a net beneficial impact?

This sounds like yet another stereotype. It's at best a conjecture that you can't prove.

But whatever the case may be for Asians, it's wrong to dismiss discrimination as too trivial to warrant serious action. Maybe you're not interested in the cause; maybe it's just not important to you. But to some people who are deeply affected, it may well be. Who the hell are you (and I don't mean you personally, in case you are as sensitive a little flower as NovaKart) to say otherwise to them? You may have the freedom to say so, but you certainly shouldn't be butthurt if someone points out that you're being an arsehole.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Beneficial my butt.

So, propose an alternative explanation.

Every Asian American I have told about you and your "Asian Americans are systematically repressed" position has laughed their butts off*...even the Japanese American I know who does keep a 'remembrance day' marked on his calendar for the day the internment order was issued.

Why does is this feeling of being burdened by oppression of yours not more widespread, or driving more people to action?

Unless something else comes along I'm going to have to go with Sommerswerds's theory that this 'oppression' is sufficiently trivial that hardly anyone recognizes it even happening, or at the very least finds it intrusive enough to be cause for concern.




*Admittedly, in every case I have included a full description of the 'reference to sports cars=slur against Asian manufacturing' leap into the abyss, which has been the root source of outright laughter.

 

[Crackerbox]

Unbelievable. I've put up video clip after video clip showing the marginalization of Asians. I've described the quota practices to limit Asians in American schools. I've put up detailed information about not being allowed to be citizens officially until after 1955. I've put up documentation about not being allowed to intermarry with other races. I've put up information about the Japanese-American internment (while their sons and daughters went off to fight for a country that disavowed them).

The only way that Asians have succeeded in the USA is by thrift, hard work, and studying. No one came to our aid like any other minority group in American history. And yet we contribute in a mighty way as veterans and professionals.

And what do we have to show for it? Depictions of Asians as the Yellow Peril in The Man in the High Castle in 2015.

Imagine the outcry if African-Americans were being prevented from attending law or medical school. Imagine if Africans were depicted as evil and wanting to take over America. There would be such an outcry like this country has never seen. There would be riots and mayhem.

 

[Sommerswerd]

This sounds like yet another stereotype.

But that's a non-sequitur isn't it? Stereotypes are well known, familiar, common. If it was a stereotype, you would recognized it, rather than saying it "sounds" like it might be one.

It's at best a conjecture that you can't prove.

True... well, maybe true... but so what? Is this a court of law? 99.9% of what we say on these threads is "conjecture" (including that statement I just made ). We are just talking here... The point is, do you find my argument reasonable or not? If not then I will try to argue it a little more. But prove? C'mon

But whatever the case may be for Asians, it's wrong to dismiss discrimination as too trivial to warrant serious action.

But I'm not the one doing the "dismissing" am I?

Let me give a real world example: Black males have a stereotype of great sexual ability. Now I can go on endlessly about how damaging and degrading this stereotype is, but what is the point? Blacks do not protest this stereotype because we recognize that it helps us as well as harms us, and the net/loss gain is not worth rioting about. The net economic impact race-wide is probably negligible. How are my sons benefited/harmed by being told they are supposed to be great lovers? Its trivial.

The Asian nerd stereotype on the other hand is beneficial. It increases the social pressure on Asians to succeed. Why? Normally people have positive adults in their lives encouraging them to do well in school. But for Asians, they also have the added influence of peer pressure and media pressure, all indoctrinating them with the idea that they must be smart, they must get good grades, etc, because they are Asian. So the net impact is more smart Asian schoolchildren. As an Asian parent, you have the additional support of society telling your kids that they are supposed to be smart. Their friends at school expect them to be smart and consider them normal for being nerdy, rather than making them feel like they are a "sellout" or that they should be ashamed for doing well in school.

You've been following this thread so you know by now that I for one don't dismiss this issue as unimportant. Disagreeing with people about the substance of an issue is not dismissing the issue as unimportant is it?

 

[Borachio]

Depictions of Asians as the Yellow Peril in The Man in the High Castle in 2015.

Ha!

I took that as an example of a positive stereotype! I thought you'd changed tack for some reason.

Silly me!

But hey! What about Pearl Harbor? That was the single greatest blow to the American psyche, and not equaled until 9/11; possibly not even then.

 

[aelf]

But that's a non-sequitur isn't it? Stereotypes are well known, familiar, common. If it was a stereotype, you would recognized it, rather than saying it "sounds" like it might be one.

This is just sophistry. It doesn't matter.

True... well, maybe true... but so what? Is this a court of law? 99.9% of what we say on these threads is "conjecture" (including that statement I just made ). We are just talking here... The point is, do you find my argument reasonable or not? If not then I will try to argue it a little more. But prove? C'mon

If it's merely conjecture and unproveable then it is necessarily of limited explanatory power, so don't be so sure of it. That's all.

