Original subtitles

Hi, there. Welcome to the show. Still taking place in this blank void, which

I've nicknamed Henry Kissinger because it's white, it's deeply unpleasant, and

at this point, I'm just mad it's still around.

It's been another busy week. Benjamin Netanyahu looks like he may have lost

power, Anthony Fauci's emails were released, and the White House partnered

with Anheuser-Busch to offer free beer to incentivize vaccines.

And rewarding you with beer really cements Joe Biden's status as America's

uncle who probably shouldn't be left in charge.

But as the vaccination rollout continues in the United States and life slowly

returns to normal, it is worth remembering many other countries are

still very much in the grips of this pandemic.

Take the United Kingdom, which is currently planning to fully reopen later

this month, even as experts warn a potential third wave of COVID may be

underway. Demand is also growing there for a public inquiry into Boris

Johnson's mismanagement of the pandemic, following testimony in a committee

hearing last week from former top advisor and smug Moby, Dominic Cummings.

He revealed a chilling moment from last March, when top government officials

realized just how badly the pandemic planning had been botched. At this

point, the second most powerful official in the country, Helen McNamara, is the

deputy cabinet secretary.

She walked into the office, she says...

I've just been talking to the official, Mark Sweeney, who is in charge of

coordinating with the Department for Health.

He said, quote, I've been told for years that there is a whole plan for this.

There is no plan.

We're in huge trouble.

Taylor McNamara said, I've come through here to the Prime Minister's office to

tell you all, quote, I think we are absolutely fucked.

Wow. There is no plan.

We're in huge trouble. I think we're absolutely fucked.

You do not expect to hear an assessment that grim unless it's from the team

behind the Fyre Festival or Warner Brothers Discovery.

Hi there, new business daddy.

Just checking in to say I absolutely love the corporate logo you dropped this

week. It looks like the opening title of The Simpsons if the fonts were not

found. And quick note...

The stuff that dreams are made of is a quote from the Maltese falcon about how

the thing that seemed like a priceless treasure was actually worthless garbage

that brought chaos and despair to everyone around it. Anyway, good luck

with the merger. I'm sure everything's gonna go great.

But the truth is, as bad as the details of Cummings' testimony were, the UK's

COVID response pales next to that of Brazil's. Because the handling of the

pandemic by its president, Jair Bolsonaro, has been a spectacular

failure, with the country recording over 1.9 million new cases in the past month

alone. And Brazilians are understandably fed up, staging protests across the

country this week.

Demonstrators want his government to account for the negligence in purchasing

vaccines and for trying to lead Brazil towards herd immunity.

Brazilian people always got vaccinated.

It could have been the first country with the whole population vaccinated.

Instead, we see such irresponsibility.

That woman makes a great point, despite wearing what I assume biologists use to

disguise themselves while watching crocodiles fuck.

The Brazilian government is in the midst of an inquiry into its own negligence,

and it has uncovered some bombshells, including that last August, Pfizer

repeatedly offered Brazil's health ministry 70 million doses of the vaccine

it was developing, but the company got no answer. And come on, Brazil.

You can't ghost Pfizer.

They're a company that was offering you a potentially life-saving vaccine, not a

fruitarian entrepreneur slash poet you met on OkCupid. In that case, absolutely

hit ignore.

And that shouldn't even be... which is surprising given how publicly dismissive

Bolsonaro's been of the vaccines.

That woman's crocodile hat wasn't just showcasing her ability to serve looks

that are exuberant without being obnoxious. She was making an explicit

reference to a shitty joke Bolsonaro told about how companies wouldn't take

responsibility for vaccine side effects.

If you turn into a crocodile, it's your problem.

If you turn into Superman, if a woman grows a beard or a man starts speaking

in a high voice,

that has nothing to do with it. Okay, that's obviously all complete bullshit,

but if I may just address his insinuation that if the vaccine turns

you into a crocodile, that's your problem, honey, no.

If you turn into a crocodile, it's your solution.

Crocodiles are incredible swimmers, they can see at night, and instead of

sweating, they do something called mouth gaping that looks a little like this.

And think how much embarrassment that would save you on a hot day. No pit

stains on you, buddy, just mouth open, dick out, swimming through life without

a care, because thank fucking God, you're a crocodile.

And when you combine this new inquiry's findings with Brazil's death rate, it's

frankly no wonder polls now show 57% of Brazilians backing Bolsonaro's

impeachment. But not only is he not backing down, just this week, he

approved this.

