Academic institutions primarily have control and power over their campus environment. To encourage more racial diversity in its admissions selection and its faculty appointment is on the whole surfacey, and doesn’t really address the institutional and structural issues within society, in the corporate world, or even in the academic institution itself. Case in point: let’s take a look at the racial diversity of the colleges’ and universities’ board of directors, executive/leadership team, and, ahem, you’ll probably find the numbers to show an overwhelming majority of white Anglo-Americans. So what good is all this maneuvering for multiculturalism and diversity anyways?

I’m Chinese and I was raised in California. I attended a public high school which was about 50% Asian. The honors classes and the AP classes were usually 85%+ Asian. I agree that Asian family values and the emphasis on education have a lot to do with the disproportionate success of Asians in America.

Asian parents expect their kids get A’s, unless there’s a very good explanation. I remember one of my classmates scored an 800 on one of the SAT subject tests, which turned out to be the 97th percentile. Instead of congratulating him on a perfect score, his mother asked why his scores didn’t say 100th percentile. While I do see some potential benefits from programs like affirmative action, I think they’re mostly peripheral. What’s really important is having high expectations which challenge people to do their best.

Having lower expectations for minorities in some ways is in itself racist. I fully recognize that there’s racism in America and it’s harder to be successful as a minority than as a white male. But in my experience the Asian mindset isn’t dwelling on your disadvantages, but working harder. Life will never be fair.

The emphasis on family also pressures children to succeed – mostly in a good way. Many of my friends know that their parents gave up familiar lives in Korea, Hong Kong, or Taiwan so that they could have greater opportunities, and now they feel obligated to hold up their end of the deal. It’s also interesting to note how few homeless Asians there are and how few Asians there are in retirement homes. There’s an obligation to take care of your family, even if you don’t want to.

Additionally, there’s a huge emphasis on education. There is no word for “nerd” in Chinese. The closest term would be “bookworm,” and that would be more of a compliment.

I’m a first-generation immigrant, from East Asia, currently a PhD student at a top-5 university, having finished my undergrad at another top-5 university. (Ms. Barber, you probably can check my IP if you wish to confirm this.)

1. Affirmative action clearly makes admission harder for asian-americans. The solution: work even harder. My friend saw his older sister fail to get into top universities, even as her obviously less-qualified friends did. He revved into high gear, and his academic performance shot up, and he got in.

2. People aren’t stupid. If you’re smart enough to get in, you’re smart enough to understand affirmative action for what it is. You choose your partners for group projects accordingly. Nothing is ever said publicly – people aren’t stupid – but it is implicitly understood that some students worked harder than others to be there.

3. Employers aren’t stupid either.

Basically, I couldn’t care less whether affirmative action exists or not. If I were black (I know our favorite blogger hates the term “african-american”), I would consider it an insult. But I’m not – higher expectations means I’ll just work harder. And in a globalized economy, being coddled by affirmative action is a bad idea anyways.

Your comments are bang on!

“Diversity in the classroom has a tremendous impact on helping with students’ critical thinking and social skills…”

These words reminded me of a comment a student recently made at our college: “I would like faculty to change. Hiring a more diverse faculty could bring in a different perspective. We have a very strong majority European-American faculty, which brings in only one perspective, and that’s not enough. I think we need more perspectives.”

Lamentably, this student’s comments reflect one of the dreadfully horrible assumptions that grounds multiculturalism, namely, essentialism. What is essentialism? Essentialism is what impelled Adolf Hitler’s genocidal beliefs and actions concerning the Jews. With multiculturalists, essentialism is the notion that race essentially cordons off viewpoints or perspectives that members of one race hold from viewpoints and perspectives that members of other races hold. Thus, for example, we regularly hear about the shortcomings of white linear thinking that needs to be enhanced, even corrected, by narrative and cyclical reasoning found in members of other races. Strange as it may seem, though assumed sociological essentialism gives multiculturalism seeming virtue to engineer racial diversity in the cause of increasing perspectival diversity multiculturalism, it simultaneously assumes that race is simply a social construction. For anyone who ponders these matters for a few moments it does not take long to realize that to believe simultaneously in sociological essentialism and in the notion that race is socially constructed is to flout the law of noncontradiction. But avoidance of logical fallacies has never been the strength of multiculturalism’s advocates.

Your following comments are so correct that they are worthy of reiterating.

