Asians are “overprivileged” and enjoy this “unacknowledged power” in a totally “incognizant” way. Privilege can look like power when it is in fact permission to escape or dominate. You don’t need epicanthic folds to see that simply by the virtue of their success Asians are seriously and systematically oppressing people of color. To be overrepresented in a field is to dominate those who are not proportionately represented. Whether they know it or not, simply existing can be tantamount to a hate crime… To tackle Asian privilege and bring them down to where the rest of us are, we need systemic change on a global level.
+ Gavin McInnes, on “Tackling Asian Privilege”
Like AsianAngryMan, I seriously contemplated the need to even respond to this article. Probably having received extreme lash-back from the Asian American community (as well as the literary community for his poorly written satirical voice), the author wrote a second piece called “Tackling White Privilege,” pointing out that if one substitutes “white” for “Asian” in the previous article, it sounds like every other left leaning, “social justice” article on the topic of racial equality and White Privilege.
I have dismissed the article as a poorly written, childish, misinformed cry out for attention. He clearly felt that White Privilege somehow invalidated his own hard work and felt the need to make the “reverse racism” accusation — a classic White Privilege defense mechanism. I ventured to guess that the author is white (which indeed he is) and possibly, maybe, kind-of…very right leaning (yes, also true). He’s also written another piece on the boo-hoo complaints of White Privilege, in which he cries foul that people of color are allowed to complain because they “aren’t winning,” but winners (read: whites) can’t complain about injustices. That’s racist, he says.
The Comment Section
The worst part of the Asian Privilege article has to be the comment section (or the fact it has 27k likes on Facebook). Beginning with fears of Asian invasion — an unsophisticated modern adaptation of the “Yellow Peril” — the comments go to perpetrate every act of racial insensitivity from reaffirming white supremacy to making very aggressive microaggressions against Asians.
Another commentator says:
Even the much vaunted northern Asians with their marginally higher IQs than Whites have never been particularly innovative or socially advanced… The development of gunpowder weapons and highly-sophisticated sailing ships by Europeans is an unbelievably interesting story… Only among Europeans did that kind of thing happen. Even in the modern era Asians have invented virtually nothing of fundamental importance.
This commenter clearly has no concept of truth or history. The earlier part of the comment (not included) is particularly loaded with completely biased views of the community of color. Beginning with ascribing crime and “just plain crappy behavior” to the innate characteristics of both Hmongs and Mexicans, the comment goes on to cast off Vietnamese as “gang affiliated” (Hmm, I wonder if you’ve ever thought of the basic societal root of gang communities developing) and characterizing South Asians as “parasitic.” Thankfully, the commentator deems me and other “North Asians” as “pretty good people.” Phe says, “I like them.” Well, what an honor. But apparently we still “flock” to phe’s country and have no business being here. We “overpopulate” and ruin our own countries, then just flee to the United States like locusts to run the American economy to the ground.
Articles like these, comments like these, and people like these make me feel so helpless and exhausted, frustrated with myself and the world, then just blood-red angry.
However, since I read Jimmy Boggs’s quote, “I love this country not only because my ancestors’ blood is in the soil but for the potential of what it can become,” I have tried to strive for the same sense of love in my revolutionary acts. But I do not think that I am yet ready to make peace with this country’s racist, sexist, bigoted, blind nature. Perhaps this is something that comes with age and wisdom. I just don’t think I’m not quite there yet.
Asian American Feminist 