One interesting thing about this whole debate is that people seem very fixated on the concept that being anti-China translates into anti-Asian American. There certainly may be backlash (plenty of Koreans went to internment camps during WWII), but most Asian countries are super hawkish on China (eg https://nationalinterest.org/blog/korea-watch/poll-most-south-koreans-are-wary-china-175989 ). Probably because the grandparents that Nina Luo referred to were soldiers in the army (or contemporaries of soldiers in the army) that threatened Korea and other Asian countries in the 50s and 60s.
To the extent I get angry about incorrect discourse, it's when Chinese Americans claim to speak for all Asian Americans...
I live in Vietnam where anti-Chinese sentiment is extremely high. To the point where there are no "Chinese" restaurants. They will go out of their way to say they are a Cantonese restaurant or a Shandong restaurant or even "We serve a variety of Cantonese, Fujian, Hunan, and Sichuan food". Anything but "Chinese".
It's true that the politics of East Asia among East Asian people are actually nearly incomprehensible to the discourse. Then I see my School's few Asian students who are almost entirely Filipino taunted on the school yard over the course of the year when kids think adults aren't listening.
I don't quite know what to do with the fact that it's really quite hard for most people to distinguish between the nation and the state. Once you release those furies it's very hard to make any sense of anything.
yeah totally. I think it's super ironic that a bunch of Koreans were interned because the US was at war with Japan, when Japan was simultaneously committing terrible atrocities in Korea.
But I think the point here is not "pretend that there is no racism against all Asians as a result of anti-China discourse." I think similar to Matt's evergreen point that "don't assume Asian American activists are representative of all Asians," there is also "don't assume that Chinese Americans are representative of all Asian Americans" or, similarly, that an anti-China policy position is inherently anti-Asian.
Anecdotally, Asian Americans joke a lot about how their parents are probably more racist towards other Asian ethnicities than white Americans would ever understand...
or even, if you believe that not all prejudice is racism... for decades my US-residing Korean grandparents refused to buy Japanese cars (and I am sure would have done the same had there been a widely-available Chinese car in the US).
I'm glad you have a picture because otherwise i'd be thoroughly confused by 4 posts in a row that all seem like an Andrew talking with himself. There are two Dan S commentators without pictures on this forum and sometimes they get into discussions with each other; it's confusing.
I totally take your point. I was an English teacher in Seoul and Shanghai for years. The name Asian American is weird considering how raw feelings are between pretty much all Asian nations with China and Japan.
Where it bothers me is some of the anti-Chinese stuff doesn't seem to have any clear point but being rude.
yeah absolutely. btw, I don't want any of the above to come across as justifying any kind of prejudice. I don't think it is a good thing that a lot of Koreans really hate Chinese (my wife is Chinese!). I just think one shouldn't react to warrantless OR "warranted" (not the right word, but I think you get the point) discrimination by saying "don't criticize China"
The idea may be that the kind of people who make racist attacks on others just don't know or care about the distinction between people of Chinese background and other Asian-Americans. It's the same kind of thing as casually referring to Hispanic people as "Mexicans" or people from the Middle East as "Arabs".
well, or maybe a better example is the progressive pundits who were shocked that "Latinos" shifted towards Trump, a topic on which Matt has written quite a bit
One thing that would help a lot is simply to talk about "CCP" or "Chinese government" human right abuse and cover up of the COVID-19 outbreak, not "Chinese," "Israeli government" policy of allowing settlements in the Occupied Territories instead of "Israeli" policy. Of course the CCP and the parties forming the Israeli government WANT everyone living in those countries to support government policies. Our rhetoric should not assume much less promote their success.
Came here to comment something to this effect! I’d guess outside the Beltway most regular voters have zero trouble distinguishing between the people of a country and its government - especially when it’s an unelected authoritarian regime like the PRC. It’s only the actual racists and the people most neurotic about accidentally appearing racist who assume that criticism of a bad government must mean condemnation of its people. But it would cost politicians and media figures $0.00 to say “the Chinese government” instead of “China” when it would be more accurate to do so, and I think it’s worth being careful about that so as not to grow the ranks of the racists.
I disagree. Most people don't want to distinguish between the people of a country and its government. Most Americans like to suggest that government action is fully representative of all the people who live in different US states and they live in the same country! Its not different than all the people who like to lump together all the BLM protesters with the rioters or want to lump together all whites as being fundamentally racists.
People like to disparage groups - especially others. They will happily use whatever excuse is available to do so.
Interesting debate between a view of "most people" that's glass half-empty versus class half-full. I've met plenty of people with views that fall on either side - one of my last co-workers refused to travel to red states since trump's election, for example. I guess my take is that both of your descriptions correctly describe a lot of people, but I'm not sure which one describes "most" people.
I think people can be amazingly thoughtful and generous, especially in person. I also think people love to knock other people whether it be because of sports, location, style (or lack thereof), etc. Our host is a great example of both.
"[M]ost regular voters have zero trouble distinguishing between the people of a country and its government" -- I hope you're right about that! Even if that's true, though, another reason to be careful about this is that if I see a random person criticizing "China" when they mean "the Chinese government", I'm not a mind reader, *I* can't be sure that they aren't one of the small fraction who are confused about the distinction--and it only takes a little uncertainty to create a lot of nervousness.
Completely agree with this! I understand that "country X" is fewer syllables than "the government of country X", but I still loathe it when people use the former as shorthand for the latter in contexts like this, for all the obvious reasons. If you always say "China" when you mean "the CCP", how can I be sure you have a bright line in your head between the government and the ordinary humans who are stuck with it?
Criticizing China (for good reasons like human rights abuses or bad reasons like ‘Kung Flu!’) may have spillover into creating prejudice against Asian Americans as a whole, particularly the large population of Chinese people who come to the country as graduate students, high skilled workers, or both.
This is obviously, a bad thing. Yet I agree with Matt that it’s unavoidable if you want to have serious conversations about the wrongdoing of nations.
Nevertheless I have never encountered an immigrant graduate student, professor, or high skilled worker from any country who moved here thinking that there would be no bigotry. It’s something that is kind of known negative about the United States. It’s also, not really that easy to remove. What some young activists have gotten so right about this new push for equity is the idea of removing “systemic” barriers to equity.
If we want to make life in America better for recent Chinese immigrants/visa holders, then look at what can be done tangibly to remove systemic barriers that they face. These people deal with what is essentially a nightmare of alphabet soup in terms of getting a student visa, getting a temporary work visa, a permanent work visa, then like forever later a green card.
This makes them take grunt coder/quant jobs long after most have been promoted. They work long hours, and are overly dependent on their employers just to stay in the country.
When they finally make it, if they wish to use their high stable salary to move their parents closer to take care of them in their elder years, this is once again very difficult.