“The emphasis on skin color for its own sake and the annoying and mind-numbing politically correct tip-toeing got on my nerves even when I was a liberal. I can’t imagine what it’s like these days as a conservative in college, where you can’t say a darn thing that’s negative about any race other than white without being called a racist.

“Let’s define ‘critical thinking.’ It is the cognitive process of ‘conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and evaluating information to reach an answer or conclusion.’ Now use your critical thinking skills to conceptualize, apply, analyze, synthesize, and evaluate this: Discussing negative aspects of “diversity” in general or racial groups in particular are taboo, unless the racial group is white, so how does one develop critical thinking skills if one can’t discuss and evaluate topics that may be offensive to some? How does one “reach an answer or conclusion” with incomplete and ‘undebated’ information? It’s difficult to develop critical thinking skills when discussions with even a hint of negativity about race are taboo.

“At this point you may be asking, ‘La Shawn, why would people need to discuss negative aspects of racial groups? Why is it relevant, and what does it have to do with developing critical thinking skills?’

“Skin color diversity-obssessed folks talk incessantly about race and promote it every chance they get. But if you’re going to promote skin color and “cultural” distinctions among students yet discourage them from talking about all aspects of race and culture, for example, what’s the point?

“There isn’t supposed to be a point. That’s the point. Critical thinking, as defined by liberals, is what they want you to think; hence, thought control through speech codes. Critical thinking is acknowledging the sins of white people in particular and America in general. Period.”

La Shawn Barber takes exception to a line she came across in an article, almost laughing herself brain dead in the process and then subsequently calling it BS.

“Reading all this about Asians made me think about the recent Michael Richards rant, and how the “leaders of the black community” weighed in on it. Who are the “leaders of the Asian community”? And who are the leaders of the white and Hispanic community?”

I challenge anyone to ask the average American to name leaders in the black community, Asian community, white community and Hispanic community.

I’m sure you will get answers such as Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton for the black community, but I bet they’d be hard pressed to name a “community leader” of the other races/ethnicities that can claim to speak for ALL people of that race/ethnicity. I like to think of myself as fairly well-read on a range of topics and current events, and I can’t do it.

Everyone in the US, even if they don’t follow the news, could likely at least name Jackson and Sharpton – they are nationally known and recognized. The same can’t be said of the other groups.

And the “Asian” community is far too diverse: Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Korean. And there is some very bad blood between some of them (I think the Chinese have long memories that go back the Rape of Nanking. I also seem to recall news stories of North Korea kidnapping Japanese citizens for the purpose of training NK spies to fit in to Japanese society. Korea was also an imperial colony in the first half of the 20th century, and Japan didn’t treat the native people well.

The Hispanic community is also diverse, but probably not to the same extent: mostly Mexican immigrants and their descendants, but also from other Central and South American countries.

Phillipe #59:

“Secondly, the notion that Asians are a model minority who don’t have any of the problems that blacks have is a myth, especially so called “boat people” and others who have experienced massive trauma. Anyone who provides social services in these commmunities will tell you that many Asians are involved in gangs, addiction, domestic violence, depression, suicide and yes, many of them are poorly educated and live in poverty just like blacks, whites, Native Americans and Hispanics. These studies suggesting that Asians are higher achievers are based on the “cream of the crop” of Asian communities not on Asians in general which is a diverse group, just like all Americans. We need to learn from all people who have shown resiliency in the face of oppression and discrimination so that the circle of success can be expanded to include greater numbers of Americans off all backgrounds. This would be of much greater use to our country than playing the tired game of “which ethnic group is the best”.”

I don’t think it’s the point that Asians are or are not a “model minority”. Personally, that description sounds a bit insulting.

What I get from Asian successes is that they ARE a minority, one that has a history of being persecuted in some fashion, yet they succeed in spite of not being a “preferred minority” that gets special treatment.

I think it’s natural, if unfortunate that we are often prone to think the worst of others. That’s probably a part of that tribalism and part of why it’s so easy to fear or suspect people who we perceive as not sharing much in common with us.

Back in 1990, I was heading back to Staten Island (SI) from a Bronx firehouse via the BQE because the George Washington Bridge was jammed. Anyway, down near the Verrazano Narrows Bridge to SI some of the entrances to the BQE enter into the left lane of that highway.

I was in the middle lane when a tractor-trailer got on. I could tell, only because the rig blocked out the sun to my left.