The country with the world's second-largest COVID-19 death toll will

host the Copa América, welcoming South American teams for a four-week football

tournament. Yeah.

Brazil is suddenly hosting a massive soccer tournament on just 13 days'

notice. It was originally supposed to be hosted by Argentina, but it was canceled

due to COVID rates. And yet, despite that, Bolsonaro, whose country's rates

are significantly higher, is now choosing to host a tournament one

standard has dubbed the Championship of Death, and which has inspired memes like

this to make the rounds in Brazil. And I will say, that is a pretty cheerful

little coffin. It looks like Clippy the Paperclip popping up to ask you, it

looks like you're about to host a soccer... in a soccer tournament while

your country's death toll is sky high. Would you like to not fucking do that?

And look, what's happening in Brazil should be a warning for everyone,

because if vaccine misinformation continues to spread and variants

continue to emerge, the whole world could remain in trouble for a very long

time. In fact, despite how comparatively well things seem to be going right now

in the U.S., if we don't actively help get this virus under control globally,

then, to quote a former top U.K. official...

I think we are absolutely fucked.

Exactly. And now this.

And now, people on TV lose their shit over the phrase hot vax summer.

The hot vax summer.

That's what they're calling it, ladies and gents. I can't make this up. You

know why? Because last summer was hot girl summer.

Was it? So they just substituted that word. All right.

All vaxed up, no place to go. It's a hot vax summer. I'm dressed.

For Hot Vax Summer. The Hot Vax Summer. Hot Vax Summer. Hot Vax Summer. Hot Vax.

Hot Vax Summer in the city.

No! So play on the Hot Girl Summer from Megan Thee Stallion. Three words, Hot

Vax Summer.

So consumers are ready to spend the... Okay.

Hot Vax Summer, I'm telling you.

Okay.

I don't know if you can tell. I'm watching.

Okay,

Jan? Jan?

What are you saying? I'm gonna borrow that, Charles. I love that philosophy.

It's going to be a hot vac summer.

All right.

Moving on. Our main story tonight concerns Asian Americans, a group that

currently makes up around 7% of the U.S. population and is actually the fastest

-growing racial group. And yet, despite that...

Asian Americans can sometimes be oddly overlooked.

A recent survey asked respondents to simply name a well-known Asian American,

and the results were not good.

42% of people said that they don't know one. The next most popular answers were

Jackie Chan, who's from Hong Kong, and Bruce Lee, who died in 1973.

Oh, come on.

No disrespect to Jackie Chan and Bruce Lee there, but that is embarrassing even

before you consider... The poll was conducted while Kamala Harris, who's

Asian American, was vice president.

How do you fuck up a question that easy? It'd be like asking Americans to name a

well-known Joe and getting back, What's Joe, John Krasinski, and Joe

Millionaire. It is pretty clear many in this country don't seem to know much

about the histories or experiences of Asian Americans.

And to the extent that experience has been discussed in recent years, it's

often been in a tragic context, such as killings, or mass shootings, or racism

around the coronavirus triggering verbal and physical attacks in the street. As

well as the kind of idiocy that forced local news to have to produce pieces

like, no, you can't get coronavirus by eating Chinese food. Because of course

you fucking can't.

to get coronavirus from eating Chinese food as you are to get chicken pox from

eating KFC.

That's not gonna happen, and it's alarming anyone thought it might.

And all of this has highlighted the need for us to have a long overdue, better

informed conversation about the way this country regards Asian Americans.

And before we start, I fully recognize the history of white people on TV

generalizing confidently about this subject isn't great. Sometimes making

statements that are offensive even when they think they're being complimentary,

like this idea that has come up constantly.

They've worked their way past column A's and column B's, past no-starch-please,

to become our nation's model minority.

Listen to the numbers.

Median family income, higher for Asians than for whites.

Once again, super-achieving Asian American students are becoming a

phenomenon. They are overachievers.

Driven to excel by tradition.

The academic achievement of Asian American students are so notable that in

some colleges, students warn each other that if they end up in a class with a

lot of oriental faces, get out.

The grading curve, they say, will go out of sight. Wow.

That is jarring to hear.

especially when delivered with such a weird combination of amused self

-satisfaction and totally inappropriate sourcing. I was eavesdropping on some

teens last week, and I heard one of them say, never share a cab with a black

person. Just thought I'd pass that along. This has been, for some reason,

the news.

