I have no problem with her being racist or not racist or anti-woke or whatever. It just seems to me she over-simplifies matters way too much, and apparently prioritizes the importance of maintaining White-European Culture (what even is that?) over basically every other concern a society may have. She then somehow tries to argue that immigrants regardless of how integrated or successful they become in America are basically all hold and strive to express anti-American values when she provides only superficial and anecdotal examples that really don't hold up to scrutiny.
I would argue that China is not going to eclipse the United States because technological superiority over the long term requires innovation and creativity, neither of which can flourish in a totalitarian, censorious police state.
Professor Wax asserts that too much Asian immigration with harm American culture. This suggestion is worth considering. Are Asians more likely to think communally, rather than individualistically? If the answer is yes, maybe you could argue that our system, based on personal liberty, would be threatened by immigration of too many people who do not assimilate and adopt this value.
On the other hand, one could argue that our culture is breaking down because we have forgotten the responsibilities to community that make personal liberty possible. If this is the case, maybe an influx of communally-minded people could balance our arguably unbalanced commitment to personal liberty.
Wherever you land on this, her point is worth considering, and doing so advances our own self-awareness as a culture.
You hear this sort of argument uttered as a matter of faith quite often in this country. Apart from the historical examples that might serve to contradict this claim, I'm also curious what people who make this claim make of China's rapid rise in STEM over the past 20 years or so.
Granted some of this was catch-up from a relatively low base no doubt, but my impression is that apart from life sciences and medicine, which the Anglosphere tends to very strong in and China less so, China has becoming increasingly prominent in the physical sciences and engineering/technology in past years. I guess I'm thinking about recent developments in quantum computing and quantum cryptography or 5G where my layman's impression is that China appears to be at the forefront of these emerging fields. So I'm definitely curious how theories linking innovation to liberty can reconcile the fact of China's rapid rise over the past couple of decades.
I'd also just point out that while I'm not dimissing claims about Asian conformity outright, as I do think there is something to that, I've always thought that the current climate we find ourselves in should make us more cautious in asserting some kind of free thinking independent mindedness over those supposedly conformist East Asians.
After all, American society's slavish devotion to the ideology of wokeness seems to me to be the antithesis of independence or individuality of thought. I pointed out in another comment that many of the ideas on race or gender or culture that get people automatically cancelled in America are basically held to be self evident truths in China. My impression is that Chinese people are remarkably un-PC about those sorts of things and are willing to call a spade a spade. That strikes me as embodying a certain independent-minded honesty that's sorely lacking in public discourse in America.
On the innovation question, I would argue that much of China’s progress is due to theft of intellectual property and subsequent iteration on that IP. It is easy to forget that the Soviet Union was the first country to put a man in space. Over the long term, it couldn’t keep up.
No question that our system is imperiled. Wokeness is an existential threat to it. So, I am not saying we are in the clear. However, I would offer that our greatest threats are internal, not external.
Regarding immigration, I have a way of thinking about it that makes sense to me, but curious to hear reactions to it. It explains why too much, too fast, is problematic. Suppose I live on a block, and one immigrant family from Mexico moves there. On July fourth, I will invite them over to the neighborhood BBQ, where we will eat hot dogs, speak English, read the Declaration of Independence, and cap it off with Ice Cream Sundaes. Our new neighbors from Mexico will be welcomed with open arms, learn some of our customs, and maybe bring a delicious treat from Mexico that we all enjoy and that opens up a discussion about Mexico and why the neighbor left. We all learn. We all enjoy it. We all melt into the pot, which hasn’t changed much at all, but now we know about that Mexican dessert and a little bit more about Mexico, while the Mexican becomes an American from Mexico.
Now imagine that instead of one family from Mexico moving to the block, ten of them do. They are likely to do their own thing together. They won’t need to join us in order to have community. They will speak Spanish, eat their Mexican food, keep to themselves. There likely won’t be room for them to invite any of the non-Mexican neighbors. They don’t hear the Declaration, they don’t eat hot dogs. We don’t get to learn about Mexico and taste a dessert from there. And we won’t view them as one of us. We don’t melt together. We just remain separate communities without the intimate relationships necessary to foster deep empathy.
I think Americans have a right to expect that people who immigrate here should be expected to embrace core American values and appreciate being here. If I moved to any other country, that would be my basic obligation to the host country: to honor it and its traditions and to express gratitude to its natives for letting me join them.
Are you able to provide specific examples where you believe significant IP theft occurred that enabled China's recent progress over the past 20 years? I oftentimes hear this claim made in the manner that you phrased it above, but it always struck me as vague and unspecific.
Not sure if you've been following the Justice Department's China Initiative that was launched in 2018 under the Trump administration but my take away from articles like the one above is that despite its intent to root out academic theft and espionage, a large percentage of the cases involve failures to disclose affilations with Chinese institutions rather than any kind of theft or espionage. Furthermore, the conviction rate for cases brought under the China Initiative appears to be much lower than the overall conviction rate for cases brought by the DOJ.
On the topic of immigration I'm actually fairly sympathetic to Amy's cultural argument, which you seem to espouse as well. My guess is that competition with China will increasingly lead to the sort of paranoia I linked to above, which will lead to some degree of decoupling between Chinese and American STEM. Geopolitical and economic developments over the next decade will almost certainly result in fewer ethnic Chinese coming over to America. I'm sure the Chinese government will be more than happy to have that talent residing in China and it'll also appease the nationalist types like Amy Wax, so it'll probably be win win for both sides.
That being said, I can't predict how South Asian immigration will evolve over the coming years, which seemed to be the specific source of Amy's ire in her conversation with Glenn.
You are familiar with the DOJ’s China Initiative. You are entitled to your interpretation of it. Chinese theft of IP and coercion of foreign companies to relinquish their IP in exchange for access to the Chinese market has been going on for a long time. I share this report from the US Chamber of Commerce for historical context:
Technological innovation and creativity can absolutely flourish in a totalitarian, censorious police state. They already have in this country. Read Albion's Seed on Puritan Culture in the early U.S. - massively theocratic and invasive into the basic personal details of people's lives. And yet those people gave us huge numbers of inventions and technological improvements; there's a reason the idea of a "Yankee tinkerer" or "Yankee ingenuity" became a watchword.
I disagree. Bleeding edge research is likely to be where top-tier postgraduate education is taking place (the better to recruit top lab workers and scout start-up ideas), where regulatory bodies are (the better to schmooze and get approval for projects), and/or where capital is easily available to fund. K-12 is a pipeline issue.
How do you think China will flourish in high end STEM R&D over the long run versus South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand, India, Vietnam, Bangladesh (not there yet, but 20 years from now?), Australia and New Zealand?
The USA has a long term challenge of attracting high end talent to study, work and do business inside the USA. This is much tougher than it was 1960s through 1990s in 2022. And will be much tougher still in the years to come.
"Technological innovation and creativity can absolutely flourish in a totalitarian, censorious police state." Agree.
Every time I hear one of these conversations, it's always missing something. As the audience, we hear "what is causing this?" from people that are immersed in elite academic institutions, and it can be difficult to take the perspective of someone outside, because the view from Glenn and Amy is from the inside.
What I believe is occurring, because I've watched formerly dead center or slightly left-of-center people that accrued occupational security and the ability to increase their quality of life (gaining some status and social capital from lower-middle to middle-upper) go from using common sense to being utterly psychologically obliterated like a Body Snatchers victim and willfully dismissing so much data and evidence (or more likely gravitating toward information sources that don't make this data available or readily accessible) as to make their position very religious in nature is this: A combination of humans getting soft (via the modern age and technology), coupled with the proliferation of everything Postmodern into the mainstream arteries of American popular culture.
By humans getting soft, what I mean is that the vast majority of Americans, despite the horrific stats emerging from urban centers that we in Rav Arora's work and elsewhere regarding a sharp uptick in violent crime (suspend for a moment that the right is much more willing to report on this than the left), don't really have to worry about physical danger. I think society has reached a point where we still have all the baked-in evolutionary biology that drives things like tribalism and vigilance for safety, but there really is no enemy anymore. There are no predators and the AVERAGE American can wake up, feed their kids, go to work, come home and not once really have to worry about imminent danger and not experience the fight or flight response. In our evolutionary history, most of it in fact, this was not the case. Technology has ushered in an era, at least in developed nations, a relatively (when compared to evolutionary history and human history from 150 years ago and older) safe existence. I'm skeptical of the notion that none of what we see is born from an inherent proclivity in humans to protect themselves against danger and conflict by defining an enemy, when there really is no immediate source to be identified. Sub-arguments can be made, sure, that's the case in any modern human society, a la freedom (speech, big brother, etc), taxes, pointing out second and third world nations and the woes of the people in them, etc. But for the sake of argument, I'm relegating my crude analysis to the United States.
Most of us don't have an awareness of potential physical danger in our daily thoughts, and if we do, the thoughts usually don't persist. Our brains that have developed over thousands upon thousands of years, in which the vast majority existed wars with other tribes, danger from predators and a need to be constantly vigilant, are now trying to fill that danger-shaped hole, and we see this manifest in a variety of ways. One of those ways is to subconsciously seek enemies or define people that are different than us as enemies.
If we combine this subconscious effort to create and/or define enemies, with the accelerated immersion of elite academia and the leaking of Postmodern philosophy out of elite academic containers into mainstream culture, we have hyper-vigilant swaths of society searching for power differentials where none exist, and where they do exist, the focus is disturbingly acute and vastly overstated. Examples: ALL police are out there hunting and killing black men as if it was in their job description. ALL white people are inherently racist because we exist in a "system" that was created where racism was prevalent and not countered, and so everything stems from that root source of evil and must be dismantled. The mere existence of white people is enough to deem them all racist, because they all enjoy a system that was designed for them, specifically based on race.
