
Ask HN: How can I become politically active and promote Asian-American rights? - TheAsprngHacker
I am Asian-American, and I&#x27;m growing concerned over rising discrimination against Asian-Americans. Asian-Americans have no social or political capital, i.e. in my experience, anti-Asian racism isn&#x27;t taken as seriously as racism against other groups, and it isn&#x27;t &quot;trendy&quot; to support Asian-Americans on social media. I am scared that prejudice against Asian-Americans is increasing, and neither of the two mainstream US political parties have a reliable track record for us. We&#x27;re basically ignored and politically irrelevant. I predict that Asian-Americans need to quickly build social and political capital or else the coming years will be rough for us.<p>I feel that one of the problems is that Asian-Americans tend not to be politically active. I want to be the change I want to see in the world. Some of my thoughts:<p>- It&#x27;s important to build soft power through culture (e.g. by having more Asian-American artists)<p>- Asian-Americans are said to be the &quot;new Jews,&quot; so maybe I can look at whatever Jewish-Americans did to advocate for their rights as a model<p>How can I best promote Asian-American rights? Also, what can I do to protect myself from the general dirtiness and dangers that come with becoming politically involved?
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neither_color
>it isn't "trendy" to support

As another non-black minority I can second that the incessant pandering to one
particular group has us all scratching our heads going "wait what's really
going on?" Lots of really strange movements are being pushed on behalf of all
minorities without our input. I just want to move on with my life/career
without having identity shoved in my face all the time. A white friend of mine
even tried to give me "the talk" about he recognizes he has privilege yada
yada and I quickly told him to cut it out.

~~~
DenisM
> A white friend of mine even tried to give me "the talk"

Wouldn't it be nice if he asked you opinion about this kerfuffle instead of
"confessing" at you?

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themodelplumber
Hi, I'm really sorry to hear about this. :-( I wish I could offer some advice,
but I wanted to express my support of what you're doing here. You deserve to
have your voice heard, and all Asian-Americans deserve the unconditional &
full support of our nation.

I'll contact my government representatives about what you've written, hoping
it can help your efforts. Wishing you the best of luck with your work and I
sincerely hope that the coming years can somehow be worked into years of
promise for you and all other Asian-Americans. --Marc

~~~
TheAsprngHacker
Thank you for your support. I do not know where you live, but one issue that I
am concerned about is California's ACA-5, which seeks to bring back racial
preferences to public universities and will be on the ballot this November. It
is being framed as being pro-equality, but I am concerned that it will also
enable universities to discriminate against Asian-American high schoolers.

One idea I've heard proposed is to instead ask a yes-or-no question, "Are you
black?", so that universities can help increase black representation, but the
important part is that they should not be able to find out whether or not
you're Asian-American. At the very least, universities should not be able to
distinguish between Asian-Americans and the white majority. The understanding
I've heard is that WASP elites aren't necessarily concerned about other
minority groups eating away at their influence, but they know that in a
meritocratic system, Asian-Americans will outperform them, and therefore they
use the "holistic admissions" system to keep Asian-Americans out of top
universities (e.g. Ivy League schools) and therefore prevent Asian-Americans
from reaching leadership positions and endangering their influence.

Furthermore, college applications ask where you were born and where your
parents went to university. Although there is an option to select "prefer not
to disclose" for race, my parents were educated in China, and I was born in
Japan (despite not even being Japanese anyway!), and I couldn't hide this
information. Colleges should not ask this, as it allows them to discriminate
against immigrant families, namely Asian immigrant families. China-related
xenophobia may make such discrimination worse.

Right now, I'm in college. My dream in HS was to study programming language
theory, and I wanted to get into a good university strong in type theory and
constructive math. However, the admissions officers were laypeople who
wouldn't have even heard of PL theory, and furthermore they negatively
stereotype Asian-Americans who are interested in math or programming, or who
have an academic focus. I want to make sure that other Asian-Americans in the
same position that I was will get a fair shot at a good education.

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raxxorrax
The best strategy is to defend general rights or human rights in my opinion.
You won't achieve much without wider support that is always focused on mostly
individuals.

Your rights against being discriminated against is violated by a lot of modern
"diversity" strategies in my opinion.

Perhaps Asians would be the last to profit from such an endeavor, but I don't
really see better alternatives.

Jews were indeed similarly discriminated against. Universities had quotas to
keep some of them out of higher education.

To be honest, I think minorities are abused to justify claims to power or by
others for emotional needs.

It wouldn't be wrong to pronounce the specific plight Asians face, but I doubt
it will help being treated more fairly. But you can certainly write
representatives that there is discrimination. If that discrimination is
enacted by institutions instead of individuals, it is real institutional
racism for once.

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xoxoy
Unfortunately Asian Americans are in a tough spot right now politically with
renewed interest at the state level in legalizing affirmative action,
including in California.

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TheAsprngHacker
Another person replied to your comment and criticized you for interpreting my
post in a certain way. (The reply is now flagged and dead.) I would like to
make clear that the ACA-5 is absolutely one of the political issues that I am
concerned about.

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aaron695
> \- It's important to build soft power through culture (e.g. by having more
> Asian-American artists)

Yes, definitely. TV. It's impossible to beat the hours of exposure TV
provides. Eddie Huang might have disowned Fresh Off the Boat but it still was
amazing for public opinion.

\- Asian-Americans are said to be the "new Jews,"

This seems to be narrowly around University admissions. I don't think the
general public would like this comparison. I also think because of religion
and the holocaust it's a different route.

I'm surprised you are grouping ACA-5 with this, I think you are thinking to
much around your own environment. I think it's a different topic to what a
cold war with China would bring.

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jelliclesfarm
I hear you and I think you are absolutely right. Having said that, I don’t
have an answer.

There is no ‘politically correct way’ to address this.

