Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - May 11, 2021


Ep 418 ｜ An Inconvenience to Intersectionality： Asian-American Success ｜ Guest： Kenny Xu


Episode Stats

Length

35 minutes

Words per Minute

163.19662

Word Count

5,803

Sentence Count

269

Misogynist Sentences

4

Hate Speech Sentences

35


Summary

Author Kenny Zhu joins me to talk about his new book, An Inconvenient Minority, and why Asian Americans are being systematically discriminated against in the admissions process at Harvard University and other Ivy League universities. We talk about the Harvard admissions process, how it's designed to disadvantage Asian Americans, and the reasons why this is happening.


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Hey guys, welcome to Relatable. Today I am talking to author Kenny Zhu. He wrote a book
00:00:14.940 called An Inconvenient Minority. He is an Asian American and he talks about the success of Asian
00:00:21.940 Americans and unfortunately how they are being institutionally discriminated against, especially
00:00:27.420 when it comes to college admissions. I mean, his argument is basically that in the woke narrative
00:00:33.140 of intersectionality, this idea that white supremacy reigns supreme in the United States,
00:00:39.460 Asian Americans are an inconvenient wedge in that argument considering they have higher test scores,
00:00:46.820 they have higher graduation rates, they have higher median incomes than white Americans,
00:00:50.760 they also have higher family togetherness rates and lower rates of crime and teen delinquency.
00:00:59.640 And so if it is true that white supremacy reigns in the United States, it is very hard to account
00:01:05.320 for why Asian Americans and even Asian immigrants, people who are not born here but become Americans
00:01:11.640 in their lifetimes actually end up across a variety of categories being on average more successful than
00:01:18.520 white Americans. And so we talk about that and some of the struggles that Asian Americans are facing
00:01:22.900 because of an assault against meritocracy, especially when it comes to academia. So
00:01:28.160 super interesting conversation that I'm excited for you guys to listen to. Without further ado,
00:01:32.840 here is Kenny Zhu. Kenny, thank you so much for joining us. Can you tell everyone who may not know
00:01:42.780 who you are and what you do? Sure. So I'm Kenny Zhu. I'm the author of the upcoming book An Inconvenient
00:01:48.880 Minority. My book talks about the Ivy League admissions cases that are going on. If some of you
00:01:55.860 aren't familiar, there's a group of Asian Americans who are suing Harvard University and actually various
00:02:01.920 other Ivy League universities for discriminating against them. And, you know, the evidence is pretty
00:02:08.980 clear cut that Harvard uses a racial preference system that actually negatively affects Asian
00:02:15.240 Americans. And the reason why they're doing it is because they want to they want to have preferences
00:02:23.680 towards other minority groups. So it brings up a really interesting issue about the diversity and the race
00:02:29.300 ideology going today. And can you talk a little bit about what that process is at Harvard and some of the
00:02:36.920 proof that you guys have or that this group has uncovered when it comes to the admissions process?
00:02:44.400 Yeah. So, I mean, this is a really interesting question. There's at Harvard University, they basically
00:02:51.980 grade you for anyone who's applied to Harvard. Actually, the admissions documents were some of the key
00:02:58.560 pieces of information that were released from this lawsuit. But they basically grade you on three or four
00:03:05.760 different factors, depending on if you're an athlete. They grade you on academics, obviously, from a
00:03:11.920 scale of one to 10. Those are things like grades, SAT scores, course rigor, those kinds of things. Then
00:03:18.440 they grade you on extracurriculars, right? They want, you know, well-rounded people. They want, you know,
00:03:24.460 people who, you know, participate in clubs, who have leadership positions, who've won medals, those kinds of
00:03:29.500 things. And then they have this final grade called a personality score. And they grade you on personality.
00:03:37.640 And actually, the Harvard admissions documents, according to a study by an economist, actually show
00:03:42.460 that the personality score is what most influences the decision of Harvard to either accept or reject
00:03:49.700 you. And it's really interesting when it comes to Asian Americans, because in Asian Americans get,
00:03:58.020 by and large, much better academic and extracurricular scores than any of the other racial groups, even