The entire purpose of Postmodern philosophy is to seek to define who holds power (not necessarily why) and to remove any system, structure, thought process, or any other source of augmentation or facilitation of that power. This is why the extreme poles of the political spectrum on the left see racism in everything and seek on one hand to "educate" everyone on one hand, and denounce and muzzle contrary ideas on the other with suppression of speech through various means, social pressure, occupational social pressure, education changes, etc. The right also has now adopted censorship as a means to combat the combatants, as it were, with no thought of what will occur once the ultimate power of censorship is granted, and their party is no longer in power. The Bill of Rights will, unfortunately, if extrapolated to a logical conclusion, be irrevocably amended in favor of more governmental control and erosion of what was once considered unassailable by most. Freedoms of Speech, Press, Assembly, and so on.
I was listening to Glenn's latest conversation with Nikita this morning, where he says ultimately he doesn't know what's causing it. I think this is because Glenn doesn't have the time to do a deep dive on the evolution of what we see occurring now, and my assessment isn't steeped in data either, it's just a strong hunch on what I've read since about 2014 when I first started to notice these ideas coming to the forefront in the media sources I was consuming. Glenn knows that the key to all of this is supporting data and deep research- though I wonder who's REALLY doing it other than perhaps James Lindsay- and I haven't followed his work in a while either.
I think what Amy has correct is that it will take collective action. But by whom? People on the left are scared to death to point to subculture as an explanation on the explosion of violent crime that is quickly reaching the "scary" levels of the late 80s and mid 90s. People on the right just want an authoritarian hammer, and they too are scared to point out the proclivities and predispositions of a dangerous subculture because it so closely relates to race (the same reason why it is verboten on the left). And it is indeed only one part of the equation. The other is the pandemic and the conditions and circumstances it created that are conducive to crimes going unanswered and unaddressed in many communities, and the push by the left regarding "defund the police" movements that we've seen in major left-controlled/governed urban centers. Like LA, like NY, like Minneapolis and the list goes on.
I don't think she has it right when she points out the tendencies of South Asian people to adopt "woke" culture. She's all over the place in this regard. First, she points to what she sees in elite academic settings and- my favorite: "on Twitter". This is not the real world. This is a cultural facsimile of the world, and only from elite media and academic perspectives. As Glenn correctly points out, the increase of the percentage of these folks in elite academia, coupled with the pervasiveness of the current ideology probably accounts for what she's seeing, but it's hard to see what color the outside of a house is when you're standing on the inside. I think we could replace any demographic with what Amy states is going on with South Asians in elite academia with regard to adopting part and parcel the "woke" ideology. If a certain demographic works harder than most to gain entrance into the elite academic institutions, and those same institutions are fervently enforcing a particular ideology, then OF COURSE there's going to be a widely manifested adoption of that ideology by the people most eager to gain entrance to and remain in those institutions. Seems like a no brainer to me, and it seems like she's incorrectly positing that it's unique to that demographic because... why exactly? She doesn't elaborate.
Professor Loury knows Professor Amy Wax better than I. Perhaps Amy is a canary in the coal mine. I see Amy as a total of two halves. Person 1A is created by Amy Wax. Person 1B is created by Equity/CRT. 1A and 1B are added to comprise the complete Amy Wax. If Equity/CRT were not what it is, Amy Wax would be at a different location on her pathway.
I’m not an expert on immigration, but if the middle center and conservative right are timid on the alternative to Equity-inspired immigration policy or fail to responsibly address Equity immigration concerns, then there is a vacuum to the right of Equity/CRT. At some point, right-wing racism will step forward and tell Equity/CRT “you are fired as immigration policy maker.” And the Ethnic Studies people have been telling us for decades that “We have immigration covered, don’t worry”.
We moderates in the middle and our conservative brothers need to step forward and fire Equity/CRT from immigration policy so that we can implement a Centrist and non-racist immigration policy, before white supremacy(or adjacent to) does this. I really don’t have any preference as long as the southern border is secure. As much as I complain about BLM, at least they are often signaling messages to the public. I have no idea what the far-fight is thinking or doing.
The task for the middle majority is to inventory the entire Equity/CRT “immigration agenda/priorities” and then articulate an immigration policy statement that is non-CRT + prepare to address each Equity/CRT immigration concern.
Because equity enforcement at institutions is non-transparent, non-direct and non-Due Process, people directly under attack such as Amy Wax - and sympathizers become terrified rightly so, but then in a mental panic can latch onto random life-rafts even if not well thought out, nor evidence-based. Equity is playing fire with the minds of 300 million people.
Equity transforms the factory assembly line in every institution from “electric can opener production” to “machine guns”. Any unauthorized institution employee (which is everyone except Equity directors) who approaches assembly line to ask questions is instantly vaporized. It will get much worse until Equity is stopped.
Glenn, as a parent with kids in SF public middle schools, the Asian immigration stories that you are commenting on are of great interest. The dynamics here seem similar to those you have commented on. Wesley Yang was great, but I have to add my voice to the chorus here that Amy Wax is really not reaching your high standard of quality. I'd vote not to bring her back.
If you can find a good commentator from the SF area, that might be a fruitful direction. I'm not sure who that person would be, but many of the issues that you have been touching on, esp with regards to Asian immigration, AAPI hate, progressive governance, and so forth are swirling around SF right now. Unfortunately, most around here seemingly have adopted one of the prevailing narratives, so it can be hard to get an unbiased account.
If you aren't worried about an unbiased approach, then it might be interesting to talk to someone involved in one of the various recall campaigns - School Board Recall (set for Feb 4th), Lowell Admissions legal campaign, etc.
Dr. Loury, this is a respectful criticism from a fan. My fandom, though, stems from the overarching theme of several recent comments of yours that we need to be more conscientious about upholding standards, and less conscientious about making race the basis of discussion on topics where it might not be relevant. Keeping the focus on culture and behavior. I'll raise this question, and I don't claim to know the answer: Is focusing on race in immigration potentially damaging, when you are perhaps trying to highlight cultural and behavioral traits? Be mindful that it may only be a certain substrata of people that are emigrating from Asia.
We have had lots of immigration from India, for example, that has probably drawn a far more educated pool of Indian immigrants than the Indian population at large. I've been honored to work with a number of these talented individuals during my career in software. This contrasts greatly with Indian immigration to countries closer to India, where the Indian immigrant population is less educated, often manual labor. And a population I've gathered from personal travels that has a reputation for criminality in those neighboring countries. Is it worth the effort to try to dissect that? Does trying to dissect that perpetuate some of the problems we're having trying to deal with race in our own country? Is it falling into the trap of wokeness in trying to ascribe that people who are doing well on the whole are a "good race", when it may be that it's just that the best work of their overall population is being done by the elites that are here?
Personally, I think the bigger lesson is about whether our immigration policy is based on skills and needs. Because it isn't right now. We have a large population of unskilled, marginally-employed native born, but prioritize bringing in immigrants who compete with people in that lane. Those Indian immigrant colleagues I mentioned have had to endure years of paperwork to be here properly, and that rigor is not applied to the immigrants competing with our lowest-paid citizens. My suggestion would be to keep the focus on the skills, standards, and behavior. There are brilliant people the world over, not just in Asia, and I'd rather the discussion be centered on how we attract them to come here. Hyper-race-consciousness is probably not going to be the welcome mat that we want to lay out.
Again, I don't claim to know the answer. And I know that academic discussions have to be able to veer somewhat into these territories, and not feel attacked for doing so. This is not an attack. It's simply an observation from one person who's inspired by the values and standards you're speaking to, just as much as by the minutiae and technicalities of economics that are brought into those discussions.
I am as anti woke as anyone on substack, and people yelling "racist" at every opinion they disagree with is a pathetically weak debating style. But boy is this Amy Wax person a racist! Does she know any Asians? That garbage about only this tiny fraction of a percent of the elite coming here shows she knows nothing. Asia is littered with billionaires, and they're not flocking over here. She should try talking to a few if she can hold her nose long enough and she'd see they come from all walks of life, and they are extremely far from the elite. And that part where she somehow tried to blame Asian defects on their being Asian while somehow those same defects are shared by Jews but somehow not part of their Jewishness-comedy gold!
Yeah… There are two ways to oppose modern anti-racism. One is a humanistic approach, the other to just be a racist. It actually requires diligence to see the difference. The enemy of your enemy is not always your friend.
Glenn, your patience with this woman is beyond anything I could ever muster. Jesus.
Jared Taylor and American Renaissance is White Nationalism--period. He/They may not be the most virulent example of it, but of course they're White nationalists. What's up with her tapdancing? "They [AmRen] 'say' they're for White interests..." Huh?
Who believes Jared Taylor wants a "return" to "colorblind standards"? LOL
And this madness is all the left's fault? Really? How many White nationalists--today or yesterday--have ever labeled themselves liberals or progressives?
They're not in the majority. You can bet that.
I continue to be a proud subscriber to this channel. But there's a reason why more than a few prominent conservative thinkers (like George Will and Jonah Goldberg) have been loud critics of current-day rightist/GOP "thought". Based on this interview, Wax is emblematic of a lot of the things they find so troubling.
I actually like Jared Taylor. The guy comes across as well spoken and mild-mannered and is also fluent in Japanese having grown up as the child of missionary parents in Japan.
But I thought he advocates for an explicitly white ethno-state in America, in effect that whites should be allowed to secede and form their own nation separate from non-whites. Maybe his views have changed or I'm misremembering exactly what he believes in, but this is my recollection of what he has advocated for in the past and if I can find a source for that I'll update my comment later now that Substack has finally seen the light and allowed comment editing.
I did find it curious that Amy Wax tried to argue that there wasn't that much difference between someone like Charles Murray and Jared Taylor. Contra Amy Wax's denial, my impression from having skimmed American Renaissance from time to time is that Jared Taylor is someone who's definitely fixated on the phenomenon of Black crime.
