Said Siva Raj, a San Francisco parent a leader of the recall effort, quoted in "In Landslide, San Francisco Forces Out 3 Board of Education Members/The recall, which galvanized Asian Americans, was a victory for parents angered by the district’s priorities during the pandemic" (NYT).
The recall was a victory for parents who were angered that the district spent time deciding whether to rename a third of its schools last year instead of focusing on reopening them. It also appeared to be a demonstration of Asian American electoral power, a galvanizing moment for Chinese voters in particular who turned out in unusually large numbers for the election.
"Chinese voters"? I guess they mean Chinese-American voters. Yikes. What's in their style guide?!
In echoes of debates in other cities, many Chinese voters were incensed...
They really must mean to say "Chinese voters." Isn't that an embarrassment?
... when the school board introduced a lottery admission system for Lowell High School, the district’s most prestigious institution, abolishing requirements primarily based on grades and test scores. A judge last year ruled that the board had violated procedures in making the change...
[W]hile signature gathering for the recall effort was already underway... controversial tweets written by [Alison] Collins, the board’s vice president, were discovered. In them, she said Asian Americans were like slaves who benefited from working inside a slave owner’s house — a comparison that Asian American groups and many city leaders called racist....
David Lee, a political science lecturer at San Francisco State University, said the combination of the tweets and the changes to the admission policies at Lowell had empowered Asian American voters. “It’s been an opportunity for the Chinese community to flex its muscles,” Mr. Lee said. “The community is reasserting itself.”
The "Chinese community." I guess he means the Chinese American community.
ADDED: In the comments, rcocean brings up the idea that the NYT is writing "Chinese" because many of the voters are not American citizens. The article makes no reference to this possibility, and I see on the San Francisco Board of Elections webpage:
Eligible non-citizen residents of San Francisco will be able to participate in the February 15, 2022, San Francisco School Board Recall Election.... In the November 2016 election, San Francisco voters passed Proposition N, Non-Citizen Voting in School Board Elections, by a vote of 54% to 46%. Proposition N is a Charter amendment that extends the voting rights in San Francisco School Board elections to non-citizen residents of San Francisco who are of legal voting age, not in prison for a felony conviction, and who are parents, legal guardians, or legally recognized caregivers of children under the age of 19 living in San Francisco.
This puts the use of "Chinese" in a completely different light, and I now consider the NYT article defective not because it referred to voters as "Chinese" but because it didn't bring up noncitizen voting.
Posts
93 comments:
So there is hope?
It shows what happens with the Chinese and the Mexicans vote together.
"I guess he means the Chinese American community."
Not really. After all, people are defined by their ethnicity. How long before "African-American" becomes taboo?
They're poets. It was a metaphor...
When the style guide can't keep up with a change of the zeitgeist, these language problems occur. The only solution for the paper, and those quoted in it, is to treat people as individuals, not group members, and respect their inherent, inalienable, individual rights. That way we're all people, not objects.
They should just be happy that "Chinese" was capitalized, i thought that privilege was reserved for "Black."
"They really must mean to say "Chinese voters." Isn't that an embarrassment? "
It's hatred, thinly disguised. Chinese Americans are all too familiar with the realities of leftism.
"How long before "African-American" becomes taboo?"
It's already taboo and was pretty much always taboo to refer to African-Americans as "Africans." You can't name a foreign country or other continent as your way of referring to American citizens without looking ignorant or disrespectful.
NYT may have its failings but this “Chinese” word choice isn’t one of them. They know how it sounds, they know it violates hyphenation norms. Yet they do it anyway, repeatedly. So the question is, why? I can think of three possibilities. One, they are serving their Chinese-from-China overlords who want to hurt America by showing they aren’t with us even when they’re in us. The Olympic American-turned-Chinese fits this pattern. Two, the Times has had it with the Chinese and maybe even this whole tolerance bullshit culture. Three, the Times staff wants to pin the blame on upcoming Democrat blowout losses on a scapegoat.
These are wild guesses pulled directly from my arse. But it is curious, this linguistic tonal thud.
"It's hatred, thinly disguised. Chinese Americans are all too familiar with the realities of leftism."
It's pushing the idea that they are foreigners, undermining our way of life. It's reminiscent of the treatment of Japanese-Americans during WWII.
