Adjacent to Whom?

The Anti-Asian leftists manifest the very racism they supposed to eradicate

This piece was originally published in TheFederalist.com. If you like it, please feel free to click the ❤️ or 🔄 button so more people can read it. Thank you.

Photo by Jason Leung on Unsplash

The U.S. Supreme Court recently ruled that race-based college admission is unconstitutional. The ruling is in line with public opinion. Both Pew Research’s survey before the court’s decision and an Economist/YouGov poll after the verdict confirmed that most Americans (including Black and Asian Americans) support banning affirmative action in college admissions. Many Americans celebrated the end of affirmative action as an important step toward eliminating racial discrimination and achieving equality for all in the United States. Yet, the woke left has targeted Asian Americans who supported the ruling with the most racially-charged rhetoric and outlandish false accusations.

NBC and CBC denigrated Asian American plaintiffs in the two Supreme Court cases on affirmative action as "pawns" or "tools" used by white supremacists because both cases were led by the conservative activist Ed Blum, who is white. NPR accused Asian Americans who supported the ending of affirmative action of being radicalized by "the promise of proximity to whiteness and power." The Nation outdid all leftist media outlets with the most outrageous claim that Asian American conservatives are "key allies" and "militant co-conspirators" of white supremacists.

Some leftists directed their bigotry at individual Asian Americans. For instance, Yiatin Chu, a parent of New York City public school students, was viciously attacked on Twitter after she shared a celebratory message with her daughter on  Twitter. The Atlantic writer Jemele Hill tweeted at Chu, "Can’t wait until she reads that you gladly carried the water for white supremacy and stabbed the folks in the back whose people fought diligently for Asian American rights in America."  

By ridiculing Asian Americans as “White adjacent,” "pawns," "tools," or as someone who "carry water" for white supremacists or being radicalized by "the promise of proximity to whiteness and power," the woke leftists treat Asian Americans as second-class citizens and inferior human beings who have no agency, cannot think independently, nor act on our own free will. How is this woke racism any different from white supremacy, which believes that white people are superior to other racial groups and should lord over them?

The leftist’s anti-Asian rhetoric also betrayed their historical ignorance. They should have read Justice Clarence Thomas’s concurring opinion in the Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard and Students for Fair Admissions v. UNC cases, in which Justice Thomas wrote, “Asian Americans can hardly be described as the beneficiaries of historical racial advantages…Strong anti-Asian sentiments in the Western States led to the adoption of many discriminatory laws at the State and local levels, similar to those aimed at blacks in the South,” and “segregation in public facilities, including schools, was quite common until after the Second World War.”

By accusing Asian Americans of being “allies” of white supremist, the woke leftists are ignorant of not only the long history of racial discrimination against Asian Americans but also Asian Americans’ important contributions to fighting for racial equality and civil rights for all Americans in this country.

Chinese immigrants fought in the U.S. Civil War, and sacrificed blood, sweat, and tears to end slavery. After the U.S. Congress passed the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, which restricted Chinese immigration to the United States, Asian American Wong Kim Ark fought for his U.S. citizenship in a landmark case, and the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Wang's favor  in 1898.  The verdict "upholds the principle of birthright citizenship and affirms the universality of American national identity—the idea that anyone born on U.S. soil can be American regardless of race."

In Ozawa vs. United States and United States vs. Bhagat Singh Thind, two Asian American legal residents challenged the constitutionality of the Naturalization Act of 1906, which allowed only "free white persons" and "persons of African nativity or persons of African descent to become naturalized U.S. citizens. Eventually, the 1952 Immigration Act removed the racial barrier to the naturalization process and paved the way for any eligible immigrant, regardless of race, to become a naturalized U.S. citizen. 

During WWII, two Japanese Americans challenged the constitutionality of the U.S. government’s incarceration of Japanese Americans without due process of law in Hirabayashi v. United States and Korematsu v. United States. As these and other historical examples have demonstrated, Asian Americans have never shied away from opposing racial discrimination and defending constitutional rights of all Americans.

The woke left's anti-Asian bigotry reflects their panic over the fact that their radical policies, from defunding police to eliminating meritocracy in education, have alienated many minorities. Asians, Blacks, and Hispanics are all reportedly moving to the political right. Rather than addressing deficiencies in policies to win back minority constituencies, the leftists have resorted to denounce any minority who dares to think differently as "white supremacist." In a viral tweet that captured several leftist’ media’s headlines, podcaster Noam Blum noticed the irony: “White Supremacy is more diverse than Harvard.”

Asian Americans won't be intimidated by woke racism. Our resolve to continue to advocate for equality before the law and oppose racial discrimination in any shape or form has only been strengthened. We will never forget what Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the majority opinion in SFFA vs. Harvard and SFFA vs. UNC, "Eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it."