To repeat what I stated in another comment of mine in this thread, I don't have a problem with Amy Wax and her explicit white nationalism, although I'm certainly sensitive to Murray's argument about the dangers of the country continuing to head down the racial identity road. What I'm slightly annoyed by is Amy Wax's at times disingenuous and sloppy argumentation. As Glenn pointed out multiple times in this conversation, Amy has a tendency to paint with a very broad and overly simplified brush. She often seems to lack a nuanced perspective of the groups she criticizes. Although she specifically singled out South Asians, I found it hilarious that she tried to somehow suggest that East Asian immigrants were also a source of disproportionate wokeness. I almost wish Glenn had called her out on that by pointing out, "Hey Amy, have you ever been to China or been around people of Chinese descent? Have you not realized how un-PC Chinese people tend to be? These are the people who are fighting to preserve meritocracy at our schools, not fighting over what pronouns we should use. In fact, they actually mock woke whites in China by referring to them as bai zuo."
I'll put it this way. I'm closer to you than you think. But we're still (apparently) light years apart.
That is to say, I can barely accept nationalism of any kind. But race-based nationalism is flat-out silly and primitive to me.
To feel pride over something so profoundly based on happenstance, as in the color of your skin or the texture of your hair, is just dumb as far as I am concerned.
But more importantly, regarding "nationalism", there's the denotative versus the connotative. Denotatively? I kinda/sorta agree. White nationalism ain't that big of a deal...in a strict denotative sense. (Like you implied, nationalism's nationalism, right? =))
But connotatively, White nationalism is kind of a big deal. Why? Because of its hefty historic legacy, which conjures up images of Klansmen and NAZI's.
Even today White nationalists are known for (very bizarre) hashtags like #WhiteGenocide (a.k.a. miscegenation to us pedestrians). And if you (and for the record I am speaking generically here) are mixed up with people like that, or giving cover to people like that, then yes, it tells me a little something about you.
No, I do not assume that you're the Spawn of Satan (although I will likely assume that you're ultimately quite shallow). But it does give me a clue about how you probably see me, and people like me, and people *not* so much like me.
It speaks to some of your most fundamental values.
At some point I have to ask myself: "Do I want to expand or heighten the voices of people like this?" And my answer is a clear and crisp "no".
I cannot be neutral or academic about it.
Jared Taylor: I have known about him since the 80s. Believe it or not, he was the lone conservative voice on a BET Sunday morning news show in the 90s--he
was a regular. FACT.
He wasn't a White nationalist back then. Just a "conservative". But over time he evolved (or devolved) into a rather unapologetic White nationalist; and I cannot imagine Taylor *ever* denying that label.
What did I mean when I said I was closer to you than you think? It is that I have much less of a problem with actual self-described White nationalists than I do someone like Amy Wax, who continues to obfuscate the real picture while presenting herself as this valiant solider/martyr in the fight against wokeism/cancel culture.
It's more than sloppy argumentation. It's disingenuous and obviously so. Because Wax is too smart not to know what she's doing.
Her behavior is typical of many pundits on the right today. I cannot feign respect for it.
I'd like to believe that I'm not too shallow ultimately, but I'll let others be the arbiter of that haha. I actually am quite sensitive to Glenn and Charles Murray's argument about the dangers of identity politics, especially when unleashed by the majority white population. Like Glenn I'd like us to ultimately arrive at a different solution to our problems by dialing down the rhetoric and eschewing the excesses of racial identity, which clearly is problematic in an ethnically diverse country like America. You can get away with that sort of thing much more easily in Japan where basically 98-99% of the country is Japanese.
So I certainly don't want you or anyone else to get the mistaken impression that I'm super gung-ho about ethnic or racial nationalism. That being said, it is what it is man. We're talking about some of the most basic and primal tribal impulses and I certainly can't fault anyone for embracing that. I'm ultimately okay with the Amy Waxes and Jared Taylors of the world espousing white nationalist sentiments, not because I think it's the most productive mindset for the multiracial American enterprise, but because I understand where it comes from and believe that they're entitled to that belief system just as much as you or I are entitled to our belief systems.
I think where you and I are in violent agreement is when it comes to being disingenuous. If you're a white nationalist who values the primacy of race and culture above and beyond all other utilitarian considerations, just come out and say so. There's no need to muddy the waters by making bad empirical arguments about how Asian immigrants are disproportionately stoking wokeism.
That being said, while I feel like Amy's argument about Asians and wokeism is a bad one, I do agree wholeheartedly with her and Glenn's arguments about colonialism. Many of the native populations conquered by European settlers were just as savage in their impulses if not more so compared to Europeans, but merely lacked the technological and political sophistication to effect their savagery upon a global scale like the countries of Europe did. Having read Steven Pinker's book the Blank Slate a while back, I think we can all agree that the stereotype of the noble savage is wildly overstated.
Finally, I especially liked Glenn's point that while depredations such as slavery were for instance universal, it was the progressive spirit of European enlightenment that led to the global movement of abolition. I think this is the kind of necessary perspective that's often overlooked in our discussions about race and culture in this country and so in that respect I actually do sympathize with Amy Wax quite a bit.
I mostly agree with you. (But I can't say I saw it coming =))
A lot of our (i.e., humanity's) worldviews are based on developments that have occurred over the last 500 years. Which suggests to me that many of our perspectives are likely to change dramatically in the *next* 500 years, if not the next 100.
"Race" as we see it today could be effectively meaningless in a few centuries. And this is a more constructive, more logical, more productive, and more realistic way to look at the future.
This is how I see it. Wax sees it differently. She thinks "race" is somehow essential. I couldn't disagree more.
P.S. I did not mean to imply that I thought YOU were shallow in any way =)
I actually argued in a monthly Q&A that Glenn and John graciously decided to address that I feel like with the future possibilities of science and technology that many of the hot-button issues today related to race might ultimately fade away in the (distant) future and that ultimately the biggest divisions then wouldn't be racial but might be between the enhanced and the non-enhanced.
But of course this is a techno-optimistic worldview that I lack the academic pedigree to qualify in any meaningful way, so maybe we can just chalk it up to a flight of amateurish imagination haha. I find it amusing though how often people are prisoners of the era that they live in. Hundreds of years ago in Europe during the era of Galileo the most pressing existential question of the day was whether not the Earth revolved around the sun or vice versa. Today that entire debate seems to us to be utterly silly and trivial. Likewise I can imagine Homo Sapiens in the (distant) future having a good laugh over how the most pressing issues of the day for primitive 21st century humans were the entire nature versus nurture debate and the race and culture wars. But alas I digress...
As a practical matter Asian immigration is likely to increase in the future. With our economy defined as Consumption + Investment + Government spending (ignoring exports less imports) a reasonable guess is that we will need to import even more educated immigrants and their investments in the years ahead. That we are all created equal is a powerful statement and I see no problem in it assimilating another wave.
Glenn, I've listened to this particular segment and most of your talk with Amy Wax and I have to say that I loved how you called her out on her penchant for painting with a broad brush. This was a very excellent discussion.
First and foremost, I have no problem with Amy Wax and her position that America is essentially a white European nation with a certain cultural heritage, although obviously that narrative oversimplifies the assimilation of various Eastern and Southern European groups during the late 19th and early 20th centuries after the earlier waves of primarily British/Germanic/Scandinavian immigrants. I don't believe she places much weight on the sorts of utilitarian arguments you make about the good of elite Asian immigration far outweighing the bad. But I respect her view nonetheless that race and culture are what matter first and foremost to the essence of a country, far more so than how many patents or elite research papers a country produces. I'm sure these kinds of views are fairly mainstream in racially insular countries like Japan, so I can hardly fault her for espousing similar views.
I do find her argument about Asians being disproportionately woke to be unconvincing though. I don't claim particular expertise in these matters, but my impression has always been that by far the most woke people in America are whites, whether Jewish or non-Jewish, i.e. the individuals who are at the vanguard of the DEI movement and those arguing over what pronouns we should use. I remember reading a couple of articles a while back by Matthew Yglesias and Zach Goldberg discussing the phenomenon of the Great Awokening whereby white liberals over the course of the decade of the 2010s moved so far left that they were oftentimes even to the left of Blacks and Hispanics on issues related to immigration, policing or affirmative action.
The empirical argument is that white liberals used to be much closer to white conservatives on these kinds of social issues, but that they moved significantly further to the left over the past 10 years or so, while white conservatives remained relatively constant in their views. Thus while Blacks and Hispanics tend to be to the left of white conservatives, they're actually oftentimes to the right of white liberals on the hot-button cultural issues of the day. Thus you might say that overall as a group whites exhibit greater variability of opinion than do other ethnic groups in America and are more over-represented among both the extreme left and the extreme right.
I especially enjoyed you mentioning the wokeness of Jewish Americans in academia in response to Amy Wax singling out South Asian immigrants because I've always wondered what Amy's views were precisely. She often speaks very broadly about America's European heritage or of the West more generally, but I recall in a past conversation you had pointed out corruption in Eastern Europe in many of the former Soviet republics as an argument against painting with an excessively broad brush. It's never been quite clear to me if Amy espouses specifically Nordicist views that privilege Northwestern Europeans over Southern and Eastern Europeans or if she was more of a pan-white nationalist type. For instance, many of America's leading racialists like Lothrop Stoddard writing in the early 20th century warned against opening the floodgates to masses of immigrants from Southern or Eastern Europe and of the menace of hyphenated Americans. Even today, there are marked differences between countries in Northwestern Europe versus those in Southern and Eastern Europe and I wonder if these are the kinds of differences Amy notices.