Look more closely at stuff like this. It will go a lot further to help Chinese people in this country than chasing down someone who said “Kung Flu” while drunk.
Re the idea that bigotry is a known negative of moving to the United States:
I can't imagine anyone planning to move anywhere in the world to a culture other than their own who would not expect to feel, at a minimum, somewhat alienated and "left out".
This would be the case with, say, a white American moving to Japan.
"Nevertheless I have never encountered an immigrant graduate student, professor, or high skilled worker from any country who moved here thinking that there would be no bigotry. It’s something that is kind of known negative about the United States."
FWIW, I live in Vietnam. A lot of Vietnamese emigrate to America. Even more want to. American bigotry is essentially completely unknown here. (Well, at least until the latest round of anti-Asian violence in the US made it into the news here.) So there's a data point. America, and living in America, is hyper-idealized and the ones who make it there send back a *very* whitewashed version of their lives. (Everyone is rich. Everyone has great jobs. Everyone is happy all the time. Everyone can buy everything they want. Everything is perfect in America. Don't you wish you could be here, too?)
The first time my (Vietnamese) wife went to the US for a 3-week holiday to visit my family, she was there three days before someone in a supermarket told her to stop stealing "our" jobs and go back home. Before that she had no idea that America was racist. She also doesn't understand TV shows like Lovecraft Country or the HBO Watchmen. She keeps asking "I don't understand, why are they doing that to him?" And I have to keep saying, "Because they are white and he is black."
Wow that’s new information. Hadn’t encountered that kind of “pure positivity” before.
I guess I will just say in defense of my nation.... That yes America has racism. But nothing like what happens in Lovecraft Country is happening today. No people of color in 2021 are sitting down at a diner only to be instantly chased out of town by a gun toting militia because they wanted a cheeseburger at the wrong place.
Some amount of proper criticism of CCP human right policies may rub off on Chinese grad students, but with carful use of language, this side effect should be minimizable.
I'm not really sure I agree with you about the power of carefully chosen language. It seems to me that people are going to draw the associations and implications that they have set up in their brains even if you carefully avoid giving them strict textual excuses.
(This is a general criticism I have of people's attempts to police language.)
>>>based on the (to the best of my knowledge, false) idea that bat-eating is some incredibly widespread Chinese practice<<<
I believe Matt is correct here. It's incredibly rare, I'm pretty sure. I've never seen it on a menu, and I've been all over this country. I've never even heard of people eating bat.* I'd bet my life bats are occasionally used as a food source *somewhere* in China (it's a big country!), but that's true of literally dozens of nations: bats have been an important source of meat for humans forever.
*I've never lived in a Western-bubble here, and thus haven't been spared exposure to some of the more exotic-seeming protein sources. I'm personally eaten wild boar, donkey, frog, snake, bamboo rat and (I was punked, and didn't know I was eating it!) dog in my near decade in China. I really do believe I'd have encountered bat by now were it a common foodstuff.
Also, forgot to mention: I think the consensus still holds that, if a natural zoonotic spillover was the source of the virus, an intermediary species was more likely than not involved, right? Or is that no longer the case? Anyway, if so, it would seem to coincide with the uncommonness of bats as a marketplace item for sale in China.
The idea of unconscious bias is described as a “mindbug” in the book Blindspot. While the psychological phenomenon they’re describing is real, I can’t help but think the *idea* of unconscious bias in *others* is the more pernicious mindbug. It has totally warped our ability to interpret someone else’s claims or ideas on the merits, and instead motivates a certain set to be constantly on the lookout for evidence of other people’s latent bigotry.
It helps that if you can cast someone as racist, unfairly or not, lots of people will feel they don't have to engage with the merits of the person's argument.
Similarly, I have long noticed that there are some people who engage in discussion forums who have a shallow (and, ultimately, wrong) understanding of the Dunning–Kruger Effect and try to use it as a cudgel.
All sound points, but worth a reminder that some criticism of Israel involves delegitimization of Israel, which in my view is antisemitic. There is no "China isn't a county; it's a settler-colonial entity" comic circulating on Instagram.
I don’t think that anyone should delegitimize Israel, and I often speak up to defend Israel’s right to exist when my fellow Leftist friends speak in ways that suggest that Israel shouldn’t exist. (In fact, it *really* bothers me that so many people have strong opinions about Israel and Palestine despite knowing little-to-nothing about the last century of that region’s history.)
That said, I’m not sure that delegitimizing Israel is necessarily antisemitic. Like, I think my friends are being stupid and ignorant and simplistic—but not necessarily prejudiced. But I could be wrong about this, so why do you think delegitimizing Israel is necessarily antisemitic?
Not the biggest fan of Israel here, but I'm trying to think of another example where it might be at least somewhat okay to say that a nation shouldn't exist. That seems to me to be particularly disturbing in the case of Israel critics.
Is this because Israel looms so large in the US political discourse? Serbia, Kosovo, South Sudan, etc all have or recently had some contested status. None of them are very important to US domestic politics, but some people in the respective regions would probably say that those countries shouldn't exist.
The Serbia-Kosovo issue has been mostly resolved, so it's less of an issue than it once was. Also, Israel isn't just a big political issue in the U.S., it's a big political issue in many countries in the world that have few if any Jews or Palestinians living there. Probably a combination of Zionism being a legitimately unique national-political movement, the U.N. being heavily involved for its entire existence, and Jerusalem mattering to a lot of people for religious reasons. Also a bit of oil diplomacy, Cold War politics, and antisemitism.
Well, during the 90's wasn't it an acceptable position to say that Yugoslavia shouldn't exist? (I'm thinking out loud here—I'm not trying to justify the "Israel shouldn't exist" claim and there could certainly be problems with the analogy.)
Isn't that what the wars were over? Yugoslavia was a one-state collection of different Slavic nations. Croatia, Bosnia, and Kosovo wanted to leave Yugoslavia, reducing it to Serbia & Montenegro (which is what happened). So supporting the separatists (which I think was the liberal consensus) meant supporting the end of the nation. Or, on the flip side, as Maggie points out above, people argued that Bosnia, Croatia, and especially Kosovo shouldn't exist as independent countries.
So, the liberal consensus was that having an entity for multiple ethnic groups can’t possibly work? I was expecting that to be the nationalist view, particularly given that there were no clean lines to separate different people within Yugoslavia, so displacement would definitely be needed.
(I realize my use of "different Slavic nations" might be confusing there, since in that case I'm not using it as synonymous with "countries" but elsewhere I have. There I mean "nations" in the sense of "ethnic groups.")
