The social justice left defines racism as "prejudice plus power" and by this definition Affirmative action is racist.I'm not talking about "reverse racism" or whatever nonsense they want to call it, I'm talking about Asian people being penalized simply for being Asian even though they are one of the smallest demographics in the US.So if the dominant culture is oppressing a minority culture why isn't the far left fighting for justice in this regard? Why aren't they calling for reform of affirmative action or its removal?SUPPORT JOURNALISM. Become a patron athttp://www.patreon.com/TimcastSupport the show (http://timcast.com/donate)
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Harvard has recently been accused of discriminating against Asian Americans.
And when this story dropped, I didn't make a video about it because I thought, yeah, what else is new?
Universities have been accused of discriminating against Asians for decades.
Recently, Google was accused of discriminating against Asians.
I started to wonder, why is it that we're not seeing outrage from social justice activists over this oppressed minority being discriminated against?
Asians have been the victims of racism for a long time, some really bad racism, and they still are.
As someone who is Asian myself, I had to wonder, why is it that it is okay to discriminate against Asian people?
And I started to realize that based on the logic of the far left, Based on intersectional feminism and how it functions, it actually is racist to implement affirmative action policies.
And now I'm going to talk about why I think that is.
On June 15th, we saw this story from ABC News.
Harvard University accused of racial discrimination in admissions process for Asian American students.
A non-profit group called Students for Fair Admissions claimed in court documents,
today's court filing exposes the startling magnitude of Harvard's discrimination against
Asian American applicants, Edward Bloom, president of Students for Fair Admissions,
said in a statement to ABC News. This filing definitively proves that Harvard engages in
racial balancing, uses race as far more than a plus factor, and has no interest in exploring
race-neutral alternatives.
Instead of taking even the most minor steps to address this problem, or conducting any further investigation, Harvard killed the investigation and buried the reports, SFAA said in its filing.
The institution fired back in its own filing, stating the 2013 study was incomplete, preliminary, and based on limited inputs.
The university went on to say their rate of Asian-American enrollment has increased by 29% over the last decade.
Mr. Blum and his organization's incomplete and misleading data analysis paint a dangerously inaccurate picture of Harvard College's whole-person admissions process by omitting critical data and information factors, such as personal essays and teacher recommendations, that directly counter his arguments, Harvard said in a statement.
SFFA claims Asian American applicants were not admitted because of low personality ratings.
The group states that Harvard assigns Asian American students the lowest score of any other racial group based on traits such as positive personality and likability.
They said that if Harvard only considered academics, Asian American students would make up 50% of the class.
Harvard rebutted this claim, saying the university considers more than just grades and test scores.
After seeing this story, I started to wonder about oppression versus the oppressed.
I started to wonder about what it means to be at odds with the dominant culture.
Many people on the far left have told me that whiteness is the idea of the dominant culture and how their cultural norms dictate what is or is not acceptable.
And when I started reading the story, I had to wonder, if Asian students are kind of boring or studious and aren't likable, then maybe that's an issue of the dominant culture straight up telling a minority culture that we don't like the way you people are.
If Asian students are overwhelmingly not likable, and their grades don't matter, then there is a problem between the two cultures.
So I started to dig into this.
Vox ran a story just last March called, And I immediately thought that this story was pretty much pro-affirmative action, but was going to address the issue of Asians in universities, so I thought it'd be worth reading.
Almost immediately, they show this graphic.
How you'd have to score on your SATs to have an equal chance of admission by race.
At seven highly selective universities in 1997, adjusting for numerous factors.
So basically, they use the white applicant score as a baseline.
If you are Asian, no matter what you score, you get a 140 point penalty.
If you're Hispanic, you get a 130 point bonus.
And if you're black, you get a 310 point bonus.
And beneath it, it says, The researchers controlled for sex, citizenship, athlete and legacy status, SAT and ACT scores, AP tests taken, SAT2 tests taken, and the scores, high school GPA, class rank, whether the applicant was a National Merit or National Achievement Scholar, high school type, elite 72 high school, and state residence.
This study found that there is a penalty on Asian Americans simply for being Asian.
They controlled for all of these different factors.
And if you are Asian, you have to score a lot higher than all other races if you want to be admitted into a university.
That sounds like...
Racism.
It sounds like the dominant group in this country oppressing a minority group.
And don't take my word for it, let's look at the actual numbers.
The Asian population is 5.6% of the United States.
Non-Hispanic blacks comprise 12.1% of the United States.
Hispanics and Latinos make up 17% of the U.S.
population.
And non-Hispanic whites totaled about 62% of the U.S.
population.
So let's talk about racism as it's defined by the social justice left.
It is a dominant group, power plus prejudice.
They are oppressing a minority group.
Here we have Asians, one of the smallest minorities in the country at 5.6%, being oppressed by the white majority at these universities who are saying that you have to score higher on these tests.
But not only that, if the black population being more than double the Asians and the Hispanic population being more than triple the Asians, those are also large dominant groups who, if they are advocating for affirmative action, are being racist against Asians who are a small minority.
Again, you have different cultures.
You have a much larger group advocating for a policy telling the minority group, you have to abide by these rules based on your race.
That is an oppressor oppressing a minority.
In fact, in the Vox article it says, In the mid-1980s, Asian-American groups started to uncover admissions practices That hurt Asian applicants.
Eventually, top schools like Stanford and Brown conceded there was a real bias against Asians in their admissions policies.
The document they linked from 1990 says between 1983 and 1986, Asian Americans charged elite colleges and universities in the United States with using discriminatory quotas to limit the enrollment of Asian-American applicants.
Included in the list of accused universities were some of the most prestigious institutions of higher education.
Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of California Los Angeles.