But I'm not the one doing the "dismissing" am I?

Let me give a real world example: Black males have a stereotype of great sexual ability. Now I can go on endlessly about how damaging and degrading this stereotype is, but what is the point? Blacks do not protest this stereotype because we recognize that it helps us as well as harms us, and the net/loss gain is not worth rioting about. The net economic impact race-wide is probably negligible. How are my sons benefited/harmed by being told they are supposed to be great lovers? Its trivial.

The Asian nerd stereotype on the other hand is beneficial. It increases the social pressure on Asians to succeed. Why? Normally people have positive adults in their lives encouraging them to do well in school. But for Asians, they also have the added influence of peer pressure and media pressure, all indoctrinating them with the idea that they must be smart, they must get good grades, etc, because they are Asian. So the net impact is more smart Asian schoolchildren. As an Asian parent, you have the additional support of society telling your kids that they are supposed to be smart. Their friends at school expect them to be smart and consider them normal for being nerdy, rather than making them feel like they are a "sellout" or that they should be ashamed for doing well in school.

You've been following this thread so you know by now that I for one don't dismiss this issue as unimportant. Disagreeing with people about the substance of an issue is not dismissing the issue as unimportant is it?

I thought I clearly said that I don't mean you as in you personally. How much clearer do you want me to be? You said you're 'picking up the ball' for NovaKart, so I'm continuing that discussion.

If that is your calculus for a stereotype that you face then good for you. I have said something similar earlier in this thread. The stereotype doesn't hurt me, or at least not yet. But if it hurts somebody else, I'm not going to tell that person to just suck it up because it really isn't a big deal. That's being an arse.

 

[Crackerbox]

Link to video.
If Tomorrow Comes (1971)
There was less bigotry in the Seventies regarding the depiction of Asian males then there is in 2015. Witness Patty Duke and Michael Liu (playing a Japanese-American) as an American couple in the midst of the Japanese internment.

1976 saw Return to Manzanar.

The late Sixties and early Seventies prominently featured Bruce Lee in the Green Hornet and in films like Enter the Dragon. Even though it was in yellowface, the tv serial Kung Fu featured an interracial romance.

The Courtship of Eddie's Father featured Miss Livingstone as a benevolent Asian housekeeper/caregiver. She was played by Japanese actress Miyoshi Umeki.

Link to video.

Far earlier two Japanese women were portrayed in a normal light, not as a seductress, but simply as young women deeply in love with American servicemen.


Link to video.
Sayonara (1957)
[Terrible yellowface by Ricardo Montalban but otherwise a good film]

Asians are losing the culture war. It's regressing in many ways.

 

[Sommerswerd]

I thought I clearly said that I don't mean you as in you personally. How much clearer do you want me to be? You said you're 'picking up the ball' for NovaKart, so I'm continuing that discussion.

You completely missed me on this point. I don't follow you at all Whether you mean me personally or not doesn't seem relevant... at least it isn't relevant to me. Either way I'm not offended.

If that is your calculus for a stereotype that you face then good for you. I have said something similar earlier in this thread. The stereotype doesn't hurt me, or at least not yet. But if it hurts somebody else, I'm not going to tell that person to just suck it up because it really isn't a big deal. That's being an arse.

But it doesn't hurt, that's my point. All stereotypes can be hurtful, but some stereotypes are helpful. And some are more helpful then they are harmful.

Anyway, I didn't hear you shouting down the praise of the Confederate flag when people were pointing out it was a hurtful symbol. But why should you? You didn't care about that issue. You talk about what interests you and take the positions you want, regardless of whether it hurts feelings, right?

 

[Crackerbox]

If you're genuinely concerned about helping African-Americans, then why not put that energy into the 37% loss of net worth among them from 2000 to 2015? Or the decline in African-Americans finishing their undergraduate or graduate education? Aren't those more important than trying to get a consensus on the Confederate flag when there isn't one?

That's how minorities get ahead. It's why Asian-Americans are largely silent and haven't wasted time and effort on trying to make things better. All of the arguing and debating is for naught. It's about money and power so as to create social uplift.

That's all a capitalist society cares about in the final analysis.

 

[Traitorfish]

I'm actually not convinced that the "Asians are smart" stereotypes is helpful to Asian people. "Smart", in the stereotype, always comes with qualifications: that they're technical rather than imaginative, efficient but not inventive. Engineers but not architects, you might say. Truly creative thought- scientific discovery, technological breakthroughs, the entire field of cultural production- are imagined to be reserved for white people.

It seems like an attempt to reconcile the empirical fact of Asian academic success with a continuing presumption that Europeans are still on some level the greater minds. This might incidentally benefit some Asian people, but ultimately it seems to function as a rationalisation for the marginalisation of Asians in Western culture. "Of course Asians are academically successful", when we can say, "but they're not still not as intelligent as white people where it really counts."