Suddenly my car jolted and spun around. My car (a 4 door Subaru) was thrown directly in front of this tractor-trailer. I remember looking up at the grill of this truck that seemed inches from the front of my car. I was blown past and clear of the truck and into a guard rail. The truck continued by side swiping my car as it passed.

I got out of my car shocked and dazed. Thankfully a city bus driver cut across all three lanes of traffic and kept the other oncoming cars from hitting me. He asked me if I was alright.

I asked him, “Any blood?”

There wasn’t any, so I escaped without a scratch.

Then I turned my attention to the tractor-trailer that had stopped about 200 feet down the road.

I looked at my car and thought that I was lucky to be alive, then I figured that the driver of this rig had to be a real jerk, so I’m thinking to myself, “If this idiot comes off wrong, just hit him, just pound his friggin face in and you can claim mental duress later on.”

The bus driver got my attention, as some cops started arriving on the scene…and when I turned around the driver of the truck was standing right in front of me. He was a short black guy (not what I was expecting), when he spoke, he said, “Man, I’m really sorry! I didn’t see you til the last minute.”

That one phrase, “I’m sorry” took all the air out of me. The guy wasn’t a jerk at all and it was just a bad accident. It didn’t make everything alright, but it took all the anger right out of me on the spot.

On New York’s roadways it’s usually pretty rare to run into non-jerks. So that was what I was expecting.

The truck driver had sought to move over into the middle lane, didn’t see me and clipped my car behind the driver’s side rear wheel…I was really lucky that I wasn’t killed. God was looking out for me that day…and he looked out for me again just four days later when I was in a fire in a vacant building at East Clarke and Walton Avenue in the Bronx and escaped a six story pancake collapse as the rear of that building came down, floor upon floor as we were moving a hose line in. There was a third close call within a ten day period, but right now, I forget the third event.

People can surprise you…good or bad, they can surprise you. So, it does pay to be a little wary around folks you don’t know, but we should be wary around all strangers, not just some.

There’s a radio talk show host I’ve gotten to know named Barry Farber – GREAT guy! He once started a group called “Enough,” he said, “It’s not about this group against that group, but about the decent among all groups against the indecent.”

THAT’S the kind of guy I’ve always wanted and aspired to be, not the scared, angry kid I once was.

The only thing that’s really bad is if we allow them to lead to self-destructive behaviors and clearly yours don’t.

I think most people struggle against the worst parts of their natures and we all have the same tribal traits that all humans have, as they’ve served humankind well for eons.

I used to try and kid myself, claiming I worked where I did out of some non-existant compassion or “goodness.”

I worked where I did because I wanted to go to fires and I wanted to go to fires because initially, like most rational people, I was very afraid of fire. I figured working in a busy area with guys who’ve done this work a long time, and who WANTED to be there was the safest way to go.

That may sound crazy, at first, but my logic was this, if you work in a slow firehouse, you may go to only a few fires a year, but you’ll be surrounded by guys who also don’t do much work and probably, in many cases, don’t want to do the work.

I figured, a busy firehouse does a lot more fire duty, BUT you’re surrounded by guys who are really into it and really want to be there.

That’s what I aspired to be and I figured the only way to get to become confident and good at this was to work in a busy place.

The people in the community have always been great with us and many times I was humbled by the kindness of people who didn’t know me nor look like me!

I’d met many great people from all different backgrounds before that, but this was different.

IN January of 2001 a guy from my Company (Ladder-44) Don Franklin was killed at a fire on 166th Street & Teller Avenue. Two people smoking in bed were also killed at that job.

Donnie was a great guy. He had thr roof position and had to ascend an aerial pitched at about 80 degrees (not uncommon with those narrow streets and high buildings up there) with about 100 pounds of gear…he vented the roof and dropped down to the top floor to overhaul…later his heart gave out. “Exertion,” they called it.

Anyway, people from all over the neighborhood came by to offer their condolences and just be with us, even though they had lost two people from that community in that same fire.

All fatal fires are bad, but when you lose a fireman, it kind of brings your own mortality into an uncomfortably close perspective…and most of us don’t much like that feeling.

But I’ve never had anything but good things to say about most of the people in that neighborhood…they were great!

I miss it now that I’m in HazMat, but I’m getting more of an education, so there’s kind of a trade-off, I guess.