On the topic of the Jews though, I give you credit Glenn for mentioning disproportionate Jewish wokeness in academia and I give Amy even more credit for being consistent in publicly condemning it because I was always curious what her thoughts were regarding the work of someone like Kevin MacDonald. I read his controversial Culture of Critique some time ago where he basically argues that as a collectivist race molded by their unique history of market minority middleman dominance and oppression, Jews ended up adopting a so called group evolutionary strategy whereby they exploit individualistic and open societies created by Northwestern Europeans and promote far left ideologies like mass immigration fundamentally for the benefit of the Jewish in-group. Based on Amy's comments in your discussion I'd be willing to wager that she would probably publicly endorse a large portion of that sort of ideology and if so I give her credit for that.
I found it interesting that she singled out South Asians specifically as being at the vanguard of wokeness because I do think that to paint with an even narrower brush there are differences between South Asians and East Asians in that the former have been likened more closely to Jews than has the latter, in part because both Jews and South Asians are racially Caucasoid but also because South Asians skew more towards the kind of verbal proficiency that Jews embody, which leads to outsized representation in the arenas of business and politics and such. I remember MacDonald arguing in Culture of Critique for instance that one major difference between the Jews and the Chinese was that the latter was skewed more towards mathematical aptitude, i.e. in America Chinese Americans are over-represented in STEM but far less so in the arenas of business, politics and culture. Even as market dominant minorities in Southeast Asia the Chinese have often been at the mercy of the political majority in countries like the Philippines and Malaysia, resorting to crony capitalism to survive, whereas Jewish Americans at merely 2% of the American population have exerted a vastly greater influence upon the American body politic and in general have a significant impact upon American politics and culture. MacDonald also links Jewish verbal precocity to the sorts of self-contained radical left-wing ideologies espoused by people like Sigmund Freud or the Frankfurt School. Fundamentally someone like MacDonald sees Jewish Americans as a far more malign influence upon the traditional racial and cultural fabric of America than Chinese Americans, who I get the impression that MacDonald sees as being mostly apolitical STEM types. I'm curious what Amy would make of that sort of argument given that I get the sense that she considers Jews to be white.
Amy mentioned that Asians tend to conform more to the prevailing opinions of whatever the dominant majority happens to be and while I wouldn't be surprised to find Chinese Americans on average to be to the left of mainland Chinese on these sorts of issues, what I think Amy fails to realize is how un-woke and politically incorrect China and Chinese people generally tend to be. The sorts of controversial opinions about race and gender that automatically get people cancelled here in America are often held to be self evident truths in China. There was even the phenomenon of people in mainland China coining the phrase "bai zuo" or white left to mock the excesses of white American wokeism. My general impression has been that Chinese Americans are far more likely to be at the vanguard of defending meritocratic admissions to elite high schools and universities than they are to be at the vanguard of DEI or the proper use of pronouns.
In general I respect Amy Wax for her racial tribalism and don't hold it against her in the least bit. But I find many of her arguments to be as you say Glenn painting with an overly broad brush. I feel like she also lacks the actual nuanced perspective of many of the groups she complains about. For instance, I mentioned above the phenomenon of Chinese mocking white Westerners as being part of the "bai zuo". I guess personally I find it amusing that Amy is actually complaining about East Asian immigrants being woke given that I've always had the opposite impression, that white Americans tended to be significantly more to the left on these sorts of issues than say Chinese or Korean Americans.
I'll add one final thought here Glenn because you and Amy spent a few minutes discussing California's attempts to erode standards in its mathematics curriculum. In particular there was consternation over the unequal representation of students in California's gifted and talented math classes and claims about pedagogical racism. What I found interesting was that according to the data, between 2004-2014, roughly 32% of Asian Americans were in gifted math programs in California, versus 8% of whites, 4% of Blacks and 3% of Hispanic students. If there is in fact unequal representation in G&T math classes in California, it's pretty obvious that the gap between Asians and whites is significantly larger even than the gap between whites and Blacks/Hispanics. I've actually heard an argument made before that part of the reason for trying to dismantle meritocracy in America isn't necessarily to uplift Blacks and Hispanics but to actually increase the representation of whites relative to Asians, but to do so covertly by utilizing a narrative that passes muster with the mainstream, i.e. meritocracy is racially biased against Blacks and Hispanics.
What I've always found to be infuriating about all of the performative angst over bias and racism and white supremacy is that in many cases when meritocracy is dismantled, Asian Americans are the ones who suffer the most from it. Sometimes whites actually benefit. For instance, the incoming student body at Thomas Jefferson High School in the past year saw Asian Americans drop from somewhere around 75% of all students to only around 55% of all students after recent admissions changes, while the percentages of Black, Hispanic and white students all increased.
Similarly I recall that Thomas Espenshade pointed out in his book No Longer Separate, Not Yet Equal that sans affirmative action, legacy and athletic preferences, the percentage of Asian Americans admitted at the schools he examined over the specific time period studied would drop significantly while the percentage of Blacks and Hispanics admitted would substantially increase. The percentage of white students admitted would roughly remain the same, although the composition of such students would change, i.e. fewer legacy types with mediocre academic credentials and more smart but less affluent whites from flyover country. Given that whites on both the left and right often solipsistically discuss meritocracy and affirmative action as though the matter were one of a trade off between more whites or more Blacks and Hispanics, I find it extraordinarily galling that in so many cases the burden of these policies if enacted primarily falls upon Asian Americans. It strikes me as perverse that one would pat themselves on the back for making a noble sacrifice but in actuality covertly pass off the costs of such said sacrifice onto the shoulders of another group.
I’m just going leave this here and see if anyone else can make something of it. Best place for trans people to get the surgery is Thailand, that’s a true stereotype. Gender plurality is something more culturally South Asian than American, unless we are talking the tribes. Trans people have always been around, but now they are more culturally prevalent. Does the rise of immigration somehow connect to the gender stuff? It wouldn’t appear that way from the families who move here. Perhaps it’s the nonimmigrant response to a new culture? Something like the spiritualism of the 70s, Americans that know more about Buddhism than actual Buddhists in the old country because the tradition is a routine and not some specialized knowledge as a result of study.
Thanks for references. Being gay and hispanic I can tell you that what is being described here is very common in various parts of the world. In essence, effeminacy in males is linked to womanliness, and in certain places, these men are allowed an out....and that's to become woman-like. They are often considered low-status and outcasts. Sometimes, they are almost like drag queens.
Americans and other in Anglophone societies see this and project "gay rights" and acceptance onto those societies. But it's really not....it's carving out a terrain in order to enforce masculine/feminine norms all the more vigorously. Please look up how Iran treats its gay men (and usually this is about effeminate gay men, not about butch women or masculine gay men and masculine gay men in such societies usually see themselves as straight)........
Actually, and I’m not alone, ask a trans woman this sometime. If you post about being trans online, you get middle eastern/Indian friend requests from guys looking for mail order brides. They want the social benefits of a white American wife, and the sexual benefit of a dick for their homosexual urges. You see this kind of thing a lot, to the point where it’s a normal expected part of being trans on the internet.
You see it on doublelist.com too........in the part called something like "Straight for Gay", it's all about these straight guys wanting passable CD or trans. I was amazed when I saw this...was something new to me.
People get murdered over this, I’ve tried to talk about it as much as I can. People think it’s a kink. The word identity has a certain stigma. I guess all that’s left to say is this is my soul.
I’ve heard a thing or two about that. Here’s a funny joke, trans women joke about Iran as having the right idea. Oppress the gays, and pay for the trans surgeries. Better than America as far as we are concerned. It’s sick, but it’s funny.
If religious police catch gays in some indiscretion, they can accept onerous punishment or have sex changes. I understand this is in part why Iran is one of the leading countries for sex change operations. And once again, it's mostly about men, not women being turned into trans men.
Amy Wax is truly a fearless thinker and a breath of fresh air in our time of stifling orthodoxy.
It is hard not to notice that there seem to be many American (and British) politicians and professors from immigrant backgrounds who make their names denouncing the West as a bigoted Moloch while they seem to have gold-plated lives and careers. (It all seems both very ungrateful and dishonest).
And if she sends a professional fool like Nathan Robinson into a sputtering "That's Racist!" tantrum, well, that's just the cherry on top.
As someone of South Asian origin I wake up every morning and look at myself in the mirror. I then ask myself, "Does the spirit of liberty beat in your breast?". Sometimes, the thumping beat of liberty is replaced with a faint murmur and I feel a bit down. Suddenly, like a devil on my shoulder, Ta-Nehisi Coates starts whispering in my ears...I ignore those temptations and immediately put on Michael Anton or Amy Wax on full blast and let them disavow me of all the cultural and genetic impulses that otherwise would lead me to blindly embrace wokeism, like my elite brethren at top medical schools and universities. One quick glance at a picture of Reagan and Trump high fiving, with Glenn smiling in the background and I'm all set. I can go about my day confident that I'm a free-thinking, proud American.
I ask my wife if she feels proud to be American too. But, she's too far gone. Unlike Amy, she hasn't escaped the pull of her Jewish leftist upbringing. I will let ya'll know that I'm trying to convert her and won't stop till I have. Because if we do have kids, I will make sure they never grow up woke. I will not have that on my conscience. They will attend Hillsdale college (a degree from elite institutions like Harvard and MIT is useless. They're all too woke), and won't get to eat breakfast till they've seen every YouTube video on PragerU.
I have no problem with her being racist or not racist or anti-woke or whatever. It just seems to me she over-simplifies matters way too much, and apparently prioritizes the importance of maintaining White-European Culture (what even is that?) over basically every other concern a society may have. She then somehow tries to argue that immigrants regardless of how integrated or successful they become in America are basically all hold and strive to express anti-American values when she provides only superficial and anecdotal examples that really don't hold up to scrutiny.
https://www.brownpundits.com/2021/12/22/i-for-one-welcome-our-new-brown-overlords/ Glenn talked to the Brown Pundits.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqBr4Dl1oBw Charles from Critical African Thinkers perceptively comments about this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqBr4Dl1oBw
I would argue that China is not going to eclipse the United States because technological superiority over the long term requires innovation and creativity, neither of which can flourish in a totalitarian, censorious police state.
