Excellent piece. If people could just grasp the idea that what's true of groups on average is not necessarily true of specific individuals but *both* remain true - without their pearl clutching pavolvian moral reflexes kicking in - we'd be in a much better place.
It seems like so much social-critical writing is predicated on deliberately sloppy thinking, I suppose in the service of generating content (a word I hate) that will draw clicks. It is tremendously discouraging.
"If the idea is that we should pay a lot less attention to demographic identity because these groupings always distort who we are as individuals, I say, yeah!"
Very few people out there in The Discourse know how to talk about Asians intelligently because their prevailing dogma & racial hierarchy instinctively recoils at nuance, and nuance is the only way to understand the Asian experience. I came to the US when my country of birth was still under rule by a military junta. My parents grew up with food insecurity. My father has a masters degree and is a top 10-15% earner. I am not white and that had an impact on me growing up. I am also, in my current circumstances, very privileged.
All these things are true at once, and the current rigidity in liberal thinking, which desperately wants me to be just one thing, fails over and over again to find language that can talk about me in a way that isn't inaccurate, insulting, patronizing, or stupid. That is why you see phrases like "white adjacent" - in the effort to coin a phrase this dumb you can see they're trying to acknowledge that there's some level of ambiguity and confusion in how to characterize me, but it just collapses into itself and just calls me "white." Which I am not. Idiotic.
This is such a great post. Over the weekend, I started reading Thomas Chatterton William’s book, Self-Portrait in Black and White: Unlearning Race, which makes similar arguments. He’s a mixed American living in France with a French wife and mixed kids, and the experience caused him to change his thinking on race. He now believes we should be working to move past race:
“a flawed paradigm cannot be re-imagined and shifted in the future simply because we are dealing with its practical consequences as they exist today… It is a mistake to reify something that is as demonstrably harmful as it is fictitious.”
It’s a good book, and you all would like it.
[Back to Freddie] “the more you tell people that they’re not a part of your tribe the more you ensure that they will mistreat you.”
This is a huge problem in social justice politics. There’s an expectation that white people must become hyper-conscious of being white, without any negative consequences like… being racist. But it’s delusional to think you can persuade all white people to adopt the Robin DiAngelo view that they should atone for existing. Some whites respond to woke politics by deciding “actually, white people are oppressed” and fighting for white rights. Which is not a great outcome.
The “white adjacent” thing strikes me as a power struggle between people of color in the social justice movement. Just like changing the acronym to BIPOC to make sure Asians and Latinos know they come second in the movement. It’s backfiring – Asians are starting to vote Republican in response to some of the efforts to prioritize other groups over them, especially efforts to reduce the Asian populations in elite schools. They’re inadvertently creating a coalition of white and Asian people who are sick of this shit.
Who comes up with words like 'white adjacent' and how/why they gain hold in current discourse is a subject worth discussing about. Who gets to define whom is matter of real power and therefore politics.
Freddie, you are an amazing writer and I find everything you say in this piece profoundly convincing, but what's up with the word "profound" today? I mean, a "profound social problem" - ok - "profoundly racist" - maybe. But "profoundly wealthy"? Do these profoundly wealthy Black people have money bins like Scrooge McDuck into the depths of which they dive? Or maybe - with all their wealth - they are trapped in a vault made from coagulated racism, de profundis of which they cannot escape.
I work in government, specifically government programs to improve welfare and health. We have a DEI committee, and our department is heavily influenced by a local professional organization that is 110% woke. Our DEI committee recently created a worksheet, which we use in small workgroups and all be graded on, with the grading overseen by a peer who is on the committee and has be deemed an "equity champion." We fill out the form for any project we are work on, and part of that form requires a discussion ranking all the groups of people the project would serve, from most oppressed and deserving of support to least oppressed and deserving of support. I am absolutely horrified at the idea of literally ranking people's pain, having it documented, and having one of my brainwashed, very ambitious peers decided if I've done a good job or not. However, believe it or not folks, its not the white people that have a huge problem with this, surprise, surprise many of my Hispanic and Asian co-workers are livid.
It's fundamentally illogical to believe that on one hand diversity is real and valuable and on the other to simultaneously argue that diversity won't lead to different outcomes in real world metrics like educational attainment, salary, and so on. It's hard not to shake the feeling that the woke set are comfortable with the idea of "diversity" as it applies to skin color but balk at the idea that it could affect individual perceptions and cultural values: for example, views on the proper role of women in society.
I agree with this column 100%. Freddie points out one of the contradictions of woke thought: If you treat a POC as a member of their race, you're othering and tokenizing them, which is bad; but if you treat them as an individual, you're invalidating their experience as a POC in a racist society, and that's equally bad. "Colorblindness is racist!"
And the idea of "white-adjacent" is just a No True Scotsman fallacy:
"No person of color can be successful in a white supremacist society!"
"But [Asian-American person] is wealthy and well-educated."
"Well then, [Asian-American person] is No True Person of Color! She's white-adjacent!"
These points are all excellent. I have a tangential one:
I've begun to think that the term "stereotype" obfuscates more than it illuminates. It's easy to forget that it is of relatively recent vintage. It serves only to discredit the making of generalizations as a pejorative synonym for them. Whereas any reasonable person recognizes that generalizations serve a purpose, when used correctly.
The criticism I’ve seen of the model minority is that it’s not an apples-to-apples comparison. It takes immigrants who are selected based on their skills and education and compares it with a population of local peasants. It’s not a fair comparison to compare the upper crust of one society with the dregs of another.
Some people prefer to break it down by specific country of ancestry eg Japan, Korea, India, etc.
That way you can see which specific groups tend to do much better than others.