Rabid diversity (i.e. color judgment, class-based bigotry), inequity, and exclusion. Asian community. People of Yellow. Chinese-American is a baby step from 1/2 American to zero American is a clear and progressive condition. Their true nature is revealed in the judgments, labels, and rites of their religion. Roe, Roe, Roe yourself. Oh, well. There are precedents.
What is in their style guide? Two possibilities here- the writers are just fucking dumb, or they are trying to malign the voters who voted to oust the board members. One should probably embrace the conjunction and.
There is a lot going on in the San Fran school system and while it has never been relevant to me living on the MA/NH border, even I can go back through news and social media and see that it has been ongoing for years and right now COVID is the mechanism that caused everything to hit the national view.
Ultimately COVID policies are just the amplifier to issues that have been simmering for a while.
As a parent that has been questioning the COVID policies at school committee meetings I get asked why I have not previously been active there, the reason is that there was no need previously. When I had an issue with my child's education or policy I went first to the teacher and or principal and was able to resolve it. Being involved in your child's school often does not need to involve the school committee or board and I would argue that if you are active in your child's education you are less likely to get involved on a higher level.
I don't think you need to be an American to vote in San Francisco.
It's pushing the idea that they are foreigners, undermining our way of life. It's reminiscent of the treatment of Japanese-Americans during WWII.
It's being done by the same people too.
Surprise, surprise surprise.......
If you have a feeling for prose style, "Chinese" is the right word. Let an anti-clunky movement start. Also do away with "he or she." It's every man for himself.
This may also be the product of whistleblowers at the "paper of record". Perhaps an individual or team that managed to redirect the proverbial "DNS server" to publish the NYT unmasked. DIE dogmatic beliefs and solutions are a festering choice that consumes the vestiges of humanity.
I can see how a context-free reference to "Chinese voters" would be wrong if you meant to refer to American voters who are Chinese. But I suppose the editors were assuming that in the context of a story about an election in the United States, the "American" descriptor would have been redundant, since every registered voter is by definition a U.S. citizen.
To test whether they are applying such an assumption fairly, I would check other stories for phrases like "Irish voters" and "Italian voters" to see whether they add "-American" for them.
There's no sorrier sight, Wm. Kerrigan wrote in the 90s, than a male lecturer talking to feminists, striving to pack all his sentences appropriately with "he or she."
Call them California-Americans.
Also do away with "he or she." It's every man for himself.
A handmade tale for leverage in corporate, political, and social affairs, with other "benefits". All's fair in lust and abortion, I suppose.
As someone married to a naturalized American Chinese woman, I’m struggling to understand the offense here. My wife would never expect to be lumped into a Chinese-American bucket. If anything she is constantly referring to Americans and Chinese, and your President, and I’m constantly reminding her she’s an American too. Maybe second or third generation Chinese could be educated into taking offense at the phrase “Chinese voters,” but it is not an organic response.
@Wendy, also near the MA/NH border here in Windham.
@Althouse wrote: "It's pushing the idea that they are foreigners, undermining our way of life. It's reminiscent of the treatment of Japanese-Americans during WWII."
California had explicitly anti-Japanese and anti-Chinese laws following the 1849 Gold Rush through WW2's internment camps (then called "concentration camps"). When considered with much later anti-Asian hostility from African-Americans (e.g., 1992 Los Angeles Rodney King riots -- directed toward Korean immigrants)...such "othering" may be fully consistent with the readership biases of the NYT.
What they meant was “yellow” voters.
But somehow they managed to figure out that just didn’t sound right.
Americans of East Asian decent would have worked.
"I can see how a context-free reference to "Chinese voters" would be wrong if you meant to refer to American voters who are Chinese."
They're American, not Chinese. They have Chinese ancestry.
A real scandal when Levi Strauss fired the top brand person because she wanted her kids to go to school and not have to wear a mask. Bari Weiss has the story on substack.
Why would you assume they’re Americans?
Foreigners are educated in public schools because SCOTUS 1982 Phyler v Doe.
It’s not like we have borders or immigration laws anymore.
"If anything she is constantly referring to Americans and Chinese, and your President, and I’m constantly reminding her she’s an American too."