Professor Wax asserts that too much Asian immigration with harm American culture. This suggestion is worth considering. Are Asians more likely to think communally, rather than individualistically? If the answer is yes, maybe you could argue that our system, based on personal liberty, would be threatened by immigration of too many people who do not assimilate and adopt this value.
On the other hand, one could argue that our culture is breaking down because we have forgotten the responsibilities to community that make personal liberty possible. If this is the case, maybe an influx of communally-minded people could balance our arguably unbalanced commitment to personal liberty.
Wherever you land on this, her point is worth considering, and doing so advances our own self-awareness as a culture.
You hear this sort of argument uttered as a matter of faith quite often in this country. Apart from the historical examples that might serve to contradict this claim, I'm also curious what people who make this claim make of China's rapid rise in STEM over the past 20 years or so.
Granted some of this was catch-up from a relatively low base no doubt, but my impression is that apart from life sciences and medicine, which the Anglosphere tends to very strong in and China less so, China has becoming increasingly prominent in the physical sciences and engineering/technology in past years. I guess I'm thinking about recent developments in quantum computing and quantum cryptography or 5G where my layman's impression is that China appears to be at the forefront of these emerging fields. So I'm definitely curious how theories linking innovation to liberty can reconcile the fact of China's rapid rise over the past couple of decades.
I'd also just point out that while I'm not dimissing claims about Asian conformity outright, as I do think there is something to that, I've always thought that the current climate we find ourselves in should make us more cautious in asserting some kind of free thinking independent mindedness over those supposedly conformist East Asians.
After all, American society's slavish devotion to the ideology of wokeness seems to me to be the antithesis of independence or individuality of thought. I pointed out in another comment that many of the ideas on race or gender or culture that get people automatically cancelled in America are basically held to be self evident truths in China. My impression is that Chinese people are remarkably un-PC about those sorts of things and are willing to call a spade a spade. That strikes me as embodying a certain independent-minded honesty that's sorely lacking in public discourse in America.
You make a number of strong points here.
On the innovation question, I would argue that much of China’s progress is due to theft of intellectual property and subsequent iteration on that IP. It is easy to forget that the Soviet Union was the first country to put a man in space. Over the long term, it couldn’t keep up.
No question that our system is imperiled. Wokeness is an existential threat to it. So, I am not saying we are in the clear. However, I would offer that our greatest threats are internal, not external.
Regarding immigration, I have a way of thinking about it that makes sense to me, but curious to hear reactions to it. It explains why too much, too fast, is problematic. Suppose I live on a block, and one immigrant family from Mexico moves there. On July fourth, I will invite them over to the neighborhood BBQ, where we will eat hot dogs, speak English, read the Declaration of Independence, and cap it off with Ice Cream Sundaes. Our new neighbors from Mexico will be welcomed with open arms, learn some of our customs, and maybe bring a delicious treat from Mexico that we all enjoy and that opens up a discussion about Mexico and why the neighbor left. We all learn. We all enjoy it. We all melt into the pot, which hasn’t changed much at all, but now we know about that Mexican dessert and a little bit more about Mexico, while the Mexican becomes an American from Mexico.
Now imagine that instead of one family from Mexico moving to the block, ten of them do. They are likely to do their own thing together. They won’t need to join us in order to have community. They will speak Spanish, eat their Mexican food, keep to themselves. There likely won’t be room for them to invite any of the non-Mexican neighbors. They don’t hear the Declaration, they don’t eat hot dogs. We don’t get to learn about Mexico and taste a dessert from there. And we won’t view them as one of us. We don’t melt together. We just remain separate communities without the intimate relationships necessary to foster deep empathy.
I think Americans have a right to expect that people who immigrate here should be expected to embrace core American values and appreciate being here. If I moved to any other country, that would be my basic obligation to the host country: to honor it and its traditions and to express gratitude to its natives for letting me join them.
Are you able to provide specific examples where you believe significant IP theft occurred that enabled China's recent progress over the past 20 years? I oftentimes hear this claim made in the manner that you phrased it above, but it always struck me as vague and unspecific.
https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/12/02/1040656/china-initative-us-justice-department/
Not sure if you've been following the Justice Department's China Initiative that was launched in 2018 under the Trump administration but my take away from articles like the one above is that despite its intent to root out academic theft and espionage, a large percentage of the cases involve failures to disclose affilations with Chinese institutions rather than any kind of theft or espionage. Furthermore, the conviction rate for cases brought under the China Initiative appears to be much lower than the overall conviction rate for cases brought by the DOJ.
On the topic of immigration I'm actually fairly sympathetic to Amy's cultural argument, which you seem to espouse as well. My guess is that competition with China will increasingly lead to the sort of paranoia I linked to above, which will lead to some degree of decoupling between Chinese and American STEM. Geopolitical and economic developments over the next decade will almost certainly result in fewer ethnic Chinese coming over to America. I'm sure the Chinese government will be more than happy to have that talent residing in China and it'll also appease the nationalist types like Amy Wax, so it'll probably be win win for both sides.
That being said, I can't predict how South Asian immigration will evolve over the coming years, which seemed to be the specific source of Amy's ire in her conversation with Glenn.
You are familiar with the DOJ’s China Initiative. You are entitled to your interpretation of it. Chinese theft of IP and coercion of foreign companies to relinquish their IP in exchange for access to the Chinese market has been going on for a long time. I share this report from the US Chamber of Commerce for historical context:
https://www.uschamber.com/assets/archived/images/documents/files/100728chinareport_0_0.pdf
Can minds that are not free compete with minds that are free? I would argue that they cannot. Time will tell.
Technological innovation and creativity can absolutely flourish in a totalitarian, censorious police state. They already have in this country. Read Albion's Seed on Puritan Culture in the early U.S. - massively theocratic and invasive into the basic personal details of people's lives. And yet those people gave us huge numbers of inventions and technological improvements; there's a reason the idea of a "Yankee tinkerer" or "Yankee ingenuity" became a watchword.
Unless the catastrophic state of US K-12 education is alleviated, increasing bleeding edge R&D will move to other countries.
You might be right between China and other Asian countries in high end R&D.
But the US is likely to continue falling more and more behind China as long as the US K-12 system remains a joke.
I disagree. Bleeding edge research is likely to be where top-tier postgraduate education is taking place (the better to recruit top lab workers and scout start-up ideas), where regulatory bodies are (the better to schmooze and get approval for projects), and/or where capital is easily available to fund. K-12 is a pipeline issue.
How do you think China will flourish in high end STEM R&D over the long run versus South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand, India, Vietnam, Bangladesh (not there yet, but 20 years from now?), Australia and New Zealand?
The USA has a long term challenge of attracting high end talent to study, work and do business inside the USA. This is much tougher than it was 1960s through 1990s in 2022. And will be much tougher still in the years to come.
"Technological innovation and creativity can absolutely flourish in a totalitarian, censorious police state." Agree.
Every time I hear one of these conversations, it's always missing something. As the audience, we hear "what is causing this?" from people that are immersed in elite academic institutions, and it can be difficult to take the perspective of someone outside, because the view from Glenn and Amy is from the inside.
What I believe is occurring, because I've watched formerly dead center or slightly left-of-center people that accrued occupational security and the ability to increase their quality of life (gaining some status and social capital from lower-middle to middle-upper) go from using common sense to being utterly psychologically obliterated like a Body Snatchers victim and willfully dismissing so much data and evidence (or more likely gravitating toward information sources that don't make this data available or readily accessible) as to make their position very religious in nature is this: A combination of humans getting soft (via the modern age and technology), coupled with the proliferation of everything Postmodern into the mainstream arteries of American popular culture.
By humans getting soft, what I mean is that the vast majority of Americans, despite the horrific stats emerging from urban centers that we in Rav Arora's work and elsewhere regarding a sharp uptick in violent crime (suspend for a moment that the right is much more willing to report on this than the left), don't really have to worry about physical danger. I think society has reached a point where we still have all the baked-in evolutionary biology that drives things like tribalism and vigilance for safety, but there really is no enemy anymore. There are no predators and the AVERAGE American can wake up, feed their kids, go to work, come home and not once really have to worry about imminent danger and not experience the fight or flight response. In our evolutionary history, most of it in fact, this was not the case. Technology has ushered in an era, at least in developed nations, a relatively (when compared to evolutionary history and human history from 150 years ago and older) safe existence. I'm skeptical of the notion that none of what we see is born from an inherent proclivity in humans to protect themselves against danger and conflict by defining an enemy, when there really is no immediate source to be identified. Sub-arguments can be made, sure, that's the case in any modern human society, a la freedom (speech, big brother, etc), taxes, pointing out second and third world nations and the woes of the people in them, etc. But for the sake of argument, I'm relegating my crude analysis to the United States.
Most of us don't have an awareness of potential physical danger in our daily thoughts, and if we do, the thoughts usually don't persist. Our brains that have developed over thousands upon thousands of years, in which the vast majority existed wars with other tribes, danger from predators and a need to be constantly vigilant, are now trying to fill that danger-shaped hole, and we see this manifest in a variety of ways. One of those ways is to subconsciously seek enemies or define people that are different than us as enemies.
If we combine this subconscious effort to create and/or define enemies, with the accelerated immersion of elite academia and the leaking of Postmodern philosophy out of elite academic containers into mainstream culture, we have hyper-vigilant swaths of society searching for power differentials where none exist, and where they do exist, the focus is disturbingly acute and vastly overstated. Examples: ALL police are out there hunting and killing black men as if it was in their job description. ALL white people are inherently racist because we exist in a "system" that was created where racism was prevalent and not countered, and so everything stems from that root source of evil and must be dismantled. The mere existence of white people is enough to deem them all racist, because they all enjoy a system that was designed for them, specifically based on race.