00:04:04.200 whites, which is kind of interesting. But for some reason, Harvard's personality score grades Asian
00:04:12.700 Americans as the lowest significantly of all of the racial groups. That's below blacks, Hispanics,
00:04:18.180 and white Americans. And so the focus of the lawsuit addresses this so-called personality score,
00:04:25.240 which addresses characteristics that Harvard says are things like likability, humor, those kinds of
00:04:31.560 things. Interesting. And you think that this is purposeful, that they've set up this scale to be
00:04:37.560 able to have a, quote, legitimate reason to discriminate against Asian students?
00:04:43.480 I think so. I think so. And the reason why is because it's not just having at Harvard. This is
00:04:50.620 happening at pretty much every Ivy League university. It's kind of a cabal-ish institute. The Department
00:04:57.040 of Justice a couple years ago found in their fact finding of Yale University as well, that they also
00:05:04.040 discriminate against Asian Americans. And actually, the process for how they do that is that when your
00:05:10.260 application gets sent to a reader, they give you a plus if you're black or Hispanic, which is a
00:05:15.380 corresponding negative if you're white or Asian American. And then it passes to the second reader,
00:05:20.620 they give you a plus. And then from that, they collect a subset and then they put it to the area
00:05:25.880 committee. They give you a plus if you're black or Hispanic, minus if you're Asian. And then they give
00:05:31.140 it to a final review committee. They give you a plus if you're black or Hispanic and a minus if you're
00:05:36.000 Asian. So the race penalty is actually compounded four times in the admissions process. Yeah.
00:05:41.880 Wow. Is this something that has been around as long as affirmative action has been around? Or is
00:05:46.360 this something that's become more prevalent in more recent years?
00:05:51.160 20. It really started actually about 20 years ago. Actually, Asian Americans used to be among the
00:05:57.320 preferred races, racial minority groups. You would think, oh, you know, because a lot of the whole idea of
00:06:03.980 diversity and inclusion, the kind of things that are going around today, has been as an artifact of
00:06:10.060 50 years of affirmative action policy. And Asian Americans used to be included in this affirmative
00:06:16.660 action policy, especially for colleges and universities. But somewhere around the late 80s,
00:06:23.980 early 90s, that started to change as Asian American applicants came to this country more and more.
00:06:31.300 the results and the fruits of their educational values continued to be realized. Harvard and Yale and
00:06:41.240 some of these other universities decided, oh, dang, there are so many Asians coming into these
00:06:46.220 universities. We have to find some way to basically create a ceiling. And so Asian Americans became about
00:06:53.520 20 percent of Harvard University and around the late 90s and has never gone up beyond that ceiling ever
00:07:02.220 since. Yeah. Wow. That is, you know, in the conversation, especially the one that we're having
00:07:07.520 recently about intersectionality and equity and the conversations that we have about critical race
00:07:15.420 theory, it seems like Asians and Jewish people are kind of placed off to the side. Like when it's
00:07:23.960 convenient for critical race theorists to use them as a minority and oppressed group, then Asians and
00:07:29.600 Jewish people are. But when it's not, when it comes to something like the admissions process or looking at,
00:07:34.840 for example, median income across different groups in the country, then it seems that Asian Americans and
00:07:41.520 Jewish Americans are put on the privileged side is the side of the oppressor, if you will. Can you talk
00:07:49.080 a little bit about that? Is that something that you've noticed? Does that trouble you? Because quite
00:07:53.180 frankly, it just confuses me. Yeah, well, I did write a book and it is called An Inconvenient Minority.
00:08:00.340 So, yes, I guess you could say it troubles me a little bit. It does trouble me a little bit because,
00:08:05.540 well, more than a little bit, because, you know, the idea of this country is that you should be
00:08:11.980 treated on the basis of the content of your character, not in the color of your skin. And
00:08:16.600 as an Asian American, what Harvard does in our culture, and by the way, so many Asian Americans
00:08:21.520 are, you know, and parents are obsessed with Harvard. They want their kids to get into Harvard
00:08:25.740 and those kinds of things. And I acknowledge that. And maybe that's a fault in our Asian American