If that's what the NYT means to say about the people it's calling "Chinese," then let's get that out in the open. If Chinese-Americans don't think of themselves as American, that's a big issue, and it's part of a ragingly hot issue. Do immigrants assimilate or do they stay within their group, feeling alien and oppositional? Do they love their country, the country they were either born in or embraced in a solemn ceremony, or are they really aligned with a foreign power?
"Republicans are increasingly looking to the education fight as a galvanizing issue that could help them sway voters." -The Associated Press blaming Republicans in which there are probably 3 in San Francisco, because they can't blame their own side?? Just another reason why most of us do not TRUST anything that comes out of the Main Stream Propagandists for the Progressives. It is sickening, that they just can't report the news, without lying.
https://apnews.com/article/san-francisco-school-board-elections-d22ee9c5175904885d41e149775102a5?utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=AP&utm_campaign=SocialFlow
No, it Chinese. Large numbers of Asians in SF are resident aliens or dual citizens. And SF either allows Non-Americans to vote in local elections or doesn't check. To put it simply, you can speak only Chinese and be a Chinese citizen and vote in SF.
NYC is pushing = or already succeded - in allowing non-Americans to vote in local NYC elections.
Many on this comment thread don't live in Calf, have friends there, or follow its state politics. But California is full of Resident aliens, illegal aliens, and dual citizens. In large parts no one considers themselves American. Or only in the nominal.
A preview of coming attractions.
But why be surprised? When does anyone talk about patriotism? HS's teach Howard Zinn if they teach american history at all.
Blogger Sean Gleeson said..."the "American" descriptor would have been redundant, since every registered voter is by definition a U.S. citizen."<
I'm pretty sure you don't have to be a citizen to vote for the San Francisco school board. I think they instituted that not too long ago.
If anything she is constantly referring to Americans and Chinese, and your President, and I’m constantly reminding her she’s an American too.
To recap: In keeping with the current leftie fashion NYT is offended how disproportionately Asian elite academia has become, slights Americans of Chinese origin, calling them Chinese...
...Chinese American above refers to themselves as Chinese. Needs reminding they are also American. Spouse claims offense is not an 'organic response'...
...so the people offended by all this are...just Ann?
Great points. Be sure to check out the authentic restaurants whenever you visiting Chinese-American Town. Also, the architecture in SF's Japanese-American Town is worth a look.
After reading more this morning about the de-evolution of Seattle, followed up by this small bit of sense coming out of a city that has time and time again voted to throw it's reputation along with it's quality of life into the storm drains, I can only sigh and think that the time has come to just decouple from the Left Coast entirely.
What is the point of Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, or LA? And no- don't give me stories about the glamour of LA on display at the SuperBowl. The town is a shithole all around the areas of high wealth. And unless you are able to live among the billioinaires and multi-millionaires, you don't want to live there in the upcoming years.
Anyway- this small slice of sanity in San Francisco is like finding a small plastic toy bucket in a large boat that has been taking on water for months and is clearly sinking, holding up the bucket and proudly proclaiming that you have some good news!
I've read some commentary on this from the lefty press in SF. It seems the whole kerfuffle was thought up some some ultra-rightists who favor charter schools, and white racists disguised as Asian-Americans. And rich people gave money to the recall campaign, so Capitalism vs Progressivism. According to lefty wisdom, the school renaming stuff was righteous, and there was nothing particularly wrong with the racist commentary of one school board member except that it gave the ultra-rightists the opportunity to Pounce. And also Republicans are bad, even if there are only a couple dozen of them in the City. Their influence is greater than their numbers.
Chinese on the west coast came over as fishermen and as worker/slaves for RR Construction. The Elite Marxist Class running the media today long for the old days of Chinese slaves again. They were like Lee, the servant of the Trask family in Steinbeck's masterpiece, East of Eden.
Steinbeck's Lee was the son of 2 Chinese RR workers. He was more of a family super assistant who took care of everything and offered sage advice when needed. The Chinese were financially wise too, and and bought in town real estate, hence China Town. They were so middle class (bourgeois) that Mao exterminated 100,000,000 of them for his Marxist fantasyland starters.
On the argument about "Chinese" check out the name of the guy who organized the recall.