Excellent piece. If people could just grasp the idea that what's true of groups on average is not necessarily true of specific individuals but *both* remain true - without their pearl clutching pavolvian moral reflexes kicking in - we'd be in a much better place.
It seems like so much social-critical writing is predicated on deliberately sloppy thinking, I suppose in the service of generating content (a word I hate) that will draw clicks. It is tremendously discouraging.
"If the idea is that we should pay a lot less attention to demographic identity because these groupings always distort who we are as individuals, I say, yeah!"
As do I.
Very few people out there in The Discourse know how to talk about Asians intelligently because their prevailing dogma & racial hierarchy instinctively recoils at nuance, and nuance is the only way to understand the Asian experience. I came to the US when my country of birth was still under rule by a military junta. My parents grew up with food insecurity. My father has a masters degree and is a top 10-15% earner. I am not white and that had an impact on me growing up. I am also, in my current circumstances, very privileged.
All these things are true at once, and the current rigidity in liberal thinking, which desperately wants me to be just one thing, fails over and over again to find language that can talk about me in a way that isn't inaccurate, insulting, patronizing, or stupid. That is why you see phrases like "white adjacent" - in the effort to coin a phrase this dumb you can see they're trying to acknowledge that there's some level of ambiguity and confusion in how to characterize me, but it just collapses into itself and just calls me "white." Which I am not. Idiotic.
This is such a great post. Over the weekend, I started reading Thomas Chatterton William’s book, Self-Portrait in Black and White: Unlearning Race, which makes similar arguments. He’s a mixed American living in France with a French wife and mixed kids, and the experience caused him to change his thinking on race. He now believes we should be working to move past race:
“a flawed paradigm cannot be re-imagined and shifted in the future simply because we are dealing with its practical consequences as they exist today… It is a mistake to reify something that is as demonstrably harmful as it is fictitious.”
It’s a good book, and you all would like it.
[Back to Freddie] “the more you tell people that they’re not a part of your tribe the more you ensure that they will mistreat you.”
This is a huge problem in social justice politics. There’s an expectation that white people must become hyper-conscious of being white, without any negative consequences like… being racist. But it’s delusional to think you can persuade all white people to adopt the Robin DiAngelo view that they should atone for existing. Some whites respond to woke politics by deciding “actually, white people are oppressed” and fighting for white rights. Which is not a great outcome.
The “white adjacent” thing strikes me as a power struggle between people of color in the social justice movement. Just like changing the acronym to BIPOC to make sure Asians and Latinos know they come second in the movement. It’s backfiring – Asians are starting to vote Republican in response to some of the efforts to prioritize other groups over them, especially efforts to reduce the Asian populations in elite schools. They’re inadvertently creating a coalition of white and Asian people who are sick of this shit.
Who comes up with words like 'white adjacent' and how/why they gain hold in current discourse is a subject worth discussing about. Who gets to define whom is matter of real power and therefore politics.
Freddie, you are an amazing writer and I find everything you say in this piece profoundly convincing, but what's up with the word "profound" today? I mean, a "profound social problem" - ok - "profoundly racist" - maybe. But "profoundly wealthy"? Do these profoundly wealthy Black people have money bins like Scrooge McDuck into the depths of which they dive? Or maybe - with all their wealth - they are trapped in a vault made from coagulated racism, de profundis of which they cannot escape.
I work in government, specifically government programs to improve welfare and health. We have a DEI committee, and our department is heavily influenced by a local professional organization that is 110% woke. Our DEI committee recently created a worksheet, which we use in small workgroups and all be graded on, with the grading overseen by a peer who is on the committee and has be deemed an "equity champion." We fill out the form for any project we are work on, and part of that form requires a discussion ranking all the groups of people the project would serve, from most oppressed and deserving of support to least oppressed and deserving of support. I am absolutely horrified at the idea of literally ranking people's pain, having it documented, and having one of my brainwashed, very ambitious peers decided if I've done a good job or not. However, believe it or not folks, its not the white people that have a huge problem with this, surprise, surprise many of my Hispanic and Asian co-workers are livid.
What a way to build a coalition.
It's fundamentally illogical to believe that on one hand diversity is real and valuable and on the other to simultaneously argue that diversity won't lead to different outcomes in real world metrics like educational attainment, salary, and so on. It's hard not to shake the feeling that the woke set are comfortable with the idea of "diversity" as it applies to skin color but balk at the idea that it could affect individual perceptions and cultural values: for example, views on the proper role of women in society.
I agree with this column 100%. Freddie points out one of the contradictions of woke thought: If you treat a POC as a member of their race, you're othering and tokenizing them, which is bad; but if you treat them as an individual, you're invalidating their experience as a POC in a racist society, and that's equally bad. "Colorblindness is racist!"
And the idea of "white-adjacent" is just a No True Scotsman fallacy:
"No person of color can be successful in a white supremacist society!"
"But [Asian-American person] is wealthy and well-educated."
"Well then, [Asian-American person] is No True Person of Color! She's white-adjacent!"
These points are all excellent. I have a tangential one:
I've begun to think that the term "stereotype" obfuscates more than it illuminates. It's easy to forget that it is of relatively recent vintage. It serves only to discredit the making of generalizations as a pejorative synonym for them. Whereas any reasonable person recognizes that generalizations serve a purpose, when used correctly.
Such a great piece. Agree 100%
The criticism I’ve seen of the model minority is that it’s not an apples-to-apples comparison. It takes immigrants who are selected based on their skills and education and compares it with a population of local peasants. It’s not a fair comparison to compare the upper crust of one society with the dregs of another.
Wow, Day After Daylight Savings Time Brain Fog is really a thing. I’m not alert enough for Freddie’s prose this PDT morning.
Great piece.
I think Asian demographic outcomes are proof that culture matters and race, gender, etc... do not.