00:08:29.480 community as well. But that doesn't give the right for Harvard to discriminate on the basis of race
00:08:34.160 and actually to even use, you know, vicious anti-Asian stereotypes, you know, the idea of
00:08:41.120 Asian Americans being math nerds and test-taking nerds with no personality. I mean, the whole idea
00:08:46.840 of a personality score in itself, what is that supposed to mean? What is that supposed to measure?
00:08:51.400 It's very subjective, right.
00:08:52.260 Because if you look at the data, the Asian Americans actually score equally on par with whites
00:09:00.840 in alumni interviews, in teacher recommendations, and all of the objective measures that you could
00:09:07.580 extrapolate into personality score. And yet, for some reason, they end up on the wrong side of the
00:09:12.380 personality score pile. It's very, it's interesting. And it's, and it's actually quite damaging,
00:09:17.340 I think, to Asian Americans here. And can you kind of push back on, if this is what you believe,
00:09:24.880 this idea that Asian Americans have been on the side of the privileged, that you guys are,
00:09:32.540 that the success that in general, of course, we're speaking in generalities, that Asian Americans,
00:09:37.720 even immigrant Asians have enjoyed in this country is a result of some kind of privilege or some kind
00:09:49.440 of lack of oppression. Is that a true assertion?
00:09:52.980 I'll give, I'll give a couple reasons why some people might find that true. Some people might find
00:09:59.040 that true, that Asian Americans are like a privileged minority, because, you know, they see our grades and
00:10:04.500 their test scores, and they see the fact that we have higher incomes than white Americans. And they're like,
00:10:09.100 oh, well, look, they've achieved middle class stability, even better than whites, you know,
00:10:12.840 they must be a so called privileged minority. But I'm going to push back on that for just a moment. Because
00:10:19.500 Asian Americans, when they come into this country, they lack a few certain things that benefit a lot of other
00:10:26.500 people of privilege, including actually other minorities. One, we lack the length of experience
00:10:35.140 in this country, right? And, you know, as as we know, and as I actually talk about in my book,
00:10:40.500 cultural experience in this country in length of time in this country actually matters a lot in terms
00:10:45.260 of cultural capital in terms of your ability to socialize in this country. And Asian Americans don't
00:10:50.760 have that too. A lot of us lack language skills, you know, when you are a Vietnamese American,
00:10:56.900 you're fleeing oppression, you're a poor farmer, you're coming over here, you don't have acts about
00:11:01.000 80%. I think of first gen Vietnamese Americans don't come here with any with proficient English
00:11:07.220 language skills, they basically have to learn it all themselves. So we don't have the social
00:11:10.900 connections, we don't have the cultural capital, and we don't have the English skills,
00:11:17.500 communication skills, meaning that for Asian Americans to succeed in this country, we have
00:11:22.420 to disproportionately rely on our merits, right, our skills, what we can bring. And usually those
00:11:29.780 are things like, you know, those are those are dynamic math skills or, or economic skills and those
00:11:36.900 kinds of things. But the issue is that when you have this ideology today, this diversity and inclusion
00:11:43.420 in this woke ideology that is basically anti merit, it's basically anti merit, they're against gifted
00:11:49.460 programs, they're against gifted and talented programs. They're against the idea that people,
00:11:55.240 you know, have objectively better, certain academic characteristics than others, which, by the way,
00:12:01.200 is not, you know, a statement on the worth of a person. But if you want to contribute positively
00:12:06.660 to the economy, you better have some good skills. But when you have this ideology that that that rails
00:12:12.260 against that, I, my, it is my belief, and I argue this in my book, that Asian Americans are going to
00:12:19.540 be disproportionately affected by this woke ideology, that it is really going to cause us a lot of pain.
00:12:26.300 Yes, you mentioned something that I do think is so important that a lot of critical race theorists
00:12:31.960 and social justice activists, they say that something like meritocracy is unfair, that you actually
00:12:37.380 have to be, you have to treat people unequally to achieve some kind of equity, and they define
00:12:43.780 equity as everyone ending up in the same place. And what that means, Thomas Sowell talks about this a