Siva Raj doesn't sound very Chinese to me. There have been lots of ethnic Chinese in San Francisco for centuries but Silicon Valley has brought a huge number of "south Asians" who are high income and very education oriented. I suspect they drove the recall for excellent reasons.
It’s an egg roll still Chinese food?
#complicatedrules.
when the school board introduced a lottery admission system for Lowell High School, the district’s most prestigious institution, abolishing requirements primarily based on grades and test scores
you know what's hilarious fun?
Randomly selecting average (or, even better! Below average) students of color,
and sending them to a Really Hard school; where they'll consistently fail their classes...
THEN! socially pass them, Anyway (heh heh)
THEN! let them be accepted into expensive colleges... Were they will FAIL
THEN! Kick them out for "academic incompetence"
tada!
a whole new group of disgruntled, indebted, ANGRY young people; that HATE what's been done to them
ROTFLMAO!!! ha ha ha!
If Chinese-Americans don't think of themselves as American, that's a big issue, and it's part of a ragingly hot issue.
I only have one data point, which is that my son and his Chinese-American wife will be giving me a Chinese-American granddaughter this summer. Certainly my daughter-in-law thinks of herself as American. There are things my son and daughter-in-law do things that pay homage to her Chinese ancestry (chiefly food) but the two of them also celebrate all the normal American holidays, and they do eat grilled hot dogs, hamburgers, and bratwursts and watch fireworks on Independence Day. Are they like every other mixed Chinese-American and American of European-descent couple? Well, they are similar to the other young families of mixed Chinese-American and American of European descent in their social circle.
The real import of this story is that "progressives" have finally run up against an issue that normal people are willing to defend: their children.
Mega-lefty Mayor London Breed gets to appoint the replacements. She was all for the recall. Guess why. Pan/fire.
The question is "do words mean things, or don't they"? Yes, I go to Chinese restaurants where they serve "Chinese food." I have also been to a West African restaurant where they served West African food, not "West-African American" food. But when we are talking about people, we have been lectured non-stop about the minute shades of meaning and subtle impositions of "otherness" on various groups. This seems like a subtle othering to me, per "The Rules." The fact that there has been a significant effort to shame Chinese Americans for "acting white" cannot be overlooked.
Right now, we are under Humpty Dumpty's rules of language, more recently known as Calvinball.
The San Francisco school administrators wear their racism and ignorance as badges of honor. The teachers are not hopeless romantics, they're just dealing out misery to Asian and White children. Ted Cruz stated that these people are "every bit as racist as the klansmen in white sheets" and Chinese-American voters agree. San Francisco voters decisively rejected the Democratic Party's racial politics and its anti-intellectualism. Good. The Democratic Party needs to stop scapegoating White and Asian kids for the achievement gap.
Notice just how serious the Democratic blindspot is. These people believe that the interests of African-Americans and elite whites are the same as the general interest. This is not a good political strategy.
‘“Chinese voters." Isn't that an embarrassment?’ I think they meant “voters of Chinese descent,” if that was even necessary or accurate, since the leftmedia no longer describes criminal suspects who are black by using ethnic descriptors. Of course, in leftworld “racism” has nothing to do with Asians.
As for embarrassment, it’s the NYT. It’s bosses and their minions are incapable of embarrassment unless they have departed from the leftist template In some way..
Sebastian said: "How long before "African-American" becomes taboo?"
Althouse replied: "It's already taboo and was pretty much always taboo to refer to African-Americans as "Africans." You can't name a foreign country or other continent as your way of referring to American citizens without looking ignorant or disrespectful."
I agree that it looks disrespectful from a traditional American point of view.
But I alluded to the possibility that, from a progressive point of view, it's the American part that rankles, at least for capital-B Blacks. How "American" should they feel if, according to the 1619 project, the country is based on a lie and molded by slavery to the present day?
Stripping subgroups of the hyphen also serves to divide groups and undermine common identification, a bonus for progressives. In this case, it may have been used to cast aspersions on "Chinese" motives, but in general ethnic rhetorical division may serve to conquer the culture.
Qualitatively, the treatment of California Japanese in WWII is almost as bad as treatment of Chinese in American in general.
Quantitatively, the treatment of Chinese in the US as a whole was much worse. Worse in the sense that many more were affected, over a longer period of time and more severely such as widespread lynchings, forbidden to marry (for all practical purposes) and generally denied basic human rights.