I'd say that no nations should exist. The obvious best-case solution is one worldwide state, with total freedom of movement and universal democratic governance (this is very unlikely in the foreseeable future, of course, because most people have a really unfortunate degree of nationalism and don't favor unlimited immigration, and a bunch aren't fans of democracy either, but it's still the solution we should have in our heads as the ideal)
It's antisemitism against Jews as Jews (Communist-style) rather than antisemitism against Jews as people (Nazi-style). Delegitimizing Israel involves asserting that Jews have no historical rights or ties to the Land of Israel, which is delegitimizing Jews as a people. I believe that some people do this without believing that it's antisemitism, but it still is. Just like people who aren't prejudiced toward individual BIPOC people but have issues with distinct nonwhite cultural identities are expressing a form of racism, even if not intentionally so.
Would you describe a one-state solution where Israel/Palestine was a secular state (possibly with an Arab majority) as anti-Semitic? What if it recognized a right of return for Jews (and Palestinian Arabs)?
A good and fair question. In theory I don't think that a binational state that recognizes the legitimate, non-colonial historical ties of both Jews and Palestinian Arabs to the land is a problem from that standpoint. The main objection to a binational one-state solution is that it's highly impractical -- Belgium is probably the most successful such state in the world and even they have serious issues. But a one-state solution is often used as code for a single Palestinian state that might allow some Jews to stay as a former colonial minority of sorts, and in that case it has the same problem as delegitimizing Israel.
A federation like Bosnia might be a better model. There are some striking similarities: the Serbian portion is in two parts (like the West Bank and Gaza) and there's a district that belongs to both but is governed by neither (Brcko/Jerusalem?)
It would be hard to sell many Israelis on a binational peace plan of "be like Bosnia," even though it is true that Bosnia is doing relatively well compared to what one might have expected in the 1990s. I think most Israelis and Palestinians would prefer full sovereignty over parts of what they consider their homelands to limited sovereignty over all of the land. But the biggest problem is that neither side really believes that the other side wants peace, and without that neither a binational one-state nor a two-state solution will work.
It would depend on the details. If your reasoning is that “ethnostates” are bad, then you can start with dismantling every European country (to say nothing of China) and once you’re done with that we can discuss Israel, the one ethnostate serving an ethnicity that actually has been persecuted everywhere they’ve ever been.
If the reasoning is “because two states don’t work” then it’s more of an empirical discussion. In that case you're not anti-Semitic, you’re just very confused.
"delegitimizing Jews as a people" — I'm not sure what "people" is supposed to mean here. Is it roughly synonymous with ethnicity (or the nation in "nation-state")? Because, if so, then I would say:
As a Jew, the claim that Jews are not (or should not be) an ethnicity does not strike me as particularly antisemitic. In particular, it seems reasonable to define Judaism in terms of religious belief instead (even if this is not the majority view among Jews).
People = ethnicity, yes. And I'd argue that it's systematically antisemitic in the same way that it's systematically racist to like racial minorities as individuals but oppose or deny their cultural and ethnic distinctiveness (and that's a view that members of those racial minorities themselves can hold).
I don't want to mischaracterize your opinion, but it sounds like you're arguing that it's antisemitic to reject a claim along the lines of "Israel has a right to exist as a Jewish state because of the historical kingdoms of Israel and Judah"
I think it's a misunderstanding to characterize the Jewish historical claim to the Land of Israel (which, to be clear, does not negate the Palestinian historical claim to the same land -- two peoples can both have legitimate historical claims to the same land) as based on the Bible or the Davidic kingdoms. The Bible is obviously a matter of faith, and there are historical questions re the precise nature of the ancient Davidic kingdoms. But it is historically and archeologically quite clear that the Jews were the primary occupants of the area during the Greco-Roman eras, until the Romans expelled the Jews. So the Jewish right to a national home in Israel (not to be confused with a theocratic state, and not to be confused with exclusive rights to all of the traditional Land of Israel) is based on more recent, historically-verifiable ties and the lack of a national home elsewhere.
I would say roughly 98% of Zionists do not base Israel’s right to exist on ancient history. (Some will talk about it but that’s not their basis for Israel’s legitimacy). And I know a lot of Zionists, including a lot of fully crazy ones.
It gets really dicey really quickly. What standard can you possibly apply that would only fit Israel but not 100 other countries?
Now it’s entirely possible that you (the putative israel delegitimizer) are just not thinking this through, and are stubborn enough that you won’t back down even when this is pointed out to you, and you are comfortable with the fact that this talking point of illegitimacy was invented by actual genocidal Arab nationalists. And I mean that - it really is possible, with decent probability, that someone is like that. People are stubborn and don’t think things through and are generally flawed.
But… at that point it’s also reasonably likely they are uniquely opposed to Israel existing for less savory reasons.
TBF, some people have tried to use a similar logic to delegitimize countries such as the USA and Australia, arguing that they should be "given back" to their native inhabitants.
Not to derail but the "We acknowledge this event is on Tongva land" thing progressives like to do now bugs me a lot and I've been trying for a while to think about whether there's a rational reason or if it's just a reaction on my part. I guess "delegitimization" is a good word for it—it seems like just a hollow rhetorical gesture that is both radical in what it implies and safe in what practically follows from it. But I acknowledge I might just be a grumpy white guy about it.
It's all performative. The folks who hold (correctly!) that the US stole all the land from the indigenous folks aren't rushing to hand over everything they own to those folks and go, I don't know, somewhere else.
My company, the RAND Corporation in Santa Monica, sold its land to the city which built the very lovely Tongva Park, you know. because the Tongva people once lived there. It's very nice to hang out in and see lots and lots of people with not a Tongvan in sight.
I acknowledge that there is some academic disagreement about whether or not war and territory annexation is a thing back to prehistory, but my read is that all land in the world has been violently taken many, many, many, many, many times. If the most recent time it was violently taken is illegitimate, the previous owners were almost certainly just as illegitimate.
I don't know if I'd say "just as illegitimate"—I think it makes sense to say that as civilization develops, so does our sense of morality, continuous ownership, etc. If we decided to conquer Newfoundland or something today, that would be to my mind less legitimate than whatever primeval first conquest happened there. But your general point is well taken (and of course my framing runs into problematic "what do you mean 'more developed civilization,' Kemo Sabe?" territory).
Yeah, I don't know where the cutoff exactly is, but I agree, if we decided to conquer Newfoundland today, it would be less legitimate.
I was remembering when my wife was trying to build some affordable housing in San Jose and the meeting started off saying that we acknowledge that this is Ohlone land, which caused me to roll my eyes. So apparently my cutoff for not caring about legitimacy is somewhere between "right now" and "250 years ago."
I've been joking to people for a while that the next wacky leftist activist movement in the same vein as "defund the police" will be the "rename America" movement, since Amerigo Vespucci was a white colonizer.
If that ever happens IRL and if politicians actually start nodding toward whatever the proposed alternate terminology is, we'll have reactionary domination of government for the next 50 years.