00:12:48.720 lot, it's in his book, Quest for Cosmic Justice, is that you have to punish some groups of people or
00:12:54.340 some individuals, and you have to uplift other groups and other individuals, not based on anything
00:13:00.840 that they have actually done or not done, but based on this very intangible, and I think impossible goal
00:13:09.480 of everyone reaching the same place. And so that completely gets rid of something like meritocracy.
00:13:15.960 And you're saying that disproportionately affects or can affect Asian Americans, correct?
00:13:21.720 Yeah, and it doesn't, it's funny, you use the word uplift. And it's, it's interesting,
00:13:28.080 because actually, the result of policies like affirmative action for blacks and Hispanics have
00:13:33.180 not given the promise that they're supposed to do. Yeah. What is the, what are the colleges who have
00:13:42.400 the highest proportion of black doctors and black engineers and black people in STEM and, and those
00:13:48.420 kinds of things? They're actually not colleges like Harvard and Yale, who use these affirmative action
00:13:53.740 policies to boost these minorities, they're actually HBCUs. You know, they're actually
00:13:59.280 universities that are actually attuned to some of the cultural elements of, of, of black, of the black
00:14:07.220 imagination, so to speak. And actually, what you find is that especially in, you know, things like law school
00:14:12.920 admissions, and those kinds of things, black Americans who are admitted because of race preferences
00:14:18.980 actually tend to do graduate in the lower segments of their classes, they tend to, you know,
00:14:27.660 get disproportionately discouraged and suffer from higher mental health issues. And sometimes the
00:14:35.800 effect of that is that they actually choose, they actually, they actually choose different majors from
00:14:46.020 what they intended. So there's a lot of black people, black Americans who want to be doctors,
00:14:51.780 who want to be engineers, who are, who are discouraged by that subject. Whereas if they're
00:14:56.680 matched accurately to the school where they, you know, are a good fit, then they would have the chance
00:15:02.780 to do a lot better. So this, this idea of uplift, I don't think it, I don't think these policies hurt any,
00:15:09.060 I mean, help anybody. They definitely don't help Asians and they don't help the people who are
00:15:13.380 necessarily being uplifted by them. Well, certainly not. I mean, if you described these
00:15:17.660 kind of policies going on for at least 20 years, and they're, and we're still talking about these
00:15:23.780 major gaps in outcome and gaps in admission, then, I mean, what else is there to do? We're already
00:15:30.180 discriminating against who these colleges think are unfairly privileged, white Americans and Asian
00:15:35.840 Americans. And we have been for a very long time. And we're still hearing about how it's an
00:15:40.220 inequitable process, how it's not fair, how they are systemically discriminating against not Asian
00:15:47.300 and white Americans, but Hispanic and, and, and black Americans. And so I don't know if you know
00:15:53.320 the answer to this, but my question is, I mean, what, what are, what more are they going to try to do
00:16:00.520 to rectify the situation? I mean, if Harvard still thinks that there are too many white and Asian
00:16:05.700 students who are being admitted and not enough black and brown or black and Hispanic students
00:16:11.180 that are being admitted, how much more can you discriminate against these so-called privileged
00:16:16.040 groups in order to help these underprivileged groups? Like, where do you see all of this going?
00:16:21.680 Right. What's, what's the line, right? Well, I can, I can tell you one thing, this,
00:16:26.580 the new Biden administration, what they're doing with these equity based policies. If you guys
00:16:30.900 are familiar and I know, Ali, you talked about this in your, your previous podcast about equity
00:16:35.780 versus equality, it's, this is a, this is a word that, that really needs to be broken down because
00:16:42.180 equity really is about all races ending up in the same position. This is exactly what Kamala Harris
00:16:47.840 said, you know, before she got elected, equity is about all races ending up in the same place.
00:16:52.900 And my, my, my pushback against that is, um, my pushback against that is you can't have equity
00:17:02.760 without eliminating free choice, without actually doing violence towards the choices of people.
00:17:10.040 Because I'll give you an example just from my Asian American culture. You know, if Asian Americans