The entire purpose of Postmodern philosophy is to seek to define who holds power (not necessarily why) and to remove any system, structure, thought process, or any other source of augmentation or facilitation of that power. This is why the extreme poles of the political spectrum on the left see racism in everything and seek on one hand to "educate" everyone on one hand, and denounce and muzzle contrary ideas on the other with suppression of speech through various means, social pressure, occupational social pressure, education changes, etc. The right also has now adopted censorship as a means to combat the combatants, as it were, with no thought of what will occur once the ultimate power of censorship is granted, and their party is no longer in power. The Bill of Rights will, unfortunately, if extrapolated to a logical conclusion, be irrevocably amended in favor of more governmental control and erosion of what was once considered unassailable by most. Freedoms of Speech, Press, Assembly, and so on.
I was listening to Glenn's latest conversation with Nikita this morning, where he says ultimately he doesn't know what's causing it. I think this is because Glenn doesn't have the time to do a deep dive on the evolution of what we see occurring now, and my assessment isn't steeped in data either, it's just a strong hunch on what I've read since about 2014 when I first started to notice these ideas coming to the forefront in the media sources I was consuming. Glenn knows that the key to all of this is supporting data and deep research- though I wonder who's REALLY doing it other than perhaps James Lindsay- and I haven't followed his work in a while either.
I think what Amy has correct is that it will take collective action. But by whom? People on the left are scared to death to point to subculture as an explanation on the explosion of violent crime that is quickly reaching the "scary" levels of the late 80s and mid 90s. People on the right just want an authoritarian hammer, and they too are scared to point out the proclivities and predispositions of a dangerous subculture because it so closely relates to race (the same reason why it is verboten on the left). And it is indeed only one part of the equation. The other is the pandemic and the conditions and circumstances it created that are conducive to crimes going unanswered and unaddressed in many communities, and the push by the left regarding "defund the police" movements that we've seen in major left-controlled/governed urban centers. Like LA, like NY, like Minneapolis and the list goes on.
I don't think she has it right when she points out the tendencies of South Asian people to adopt "woke" culture. She's all over the place in this regard. First, she points to what she sees in elite academic settings and- my favorite: "on Twitter". This is not the real world. This is a cultural facsimile of the world, and only from elite media and academic perspectives. As Glenn correctly points out, the increase of the percentage of these folks in elite academia, coupled with the pervasiveness of the current ideology probably accounts for what she's seeing, but it's hard to see what color the outside of a house is when you're standing on the inside. I think we could replace any demographic with what Amy states is going on with South Asians in elite academia with regard to adopting part and parcel the "woke" ideology. If a certain demographic works harder than most to gain entrance into the elite academic institutions, and those same institutions are fervently enforcing a particular ideology, then OF COURSE there's going to be a widely manifested adoption of that ideology by the people most eager to gain entrance to and remain in those institutions. Seems like a no brainer to me, and it seems like she's incorrectly positing that it's unique to that demographic because... why exactly? She doesn't elaborate.
Professor Loury knows Professor Amy Wax better than I. Perhaps Amy is a canary in the coal mine. I see Amy as a total of two halves. Person 1A is created by Amy Wax. Person 1B is created by Equity/CRT. 1A and 1B are added to comprise the complete Amy Wax. If Equity/CRT were not what it is, Amy Wax would be at a different location on her pathway.
I’m not an expert on immigration, but if the middle center and conservative right are timid on the alternative to Equity-inspired immigration policy or fail to responsibly address Equity immigration concerns, then there is a vacuum to the right of Equity/CRT. At some point, right-wing racism will step forward and tell Equity/CRT “you are fired as immigration policy maker.” And the Ethnic Studies people have been telling us for decades that “We have immigration covered, don’t worry”.
We moderates in the middle and our conservative brothers need to step forward and fire Equity/CRT from immigration policy so that we can implement a Centrist and non-racist immigration policy, before white supremacy(or adjacent to) does this. I really don’t have any preference as long as the southern border is secure. As much as I complain about BLM, at least they are often signaling messages to the public. I have no idea what the far-fight is thinking or doing.
The task for the middle majority is to inventory the entire Equity/CRT “immigration agenda/priorities” and then articulate an immigration policy statement that is non-CRT + prepare to address each Equity/CRT immigration concern.
Because equity enforcement at institutions is non-transparent, non-direct and non-Due Process, people directly under attack such as Amy Wax - and sympathizers become terrified rightly so, but then in a mental panic can latch onto random life-rafts even if not well thought out, nor evidence-based. Equity is playing fire with the minds of 300 million people.
Equity transforms the factory assembly line in every institution from “electric can opener production” to “machine guns”. Any unauthorized institution employee (which is everyone except Equity directors) who approaches assembly line to ask questions is instantly vaporized. It will get much worse until Equity is stopped.
Glenn, as a parent with kids in SF public middle schools, the Asian immigration stories that you are commenting on are of great interest. The dynamics here seem similar to those you have commented on. Wesley Yang was great, but I have to add my voice to the chorus here that Amy Wax is really not reaching your high standard of quality. I'd vote not to bring her back.
If you can find a good commentator from the SF area, that might be a fruitful direction. I'm not sure who that person would be, but many of the issues that you have been touching on, esp with regards to Asian immigration, AAPI hate, progressive governance, and so forth are swirling around SF right now. Unfortunately, most around here seemingly have adopted one of the prevailing narratives, so it can be hard to get an unbiased account.
If you aren't worried about an unbiased approach, then it might be interesting to talk to someone involved in one of the various recall campaigns - School Board Recall (set for Feb 4th), Lowell Admissions legal campaign, etc.
Dr. Loury, this is a respectful criticism from a fan. My fandom, though, stems from the overarching theme of several recent comments of yours that we need to be more conscientious about upholding standards, and less conscientious about making race the basis of discussion on topics where it might not be relevant. Keeping the focus on culture and behavior. I'll raise this question, and I don't claim to know the answer: Is focusing on race in immigration potentially damaging, when you are perhaps trying to highlight cultural and behavioral traits? Be mindful that it may only be a certain substrata of people that are emigrating from Asia.
We have had lots of immigration from India, for example, that has probably drawn a far more educated pool of Indian immigrants than the Indian population at large. I've been honored to work with a number of these talented individuals during my career in software. This contrasts greatly with Indian immigration to countries closer to India, where the Indian immigrant population is less educated, often manual labor. And a population I've gathered from personal travels that has a reputation for criminality in those neighboring countries. Is it worth the effort to try to dissect that? Does trying to dissect that perpetuate some of the problems we're having trying to deal with race in our own country? Is it falling into the trap of wokeness in trying to ascribe that people who are doing well on the whole are a "good race", when it may be that it's just that the best work of their overall population is being done by the elites that are here?
Personally, I think the bigger lesson is about whether our immigration policy is based on skills and needs. Because it isn't right now. We have a large population of unskilled, marginally-employed native born, but prioritize bringing in immigrants who compete with people in that lane. Those Indian immigrant colleagues I mentioned have had to endure years of paperwork to be here properly, and that rigor is not applied to the immigrants competing with our lowest-paid citizens. My suggestion would be to keep the focus on the skills, standards, and behavior. There are brilliant people the world over, not just in Asia, and I'd rather the discussion be centered on how we attract them to come here. Hyper-race-consciousness is probably not going to be the welcome mat that we want to lay out.
Again, I don't claim to know the answer. And I know that academic discussions have to be able to veer somewhat into these territories, and not feel attacked for doing so. This is not an attack. It's simply an observation from one person who's inspired by the values and standards you're speaking to, just as much as by the minutiae and technicalities of economics that are brought into those discussions.
Yours truly,
Silent Bob
I am as anti woke as anyone on substack, and people yelling "racist" at every opinion they disagree with is a pathetically weak debating style. But boy is this Amy Wax person a racist! Does she know any Asians? That garbage about only this tiny fraction of a percent of the elite coming here shows she knows nothing. Asia is littered with billionaires, and they're not flocking over here. She should try talking to a few if she can hold her nose long enough and she'd see they come from all walks of life, and they are extremely far from the elite. And that part where she somehow tried to blame Asian defects on their being Asian while somehow those same defects are shared by Jews but somehow not part of their Jewishness-comedy gold!
Yeah… There are two ways to oppose modern anti-racism. One is a humanistic approach, the other to just be a racist. It actually requires diligence to see the difference. The enemy of your enemy is not always your friend.
exactly
Glenn, your patience with this woman is beyond anything I could ever muster. Jesus.
Jared Taylor and American Renaissance is White Nationalism--period. He/They may not be the most virulent example of it, but of course they're White nationalists. What's up with her tapdancing? "They [AmRen] 'say' they're for White interests..." Huh?
Who believes Jared Taylor wants a "return" to "colorblind standards"? LOL
And this madness is all the left's fault? Really? How many White nationalists--today or yesterday--have ever labeled themselves liberals or progressives?
They're not in the majority. You can bet that.
I continue to be a proud subscriber to this channel. But there's a reason why more than a few prominent conservative thinkers (like George Will and Jonah Goldberg) have been loud critics of current-day rightist/GOP "thought". Based on this interview, Wax is emblematic of a lot of the things they find so troubling.
I actually like Jared Taylor. The guy comes across as well spoken and mild-mannered and is also fluent in Japanese having grown up as the child of missionary parents in Japan.
But I thought he advocates for an explicitly white ethno-state in America, in effect that whites should be allowed to secede and form their own nation separate from non-whites. Maybe his views have changed or I'm misremembering exactly what he believes in, but this is my recollection of what he has advocated for in the past and if I can find a source for that I'll update my comment later now that Substack has finally seen the light and allowed comment editing.