Anyway, it’s always good to get other perspectives. It’s not always about agreeing, but just figuring things out.

As for blacks having a “civil disturbance” following OJ’s acquittal……. Please!

Blacks didn’t just burn down Korean stores just because…

There was a specific reason why that happened.

Remember the “LaTasha Harlans” thing?

Google “LaTasha Harlans”.

She was the Black Gal that was gunned down by a Korean Grocer, and the Korean Grocer went free.

Something along the lines of Bernhard Goetz.

So, much of the anger, and burning down of Korean Grocers was payback…

…according to Maxine Waters, who, to this day refuses to utter the word…R-I-O-T-S, and instead prefers the term “Civil Disturbance”.

Oh, I’m not kidding.

Ok, let me just make this one point: Why is it that if a Korean Grocer goes free after killing a Black ….and there’s all sorts of outrage—

—Yet if O.J. Simpson goes free after killing, not one, but two Whites…..not a peep out of the Black community.

Now, there’s a double standard for ya!

I really enjoyed reading your experience.

I believe that discrimination and racism is an individual experience while I still think depending on a group’s history, it can affect an individual just like stretching a bit, Irish and British have a bad history but again it will be based on personal experiences between Irishes and Britishes.

I have a multi cultural base of friends, that’s why I tell close minded people to look that not all white people are racists, in fact, I found it easier at various time to interact among my white than blacks (that’s another story). Some some of my best friends are Italians and Irish, really people that would go out of a limb for me and vice versa they have become like family members. Race isn’t not an issue.

I love having friends from different places, India, Taiwan, France, Germany, Africa ect…..

You brought up an interesting issue, your thoughts that black people hated white people. It’s interesting, the way it’s set up when you think of racism, discrimination ect…. you always think of whites as the agressors and blacks as the victim.

Blacks tend to think that if they find themselves alone among whites, that whites don’t like black people.

You never think that whites worry about things like another group not liking them, because we get caught up in thinking that when you’re white, race and racism is probably not an issue, when it could be.

many of the white friends I have have shared their fear as well of blacks not liking them because of experience.

I really enjoyed reading your experience.

This is the kinda of discussion we should be having at the dinner table, social gatherings ect…. the more people talk about these issues, the more it’s in the open and the chance to improve our relations when we get to share. Though we all have different opinions, I think the fact that we’re having something to say means that we want the situation to change and I guess that’s step 1.

There’s good and bad in every people, you can’t blame one group for the mistake of one and life is a daily experience that differs with every individual.

As for the Jewish Rabbi story, I always go by a, we don’t have to like each other, but we have to respect each other.

As for the thoughts that roll around in people’s heads, just looking for an opportunity to come out, well, yeah. I read an article by a well known rabbi recently who said that he would prefer that people treat him civilly, even if they harbor antisemitic feelings for him, rather than have people treat him badly and claim that the bad treatment has nothing to do with their attitudes and thoughts toward him (which is possible). There were several responses to his article by people who stated that they didn’t want someone just to treat them nicely; they wanted everyone to have nice thoughts about them. They were uncomfortable with the duplicity, and they “want to the know the enemy” and “want to know where I stand with him.” But I understand the rabbi’s point of view and I share it. I can’t control what people think of me, and I can’t control any bigoted feelings they may harbor about Jews. In fact, I might even sympathize with some of their thoughts! But what is more important to me is what they choose to do with those thoughts. Can they control them, and act with reason and humanity as their guide? If I can’t have both the nice thoughts and the nice actions, then I’ll take the actions over the thoughts, inasmuch as these can be separated. Maybe I’m a behavioralist, but I believe that if you act in a righteous way, the thoughts will follow. This seems to be more successful than trying to change and control thoughts, and hope the behaviors will follow.

There certainly are criminals in every group, and police go after them all. All poice do is respond to calls. Those calls are reported to them by people in those areas. Police are assigned to various areas due to the volume of calls generated there.

If you’re a law-abiding citizen, more cops on the streets where you live is a blessing. I WANT those squeegee men locked up, I WANT those drug dealers and pimps and prostitutes run through the system and chased out of those neighborhoods. I don’t do bad stuff, why should they?

If kids in the suburbs drink too much or do drugs, they’re heading down a real bad path and that’ll no doubt catch up with them down the road.

I feel bad for those kids black or white, but I don’t want them threatening my family. I think it’s the most basic of social contracts, “Live straight or get locked up.”