We still still recall the life of Chinese in the 19th and 20th centuries with the expresion "Not a Chinaman's chance" as a meaning no chance at all.
John LGBTQBNY Henry
“It's hatred, thinly disguised. Chinese Americans are all too familiar with the realities of leftism”
No doubt.
The problem is the asymmetry of how the two ethic groups are treated by the author. We have Chinese, and we have African-Americans. Which is to say, the foreigners, and those who belong here. Around here, you ask someone about their ethnicity, they will respond “Mexican”, and not Mexican-American. Or maybe from El Salvador, etc. This is true even if their family has been here for several generations. Or, sometimes, and esp if their family has been here even longer, they will reply “American”. But then, African-Americans don’t very often refer to themselves as such, but rather as Black, or even the despised N Word.
Think of how silly “African-American” is. It is over and under inclusive. Most are Americans, and their families have been here for many generations, except for those, like Kamala Harris, whose Black ancestry was not American, who are trying to sneak into the class, for the advantages it confers. Both my ancestors and those of Teresa Heinz Kerry came from Africa, just tens of thousands of years apart. Hers were hundreds of years more recent than most African-Americans, descended from slaves, who came over more than two centuries ago. What they mean by African-American is someone of predominantly (or at least significant) Negroid blood who lives here legally. Kerry can’t be AA, because she doesn’t have enough Negroid ancestry, while Harris can be, because she does, even though she isn’t descended from American slaves. (Interestingly, the average admixture of Negroid blood in African-Americans in this country is apparently around 60%, compared to almost 100% for Blacks from Africa). Adding “American” to the descriptor does nothing, since most Blacks we see on the streets have ancestry stretching back for hundreds of years in this country. It is assumed, at least until a person opens their mouth.
Its really hard to keep up. Just last week Chinese Americans were supposed to be referred to as the "AAPI Community" as if they had anything in common with Samoans. Yet Chinatown was still Chinatown. And our mayor of color is named London after the worlds premier imperial city. And never say "China***" where the "***" is "man". Then there is the "Stop Asian Hate". Could never say Stop African Hate.
Do immigrants assimilate or do they stay within their group, feeling alien and oppositional? Do they love their country, the country they were either born in or embraced in a solemn ceremony, or are they really aligned with a foreign power?
Did "the only Swede in MacNamera's band" expect to be thought of as a "Swedish-American"?
The Chinese in California seem to assimilate just fine into America. Not unlike whites. For what it's worth, I've never heard any of them express a wish to be called "Chinese-American", they're fine with being known as Chinese.
What they're waking up to is that the liberal black political agenda is directly opposed to Chinese success. If you'd like to create racial divisions, they're doing well. If you think this will turn out well for blacks in the long run, that requires some deliberate ignorance of how people handle such divisiveness.
@tim in vermont wrote: "Yes, I go to Chinese restaurants where they serve "Chinese food." I have also been to a West African restaurant where they served West African food, not "West-African American" food.'
However, there are very clear distinctions between Americanized versions of foreign foods and authentic foreign foods. This includes Tex-Mex such as chili soup poured into a bag of Fritos. This includes California rolls and sushi that adds avocados, cream cheese, and/or deep fries an entire maki roll in tempura batter.
The USA was a common racial and ethnic "melting pot" for most of its (largely White) history, and then the university left switched metaphors to "a salad bowl of distinct flavors."
You can either have a country with a common vision and tolerance or acceptance of difference or not. Quibbling over language is an artifact of sour grapes and a de facto desire for segregation or apartheid. As such, the left now includes many covert ultra-conservatives while the right includes a whole lot of mild-mannered libertarians.
Didn't they all just lose their minds when McConnell said African-Americans vote as much as Americans? Now they think it's ok to not even add the hyphen? Seems more "othering" than anything McConnell said.