00:17:15.660 choose to be academically excellent, we, we know why Asian Americans choose to be academically excellent
00:17:21.620 because they have to, because they don't have the connections in the social, uh, you could call
00:17:26.780 social networks and privilege that would help them to survive the decline in meritocracy. They have to
00:17:32.460 use their merit to, to gain an extra advantage and edge in this society today. And that's the result of
00:17:38.480 their free choice, you know? And so by discriminating against them in the name of equity, you're actually
00:17:44.260 eliminating, or you're actually discouraging the ability, you know, for people to make the free choice
00:17:49.660 and enjoy the fruits of their choices. Right. Yeah. And I think that, sorry, because I think that
00:17:56.940 you, um, you touched on a really good question about, you know, where is this going? You know,
00:18:01.820 where is this, where is this culture going? Um, I, it's, it's funny because these policies have been
00:18:10.920 happening for over 20 years. So you can actually start to see a lot of the effects with Asian Americans.
00:18:15.160 But if you continue as a country to go in these directions, you're going to see a lot of other
00:18:19.380 racial groups be affected as well. But I'll tell you what's happened, what's happened in my culture,
00:18:24.180 in my, um, in my culture over the past 20, 30 years. Um, a lot of Asian Americans in my culture,
00:18:31.280 the competition culture for Asian Americans is ramped up to a hundred. It's ramped up to like 150.
00:18:37.040 You know, you have kids that are trying to do every extracurricular, trying to get into every club,
00:18:42.520 trying to fill out every thing on their common app resume, because they know that they're not
00:18:47.520 going to be competing with the general population. They know that their competition is other Asians.
00:18:53.460 I mean, if think about what that does to Asian American identity, you know, if you have Asian
00:18:57.580 friends and you start to think, Oh, I actually have to compete against them in the college admissions
00:19:02.640 process, not against, you know, other people. I mean, it, it damages you as an Asian American.
00:19:09.060 It, it, it, it really hurts, you know, your, your, your ability to think of yourself as a self
00:19:14.540 actualized individual. And so when you see the progression of these equity based policies,
00:19:20.200 um, that will soon affect other groups that, you know, once many Latino and Hispanic Americans also
00:19:26.560 achieve parity with, um, whites in many places, which they actually are, they're really approaching,
00:19:31.880 you know, whites in terms of, of where they are, you know, they will find themselves on the
00:19:36.740 opposite end of these equity based policies as well. And that's going to have a severe effect,
00:19:42.360 I think on, on, on the way that they perceive themselves racially. Yeah, I think so too.
00:19:48.420 Unfortunately, I think progressivism has a different view of human nature. They kind of
00:19:54.440 eliminate the idea of choice. There's never the possibility that some people are where they are
00:19:59.820 because of choices they made. It's always, um, society either gets credit or society either gets
00:20:06.680 blame. And society is just kind of this very generalized term for the system. And they have
00:20:12.720 to have society as a boogeyman, or for example, white supremacy as a boogeyman to be able to
00:20:19.820 campaign and to say, look, I'm going to change society. I'm going to change the system. I'm going
00:20:24.640 to dismantle white supremacy. I'll dismantle the patriarchy, all of these very like intangible,
00:20:31.120 inexplicable, big boogeyman systems that are apparently keeping people down. And of course,
00:20:37.040 there are examples throughout history of institutions holding people back, discriminating,
00:20:43.840 ensuring that, for example, black Americans cannot get ahead. Certainly Asian Americans throughout our,
00:20:49.700 throughout our history have received discrimination as well. So of Italian Americans and Irish Americans
00:20:56.560 and all of that. So of course, that's certainly true. But today, that doesn't actually seem to be
00:21:03.100 the case. It doesn't seem to be like there is this big system or this big monster of white supremacy
00:21:08.940 that is pushing some people down and lifting other people's, uh, other people up. And yet that's what
00:21:15.800 we're hearing over and over again. That's the justification for so-called equity executive
00:21:20.860 orders and all of these social engineering policies to hold back groups like Asian Americans and try to
00:21:27.600 push forward other groups. And like you said, I don't think it's going to work. I actually think