But that idea that Asian Americans are a model minority has been as persistent as

it is problematic.

So tonight, we thought we'd try and unpack both parts of this sentence. And

let's start with the first half.

We're actually going to spend most of our time on this term because it's

having to do a lot of work.

It encompasses a vast group who can trace their heritage back to more than

20 countries covering a huge amount of the world's land mass from Mongolia to

Indonesia to Pakistan to Japan.

And even some who fall under the term Asian American or the broader AAPI,

which includes Pacific Islanders, feel that it may not fit them or that the

broadness of the category means their experiences get erased.

People associate Asian with East Asian.

Filipinos aren't so much dismissed, they're just overlooked just because

they're not as popular within at least the American culture.

Sometimes I will identify as Asian, but then other Indian people don't identify

as Asian. Why are you considered Asian? You're in the Pacific Islander. Wouldn't

you be considered more Hawaiian?

And I'm like, not really.

Yeah, the term Asian American applies to a ridiculously large and diverse group

of people. And there is clearly... Not going to be enough time to discuss

everyone who supposedly fits under that umbrella in this piece, even though I do

intend to talk very fast.

So apologies in advance to all 127 Maldivian Americans.

I promise I will make it up to my one Maldivian American fan in the future. I

am serious, Kareem. Stay with me. Trust me on this. You will be seen.

But the fact the term Asian American is so incredibly broad isn't an accident.

It was kind of the point from the start, because it was first coined in the late

1960s by Asian American student activists in California, who went on

strike alongside Black, Hispanic, and Native American students to demand an

ethnic studies curriculum.

In those days, the term Asian American didn't exist.

We were all Orientals.

1968, that was the first time that I heard the term Asian Americans.

Asian American encompasses everybody. I thought, wow, that's something.

People are finally starting to realize that we wear our race on our face. It's

true. Under a system of white supremacy, we do tend to wear our race on our face.

My face, for example, is currently wearing down-market vintage colonial

casual. I'd change it into something a little less imperial if I could, but I

can't, so instead, I wear these glasses.

For those activists, the term Asian American was an attempt to unite a

massively diffused community in solidarity, thus increasing their power,

and crucially, forcing their universities to devote resources to

making sure the histories of all their communities were actually taught.

It was a political term, a radical redefinition at the time, but it's since

become a common shorthand that can unfortunately end up being used in a way

that is...

far too reductive and superficial, to the point where an old government PSA

felt the need to make a pretty obvious statement.

People always ask me how I like America.

My great-grandfather was born here. Like most Americans, we've been American for

a long time.

Some of us follow Asian traditions.

My family is apple pie American.

Mini bikes, football, rock guitar.

All Asian Americans are no more alike than any other kind of Americans.

We don't all look alike, do we?

Well, do we?

The fuck?

Government money paid for that?

Even this kid has a smirk that says, fucking white people.

Although, I will admit, the writer of that PSA defining Apple Pie American as,

mini-bikes, football, rock guitar, is magnificent.

It should be the oath of citizenship.

You put your hand over your heart, say, mini-bikes, football, rock guitar, and

then you never ride a regular sized bike again. Why?

Because you are an American now.

And obviously, recognizing the diversity of Asian Americans is about much more

than simply recognizing those three children have three different faces.

Because... One of the main dangers of treating Asian Americans as a single

entity is that it obscures the reality of what is happening for the different

subgroups inside it. For example, about 10% of Asian Americans live in poverty,

which is actually lower than the overall U.S. poverty rate. But when you

disaggregate the data, when you break it down by subgroup, you start to see a

much more complicated situation, with Mongolian and Burmese Americans having a

poverty rate of 25%, more than twice the national average.

And when it comes to education, while around 75% of Indian Americans have a

bachelor's degree, well above the national average, for Bhutanese

Americans, that figure is just 15%, which is well below it. The point is...

Disaggregating the data can reveal big disparities that you couldn't see

previously. Looking at averages for Asian Americans as a whole is like

looking at the average income of the Hemsworth brothers.

It's very misleading when we all know some Hems are worth a lot more than

other Hems are worth.

And look, using the term Asian Americans to represent a political coalition made

sense and still does to some extent.

