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Culture War Roundup for the week of June 12, 2023

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Contra Greer, I like Asian-Americans, find that they are on average excellent American citizens and net contributors, and the extent to which their politics leans Democrat seems heavily driven by continued wignat sentiments. I don't actually think I need to "remember that identity will always remain paramount" to find common cause with Asian-Americans in battles against affirmative action or other racial spoils systems.

'Asian American' is far too broad a category. Indian-Americans and Chinese-Americans are about as different to each other as either is to European-Americans. In general on the 'new right' we see (and have long seen, see Dinesh D'Souza in the 1990s) quite a substantial number of South Asians (including even a few Pakistanis and Bengalis here and there), but very, very few East Asian Americans, who are more uniformly progressive.

This doesn't track with personal experience or with any polling I've ever seen. Indian Americans are the Asian American group that is usually most consistently supportive of Democrats (e.g. 2020 and 2012). It's possible that East Asian Americans are just less likely to engage deeply in politics overall, so your observations may just be a variance effect.

Too broad for what, exactly? We surely can drill down even further and note that Hmong-Americans aren't socioeconomically advantaged, or that Korean-Americans do tend towards more conservative affiliations (see Michelle Steel and Young Kim, see also the relationship of Korean immigrants to the LA riots), and I think that makes sense at times. I agree with the obvious statement that South Asians and East Asians aren't very similar. Nonetheless, my statement above seems true for the aggregated group that includes both South Asians and East Asians. Most importantly in the context of the Greer article, I reject the idea of my racial identity being highly salient when it comes to whether I should regard people of both South Asian and East Asian as both good Americans and potential allies across many political dimensions.