[tedivm]

Your examples are two opinion pieces that seem to not actually understand what critical race theory even is. Asians aren't a problem for the people who study critical race theory, it's really only a problem for people who have no clue what they're talking about.

[rayiner]

Asians and Hispanics create two problems for critical race theory, one pretty easily fixable another less so.

1) CRT, originally developed in the 1970s, generally assumes a black-white dichotomy. Insofar as it addresses Hispanics and Asians, it does so by putting them in the “black” column—victims of oppression in a system of “white supremacy.” But that’s plainly not true. If you look at the statistics, the closest comparison to the experience of poor Latino and Asian immigrants is poor white immigrants like Italians. They are achieving economic parity with whites within a couple of generations. They don’t face persistent multi-generational gaps like black and indigenous people do.

2) Asians (and to a lesser extent Latinos) broadly do not share the political premise of CRT: that our economic and political systems are tainted by “white supremacy” and must be fundamentally changed. That flows partly from culture. Animosity between different ethnic and cultural groups is widespread in Asia and Latin America. Generally speaking, it’s perceived as bad manners, not an existential threat to prosperity. My parents never talked to me about racism growing up, and I suspect that’s pretty typical in Asian and Latino families. By contrast, I think such conversations is very common among black Americans. That attitude is reinforced by the economics. The experience of the overwhelming majority of the kids of Asian and Latino immigrants is closing the gap with whites as compared to their parents. The notion, fundamental to CRT, that non-whites can only make progress through coordinated changes to the system isn’t compatible with their lives experience.

[kelseyfrog]

> Insofar as it addresses Hispanics and Asians, it does so by putting them in the “black” column—victims of oppression in a system of “white supremacy.”

Can you point to CRT works that do this? I'd like to read them.

[rayiner]

Sure, look at the California Model Ethnic Studies Curriculum: https://www.cde.ca.gov/ci/cr/cf/documents/esmcchapter4.pdf. It takes Kendi's black-white oppressed-oppressor dichotomy, and simply shuffles asians into the oppressed, non-white category.

Lesson 14:

> It presents a false narrative that Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPIs) have overcome racism and prejudice. It glosses over the violence, harm, and legalized racism that AAPIs have endured, for example, the 1871 Chinese massacre in Los Angeles, the annexation of Hawaii, shooting of Southeast Asian schoolchildren in Stockton.

Lesson 16:

>Chinese Americans are Americans and have played a key role in building this country. Had it not been for this workforce, one of the greatest engineering feats of the nineteenth century (the first transcontinental railroad and others that followed), would not have been achieved within the allotted timeline.

It's a projection of how CRT views black history, where ethnic identity is defined in terms of historical discrimination. Meanwhile, do kids of German, Italian, or Irish descent in California learn about the intense racism their ancestors faced when they came here? Of course not.

What's especially galling is that German, Italian, and Irish Americans are at least the descendants of people who faced intense discrimination when they got to America. Meanwhile, virtually all Asian Americans are descended from people who came here after 1950, and mostly after 1990. California is teaching Asian kids to identify with historically discriminated people who aren't even their ancestors.

[908B64B197]

> What's especially galling is that German, Italian, and Irish Americans are at least the descendants of people who faced intense discrimination when they got to America. Meanwhile, virtually all Asian Americans are descended from people who came here after 1950, and mostly after 1990. California is teaching Asian kids to identify with historically discriminated people who aren't even their ancestors.

Especially for Asians, a lot of them came to America fleeing persecutions in their home countries... from other Asians! I'm thinking Vietnamese refugees fighting against the communist regime and people from Hong Kong fleeing the Chinese Communist Party at home.

[kelseyfrog]

I should have been more clear. I mean like original works by CRT scholars that do this. Something with a DOI would be great.