That's not a "progressive thing". Scott Morrison, the Prime Minister of Australia, is the head of the Liberal part (i.e. right-wing) and leads the Coalition with the Nationals (even more right-wing).
He's not a progressive.
He *always* starts by acknowledging the traditional owners. See here a transcript of a speech he gave about Israel which starts out with:
"Thank you very much. Please be seated. Shalom. It’s wonderful to be here with you all this evening.
"I want to begin by acknowledging the traditional owners of the land on which we gather, the Gadigal and Bidjigal people of the Eora nation."
I think with places like the U.S., Canada, New Zealand, and Australia you just have to properly acknowledge that we are in fact settler-colonial societies, and you mitigate this as much as possible by recognizing the rights of native political entities to the extent they still exist (a big deal at least in the U.S., Canada, and N.Z.) and treating the country as a multi-ethnic society rather than a nation-state of one settler people.
China is a settler-colonial entity, they just got started a lot sooner. That's what's happening in Tibet and Xinjiang, that's why a bunch of peoples live in Southeast Asia, etc.
Well one can certainly argue that portions of China involve Han Chinese colonization of other peoples (this also applies to a number of countries in Europe), but no one argues that there shouldn't be a legitimate nation-state of China within at least a large portion of the territory of the current PRC. Can't say that about world opinions re Israel. Saying that Israel is a legitimate nation-state that is wrongly colonizing Palestinian parts of the West Bank is different than saying Israel is an illegitimate settler-colonial entity.
It’s a ridiculous talking point invented by the losers of Israel’s many wars against Arab countries who turned to activism when they realized 1948 was the high water mark of their relative strength. I don’t understand how anyone says this stuff with a straight face.
That meme was unadulterated brain cancer in meme form, wrapped up with a nice picture of two ladies drinking tea, and it deserved more explicit condemnation than it got.
He was just being consistent with the long history of right-wing Republicans claiming to deplore Middle Eastern regimes but simultaneously rejecting the idea of letting in any dissidents from those countries. The Don Jr. Skittles episode being a particularly egregious edition of that.
He was being careful not to cross the anti-immigration wing of his party (that's like, 90% of the base these days) is what he was doing. I have to say he handled his craven decision perfectly, from a messaging standpoint: A) he avoided any potential charges of being insufficiently restrictionist in his immigration politics and B) he managed to blame the Chinese Communist Party. Well-played!
Matt, of course, is right that's the there's nothing intrinsically racist (in the least) about criticism of the actions of the government of the PRC. I do think it bears mentioning, though (not that there's much that can be done about it) that, flowing from white privilege in the US is the notion that some people are "visible" minorities. Americans of Russian heritage, for instance, never came in for much abuse during the Cold War. German-Americans caught some grief during the First World War, but they weren't interned, and during WW2 as far as I know their ethnicity was barely a thing. (I mean, Eisenhower was German-American!). Something very different was experienced by Americans of Japanese heritage. Anyway, this is a long-winded way of getting up to my main point, which is: Chinese-Americans (and Asian Americans in general and Asian residents of the US who aren't citizens yet) probably are pretty vulnerable to various kinds of ugliness because of their non-whiteness. I'm glad the current administration in Washington seems sensitive to these concerns. The previous administration appeared to think lack of sensitivity on this score was a net vote gainer for them.
There was a good amount of hysteria against German-Americans in WWI, including a mass killing of dogs of German breeds in Columbus, OH, I think. (There is a good WWI documentary series on PBS which I recommend.) There were also people interned in Fort Oglethorpe, GA (and other places I think) for crimes like being the conductor of a symphonic orchestra that played songs by German composers.
I think there's something to the point though, that by WW2 times nothing like that happened with Germans but did happen with the Japanese. That may be partially because German-Americans spent the inter-war years accelerating their assimilation by shutting down German-language schools, clubs, radio stations, etc...and a much larger percentage had been born in the US than had the Japanese-Americans. But it's unlikely that that explains all of it
I agree with you about WWII and the different treatment towards people of Japanese ancestry vs people of German/Italian ancestry. I just wanted to point out that German internment existed during WWI.
Some China issues are pretty one-sided, but the lab-leak virus possibilities bring the extra difficulty that the Wuhan researchers are well-integrated with American colleagues, and have received NIH and other American assistance and funding. Several of our famous names are involved. So if we discover that millions of deaths and trillions of lost income are the results of a little scientific hubris, we're in it together. And, although this shades into conspiracy stuff, the line between biowarfare at Camp Detrick and medical science at NIH has never been entirely clear. This will have to be unpacked with great care, which is probably why Biden asked the intelligence agencies to be responsible for the unpacking.
To start off with, I'm just going to shill and say that this is an excellent piece.
There is a lot to unpack here, but beyond any specific policy positions on China, Israel or whatever else, the injunction to ignore the intent behind any argument does not help the discourse move forward in a productive fashion; intent is important, and differentiating between good faith arguments and bad faith ones makes it easier to differentiate between good arguments and bad ones.
Liberals like me are probably more prone to falling into this trap, which leads to self-censorship or hypocritical-seeming positions on things like far from progressive religions ideals and practices.
Thanks once again for a well-informed voice of sanity. I hadn't known about the goofy WHO disease naming rules. Most of the rest is unsurprising if sad; thanks for putting it all together.
Are those rules goofy? I don't know. When I was young, all hurricanes had female names. Then they switched to names from both genders. A bit odd at first, but now it's totally fine.
One interesting thing about this whole debate is that people seem very fixated on the concept that being anti-China translates into anti-Asian American. There certainly may be backlash (plenty of Koreans went to internment camps during WWII), but most Asian countries are super hawkish on China (eg https://nationalinterest.org/blog/korea-watch/poll-most-south-koreans-are-wary-china-175989 ). Probably because the grandparents that Nina Luo referred to were soldiers in the army (or contemporaries of soldiers in the army) that threatened Korea and other Asian countries in the 50s and 60s.
To the extent I get angry about incorrect discourse, it's when Chinese Americans claim to speak for all Asian Americans...
A bit more data on this: both Japan and South Korea are more "unfavorable" (Japan is net negative 77%!!!!) on China than the US. https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2020/10/06/unfavorable-views-of-china-reach-historic-highs-in-many-countries/
I live in Vietnam where anti-Chinese sentiment is extremely high. To the point where there are no "Chinese" restaurants. They will go out of their way to say they are a Cantonese restaurant or a Shandong restaurant or even "We serve a variety of Cantonese, Fujian, Hunan, and Sichuan food". Anything but "Chinese".
It's true that the politics of East Asia among East Asian people are actually nearly incomprehensible to the discourse. Then I see my School's few Asian students who are almost entirely Filipino taunted on the school yard over the course of the year when kids think adults aren't listening.