I did find it curious that Amy Wax tried to argue that there wasn't that much difference between someone like Charles Murray and Jared Taylor. Contra Amy Wax's denial, my impression from having skimmed American Renaissance from time to time is that Jared Taylor is someone who's definitely fixated on the phenomenon of Black crime.
To repeat what I stated in another comment of mine in this thread, I don't have a problem with Amy Wax and her explicit white nationalism, although I'm certainly sensitive to Murray's argument about the dangers of the country continuing to head down the racial identity road. What I'm slightly annoyed by is Amy Wax's at times disingenuous and sloppy argumentation. As Glenn pointed out multiple times in this conversation, Amy has a tendency to paint with a very broad and overly simplified brush. She often seems to lack a nuanced perspective of the groups she criticizes. Although she specifically singled out South Asians, I found it hilarious that she tried to somehow suggest that East Asian immigrants were also a source of disproportionate wokeness. I almost wish Glenn had called her out on that by pointing out, "Hey Amy, have you ever been to China or been around people of Chinese descent? Have you not realized how un-PC Chinese people tend to be? These are the people who are fighting to preserve meritocracy at our schools, not fighting over what pronouns we should use. In fact, they actually mock woke whites in China by referring to them as bai zuo."
I'll put it this way. I'm closer to you than you think. But we're still (apparently) light years apart.
That is to say, I can barely accept nationalism of any kind. But race-based nationalism is flat-out silly and primitive to me.
To feel pride over something so profoundly based on happenstance, as in the color of your skin or the texture of your hair, is just dumb as far as I am concerned.
But more importantly, regarding "nationalism", there's the denotative versus the connotative. Denotatively? I kinda/sorta agree. White nationalism ain't that big of a deal...in a strict denotative sense. (Like you implied, nationalism's nationalism, right? =))
But connotatively, White nationalism is kind of a big deal. Why? Because of its hefty historic legacy, which conjures up images of Klansmen and NAZI's.
Even today White nationalists are known for (very bizarre) hashtags like #WhiteGenocide (a.k.a. miscegenation to us pedestrians). And if you (and for the record I am speaking generically here) are mixed up with people like that, or giving cover to people like that, then yes, it tells me a little something about you.
No, I do not assume that you're the Spawn of Satan (although I will likely assume that you're ultimately quite shallow). But it does give me a clue about how you probably see me, and people like me, and people *not* so much like me.
It speaks to some of your most fundamental values.
At some point I have to ask myself: "Do I want to expand or heighten the voices of people like this?" And my answer is a clear and crisp "no".
I cannot be neutral or academic about it.
Jared Taylor: I have known about him since the 80s. Believe it or not, he was the lone conservative voice on a BET Sunday morning news show in the 90s--he
was a regular. FACT.
He wasn't a White nationalist back then. Just a "conservative". But over time he evolved (or devolved) into a rather unapologetic White nationalist; and I cannot imagine Taylor *ever* denying that label.
What did I mean when I said I was closer to you than you think? It is that I have much less of a problem with actual self-described White nationalists than I do someone like Amy Wax, who continues to obfuscate the real picture while presenting herself as this valiant solider/martyr in the fight against wokeism/cancel culture.
It's more than sloppy argumentation. It's disingenuous and obviously so. Because Wax is too smart not to know what she's doing.
Her behavior is typical of many pundits on the right today. I cannot feign respect for it.
I'd like to believe that I'm not too shallow ultimately, but I'll let others be the arbiter of that haha. I actually am quite sensitive to Glenn and Charles Murray's argument about the dangers of identity politics, especially when unleashed by the majority white population. Like Glenn I'd like us to ultimately arrive at a different solution to our problems by dialing down the rhetoric and eschewing the excesses of racial identity, which clearly is problematic in an ethnically diverse country like America. You can get away with that sort of thing much more easily in Japan where basically 98-99% of the country is Japanese.
So I certainly don't want you or anyone else to get the mistaken impression that I'm super gung-ho about ethnic or racial nationalism. That being said, it is what it is man. We're talking about some of the most basic and primal tribal impulses and I certainly can't fault anyone for embracing that. I'm ultimately okay with the Amy Waxes and Jared Taylors of the world espousing white nationalist sentiments, not because I think it's the most productive mindset for the multiracial American enterprise, but because I understand where it comes from and believe that they're entitled to that belief system just as much as you or I are entitled to our belief systems.
I think where you and I are in violent agreement is when it comes to being disingenuous. If you're a white nationalist who values the primacy of race and culture above and beyond all other utilitarian considerations, just come out and say so. There's no need to muddy the waters by making bad empirical arguments about how Asian immigrants are disproportionately stoking wokeism.
That being said, while I feel like Amy's argument about Asians and wokeism is a bad one, I do agree wholeheartedly with her and Glenn's arguments about colonialism. Many of the native populations conquered by European settlers were just as savage in their impulses if not more so compared to Europeans, but merely lacked the technological and political sophistication to effect their savagery upon a global scale like the countries of Europe did. Having read Steven Pinker's book the Blank Slate a while back, I think we can all agree that the stereotype of the noble savage is wildly overstated.
Finally, I especially liked Glenn's point that while depredations such as slavery were for instance universal, it was the progressive spirit of European enlightenment that led to the global movement of abolition. I think this is the kind of necessary perspective that's often overlooked in our discussions about race and culture in this country and so in that respect I actually do sympathize with Amy Wax quite a bit.
I mostly agree with you. (But I can't say I saw it coming =))
A lot of our (i.e., humanity's) worldviews are based on developments that have occurred over the last 500 years. Which suggests to me that many of our perspectives are likely to change dramatically in the *next* 500 years, if not the next 100.
"Race" as we see it today could be effectively meaningless in a few centuries. And this is a more constructive, more logical, more productive, and more realistic way to look at the future.
This is how I see it. Wax sees it differently. She thinks "race" is somehow essential. I couldn't disagree more.
P.S. I did not mean to imply that I thought YOU were shallow in any way =)
I actually argued in a monthly Q&A that Glenn and John graciously decided to address that I feel like with the future possibilities of science and technology that many of the hot-button issues today related to race might ultimately fade away in the (distant) future and that ultimately the biggest divisions then wouldn't be racial but might be between the enhanced and the non-enhanced.
But of course this is a techno-optimistic worldview that I lack the academic pedigree to qualify in any meaningful way, so maybe we can just chalk it up to a flight of amateurish imagination haha. I find it amusing though how often people are prisoners of the era that they live in. Hundreds of years ago in Europe during the era of Galileo the most pressing existential question of the day was whether not the Earth revolved around the sun or vice versa. Today that entire debate seems to us to be utterly silly and trivial. Likewise I can imagine Homo Sapiens in the (distant) future having a good laugh over how the most pressing issues of the day for primitive 21st century humans were the entire nature versus nurture debate and the race and culture wars. But alas I digress...
As a practical matter Asian immigration is likely to increase in the future. With our economy defined as Consumption + Investment + Government spending (ignoring exports less imports) a reasonable guess is that we will need to import even more educated immigrants and their investments in the years ahead. That we are all created equal is a powerful statement and I see no problem in it assimilating another wave.
Honestly? This felt like Glenn had to talk down to Wax, kind of like the venerable uncle.
I left with even less respect for this woman.
Glenn, I've listened to this particular segment and most of your talk with Amy Wax and I have to say that I loved how you called her out on her penchant for painting with a broad brush. This was a very excellent discussion.
First and foremost, I have no problem with Amy Wax and her position that America is essentially a white European nation with a certain cultural heritage, although obviously that narrative oversimplifies the assimilation of various Eastern and Southern European groups during the late 19th and early 20th centuries after the earlier waves of primarily British/Germanic/Scandinavian immigrants. I don't believe she places much weight on the sorts of utilitarian arguments you make about the good of elite Asian immigration far outweighing the bad. But I respect her view nonetheless that race and culture are what matter first and foremost to the essence of a country, far more so than how many patents or elite research papers a country produces. I'm sure these kinds of views are fairly mainstream in racially insular countries like Japan, so I can hardly fault her for espousing similar views.
I do find her argument about Asians being disproportionately woke to be unconvincing though. I don't claim particular expertise in these matters, but my impression has always been that by far the most woke people in America are whites, whether Jewish or non-Jewish, i.e. the individuals who are at the vanguard of the DEI movement and those arguing over what pronouns we should use. I remember reading a couple of articles a while back by Matthew Yglesias and Zach Goldberg discussing the phenomenon of the Great Awokening whereby white liberals over the course of the decade of the 2010s moved so far left that they were oftentimes even to the left of Blacks and Hispanics on issues related to immigration, policing or affirmative action.
The empirical argument is that white liberals used to be much closer to white conservatives on these kinds of social issues, but that they moved significantly further to the left over the past 10 years or so, while white conservatives remained relatively constant in their views. Thus while Blacks and Hispanics tend to be to the left of white conservatives, they're actually oftentimes to the right of white liberals on the hot-button cultural issues of the day. Thus you might say that overall as a group whites exhibit greater variability of opinion than do other ethnic groups in America and are more over-represented among both the extreme left and the extreme right.
https://www.vox.com/2019/3/22/18259865/great-awokening-white-liberals-race-polling-trump-2020
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/americas-white-saviors
I especially enjoyed you mentioning the wokeness of Jewish Americans in academia in response to Amy Wax singling out South Asian immigrants because I've always wondered what Amy's views were precisely. She often speaks very broadly about America's European heritage or of the West more generally, but I recall in a past conversation you had pointed out corruption in Eastern Europe in many of the former Soviet republics as an argument against painting with an excessively broad brush. It's never been quite clear to me if Amy espouses specifically Nordicist views that privilege Northwestern Europeans over Southern and Eastern Europeans or if she was more of a pan-white nationalist type. For instance, many of America's leading racialists like Lothrop Stoddard writing in the early 20th century warned against opening the floodgates to masses of immigrants from Southern or Eastern Europe and of the menace of hyphenated Americans. Even today, there are marked differences between countries in Northwestern Europe versus those in Southern and Eastern Europe and I wonder if these are the kinds of differences Amy notices.