But a coalition is not a monolith.

and to start to understand some of the present-day differences here. It really

helps to understand the differences in when and how people came to this

country. And you can break down those experiences into a few broad categories,

starting with those who arrived earlier in the 19th century and the first half

of the 20th.

Asian immigration in that time was essentially a cycle of economic

exploitation followed by a violent and restrictive backlash.

This began with Chinese immigrants who were recruited to work on the railroads

in the 1860s. They faced virulent racism from the beginning, both from their

bosses, who saw their lives as disposable, and from whites, many of

whom saw them as unfair competition for jobs.

At the time, this senator from California described Chinese immigrants

as... automatic engines of flesh and blood, making them sound like some kind

of railroad lane terminators, and demanded that the federal government

secure the American Anglo-Saxon civilization without contamination or

adulteration. And in 1882, with the Chinese Exclusion Act, he got his wish.

The Chinese Exclusion Law is one of the first really comprehensively restrictive

laws.

And it's also the first and only time in the entire history of the United States

that a group is singled out by name, Chinese, by name, as being

undesirable.

So this is truly a remarkable moment.

Yep. The poster said, hip hurrah.

to the Chinese Exclusion Act. And if you look at the whole thing, it says in the

middle, hip hurrah, the white man is on top, which is a bit redundant.

If you've said hip hurrah twice, you really don't need to say the white man

is on top. It's like saying blue lives matter or welcome to Carrie Bradshaw's

bedroom. The white man on top part is very much implied.

And America committed to that exclusion policy.

Here is something you might not know. There were actually six Chinese men who

survived the sinking of the Titanic, but upon reaching U.S. shores, were not

permitted to enter the United States to recover.

Instead, they were forced onto another boat and sent away the very next day,

which isn't just racist.

It's insensitive.

Did it really have to be another boat?

They had just been on the best boat, and it fucking sucked.

Could you not put them on a Zeppelin or something? At the very least, let's try

and mix up the doomed turn of the century transportation methods here.

And the experience of Chinese immigrants, unfortunately, set the

template for the different groups that followed because waves of Japanese,

Korean, South Asian, and Filipino immigrants later came over as

agricultural workers, with those in charge often pitting the groups against

each other with unequal wages and treatment.

Each group that came... face the common experience of racial hostility,

violence, and laws denying them the possibility of becoming citizens or

owning land.

Here is a poster targeting Chinese people. Here is a sign targeting

Japanese people. And here is one targeting Filipinos.

It's just like the Statue of Liberty says, give me your tired, your poor,

your huddled masses, but not over there, not there either, definitely not in

Maine. You know what? You guys just figure it out. Don't worry. The signs

will make it really obvious.

And no matter how long Asian Americans or their families had been in this

country, they were, as now, treated as perpetual foreigners whose loyalties

were in question. With the most famous example of this being the World War II

internment camps where 120,000 Japanese Americans who'd been rounded up en masse

were imprisoned.

And to add insult to injury, when they were finally allowed to leave, the U.S.

government had the gall to try and give it a positive spin.

If you don't have money enough to get to your new location, the government,

through WRA, will make a grant of enough money to get you there, and a little

extra until the paychecks start coming in.

This money does not have to be repaid.

It's a helping hand from Uncle Sam.

It's a big moment when you start to pack for your trip outside.

It's an even bigger moment when you walk through the gate for the last time and

present your pass to the guard for the last time.

and take a look at the barbed wire fence for the last time.

And as you look at that barbed wire, you can think, fuck you, America, for the

last time. Go ahead. We're cool with it. You can even say it out loud if you want

to. We'll pretend we didn't hear you, and then we'll be even. In fact, you

know what? Let's shake on that. You can say, fuck you, America, one time, and

then we'll be cool.

But around the middle of the last century, attitudes began to shift as the

U.S., locked in a Cold War, came to see exclusion laws and racial quotas as bad

for its global image.

So... laws like the Chinese Exclusion Act went away to eventually be replaced

by the 1965 Immigration Act. And this is the next broad category of Asian

American immigrants. Those who came post-1965 as a result of that act.

Because in contrast to the previous migrants who were generally relegated to

low-wage manual labor, a key thing that this law did was prioritize educated and

highly skilled workers like doctors and engineers, and it also tried to address

specific labor needs, like when a nursing shortage resulted in overseas

ads like these.

Labor recruiters and travel agencies started targeting Filipino nurses with

ads that promised them bright futures in America.

One particular ad featured a basket that was decorated with the Philippine flag.

