Thread by @Noahpinion

Andrew Yang on coronavirus and discrimination against Asian-Americans.

washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/…

After thinking long and hard about this article, I'm not sure what I think about it.

On one hand, I think it's good to be patriotic and work for the good of the nation, etc. etc.

On the other hand, doing this will never appease racists or lead to lasting acceptance.

It seems legitimate to take the attitude of "Racists gonna racist; I can't affect them at all, so I'm just going to be the best person I can be." This seems to be Yang's approach.

But does this approach come at the expense of other approaches that would be more effective?

It seems like there must be *some* other approach that's more effective. Some way to attack and confront and defeat racism head-on, instead of knuckling under and trying to prove oneself to people who will never really accept you.

But how?

If one is fighting for civil rights, or some other concrete policy change, a confrontational and aggressive strategy might work. Simply demand the things you want, and don't stop fighting til you get those things...

But what if one's goal is acceptance? I.e. to be reflexively and universally viewed as a core, inalienable part of a national polity?

Can this be achieved via confrontation and demands?

Can you yell at your asshole neighbor until he likes living next to you?

Maybe not.

Maybe there's nothing you can do about your asshole neighbor. If being nice won't work and if yelling at him won't work, all you can do is either A) move away, or B) wait til he dies or moves away and someone nicer moves in.

What this dilemma illustrates is that diverse societies basically come with veto points. If one group of people refuses to accept another as an integral member of their own polity, there is simply not much the second group can do about it, other than guard themselves from harm.

To put it bluntly, if some large subset of white Americans (or even black Americans, etc.) refuses to accept that Asian Americans are full 100% real Americans, it's not clear that there's *anything* Asian Americans can do about that on their own.

But if this is the case, it falls to non-Asian Americans who actually want to see a harmonious, united society to shrink, discredit, and disempower those who refuse to accept Asian Americans.

Hence "allyship" and so on...

All my life I've wanted to see Asian Americans accepted as core, inalienable members of the American polity.

So perhaps it's not actually on people like Andrew Yang to do something about the forces trying to exclude him.

Perhaps it's really on me, and people like me.

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