It's a well known fact that drawing cross hairs on electoral districts incites some citizens into shooting the representatives of those districts. Is there any possibility that the rhetoric of these school board members has something to do with all the assaults on Asian grannies?.....I sure hope that they find a cure for cancer someday soon. My bet is that the Nobel for this will go to some Jewish or Asian scientist with a nagging mother who insists that her kid get straight A's and takes efforts to enroll him in accelerated program in an elite school. Well, good. I think ethnic Catholics (my group) are under-represented in elite schools, and I don't care. That's as it should be. You're most American when you're not offended by other Americans.....I don't think Chinese-Americans get upset at being called Chinese. They're somewhat irritated when people think they're Japanese, however.....If a term is applied to a group without meaning to give offense and the group involved doesn't take offense at the term can that term be reasonably said to be offensive?
"No, it Chinese. Large numbers of Asians in SF are resident aliens or dual citizens. And SF either allows Non-Americans to vote in local elections or doesn't check. To put it simply, you can speak only Chinese and be a Chinese citizen and vote in SF."
If that's the situation, the NYT needs to tell us that.
Are fortune cookies and General Tso's Chicken "Chinese Food"?
The only place I've ever seen either is in "Chinese" restaurants.
But both were invented in the US.
Interesting doco on General Tso's chicken not on YouTube but a Ted Talk by the woman who produced it here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6MhV5Rn63M
I did see fortune companies once at a trade show. A US controls and automation company was passing them out. They were orange (company color) instead of yellow and the fortune was always along the lines of "Using Acme controls will improve your productivity"
Is that cultural appropriation?
Should I have not eaten them?
John LGBTQBNY Henry
“Great points. Be sure to check out the authentic restaurants whenever you visiting Chinese-American Town. Also, the architecture in SF's Japanese-American Town is worth a look.”
Travelogue hints from a gorbellied, doghearted fustilarian… the Hapless Wanderer.
Disagree, Ann,
This article is evidence of the use of "Chinese" instead of "chinese-American"
In my life I've commonly heard "Irish", "Italian" "scandinavian" polish and other nationalities to denote Americans of ethnic background.
Probably not strictly correct as you say but I doubt anyone gets insulted.
So why could we not use "african" in the same way?
John LGBTQBNY Henry
rhhardin said...
Call them California-Americans.
---------
californicatees turned californicators?
I updated the post over this noncitizen voting issue.
If that's the situation, the NYT needs to tell us that.
Not if they deem it unfit to print.
To put it simply, you can speak only Chinese and be a Chinese citizen and vote in SF."
--------
does /chinese/ includes ?Taiwanese?
Calaloo, Strange calaloo
Mysterious curious roux
Try as you might to avoid the hoodoo
Sooner or later we're all in the stew
-Jimmy Buffett
This thread is making me hungry.
John LGBTQBNY Henry
You can't name a foreign country or other continent as your way of referring to American citizens without looking ignorant or disrespectful.
Sez who?
US Census sez:
"Earnings Inequality and Immobility for Hispanics and Asians: An Examination of Variation Across Subgroups"
"Our analysis provides the first disaggregated examination of earnings inequality and immobility within the Hispanic ethnic group and the Asian race group in the U.S. over the period of 2005-2015."
"Asian" is used to mean race since "Mongoloid" became taboo (it's also too general, since it included Amerindians).
"Black" is used to mean race since "Negro" became taboo.
"Hispanic/Latino" are used to mean race since Mestizo is only used in Central and South America.
"Asian Americans" are not a race, nor are "African Americans", like Elon Musk. Would "Asian Americans" change race if they moved to Canada?
This renaming and taboo-ing of race names is part of the Newspeak process to prevent people from thinking clearly, by preventing them from communicating clearly.
Ann, aren't they supposed to be legal aliens, green card, to vote?
I think California allows legal aliens to vote in local elections.
Illegal aliens (Those aliens here illegally) are not supposed to vote but apparently do because nobody checks.
John LGBTQBNY Henry
Negroid blood ?
is that different from A/B/O/AB etc Rh+-
Living on the MA/NH border during Covid has had its moments. For a while we had one car with MA plates and another with NH plates. We had to take the NH car to Maine so as not to get jammed up with its travel ban on Massachusetts residents. We wanted to spend the night in Stockbridge on a trip back from Iowa at the height of Covid (December 2020) but the B&B we called ahead from the road wouldn’t take us without a test so we had to spend the night outside Albany, New York, as we didn’t want to drive through to New Hampshire.
" Iman said...
So there is hope?"