00:21:32.360 it's going to end up with a lot of self-loathing and resentment between groups.
00:21:38.700 Yeah. I mean, you're so right. Um, it's funny how you, you mentioned the, uh, systemic, um,
00:21:47.980 oppression narrative, this side, this, this, this narrative that they're latching onto that
00:21:52.760 to be a minority inherently means that you are not able to participate fully in the benefits of
00:22:00.680 American society and the American dream. I mean, think about what that does if you actually believe
00:22:05.640 that. And by the way, I know many people who, who actually believe that and are very bitter about
00:22:10.400 that many minorities who are, you know, bitter about that. And I've, I've interviewed several of
00:22:14.980 them in my book. Um, it creates a culture of bitterness and resentment against the world.
00:22:20.780 And it just, um, it breaks my heart. I mean, it really does. And now you see in this narrative,
00:22:28.180 particularly with regards to Asian Americans, uh, a lot of the, the Asian Americans who go through these,
00:22:34.360 you know, college diversity and inclusion programs are basically taught to view their
00:22:39.000 academic success as privilege and are taught to feel guilty about that or taught to feel guilty
00:22:44.580 about that. I, I, I saw, I talked with a friend, I interviewed a friend, um, about, you know, uh, um,
00:22:53.360 going to a gifted and talented magnet school. And he basically said, yeah, like I had no reason why
00:22:57.820 I was there. I was lucky. Um, you know, I, and, and those kinds of things. And maybe he was lucky.
00:23:03.520 Maybe he was lucky. But if you are blessed with the ability to, you know, to, to pursue academic
00:23:11.680 excellence and those kinds of things, then you should do it. You should take responsibility for
00:23:15.860 that. And you should be proud of that. You shouldn't have to apologize for yourself and
00:23:20.840 apologize for being academically excellent. You are, society is counting on you. People are counting
00:23:27.000 on the next generation of scientists and engineers and mathematicians and writers to produce the next
00:23:36.120 great works and to help humanity and to help society. Um, you know, and, and, and pastors too.
00:23:43.020 Um, and it's just, uh, but doing so requires you to have some confidence in your ability,
00:23:49.920 not to believe that you've got it because of, um, you know, uh, privilege or that you feel guilty
00:23:56.580 about it. Yeah. It's one thing to be humble, which I think is good for all of us. It's another
00:24:01.280 thing to feel guilty and to deny the hard work that you've put in or deny the talent that God
00:24:07.460 gave you. Um, and I could definitely see how, if you think that everything that you have is just
00:24:13.600 because of privilege that society has given you that nothing that you have has been earned,
00:24:19.340 then that does create almost a kind of embarrassment and a shame over being successful or
00:24:25.260 having good grades. And I don't see how that lack of confidence from one group benefits another group.
00:24:33.000 It doesn't transfer confidence to another group. I think that it's all just going to end up with
00:24:38.320 a bunch of very insecure people. Um, what do you think, like, what do you think the
00:24:45.200 end will look like? Like, do you think that if these court cases, if the students win these court
00:24:50.740 cases, if you, um, do you, or do you see any kind of like positive change in the direction of
00:24:57.060 re-accepting meritocracy, not on the basis of skin color, just on the basis of, of what you've done?
00:25:03.960 Do you have hope and optimism in going that direction?
00:25:06.400 Ali, Ali, I really do. Um, and the, I'll, I'll give you an example. Um, in California this year
00:25:15.320 in 2020, during the 2020 elections, um, there was a proposition that was created, a California
00:25:23.200 constitutional amendment that was basically created by a, um, a legislator who, you know, talked about
00:25:30.980 this equity principle and talked about, you know, fighting systemic racism. And basically the
00:25:36.080 rationale for all of that was simply to propose an amendment that repealed California's non-discrimination
00:25:41.360 clause on the basis of race. She wanted to repeal California's non-discrimination clause. Okay.
00:25:49.260 The clause says you cannot discriminate on the basis of race or ethnicity. It was created in the 1990s.
00:25:55.740 She wanted to repeal that, you know? Um, and so obviously, so members of, um, uh, certain races would
00:26:04.240 get preferential treatment over others. And that was, was this one of the most liberal states in the
