This is an article from Kenny Xu, a D.C.-based writer focusing on identity politics and the author of the
book “An Inconvenient Minority: An Attack on Asian American Excellence and the Fight for Meritocracy”
Drifter
Critical
Race Theory often justifies Asian discrimination because Asian Americans are
often on the wrong side of the “groups who need to be helped” debate.
One of today’s most
vexing Supreme Court cases is Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard,
which has brought anti-Asian discrimination to the forefront of the current
cultural discourse. SFFA (Students for Fair Admissions) contends that Harvard’s
“race-conscious” admissions process violates the Constitution by disadvantaging
Asian American applicants based upon their race, while Harvard argues that
campus diversity goals justify their race-based process.
Most of the reasoning
behind Harvard’s admissions process comes from critical race theory (CRT), a
theory of race which originated
with Harvard
University. Another hot topic recently, critical race theory teaches that
America is divided into privilege and oppressed groups based on race.
Negative aspects of modern society follow from that dichotomy, and the only way
to fix it is to revolutionize the way we think about race, culture, and
society.
Under the critical race
framework, “white supremacy” covers a lot of different phenomena. Everything
from blatant discrimination, to the existence
of English grammar, to choosing
not to riot are
included under the term. And in the words of social justice activist and author
Ibram X. Kendi, “The only remedy to racist discrimination is anti-racist
discrimination. The only remedy to past discrimination is present
discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future
discrimination.” In order to combat white supremacy (however broadly defined),
critical race theorists view “antiracist” discrimination as the only legitimate
response.
However, with the
emergence of several racial groups that have come to be just as successful as
whites, Critical Race Theorists came up with the term “white adjacency.” Robin
DiAngelo, author of the now infamous book “White Fragility,” defines it this way: “The
closer you are to whiteness—the term often used is white-adjacent—you’re still
going to experience racism, but there are going to be some benefits due to your
perceived proximity to whiteness. The further away you are, the more intense the
oppression’s going to be.”
According to critical
theorists, Asian Americans are the most white adjacent minority. They go so far
as to say that Asians don’t
count as
“people of color,” and even invented the term “BIPOC:
(Black and Indigenous people of color) specifically to exclude Asian and other
“white adjacent” minorities,
What does this
mean? In my new book, An
Inconvenient Minority, I tell the story of the many Asian Americans who are harmed by
an ideology that penalizes their success. Progressives “call out Asians for
either trying to be like white people or benefitting from systems that prop up
white dominance.” Under critical race theory, it also means they are complicit
in upholding white supremacy. To be white adjacent is to benefit from the
systems of oppression that America was allegedly founded upon.
Applying the words of
Kendi, then, means that Asians are a privileged group in which discrimination
is justified, to make room for the “truly” oppressed.
But is the concept of
white adjacency actually valid? In fact, white adjacency is simply a
rhetorical tool to discriminate against Asian Americans. It’s also an
implicitly racist concept that devalues other races, meritocracy, and Asian
culture.
The idea of white
adjacency hinges on the overwhelming success of Asian Americans in this
country. It emerges from the fact that Asian Americans have the highest
per capita income, lowest per capita crime
rates,
and highest
rates of college education. In fact, Asian Americans score better on average than whites
on all of these variables.
The problem is that
critical race theory implicitly defines every good societal outcome as white.
Even if your family came from China or India, being educated and achieving a
high degree of personal success is deemed “white” behavior. This is racist in
multiple ways. Obviously, it puts Asian Americans into a white adjacent box
that completely ignores their unique cultures and struggles. Furthermore, it
implies by default that other races aren’t successful, talented, or educated.
If being rich and successful are “white” characteristics, then doesn’t the
logic follow that being poor and lazy are Black characteristics? Despite
pretending to care about diversity and inclusion, critical race theory is
actually racist in the way it implicitly categorizes groups of people.
Asians are harmed from
multiple directions by the white adjacency myth. Asian Americans have struggled
in this country as well – let us not forget the Chinese Exclusion Act or
Japanese Internment. Yet, the concept is frequently used to silence Asian
Americans when they attempt to explain their own struggles as a minority in
America. It also gives universities such as Harvard the required justification
to discriminate against Asian American applicants to their schools, who blow
every other race out of the water academically. Asians are an inconvenient minority because
their high performance is a threat to both prevailing woke narratives
surrounding diversity, and to continued, largely white, ruling class hegemony
in the Ivy League schools. As the coastal elite continue to double down on
critical race theory, Asian Americans will continue to be the thorn in their
side.
Asian Americans are not
deficient white people or “white adjacent.” They are unique individuals from
distinct cultures, each with our own struggles and backgrounds. Their
individual successes are theirs alone, and defining those successes as “white”
is racist in myriad ways. Asian Americans cannot simply be designated by
Critical Race Theory as a prop for white supremacy; we are the inconvenient minority.