My “freedoms” end where my neighbor’s nose begins. I don’t have the “right” to do things that’ll bring harm to my neighbors or lower property values where I live. When we do negative things, such things are “actionable,” either civilly or criminally.

None of us has the “right to do whatever we like.” That’s not freedom/Liberty, that’s “license.” Freedom is being responsible for everything we do, license is “doing whatever feels good.”

As you say, education IS a national problem and it’s primarily a problem because standards have been lowered and discipline has been reduced in our schools.

Kids don’t need “freedom,” they need discipline. School is a kid’s JOB. It should prepare them for the working world to come.

And “self esteem?” A great writer named M. Scott Peck (author of “The Road Less Travelled”), was commissioned to do a study on why some students excel and others don’t. He found that those students who tended to do very well, seemed to register VERY LOW “self esteem,” while those who tended to do poorly had relatively HIGH “self-esteem.”

He found that many of the students who did very well on various exams would fret all day over the questions they got wrong, while those who did poorly tended to base their “self-esteem” on other things – a poor performing girl would take pride in her good looks, while a poor performing boy would take comfort in that he was a really good baseball player.

Dr Peck (a psychologist) found that there was NO correlation between self esteem and doing well academically, in fact, he found an almost inverse correlation!

At another point, the U.S. Army had Dr Peck study why some Officer Candidate recruits did very well and others didn’t.

What he found was again counter-intuitive. He noticed first, that none of the highest performing candidates seemed to care how long or how quickly they finished his questionairres. When THEY were done, they were done.

He also found something else. One question they all answered the same was “What is the most important thing in your life?”

While other candidates answered things like “Doing well in my career,” My home life,” EVERY ONE of the highest achievers answered “MYSELF.”

And it makes perfect sense. If a person doesn’t first take care of and improve him/herself, they’re no good to anyone else.

Interestingly enough, Dr. Peck also studied serial killers and wrote about that in a book called “People of the Lie.” In it he asked these serail killers what the most important thing to them was…and they ALL answered “What people think of me.” In other words, “respect.” These men would justify anything in the name of having others think highly of them, while the high achievers in the Military all sought to improve themselves so they could first think highly of themselves.

I’m not assailing your perspective Derek, I’m pointing out that sometimes we can go through life thinking something is true, when it’s clear to everyone else that we’re laboring under a misconception.

You say you don’t “blame whites,” but you seem to hold a lot of race-based resentment, despite that.

I once did too, so I understand.

I grew up in a nearly all white part of Staten Island. My Dad had been in the Navy during WW II & Korea and then got on the Fire Dept (the FDNY). He worked in various areas, but as I approached my teens, he was a Captian in a busy Ladder Company in the Ocean-Hill/Brownsville section of Brooklyn.

I’d never really met any black people to that point in my life and never really thought much about it. My father was a fiscal Conservative but a social Liberal, who saw blacks as a group that was mis-treated as bad or worse than his own Irish ancestors who dealt with signs like “Irish & Dogs Need Not Apply.”

One day, I recall seeing the news accounts of the riots of the late 1960s. In those accounts were video images of black people hurling things from rooftops down upon Fire Companies.

I didn’t like that…and I didn’t much like them.

A thought crystalized in my mind – “Black people hate whites.”

Since I didn’t know any black people at that time, that thought had no real impact on me, but as I got a little older I ran into black people much more frequently.

My initial thoughts were that “these people are inherantly dangerous,” so I was wary and cautious around them and very rarely smiled in the presence of blacks.

But as I got to know more of them and started playing on various sports teams with blacks, I found out something startling – most of the black people I met were pretty damned good people.

I used to say “Some of the best and worst people I’ve ever met were Irish,” well, I’ve since found that out to be true of EVERY group of people I’ve ever known – “Some of the BEST and WORST are…”

I’ve had great experiences with all sorts of people and bad experiences with members of every group as well, the vast majority of people are good and decent and the few bad shouldn’t reflect on the entire group.

When you enter a store somewhere where everyone is of a different ethnic group…and they all seem to turn around to stare….as they look at you, you can think one of two things, “They’re all staring at me cause they’re bigots and hate me,” OR “They’ve all turned around cause they’re curious as to who just walked in.”

No matter what group you’re talking about, I’ve found that the latter is much more likely to be the case.