All of the universities denied using quotas against Asian-American students, but the media suggested otherwise, featuring stories about Asian-American high school valedictorians with perfect grade point averages and assorted academic honors who failed to gain admission to the top universities.
And then we have the New York Times from 2013.
Statistics indicate an Ivy League Asian quota.
In it, they say the last 20 years have brought a huge rise in the number of Asians winning top academic awards in our high schools or being named National Merit Scholarship semifinalists.
It seems quite suspicious that none of trends have been reflected in their increased enrollment at Harvard and other top Ivy League universities.
Suffice it to say, there are many bits of circumstantial evidence suggesting Asians are being discriminated against.
And as I pointed out, they're the overwhelming minority.
In which case, is it racist when the far left advocates for a policy that discriminates against Asians?
If universities are giving benefits to black students and hispanic students, but penalizing Asian students under affirmative action policies, that would indicate that a much larger group is enacting and benefiting from policies at the expense of a smaller minority group.
It seems like you've got prejudice and power here.
Is it not fair to say that affirmative action is racist by every metric, according to the left's definition of prejudice plus power and the standard definition of discrimination against someone based on their race?
What was really surprising to me is that in 2016, the Supreme Court ruled that you can use race as a factor in admission.
From CNN, the Supreme Court on Thursday upheld the race-conscious admissions program at the University of Texas, saying that the plan taking race into consideration as one factor of admission is constitutional.
The court's affirmance of the university's admissions policies today does not necessarily mean the university may rely on the same policy without refinement.
It is the university's ongoing obligation to engage in constant deliberation and continued reflection regarding its admissions policies, Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in the majority opinion.
They said, this is the second time the court heard the case from lead plaintiff Abigail Fisher, a white woman from Texas.
In 2012, the justices issued a narrow opinion, sending the case back down to a lower court for another look.
After the lower court again upheld the school program, the justices once again took up the case.
I was actually surprised to find the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the universities, saying that they can take race into consideration when admitting students.
They called it positive discrimination.
It's still discrimination.
So then my question is this.
If the goal of these policies, if the goal of affirmative action is to make sure that minority groups are given equal opportunity to these programs, then why is it that no one cares that Google and universities Even the Vox article that talks about Asians being discriminated against, and does show evidence of it being true, acts as though it's still beneficial that Asians are purposefully held back.
What I find particularly interesting is that the argument itself lends itself to another argument.
This woman who works at Vox writes that, as an Asian person, they're being used as mascots against affirmative action, and that many Asian people actually agree with affirmative action.
And what that says to me is that you're an individual.
You hold those beliefs.
You highlight other people who agree with you.
But the reality is, it's not like the Asian community is all completely in agreement that affirmative action is good.
Because we're actually seeing groups form of Asian students and other Asian community members trying to fight back against this racism.
The website AsianAmericanForEducation.org, the Asian American Coalition for Education.
They say they're a non-political, non-profit national organization, the proven leader in fighting for Asian American children's equal education rights.
Now I'm going to tell you why I just plain don't like identitarian politics.
And this is one of the biggest reasons.
I see the active discrimination against minorities.
I see the people on the far left saying that racism is prejudice plus power.
I then see them wield that power against minorities, against the Asian community and the mixed-race community.
And what is their response?
You're racist for accusing them of being racist.
It just doesn't make sense.
I see a group of Asian Americans coming together to fight against discrimination and then I see Asian women writing for Vox saying that they don't disagree with affirmative action and neither do these people.
And that says to me that we're all individuals and that someone might claim to represent the minority group or some group of people when they really don't.
They represent themselves and maybe other people who have agreed to let them represent Those people!
But they certainly don't represent me, and it's hard for me to find what group I belong to when I'm part of a couple different races.
In which case, these policies just don't make sense.
Because they're racist by everyone's definition.
In which case, maybe they shouldn't exist.
But, all that really ends up happening, in my opinion, is that people are going to fight for power.
The people on the left are going to do whatever it takes to gain power for themselves.
The people on the right are going to do the same thing.
And there are honest people who are moderate left, moderate right, and in the center, who think we should all just be honest with each other and try and figure out what makes the best for everyone.
We don't always agree on it, but I think, ultimately, at the end of the day, we all want the same thing.
We want everyone to be able to pursue life, liberty, and happiness.
We just disagree on how to get there, and that's the big challenge.
This is something I wanted to address because I'm kind of sick of these white far leftists being racist but claiming they are not racist.
Look, I get it.
There are people on the right who are overtly racist.
They say it to my faces.
I've dealt with this stuff growing up.
They don't like the fact that I am a mudblood and they have called me and other people who are mixed mudbloods.
But people on the far left claim to be anti-racist when in fact It tends to be far leftists who are overwhelmingly white accusing me of being a racist and agreeing with the people who actually don't like me and probably want to kill me in some instances.
That really annoys the hell out of me.
So as somebody who doesn't necessarily fit in in any of these programs, all I can do is look at them and say, hey, all this is doing is giving one particular political faction power.
And that's really what it's all about when I look at it.
I'm really just sick of people using the mask of anti-racism to attack people in the streets and claim they're the good guys fighting on the right side of history.
That's just not true.
I don't know what the right side is gonna be, but I think it tends to be more liberal and libertarian.
And that means we should allow people to live and let live, and not allow people to bully others to gain power.
But...
I don't know.
There's a lot I could have covered in this video and I kind of just wanted to talk about this issue because it was in the news and it's something that's poked at me for a long time.
So let me know what you think.
Comment below.
We'll keep the conversation going.
I know a lot of people who tend to be on the libertarian spectrum, left or right, are going to say affirmative action is a bad idea.
But maybe it's not a bad idea.
Maybe it's just being implemented wrong.
Maybe it can be fixed and maybe there are policies that actually do make sense.
Comment below, and again, we'll keep the conversation going.