I don't quite know what to do with the fact that it's really quite hard for most people to distinguish between the nation and the state. Once you release those furies it's very hard to make any sense of anything.
yeah totally. I think it's super ironic that a bunch of Koreans were interned because the US was at war with Japan, when Japan was simultaneously committing terrible atrocities in Korea.
But I think the point here is not "pretend that there is no racism against all Asians as a result of anti-China discourse." I think similar to Matt's evergreen point that "don't assume Asian American activists are representative of all Asians," there is also "don't assume that Chinese Americans are representative of all Asian Americans" or, similarly, that an anti-China policy position is inherently anti-Asian.
Anecdotally, Asian Americans joke a lot about how their parents are probably more racist towards other Asian ethnicities than white Americans would ever understand...
or even, if you believe that not all prejudice is racism... for decades my US-residing Korean grandparents refused to buy Japanese cars (and I am sure would have done the same had there been a widely-available Chinese car in the US).
I'm glad you have a picture because otherwise i'd be thoroughly confused by 4 posts in a row that all seem like an Andrew talking with himself. There are two Dan S commentators without pictures on this forum and sometimes they get into discussions with each other; it's confusing.
There are 2 Dan Ss? Damn, this explains a few things.
I totally take your point. I was an English teacher in Seoul and Shanghai for years. The name Asian American is weird considering how raw feelings are between pretty much all Asian nations with China and Japan.
Where it bothers me is some of the anti-Chinese stuff doesn't seem to have any clear point but being rude.
yeah absolutely. btw, I don't want any of the above to come across as justifying any kind of prejudice. I don't think it is a good thing that a lot of Koreans really hate Chinese (my wife is Chinese!). I just think one shouldn't react to warrantless OR "warranted" (not the right word, but I think you get the point) discrimination by saying "don't criticize China"
Where do you teach?
Outside Orlando Florida. My school is only like <10 % Asian and pretty close to zero Chinese.
The idea may be that the kind of people who make racist attacks on others just don't know or care about the distinction between people of Chinese background and other Asian-Americans. It's the same kind of thing as casually referring to Hispanic people as "Mexicans" or people from the Middle East as "Arabs".
well, or maybe a better example is the progressive pundits who were shocked that "Latinos" shifted towards Trump, a topic on which Matt has written quite a bit
One thing that would help a lot is simply to talk about "CCP" or "Chinese government" human right abuse and cover up of the COVID-19 outbreak, not "Chinese," "Israeli government" policy of allowing settlements in the Occupied Territories instead of "Israeli" policy. Of course the CCP and the parties forming the Israeli government WANT everyone living in those countries to support government policies. Our rhetoric should not assume much less promote their success.
One way to do this is to refer to the government as “Beijing” instead of “China” though this gets a bit complicated with Israel.
I'd keep the focus on the CCP. A competent, honest 'government" in China is no threat to liberal democratic countries at all.
Came here to comment something to this effect! I’d guess outside the Beltway most regular voters have zero trouble distinguishing between the people of a country and its government - especially when it’s an unelected authoritarian regime like the PRC. It’s only the actual racists and the people most neurotic about accidentally appearing racist who assume that criticism of a bad government must mean condemnation of its people. But it would cost politicians and media figures $0.00 to say “the Chinese government” instead of “China” when it would be more accurate to do so, and I think it’s worth being careful about that so as not to grow the ranks of the racists.
I disagree. Most people don't want to distinguish between the people of a country and its government. Most Americans like to suggest that government action is fully representative of all the people who live in different US states and they live in the same country! Its not different than all the people who like to lump together all the BLM protesters with the rioters or want to lump together all whites as being fundamentally racists.
People like to disparage groups - especially others. They will happily use whatever excuse is available to do so.
Interesting debate between a view of "most people" that's glass half-empty versus class half-full. I've met plenty of people with views that fall on either side - one of my last co-workers refused to travel to red states since trump's election, for example. I guess my take is that both of your descriptions correctly describe a lot of people, but I'm not sure which one describes "most" people.
I think people can be amazingly thoughtful and generous, especially in person. I also think people love to knock other people whether it be because of sports, location, style (or lack thereof), etc. Our host is a great example of both.
"[M]ost regular voters have zero trouble distinguishing between the people of a country and its government" -- I hope you're right about that! Even if that's true, though, another reason to be careful about this is that if I see a random person criticizing "China" when they mean "the Chinese government", I'm not a mind reader, *I* can't be sure that they aren't one of the small fraction who are confused about the distinction--and it only takes a little uncertainty to create a lot of nervousness.
Completely agree with this! I understand that "country X" is fewer syllables than "the government of country X", but I still loathe it when people use the former as shorthand for the latter in contexts like this, for all the obvious reasons. If you always say "China" when you mean "the CCP", how can I be sure you have a bright line in your head between the government and the ordinary humans who are stuck with it?
Criticizing China (for good reasons like human rights abuses or bad reasons like ‘Kung Flu!’) may have spillover into creating prejudice against Asian Americans as a whole, particularly the large population of Chinese people who come to the country as graduate students, high skilled workers, or both.
This is obviously, a bad thing. Yet I agree with Matt that it’s unavoidable if you want to have serious conversations about the wrongdoing of nations.
Nevertheless I have never encountered an immigrant graduate student, professor, or high skilled worker from any country who moved here thinking that there would be no bigotry. It’s something that is kind of known negative about the United States. It’s also, not really that easy to remove. What some young activists have gotten so right about this new push for equity is the idea of removing “systemic” barriers to equity.
If we want to make life in America better for recent Chinese immigrants/visa holders, then look at what can be done tangibly to remove systemic barriers that they face. These people deal with what is essentially a nightmare of alphabet soup in terms of getting a student visa, getting a temporary work visa, a permanent work visa, then like forever later a green card.
This makes them take grunt coder/quant jobs long after most have been promoted. They work long hours, and are overly dependent on their employers just to stay in the country.
When they finally make it, if they wish to use their high stable salary to move their parents closer to take care of them in their elder years, this is once again very difficult.
Look more closely at stuff like this. It will go a lot further to help Chinese people in this country than chasing down someone who said “Kung Flu” while drunk.
Re the idea that bigotry is a known negative of moving to the United States:
I can't imagine anyone planning to move anywhere in the world to a culture other than their own who would not expect to feel, at a minimum, somewhat alienated and "left out".
This would be the case with, say, a white American moving to Japan.
"Nevertheless I have never encountered an immigrant graduate student, professor, or high skilled worker from any country who moved here thinking that there would be no bigotry. It’s something that is kind of known negative about the United States."
