BY BRYAN PRESTON | P J MEDIA
(AP Photo/Charles Krupa, File)
In economics and social science, Bastiat’s Parable of the Broken Window illustrates the law of
unintended consequences. It describes a careless son who breaks his father’s
window. The father then has to spend his own money repairing the window. A
government official walks by and reasons that the broken window was good,
because the glazier profits from selling the replacement, and money circulates
through the economy. The government official is wrong, though, because
the unseen cost of repairing the window is that the father
does not get to spend that money elsewhere in a way that benefits him and the
rest of the economy more.
Today the implementation of “diversity, equity, and
inclusion,” or “affirmative action,” or “equity” is sweeping across the country
across government, the military, education, and corporate America, and its
stated purpose is to rectify the original Broken Windows of black opportunity
in America. There’s far more to the story than that, of course. Among its many
side effects is that it excludes well-qualified Asian Americans from
opportunities. Harvard University, for example, admits Asian Americans to
its student body at a lower rate than black Americans who score an average 400
points lower on the SAT than them. Harvard discriminates against Asians
systematically according to author Kenny Xu, scoring them lower on
“personality” interviews despite the fact that they score the same in this area
as everyone else. Harvard’s decision to scrap standardized testing will also
end up hurting Asian Americans, Xu says.
Xu has covered the Harvard discrimination case from start
to finish and fights against Ivy League racism to this day. In his
new book, An Inconvenient Minority: The Attack on Asian American
Excellence and the Fight for Meritocracy, he traces the
left’s long history and present-day reality of discriminating against Asian
Americans in the name of diversity – only to turn a blind eye
when someone raises the issue. One recent example is a party-line vote by 48
Democratic senators to block the passage of a bill that would rescind federal
funding from any university that discriminates against Asian Americans. Those
Democrats objectively voted for discrimination. Why?
Xu is strong right out of the gate in An Inconvenient Minority, uncompromising in his
stance that “diversity and inclusion” programs and practices hurt Asian
Americans and, more largely, America’s culture of meritocracy and excellence.
He cites China as an example of a country that is gaining while America consumes
itself with admitting, hiring, and promoting based on race.
But Xu doesn’t spare his own Asian American community
from criticism. He writes: “After more than 150 years on the American
shores, they have not gained anywhere close to the kind of sociocultural
capital that can fight stereotypes and political will; the kind of capital that
stands up to Harvard University and says a resounding ‘f- you’ to their
race-based admissions policies and dangerous exploitation of damaging
stereotypes against Asian people.” He implores Asian Americans to take a
more aggressive stance in the fight for their own equal rights against elite
discrimination. Xu suggests the elites discriminate against Asians
because they know they can get away with it. Those Democrat senators suggest
that he’s onto something.
Xu’s book also smashes critical race theory head-on. In
the foreword, author James Lindsay writes: “Through their one lens of zero-sum
racial conflict theory, Critical Race Theorists have only one explanation for
Asian American success where it exists: participation in racism. Not hard work.
Not sacrifice to succeed. Collusion in evil and oppression. And this must be
their resolution to the paradox they write for themselves. In Critical Race
Theory, merit is considered a feature of ‘white supremacy culture,’ so those
who believe in it and succeed by it must be upholding white supremacy—even if
they are Asian.”
Xu examines what he calls the broken meritocracy — broken
in the favor of “equity” — and its impact on students who excel and achieve. He
skewers the leftist urban tech and economic elites who discriminate against
Asians because they pose a threat. He cuts through the notion that economic
advantages explain Asian American academic success. His topic runs the gamut
from the lack of millennial entrepreneurship to the CDC’s well-funded failure
to protect America from COVID-19. He casts everything not as a grievance but as
a warning that a rising China alongside a declining America will spell great
trouble for the whole world.
His critique in An Inconvenient Minority is forceful and smart,
weaving current events and racial dynamics that form a persuasive answer to the
question: “What, or who is truly excluded in the land of
diversity and inclusion?”