00:26:10.100 country. And, you know, I chronicled that in my book, the fight against proposition 16, it was
00:26:15.940 the, they were the, the, the no one 16 campaign, which was the campaign against that was outspent
00:26:21.940 13 to one. And there were tech billionaires on the yes on proposition 16 side, the wife of the
00:26:29.160 Netflix billionaire, um, various, you know, many educational associations were for this prop 16,
00:26:36.360 all of the sports teams, the nine 49ers, the Raiders, all of them were for prop 16. And on election
00:26:43.200 day in this vote in one of the most liberal States in the country, voters rejected this amendment 57%
00:26:51.380 to 43%. Wow. And to me, that just shows that when these things actually come to popular vote
00:27:00.400 and when these things actually are understood by the American public, you know, the American public
00:27:08.160 will reject it. Yeah. I'm, I am very encouraged by that story in California. I remember hearing
00:27:13.180 that. Why do you think, I know we can't necessarily assume people's motives, but in your analysis,
00:27:19.300 why do you think some of those billionaires, those education associations, football teams
00:27:25.600 were for a proposition like that for discrimination against certain people just because of their skin
00:27:30.820 color? Yeah. So this is something I talk about in my book a little bit. Um, there's a, there's a
00:27:36.580 couple of things here. Um, there's a couple of things here. Obviously the whole, we want virtue
00:27:41.560 signaling. We want to be a part of, you know, the, uh, the, the, the social justice movements
00:27:48.080 of today. Obviously there's a lot of financial capital there, but you have to, I would, I would
00:27:55.680 even go a little further. I would even go a little further. And if you would allow me to
00:27:59.220 make this claim, um, they're there, it's human nature almost that when you are competing with a
00:28:08.580 group that looks vastly different from you, you begin to experience a little resentment against
00:28:14.440 them. Um, and I, I tell this story in my book in the 1800s, um, during the gold rush, there were white
00:28:23.440 miners who wanted to come to California to, you know, um, to, to mine for gold. But then there
00:28:29.460 are actually a lot of Chinese who actually started to come to America for the same purpose. Cause they
00:28:34.020 wanted to bring money back home and those kinds of things. And the Chinese, they worked, um, their
00:28:39.100 butts off, um, because that was their only hope in this country. They didn't have unions or anything
00:28:44.280 like that. And the white miners began to grow very resentful of these Chinese Americans. And they
00:28:51.040 used because these Chinese Americans would work day and night and the white miners didn't necessarily
00:28:57.300 want to work day and night. Um, and so they used their political will, the political capital they
00:29:03.220 had to pass the Chinese exclusion act that banned Chinese Americans from coming to this country for,
00:29:11.480 you know, a period of nearly 50 years. Um, um, and, and, and these, and I think
00:29:20.920 there's a, there's a, there's an inherent resentment, um, that that's there. And so when you look at
00:29:26.660 today's elite liberal population, you know, the elite, mostly white liberal population who lives in
00:29:33.580 enclaves like San Francisco, New York, and those kinds of things, you have to understand that the
00:29:39.720 minorities that they're competing with are, are, you know, and this actually, this is actually like not
00:29:46.700 a fun thing for me to say, but minorities that they're actually competing with are actually Asian
00:29:51.500 Americans. Um, a lot of it, because they're, they're the ones who are getting into, you know,
00:29:56.480 doctors and going to be doctors and engineers and, you know, and, and have the math skills to,
00:30:01.440 you know, compete in those kinds of things. And so there is a inherent, I think, natural resentment
00:30:06.040 and then a natural competition culture that comes in. Um, now the, the whole idea of America is that,
00:30:12.920 you know, we're supposed to live in a tolerant and inclusive country, the actual term inclusive
00:30:18.800 country where we shouldn't judge people based on that, but sometimes human nature wins.
00:30:32.780 And, you know, it, it's unfortunate that it seems like we've moved so far away from a premise that
00:30:38.780 we at least all theoretically agreed on that we judge people by the content of their character,
00:30:43.300 that people should be rewarded based on merit, not the color of their skin. And of course there,