FWIW, I live in Vietnam. A lot of Vietnamese emigrate to America. Even more want to. American bigotry is essentially completely unknown here. (Well, at least until the latest round of anti-Asian violence in the US made it into the news here.) So there's a data point. America, and living in America, is hyper-idealized and the ones who make it there send back a *very* whitewashed version of their lives. (Everyone is rich. Everyone has great jobs. Everyone is happy all the time. Everyone can buy everything they want. Everything is perfect in America. Don't you wish you could be here, too?)
The first time my (Vietnamese) wife went to the US for a 3-week holiday to visit my family, she was there three days before someone in a supermarket told her to stop stealing "our" jobs and go back home. Before that she had no idea that America was racist. She also doesn't understand TV shows like Lovecraft Country or the HBO Watchmen. She keeps asking "I don't understand, why are they doing that to him?" And I have to keep saying, "Because they are white and he is black."
Wow that’s new information. Hadn’t encountered that kind of “pure positivity” before.
I guess I will just say in defense of my nation.... That yes America has racism. But nothing like what happens in Lovecraft Country is happening today. No people of color in 2021 are sitting down at a diner only to be instantly chased out of town by a gun toting militia because they wanted a cheeseburger at the wrong place.
Some amount of proper criticism of CCP human right policies may rub off on Chinese grad students, but with carful use of language, this side effect should be minimizable.
I'm not really sure I agree with you about the power of carefully chosen language. It seems to me that people are going to draw the associations and implications that they have set up in their brains even if you carefully avoid giving them strict textual excuses.
(This is a general criticism I have of people's attempts to police language.)
>>>based on the (to the best of my knowledge, false) idea that bat-eating is some incredibly widespread Chinese practice<<<
I believe Matt is correct here. It's incredibly rare, I'm pretty sure. I've never seen it on a menu, and I've been all over this country. I've never even heard of people eating bat.* I'd bet my life bats are occasionally used as a food source *somewhere* in China (it's a big country!), but that's true of literally dozens of nations: bats have been an important source of meat for humans forever.
*I've never lived in a Western-bubble here, and thus haven't been spared exposure to some of the more exotic-seeming protein sources. I'm personally eaten wild boar, donkey, frog, snake, bamboo rat and (I was punked, and didn't know I was eating it!) dog in my near decade in China. I really do believe I'd have encountered bat by now were it a common foodstuff.
Also, forgot to mention: I think the consensus still holds that, if a natural zoonotic spillover was the source of the virus, an intermediary species was more likely than not involved, right? Or is that no longer the case? Anyway, if so, it would seem to coincide with the uncommonness of bats as a marketplace item for sale in China.
Coronaviruses don’t need an intermediate species.
True. But apparently the bulk of scientific community hold that an intermediary species was involved in this case:
https://www.bioworld.com/articles/503405-intermediary-host-species-likely-introduced-sars-cov-2-virus-says-who
I got cajoled in Hong Kong into eating chicken testicles. Pretty un-tasty.
Duck tongues for me in HK. I also didn't care for them. The donkey I had there was fine though.
Yeah we did a game once at dim sum where we ordered a few things we couldn't read off the menu. Ended up with boiled duck tongues. Not great.
The idea of unconscious bias is described as a “mindbug” in the book Blindspot. While the psychological phenomenon they’re describing is real, I can’t help but think the *idea* of unconscious bias in *others* is the more pernicious mindbug. It has totally warped our ability to interpret someone else’s claims or ideas on the merits, and instead motivates a certain set to be constantly on the lookout for evidence of other people’s latent bigotry.
It helps that if you can cast someone as racist, unfairly or not, lots of people will feel they don't have to engage with the merits of the person's argument.
Similarly, I have long noticed that there are some people who engage in discussion forums who have a shallow (and, ultimately, wrong) understanding of the Dunning–Kruger Effect and try to use it as a cudgel.
All sound points, but worth a reminder that some criticism of Israel involves delegitimization of Israel, which in my view is antisemitic. There is no "China isn't a county; it's a settler-colonial entity" comic circulating on Instagram.
I don’t think that anyone should delegitimize Israel, and I often speak up to defend Israel’s right to exist when my fellow Leftist friends speak in ways that suggest that Israel shouldn’t exist. (In fact, it *really* bothers me that so many people have strong opinions about Israel and Palestine despite knowing little-to-nothing about the last century of that region’s history.)
That said, I’m not sure that delegitimizing Israel is necessarily antisemitic. Like, I think my friends are being stupid and ignorant and simplistic—but not necessarily prejudiced. But I could be wrong about this, so why do you think delegitimizing Israel is necessarily antisemitic?
Not the biggest fan of Israel here, but I'm trying to think of another example where it might be at least somewhat okay to say that a nation shouldn't exist. That seems to me to be particularly disturbing in the case of Israel critics.
Is this because Israel looms so large in the US political discourse? Serbia, Kosovo, South Sudan, etc all have or recently had some contested status. None of them are very important to US domestic politics, but some people in the respective regions would probably say that those countries shouldn't exist.
The U.S. has fought mini-wars over Kosovo, which is far more direct military involvement than we've ever had in Israel!
Yes, which makes it pretty wild that Israel is prominent in the US political discourse than Kosovo
The Serbia-Kosovo issue has been mostly resolved, so it's less of an issue than it once was. Also, Israel isn't just a big political issue in the U.S., it's a big political issue in many countries in the world that have few if any Jews or Palestinians living there. Probably a combination of Zionism being a legitimately unique national-political movement, the U.N. being heavily involved for its entire existence, and Jerusalem mattering to a lot of people for religious reasons. Also a bit of oil diplomacy, Cold War politics, and antisemitism.
Well, during the 90's wasn't it an acceptable position to say that Yugoslavia shouldn't exist? (I'm thinking out loud here—I'm not trying to justify the "Israel shouldn't exist" claim and there could certainly be problems with the analogy.)
Was it really? In the US? Why?
Isn't that what the wars were over? Yugoslavia was a one-state collection of different Slavic nations. Croatia, Bosnia, and Kosovo wanted to leave Yugoslavia, reducing it to Serbia & Montenegro (which is what happened). So supporting the separatists (which I think was the liberal consensus) meant supporting the end of the nation. Or, on the flip side, as Maggie points out above, people argued that Bosnia, Croatia, and especially Kosovo shouldn't exist as independent countries.
So, the liberal consensus was that having an entity for multiple ethnic groups can’t possibly work? I was expecting that to be the nationalist view, particularly given that there were no clean lines to separate different people within Yugoslavia, so displacement would definitely be needed.
Seems reasonable but worth noting that’s the opposite view of the Israel delegitimizers.
(I realize my use of "different Slavic nations" might be confusing there, since in that case I'm not using it as synonymous with "countries" but elsewhere I have. There I mean "nations" in the sense of "ethnic groups.")