Heavens, no. The same fools voted them in who voted them out. Their embarrassment at their prior foolishness is entirely transitory.
While kids were forced to stay home, the SF School Board members earmarked million$ to change the racist names of a dozen SF schools, like John Muir Elementary. Horrid man. Allison Collins, the lead mouth, was, and is, a nasty person - and not in a fun way. Most egregious, her Board fucked with Lowell High, lowering admission standards of one of the best public high schools in the country. It's the #1 school targeted by Asian parents for their kids. Any parents really.
On deck for a beaning in June, SF DA Chesa Boudin, the super-progressive adoptive son of Bernardine Dohrn and Bill Ayers, who charitably stepped in when Chesa's real parents were imprisoned for robbery and murder, tho they were not the trigger-people. The black Chief of Police, a solid guy, will be first in line at the voting booth that day.
They really must mean to say "Chinese voters." Isn't that an embarrassment?
No, the inherent "logic" of CRT and DIE (Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity) is that people must be divided up by their skin color, because that's the most important thing about them.
"Chinese-American" would imply that they've assimilated, and become American, not just Chinese. But to the creatures writing at the NYT, that would be bad.
They don't mean "Chinese-American", and they're not just talking about the non-citizens who get to vote. For them, anyone with some "Chinese ancestry" is, and will always be, "Chinese"
That's the "logic" of the racism of the Left
Ann Althouse said...
"It's hatred, thinly disguised. Chinese Americans are all too familiar with the realities of leftism."
It's pushing the idea that they are foreigners, undermining our way of life. It's reminiscent of the treatment of Japanese-Americans during WWII.
Except that for the Left, "undermining our way of life" is a feature, not a bug.
It's why the new "Superman" doesn't fight for "Truth, Justice, and the American Way." Because the people writing the new "Superman", and the people writing at the NYT and WaPo, all hate the American Way
“tweets written by [Alison] Collins, the board’s vice president … said Asian Americans were like slaves who benefited from working inside a slave owner’s house — a comparison that Asian American groups and many city leaders called racist”. Yes, what a terrible analogy. So minorities today are to whites what slaves were to slave owners? And Asian Americans are to African Americans what house slaves were to field slaves? This comparison manages to be insulting and disrespectful to both living Asian Americans, living Blacks, and the memory of slaves long since gone. Talk about trivializing slavery. Does this Collins person think slaves had a higher income than slave owners? Asian Americans have a higher average income today than whites today. Does she think house slaves were over represented as a percentage of population in elite institutions of learning in the slavery era and there was a big effort to get more field slaves into those intuitions instead? And what’s with her implied criticism of house slaves? They should have done what? Gone into the fields in the interest of, I guess, slave equality? Where does Collins think she gets the moral authority to pass that judgement?
More evidence that those new to America will save America from the neo-Marxist descendants of the Mayflower. We see this rising among Hispanics as well. They want the American idea. Thank goodness.
(Interestingly, the average admixture of Negroid blood in African-Americans in this country is apparently around 60%, compared to almost 100% for Blacks from Africa).
Change "blood", whatever that means, to "genetic information", and your 60% becomes about 80% African ancestry.
Ice Nine said...
Mega-lefty Mayor London Breed gets to appoint the replacements. She was all for the recall. Guess why. Pan/fire.
Breed wants to get re-elected. It's why, IIRC, she's also supporting the SF DA Chesa Boudin recall.
So I expect she'll be appointing replacements who don't go out of their way to piss off parents, especially parents who want their kids to get educated
The real import of this story is that "progressives" have finally run up against an issue that normal people are willing to defend: their children.
Exactly.
"So why could we not use "african" in the same way?"
Well, the Progs will probably be late to understanding, but "African" is used by real racists as a derogation. "Nigerian" is also very popular, for obvious reasons. I think most Black people realize this, but the White Woke will take a while to get it. Comedy will ensue.
"controversial tweets written by [Alison] Collins, the board’s vice president, were discovered. In them, she said Asian Americans were like slaves who benefited from working inside a slave owner’s house — a comparison that Asian American groups and many city leaders called racist...."
Well it IS real racism, but not by today's enforced newer definition of "racism."
Instead, this categorization of Asians as benefiting from "acting white" like a House Negro is a completely normal standard--even mandatory--under the current Critical Race Theory that is strangling our culture.