00:30:48.560 like I said, there've been different parts in, in history where we have had to legally rectify
00:30:54.160 injustices and wrongs that were being perpetrated. For example, like Jim Crow, there have been times
00:31:00.920 like that, but it's been, it's been a very long time since institutionalized discrimination against
00:31:07.000 particular groups has actually been legal. Um, but now it's kind of been switched. There is
00:31:12.960 institutionalized racism, uh, but it just happens to be against different groups. And for different
00:31:18.360 reasons, it happens to be against, for example, Asian Americans. Um, how, what kind of advice do you
00:31:24.260 give to people who are worried about this? They're discouraged about this, whether they're Asian or not,
00:31:29.580 they just don't want to live in a country where merit doesn't matter, where you're almost,
00:31:33.520 um, you're almost punished for, for having merit and working hard and for maybe being a part of a
00:31:40.600 group that is traditionally more successful. They don't want to live in that kind of a country where
00:31:45.000 meritocracy is taken down in the name of equity and critical race theory. What can they do? What
00:31:50.740 can they do in their everyday lives to kind of push back against that? Well, that's a good question.
00:31:56.880 I would say, I mean, for Asian Americans, a lot of Asian Americans have, I guess, accepted the reality
00:32:03.340 that they're going to be treated twice as difficult in the college admissions process, or, you know,
00:32:08.520 in some cases, magnitudes of even more than that. Um, I would say maybe stop being so accepting. And this
00:32:15.240 is a weird, a weird statement to make, but maybe stop being so accepting of that. If the thing is,
00:32:22.980 you know, the reason why this is allowed to continue to occur in part is because no matter
00:32:29.520 what Harvard does for Asian Americans, Asian Americans are going to continue to flock to Ivy
00:32:35.040 leagues, continue to be, want to be admitted into these kinds of places and those kinds of things.
00:32:41.080 Um, you know, even admits these discrimination policies because there's prestige and social status
00:32:46.920 that goes, that goes for that. You know, it is a limited piece of prestige and a limited piece of
00:32:51.800 social status. Actually, if you are a math or STEM major going to an elite college or a first tier
00:32:58.520 elite college doesn't have that much effect on the rest of your life compared to if you went to a
00:33:03.480 different college. Um, if you actually are majoring in, in those, in, in, in the STEM fields, it actually
00:33:10.000 does not matter as much. Um, so I would say Asian Americans learn the, learn the, and other people,
00:33:16.080 you know, who are worried about this, you know, learn the facts and, you know, try to, I guess,
00:33:22.200 understand that, um, that you don't have to exceed to what society wants to tell you and what society
00:33:30.400 artificially builds up. Yeah, definitely. Okay. For people who want to buy your book to learn more
00:33:36.320 about all of this, you said, know the facts. And I know your book has a lot of facts. They want to
00:33:40.240 follow you on Twitter. Um, how can they buy your book? How can they follow and support you?
00:33:45.680 Absolutely. Well, you can buy my book. Uh, you can pre-order my book. It's coming out soon. Um,
00:33:51.040 on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, um, follow me on Twitter and Instagram at Kenny M shoe and like Mary. Um,
00:33:59.860 and actually, Ali, I'm also starting my own inconvenient minority podcast coming soon, where I'm actually
00:34:05.080 talking with, um, many other minorities, um, and maybe, you know, some members of the so-called
00:34:10.980 majority who, who in some way or another inconvenience, the woke narrative on race today.
00:34:17.280 And I'm going to go in depth on their life stories. You know, I'm talking with nonprofit activists,
00:34:22.220 intellectuals, public commentators. Um, so I would encourage you to follow me, um, and then, uh,
00:34:28.940 stay tuned for those details. Awesome. Well, we will put the links to all of that in the description
00:34:33.520 for this podcast and inconvenient minority. That's the name of your book, the name of, uh,
00:34:39.740 the name of your podcast, and also everyone can follow you on social media as well. Thank you so
00:34:44.420 much, Kenny, for taking the time to talk to us today. Um, this is a very important subject and I
00:34:49.360 just hope that you keep hammering on because your voice is a very important one. Thank you,
00:34:54.960 Ali. I really appreciate all the work that you do too. Thank you so much.
00:35:03.520 Thank you.