I'd say that no nations should exist. The obvious best-case solution is one worldwide state, with total freedom of movement and universal democratic governance (this is very unlikely in the foreseeable future, of course, because most people have a really unfortunate degree of nationalism and don't favor unlimited immigration, and a bunch aren't fans of democracy either, but it's still the solution we should have in our heads as the ideal)
It's antisemitism against Jews as Jews (Communist-style) rather than antisemitism against Jews as people (Nazi-style). Delegitimizing Israel involves asserting that Jews have no historical rights or ties to the Land of Israel, which is delegitimizing Jews as a people. I believe that some people do this without believing that it's antisemitism, but it still is. Just like people who aren't prejudiced toward individual BIPOC people but have issues with distinct nonwhite cultural identities are expressing a form of racism, even if not intentionally so.
Would you describe a one-state solution where Israel/Palestine was a secular state (possibly with an Arab majority) as anti-Semitic? What if it recognized a right of return for Jews (and Palestinian Arabs)?
A good and fair question. In theory I don't think that a binational state that recognizes the legitimate, non-colonial historical ties of both Jews and Palestinian Arabs to the land is a problem from that standpoint. The main objection to a binational one-state solution is that it's highly impractical -- Belgium is probably the most successful such state in the world and even they have serious issues. But a one-state solution is often used as code for a single Palestinian state that might allow some Jews to stay as a former colonial minority of sorts, and in that case it has the same problem as delegitimizing Israel.
A federation like Bosnia might be a better model. There are some striking similarities: the Serbian portion is in two parts (like the West Bank and Gaza) and there's a district that belongs to both but is governed by neither (Brcko/Jerusalem?)
It would be hard to sell many Israelis on a binational peace plan of "be like Bosnia," even though it is true that Bosnia is doing relatively well compared to what one might have expected in the 1990s. I think most Israelis and Palestinians would prefer full sovereignty over parts of what they consider their homelands to limited sovereignty over all of the land. But the biggest problem is that neither side really believes that the other side wants peace, and without that neither a binational one-state nor a two-state solution will work.
It would depend on the details. If your reasoning is that “ethnostates” are bad, then you can start with dismantling every European country (to say nothing of China) and once you’re done with that we can discuss Israel, the one ethnostate serving an ethnicity that actually has been persecuted everywhere they’ve ever been.
If the reasoning is “because two states don’t work” then it’s more of an empirical discussion. In that case you're not anti-Semitic, you’re just very confused.
I can’t think of any other popular reasons.
Yeah, so a kind of systemic antisemitism. Not totally sure I agree, but I appreciate the thought and will continue to mull it over.
"delegitimizing Jews as a people" — I'm not sure what "people" is supposed to mean here. Is it roughly synonymous with ethnicity (or the nation in "nation-state")? Because, if so, then I would say:
As a Jew, the claim that Jews are not (or should not be) an ethnicity does not strike me as particularly antisemitic. In particular, it seems reasonable to define Judaism in terms of religious belief instead (even if this is not the majority view among Jews).
People = ethnicity, yes. And I'd argue that it's systematically antisemitic in the same way that it's systematically racist to like racial minorities as individuals but oppose or deny their cultural and ethnic distinctiveness (and that's a view that members of those racial minorities themselves can hold).
I don't want to mischaracterize your opinion, but it sounds like you're arguing that it's antisemitic to reject a claim along the lines of "Israel has a right to exist as a Jewish state because of the historical kingdoms of Israel and Judah"
If so, why? If not, what am I misunderstanding?
I think it's a misunderstanding to characterize the Jewish historical claim to the Land of Israel (which, to be clear, does not negate the Palestinian historical claim to the same land -- two peoples can both have legitimate historical claims to the same land) as based on the Bible or the Davidic kingdoms. The Bible is obviously a matter of faith, and there are historical questions re the precise nature of the ancient Davidic kingdoms. But it is historically and archeologically quite clear that the Jews were the primary occupants of the area during the Greco-Roman eras, until the Romans expelled the Jews. So the Jewish right to a national home in Israel (not to be confused with a theocratic state, and not to be confused with exclusive rights to all of the traditional Land of Israel) is based on more recent, historically-verifiable ties and the lack of a national home elsewhere.
I would say roughly 98% of Zionists do not base Israel’s right to exist on ancient history. (Some will talk about it but that’s not their basis for Israel’s legitimacy). And I know a lot of Zionists, including a lot of fully crazy ones.
It gets really dicey really quickly. What standard can you possibly apply that would only fit Israel but not 100 other countries?
Now it’s entirely possible that you (the putative israel delegitimizer) are just not thinking this through, and are stubborn enough that you won’t back down even when this is pointed out to you, and you are comfortable with the fact that this talking point of illegitimacy was invented by actual genocidal Arab nationalists. And I mean that - it really is possible, with decent probability, that someone is like that. People are stubborn and don’t think things through and are generally flawed.
But… at that point it’s also reasonably likely they are uniquely opposed to Israel existing for less savory reasons.
TBF, some people have tried to use a similar logic to delegitimize countries such as the USA and Australia, arguing that they should be "given back" to their native inhabitants.
Not to derail but the "We acknowledge this event is on Tongva land" thing progressives like to do now bugs me a lot and I've been trying for a while to think about whether there's a rational reason or if it's just a reaction on my part. I guess "delegitimization" is a good word for it—it seems like just a hollow rhetorical gesture that is both radical in what it implies and safe in what practically follows from it. But I acknowledge I might just be a grumpy white guy about it.
It's all performative. The folks who hold (correctly!) that the US stole all the land from the indigenous folks aren't rushing to hand over everything they own to those folks and go, I don't know, somewhere else.
My company, the RAND Corporation in Santa Monica, sold its land to the city which built the very lovely Tongva Park, you know. because the Tongva people once lived there. It's very nice to hang out in and see lots and lots of people with not a Tongvan in sight.
Give Europe back to the Neanderthals!
I acknowledge that there is some academic disagreement about whether or not war and territory annexation is a thing back to prehistory, but my read is that all land in the world has been violently taken many, many, many, many, many times. If the most recent time it was violently taken is illegitimate, the previous owners were almost certainly just as illegitimate.
I don't know if I'd say "just as illegitimate"—I think it makes sense to say that as civilization develops, so does our sense of morality, continuous ownership, etc. If we decided to conquer Newfoundland or something today, that would be to my mind less legitimate than whatever primeval first conquest happened there. But your general point is well taken (and of course my framing runs into problematic "what do you mean 'more developed civilization,' Kemo Sabe?" territory).
Yeah, I don't know where the cutoff exactly is, but I agree, if we decided to conquer Newfoundland today, it would be less legitimate.
I was remembering when my wife was trying to build some affordable housing in San Jose and the meeting started off saying that we acknowledge that this is Ohlone land, which caused me to roll my eyes. So apparently my cutoff for not caring about legitimacy is somewhere between "right now" and "250 years ago."