On the topic of the Jews though, I give you credit Glenn for mentioning disproportionate Jewish wokeness in academia and I give Amy even more credit for being consistent in publicly condemning it because I was always curious what her thoughts were regarding the work of someone like Kevin MacDonald. I read his controversial Culture of Critique some time ago where he basically argues that as a collectivist race molded by their unique history of market minority middleman dominance and oppression, Jews ended up adopting a so called group evolutionary strategy whereby they exploit individualistic and open societies created by Northwestern Europeans and promote far left ideologies like mass immigration fundamentally for the benefit of the Jewish in-group. Based on Amy's comments in your discussion I'd be willing to wager that she would probably publicly endorse a large portion of that sort of ideology and if so I give her credit for that.
I found it interesting that she singled out South Asians specifically as being at the vanguard of wokeness because I do think that to paint with an even narrower brush there are differences between South Asians and East Asians in that the former have been likened more closely to Jews than has the latter, in part because both Jews and South Asians are racially Caucasoid but also because South Asians skew more towards the kind of verbal proficiency that Jews embody, which leads to outsized representation in the arenas of business and politics and such. I remember MacDonald arguing in Culture of Critique for instance that one major difference between the Jews and the Chinese was that the latter was skewed more towards mathematical aptitude, i.e. in America Chinese Americans are over-represented in STEM but far less so in the arenas of business, politics and culture. Even as market dominant minorities in Southeast Asia the Chinese have often been at the mercy of the political majority in countries like the Philippines and Malaysia, resorting to crony capitalism to survive, whereas Jewish Americans at merely 2% of the American population have exerted a vastly greater influence upon the American body politic and in general have a significant impact upon American politics and culture. MacDonald also links Jewish verbal precocity to the sorts of self-contained radical left-wing ideologies espoused by people like Sigmund Freud or the Frankfurt School. Fundamentally someone like MacDonald sees Jewish Americans as a far more malign influence upon the traditional racial and cultural fabric of America than Chinese Americans, who I get the impression that MacDonald sees as being mostly apolitical STEM types. I'm curious what Amy would make of that sort of argument given that I get the sense that she considers Jews to be white.
Amy mentioned that Asians tend to conform more to the prevailing opinions of whatever the dominant majority happens to be and while I wouldn't be surprised to find Chinese Americans on average to be to the left of mainland Chinese on these sorts of issues, what I think Amy fails to realize is how un-woke and politically incorrect China and Chinese people generally tend to be. The sorts of controversial opinions about race and gender that automatically get people cancelled here in America are often held to be self evident truths in China. There was even the phenomenon of people in mainland China coining the phrase "bai zuo" or white left to mock the excesses of white American wokeism. My general impression has been that Chinese Americans are far more likely to be at the vanguard of defending meritocratic admissions to elite high schools and universities than they are to be at the vanguard of DEI or the proper use of pronouns.
In general I respect Amy Wax for her racial tribalism and don't hold it against her in the least bit. But I find many of her arguments to be as you say Glenn painting with an overly broad brush. I feel like she also lacks the actual nuanced perspective of many of the groups she complains about. For instance, I mentioned above the phenomenon of Chinese mocking white Westerners as being part of the "bai zuo". I guess personally I find it amusing that Amy is actually complaining about East Asian immigrants being woke given that I've always had the opposite impression, that white Americans tended to be significantly more to the left on these sorts of issues than say Chinese or Korean Americans.
I'll add one final thought here Glenn because you and Amy spent a few minutes discussing California's attempts to erode standards in its mathematics curriculum. In particular there was consternation over the unequal representation of students in California's gifted and talented math classes and claims about pedagogical racism. What I found interesting was that according to the data, between 2004-2014, roughly 32% of Asian Americans were in gifted math programs in California, versus 8% of whites, 4% of Blacks and 3% of Hispanic students. If there is in fact unequal representation in G&T math classes in California, it's pretty obvious that the gap between Asians and whites is significantly larger even than the gap between whites and Blacks/Hispanics. I've actually heard an argument made before that part of the reason for trying to dismantle meritocracy in America isn't necessarily to uplift Blacks and Hispanics but to actually increase the representation of whites relative to Asians, but to do so covertly by utilizing a narrative that passes muster with the mainstream, i.e. meritocracy is racially biased against Blacks and Hispanics.
What I've always found to be infuriating about all of the performative angst over bias and racism and white supremacy is that in many cases when meritocracy is dismantled, Asian Americans are the ones who suffer the most from it. Sometimes whites actually benefit. For instance, the incoming student body at Thomas Jefferson High School in the past year saw Asian Americans drop from somewhere around 75% of all students to only around 55% of all students after recent admissions changes, while the percentages of Black, Hispanic and white students all increased.
Similarly I recall that Thomas Espenshade pointed out in his book No Longer Separate, Not Yet Equal that sans affirmative action, legacy and athletic preferences, the percentage of Asian Americans admitted at the schools he examined over the specific time period studied would drop significantly while the percentage of Blacks and Hispanics admitted would substantially increase. The percentage of white students admitted would roughly remain the same, although the composition of such students would change, i.e. fewer legacy types with mediocre academic credentials and more smart but less affluent whites from flyover country. Given that whites on both the left and right often solipsistically discuss meritocracy and affirmative action as though the matter were one of a trade off between more whites or more Blacks and Hispanics, I find it extraordinarily galling that in so many cases the burden of these policies if enacted primarily falls upon Asian Americans. It strikes me as perverse that one would pat themselves on the back for making a noble sacrifice but in actuality covertly pass off the costs of such said sacrifice onto the shoulders of another group.
I’m just going leave this here and see if anyone else can make something of it. Best place for trans people to get the surgery is Thailand, that’s a true stereotype. Gender plurality is something more culturally South Asian than American, unless we are talking the tribes. Trans people have always been around, but now they are more culturally prevalent. Does the rise of immigration somehow connect to the gender stuff? It wouldn’t appear that way from the families who move here. Perhaps it’s the nonimmigrant response to a new culture? Something like the spiritualism of the 70s, Americans that know more about Buddhism than actual Buddhists in the old country because the tradition is a routine and not some specialized knowledge as a result of study.
Can you provide a link to information substantiating your claim about gender plurality vis a vis South Asia?
Hijra and Kathoey on wikipedia. Two separate entries. It’s common knowledge. I’d share the link but phone is being weird.
Thanks for references. Being gay and hispanic I can tell you that what is being described here is very common in various parts of the world. In essence, effeminacy in males is linked to womanliness, and in certain places, these men are allowed an out....and that's to become woman-like. They are often considered low-status and outcasts. Sometimes, they are almost like drag queens.
Americans and other in Anglophone societies see this and project "gay rights" and acceptance onto those societies. But it's really not....it's carving out a terrain in order to enforce masculine/feminine norms all the more vigorously. Please look up how Iran treats its gay men (and usually this is about effeminate gay men, not about butch women or masculine gay men and masculine gay men in such societies usually see themselves as straight)........
Actually, and I’m not alone, ask a trans woman this sometime. If you post about being trans online, you get middle eastern/Indian friend requests from guys looking for mail order brides. They want the social benefits of a white American wife, and the sexual benefit of a dick for their homosexual urges. You see this kind of thing a lot, to the point where it’s a normal expected part of being trans on the internet.
You see it on doublelist.com too........in the part called something like "Straight for Gay", it's all about these straight guys wanting passable CD or trans. I was amazed when I saw this...was something new to me.
People get murdered over this, I’ve tried to talk about it as much as I can. People think it’s a kink. The word identity has a certain stigma. I guess all that’s left to say is this is my soul.
I’ve heard a thing or two about that. Here’s a funny joke, trans women joke about Iran as having the right idea. Oppress the gays, and pay for the trans surgeries. Better than America as far as we are concerned. It’s sick, but it’s funny.
If religious police catch gays in some indiscretion, they can accept onerous punishment or have sex changes. I understand this is in part why Iran is one of the leading countries for sex change operations. And once again, it's mostly about men, not women being turned into trans men.
Amy Wax is truly a fearless thinker and a breath of fresh air in our time of stifling orthodoxy.
It is hard not to notice that there seem to be many American (and British) politicians and professors from immigrant backgrounds who make their names denouncing the West as a bigoted Moloch while they seem to have gold-plated lives and careers. (It all seems both very ungrateful and dishonest).
And if she sends a professional fool like Nathan Robinson into a sputtering "That's Racist!" tantrum, well, that's just the cherry on top.
As someone of South Asian origin I wake up every morning and look at myself in the mirror. I then ask myself, "Does the spirit of liberty beat in your breast?". Sometimes, the thumping beat of liberty is replaced with a faint murmur and I feel a bit down. Suddenly, like a devil on my shoulder, Ta-Nehisi Coates starts whispering in my ears...I ignore those temptations and immediately put on Michael Anton or Amy Wax on full blast and let them disavow me of all the cultural and genetic impulses that otherwise would lead me to blindly embrace wokeism, like my elite brethren at top medical schools and universities. One quick glance at a picture of Reagan and Trump high fiving, with Glenn smiling in the background and I'm all set. I can go about my day confident that I'm a free-thinking, proud American.
I ask my wife if she feels proud to be American too. But, she's too far gone. Unlike Amy, she hasn't escaped the pull of her Jewish leftist upbringing. I will let ya'll know that I'm trying to convert her and won't stop till I have. Because if we do have kids, I will make sure they never grow up woke. I will not have that on my conscience. They will attend Hillsdale college (a degree from elite institutions like Harvard and MIT is useless. They're all too woke), and won't get to eat breakfast till they've seen every YouTube video on PragerU.
USA!USA!USA!