Perhaps when Asian philosophy, art and literature are taken as seriously as European traditions rather than as exotic consumables, we can claim that stereotypes of Asian intellectualism is beneficial, but until then I must remain sceptical.

 

[Sommerswerd]

"Smart", in the stereotype, always comes with qualifications: that they're technical rather than imaginative, efficient but not inventive. Engineers but not architects, you might say.

Yes, absolutely, I agree with much of this analysis, and I think it is an example of what I mean when I say the "Black male sexual prowess" stereotype has a bunch of downsides... what you might refer to as "qualifications."

But my argument, is that despite the qualifications, Asians end up with a net benefit from the stereotype. "Engineers not architects" you say? Or maybe "scientists not artists" or "doctors not entertainers" or "accountants not athletes"... And you don't see the immense economic benefit that this brings?

Asian children are steered into fields that they, indeed that anyone, of any ethnicity would have a much better chance of achieving success in, not because they are more racially suited to those fields, or even because the fields pay more at the high-end, but because there is more stable, reliable opportunity in those fields for a larger number of people.

Consider the flipside, where your children are being bombarded with the stereotype that they should be "athletes not accountants, because 'we' aren't good at math, but boy 'we' sure are good at running fast!" or "entertainers not doctors, because only 'sellouts' care getting good grades! 'We' are good at rapping and dancing" See the difference?

 

[jackelgull]

I'm actually not convinced that the "Asians are smart" stereotypes is helpful to Asian people. "Smart", in the stereotype, always comes with qualifications: that they're technical rather than imaginative, efficient but not inventive. Engineers but not architects, you might say. Truly creative thought- scientific discovery, technological breakthroughs, the entire field of cultural production- are imagined to be reserved for white people.

It seems like an attempt to reconcile the empirical fact of Asian academic success with a continuing presumption that Europeans are still on some level the greater minds. This might incidentally benefit some Asian people, but ultimately it seems to function as a rationalisation for the marginalisation of Asians in Western culture. "Of course Asians are academically successful", when we can say, "but they're not still not as intelligent as white people where it really counts."

Perhaps when Asian philosophy, art and literature are taken as seriously as European traditions rather than as exotic consumables, we can claim that stereotypes of Asian intellectualism is beneficial, but until then I must remain sceptical.

I think you have hit the nail on the head. I also want to note that much Asian philosophy is losing importance within its own country. The world is becoming a more globalized place, and as that happens, Western philosophy as the philosophy of the victors is taking hold as the dominant attitude of the world.

 

[Sommerswerd]

so don't be so sure of it. That's all.

"so sure of" what? What about the wording of my statement (that you were criticizing) gave the impression that I was "so sure" of anything?

 

[jackelgull]

If you're genuinely concerned about helping African-Americans, then why not put that energy into the 37% loss of net worth among them from 2000 to 2015? Or the decline in African-Americans finishing their undergraduate or graduate education? Aren't those more important than trying to get a consensus on the Confederate flag when there isn't one?

That's how minorities get ahead. It's why Asian-Americans are largely silent and haven't wasted time and effort on trying to make things better. All of the arguing and debating is for naught. It's about money and power so as to create social uplift.

That's all a capitalist society cares about in the final analysis.

It's also a historically proven too. The women's rights movement didn't begin gaining ground until women started making money and gained financial independence from men. As African Americans entered the work force in larger numbers and made more money, the Civil Right's movement took off. Financial power has always been the cursor towards social and political equality.

 

[warpus]

Not always, states didn't start legalizing homosexual marriage because gay men were suddenly making good coin.

 

[Borachio]

Maybe or maybe not. But gay people are notoriously better off than the rest of us. On average. The pink pound is not to be sniffed at. And never was.

 

[Sommerswerd]

Not always, states didn't start legalizing homosexual marriage because gay men were suddenly making good coin.

I don't know about this. Sure closeted LGBT were making money before, but as more people become openly gay and make their economic power known, and especially link their spending/political contributions to gay rights , the marriage equality movement has gained ground exponentially.

 

[Crackerbox]

I think you have hit the nail on the head. I also want to note that much Asian philosophy is losing importance within its own country. The world is becoming a more globalized place, and as that happens, Western philosophy as the philosophy of the victors is taking hold as the dominant attitude of the world.

You beat me to the punch. Traitorfish is precisely and succintly correct in his conclusion. It used to be an adage that an Asian could copy with the best of them, but never innovate. I can't tell you how often I heard that old chestnut. Obviously with postmodern robotics, that's being daily proven to be incorrect.

Link to video.
Globalism and free trade ruined the employment situation for all Americans, and particularly was destructive to middle class Hispanic-Americans and Black-Americans. Many of them came late to home ownership and are becoming renters again.