I've been joking to people for a while that the next wacky leftist activist movement in the same vein as "defund the police" will be the "rename America" movement, since Amerigo Vespucci was a white colonizer.
If that ever happens IRL and if politicians actually start nodding toward whatever the proposed alternate terminology is, we'll have reactionary domination of government for the next 50 years.
That's not a "progressive thing". Scott Morrison, the Prime Minister of Australia, is the head of the Liberal part (i.e. right-wing) and leads the Coalition with the Nationals (even more right-wing).
He's not a progressive.
He *always* starts by acknowledging the traditional owners. See here a transcript of a speech he gave about Israel which starts out with:
"Thank you very much. Please be seated. Shalom. It’s wonderful to be here with you all this evening.
"I want to begin by acknowledging the traditional owners of the land on which we gather, the Gadigal and Bidjigal people of the Eora nation."
I think with places like the U.S., Canada, New Zealand, and Australia you just have to properly acknowledge that we are in fact settler-colonial societies, and you mitigate this as much as possible by recognizing the rights of native political entities to the extent they still exist (a big deal at least in the U.S., Canada, and N.Z.) and treating the country as a multi-ethnic society rather than a nation-state of one settler people.
China is a settler-colonial entity, they just got started a lot sooner. That's what's happening in Tibet and Xinjiang, that's why a bunch of peoples live in Southeast Asia, etc.
Well one can certainly argue that portions of China involve Han Chinese colonization of other peoples (this also applies to a number of countries in Europe), but no one argues that there shouldn't be a legitimate nation-state of China within at least a large portion of the territory of the current PRC. Can't say that about world opinions re Israel. Saying that Israel is a legitimate nation-state that is wrongly colonizing Palestinian parts of the West Bank is different than saying Israel is an illegitimate settler-colonial entity.
It’s a ridiculous talking point invented by the losers of Israel’s many wars against Arab countries who turned to activism when they realized 1948 was the high water mark of their relative strength. I don’t understand how anyone says this stuff with a straight face.
That meme was unadulterated brain cancer in meme form, wrapped up with a nice picture of two ladies drinking tea, and it deserved more explicit condemnation than it got.
>>>If we give visas to people who’d like to depart post-democratic Hong Kong, many of them will take us up on that offer.<<<
As I'm sure some of you heard, this idea was floated on Capitol Hill and and true stand up guy and heroic opponent of Communism Ted Cruz shot it down.
A real profile in courage, that Senator Cruz.
He was just being consistent with the long history of right-wing Republicans claiming to deplore Middle Eastern regimes but simultaneously rejecting the idea of letting in any dissidents from those countries. The Don Jr. Skittles episode being a particularly egregious edition of that.
He was being careful not to cross the anti-immigration wing of his party (that's like, 90% of the base these days) is what he was doing. I have to say he handled his craven decision perfectly, from a messaging standpoint: A) he avoided any potential charges of being insufficiently restrictionist in his immigration politics and B) he managed to blame the Chinese Communist Party. Well-played!
You'd think the Republicans would be thrilled for America to add a bunch of new voters that hate socialism, after 2020.
Matt, of course, is right that's the there's nothing intrinsically racist (in the least) about criticism of the actions of the government of the PRC. I do think it bears mentioning, though (not that there's much that can be done about it) that, flowing from white privilege in the US is the notion that some people are "visible" minorities. Americans of Russian heritage, for instance, never came in for much abuse during the Cold War. German-Americans caught some grief during the First World War, but they weren't interned, and during WW2 as far as I know their ethnicity was barely a thing. (I mean, Eisenhower was German-American!). Something very different was experienced by Americans of Japanese heritage. Anyway, this is a long-winded way of getting up to my main point, which is: Chinese-Americans (and Asian Americans in general and Asian residents of the US who aren't citizens yet) probably are pretty vulnerable to various kinds of ugliness because of their non-whiteness. I'm glad the current administration in Washington seems sensitive to these concerns. The previous administration appeared to think lack of sensitivity on this score was a net vote gainer for them.
There was a good amount of hysteria against German-Americans in WWI, including a mass killing of dogs of German breeds in Columbus, OH, I think. (There is a good WWI documentary series on PBS which I recommend.) There were also people interned in Fort Oglethorpe, GA (and other places I think) for crimes like being the conductor of a symphonic orchestra that played songs by German composers.
I think there's something to the point though, that by WW2 times nothing like that happened with Germans but did happen with the Japanese. That may be partially because German-Americans spent the inter-war years accelerating their assimilation by shutting down German-language schools, clubs, radio stations, etc...and a much larger percentage had been born in the US than had the Japanese-Americans. But it's unlikely that that explains all of it
I agree with you about WWII and the different treatment towards people of Japanese ancestry vs people of German/Italian ancestry. I just wanted to point out that German internment existed during WWI.
Germans weren't interned? Don't be so America-centric https://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-08-05/world-war-i-germany-fighting-the-huns-on-the-home-front/5638066
In case you don't have time to scroll down in that link, here's how Germans were portraed in many propaganda posters (including some American ones). Sure looks like they got off easy by being white... https://live-production.wcms.abc-cdn.net.au/56c57142c064e11ba1f0451eeaa98649?src
WW1 vs. WW2
And?
Some China issues are pretty one-sided, but the lab-leak virus possibilities bring the extra difficulty that the Wuhan researchers are well-integrated with American colleagues, and have received NIH and other American assistance and funding. Several of our famous names are involved. So if we discover that millions of deaths and trillions of lost income are the results of a little scientific hubris, we're in it together. And, although this shades into conspiracy stuff, the line between biowarfare at Camp Detrick and medical science at NIH has never been entirely clear. This will have to be unpacked with great care, which is probably why Biden asked the intelligence agencies to be responsible for the unpacking.
To start off with, I'm just going to shill and say that this is an excellent piece.
There is a lot to unpack here, but beyond any specific policy positions on China, Israel or whatever else, the injunction to ignore the intent behind any argument does not help the discourse move forward in a productive fashion; intent is important, and differentiating between good faith arguments and bad faith ones makes it easier to differentiate between good arguments and bad ones.
Liberals like me are probably more prone to falling into this trap, which leads to self-censorship or hypocritical-seeming positions on things like far from progressive religions ideals and practices.
*religious ideals and practices.
Are we ever going to get an edit function around here?
Thanks once again for a well-informed voice of sanity. I hadn't known about the goofy WHO disease naming rules. Most of the rest is unsurprising if sad; thanks for putting it all together.
Are those rules goofy? I don't know. When I was young, all hurricanes had female names. Then they switched to names from both genders. A bit odd at first, but now it's totally fine.
"COVID" is a perf