There is only ONE possible viewpoint allowed, and that is that whiteness is a viewpoint/standard/power structure that must be destroyed. Any otherwise protected group who opposes the destruction of anything associated with "whiteness" (such as favoring merit over lottery systems) is "complicit" with "whiteness" and their opinion is invalid. Their minority status is revoked. No one is permitted to stand firm in any place that gives them the ability to resist the revolution.
African-American means black. Immigrant South African whites don't get called that. Also the inclination is to call black citizens of say Japan African-Americans before correcting yourself, first using the polite term for black these days and then noticing that it has a literally-nonsense problem.
I wouldn't be surprised if you could count on one hand the total number of times anyone on the very large Italian-American side of my family ever said the hyphenated "Italian-American" out loud. If asked, every one of them would say they were "Italian", but God help you if you challenged their American patriotism, which would be second to none.
That said, I think they'd all expect to be described as "Italian-American" in a news story, and they'd be very uncomfortable being described in the NYT as simply "Italian."
FWIW.
African-American means black. Immigrant South African whites don't get called that.
"an American of African and especially of Black African descent"
Elon Musk just got called that in this thread, correctly. What about Arabs and Berbers? They're Africans but not black.
Countries and continents shouldn't be used to describe race since race is independent of citizenship or residence, but we're reduced to doing so (e.g "Asian race" in the census) because Newspeak: to communicate clearly is "offensive".
Althouse said…"…and I now consider the NYT article defective not because it referred to voters as "Chinese" but because it didn't bring up noncitizen voting."
You can be sure this wasn't an oversight. The NYT knows that noncitizens are voting but they don't want you to know.
Beautiful, mikee
In this context, the heritage of mom and dad is irrelevant to understanding their concern for their children and criticism of a school board run amuck. No one wants every child left behind policy, and the Atlanta and similar incidents was, to say the least, an revelation of just how far the diversity, inequity, and exclusion infection, including critical racists' theory, had progressed.
I would like to note that voting your elected representatives is not at all "people rising up in revolt". It's people rising up in republican fashion to hold their reps accountable. In this case it's the school board that is revolting.
I saw the results last night and although I figured these three school board members would be ousted, I didn't realize how steep the results were. It was at least a solid 70% of ballots cast in favor of the recall. That tells me there were some really cheesed off residents. Heck I was cheesed off about it, and I don't even have kids! I heard something today reporting a good percentage of school districts in the state are floating recall measures for their boards.
We'll see where the June election takes us with Boudin. Might be a tougher go.
David Bernstein has a book coming out -- Classified: The Untold Story Of Racial Classification In America -- that undertakes to describe exactly how deep a mess the classifiers have put us in. It's not due until July, but based on various posts of his on the Volokh Conspiracy, it ought to be an exceedingly interesting read.
I notice that the article in the San Francisco Chronicle includes an indignant complaint from one against the recall that "three people of color" were ousted. Somewhere later on, the article gets around to saying that 6 of the 7 board members were POC. (IIRC, the remaining one is a white man, but gay.)
The same person, I think, goes on to call the pro-recall folks "closet Republicans," hinting darkly that while there are very few registered Republicans in SF, a lot of people are "hiding" their "true" beliefs by registering as Democrats or Independents. Um . . . OK, if you say so.
So I guess this means that not everyone who doesn't have their nose up Trump's ass supports the woke agenda.
The NYT article now (as of 5:00 pm Central) says "Chinese-American voters" in each of these locations. Your initial revulsion at the sloppy reporting and editing was correct.
You lost me at the request for ballots printed in Chinese. Anyone requiring ballot material in non-English may be obtaining most of their information from non-English sources, which may have their own agendas
In 2016, San Franciscans passed a charter amendment allowing non-citizen parents to vote in school board elections. Only a handful of people registered until the recall campaign launched a voter registration drive mostly in Chinatown. (It's still not a huge number.)
Siva Raj, an immigrant from India, is not a U.S. citizen. He voted for the first time in the recall election as a non-citizen parent. He also launched the recall a year ago with Autumn Looijen, also a parent and also a complete political novice. They went online, asked for support and started an avalanche. https://bit.ly/3rVRsP6
And To Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street
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