It's addressing the Filipino nurse saying, dear nurse, if you're not happy

where you are right now, contact us.

And we can't promise you happiness, but we can help you chase it all over the

place. I've got to say, that is a refreshingly honest slogan.

You might not catch happiness, but you can chase it.

And it did seem to work, as nurses are one of this country's top imports from

the Philippines, followed closely by, of course, Jollibee, the world's greatest

fast food mascot. Because believe me, unlike American labor recruiters in the

60s, Jollibee can promise you happiness and deliver it to you in videos like

this.

Yes, please.

I don't know what I love more there, Jollibee tastefully shaking that stinger

like it's a bottle of his signature banana ketchup, or the coy flutter of

those naughty humanoid eyes.

Jollibee can get it.

So, very broadly, Asian Americans before 1965 were largely exploited for their

labor and legally discriminated against, while... But after 1965, there were many

more who came as skilled workers and who faced fewer formal legal barriers. And

then, there's the final group here that has less to do with America's labor

needs and more to do with its geopolitical interests.

Those who arrived as refugees.

Because between 1975 and 2010, we took in over a million refugees from Vietnam,

Laos, and Cambodia, which...

wasn't so much generous as it was a direct result of people seeking refuge

from wars that America waged in the region. Basically, we bombed the shit

out of their countries to thwart the spread of communism, sometimes in secret

wars to fulfill Henry Kissinger's napalm kink. And then, once we took those

refugees in, we didn't really do much to set them up for success.

When it comes to refugees, we hold a lot of trauma, a lot of PTSD, a lot of

mental illness from the war and the genocide.

We have, in the U.S., with respect to our refugee policy, this doctrine of

work first or work immediately.

It doesn't matter if you just came from a war zone and haven't healed from the

mental and physical traumas of war. We want you to get a low wage job

immediately. And that is really the full spectrum of the American experience,

isn't it? To go from the U.S. not giving a shit about your life abroad to not

giving a shit about your life here. Good luck. And by the way, if you think you

hear bombs again, try not to freak out. It's either a holiday half the country

kind of hates, or some couple telling their friends what gender their baby is.

Welcome to America!

The point is, different groups of Asian Americans have had vastly divergent

migration experiences.

And when you understand them more... the variation you see in everything from

income to education to health outcomes begins to make sense.

And yet, groups that have, in some ways, so little in common often have been

unified, unfortunately, through the common experience of bigotry. As was the

case in the early 1980s, when America's fear of an economically ascendant Japan

led to a racist fervor at home.

Pretty soon, the finger of blame ended up on Japan.

All of this hatred, you could feel it. It was palpable.

Detroiters were invited for 50 cents a smash to take out their anger on

Japanese cars.

Wow, that's stupid.

I honestly can't think of a single good reason to beat up a car, except...

Maybe if Lightning McQueen owes you money. And to be honest, even then, if

you really want to hurt him, you don't beat him with a sledgehammer. Your light

mate are on fire and you make him watch. That's what you do.

Everybody knows that. Where is my fucking money, McQueen?

But tragically and unsurprisingly, that type of resentment and blame turned to

violence and eventually culminated in the murder of Vincent Chin, a Chinese

-American man who was beaten to death by two white men.

who blamed him for what Japan was doing to the U.S. auto industry.

Chin's killers were arrested and convicted, but the judge sentenced them

to exactly no prison time, instead giving each of them three years

probation and less than $4,000 in fines. And he insisted at the time he'd made

the right decision.

Judge Charles Kaufman says justice was done.

He would not talk to CBS News, but he did tell a Detroit newspaper that the

two defendants were long-time, hardworking members of the community,

adding... Oh,

it gets worse.

That judge also said these weren't the kind of men you send to jail.

And it's hard to tell what criteria that judge used to decide what kind of men

these two murderers were. Was it the color of the skin on their faces?

The color of the skin on their hands? Or just judicial instinct?

A gut feeling that these two men were, in fact, white.

That's the thing about the criminal justice system. At the end of the day,

it's more race art than race science.

But the enduring legacy of the Vincent Chin case was that it managed to bring

Asian Americans of all ethnicities together... to call for justice.

And out of that sprang a new chapter of Asian American activism and political

identity. And that is just the most famous example of a rich history of

Asian American activism, which has often worked across racial lines.

From the student strike that we mentioned earlier, to Filipino labor

leaders working with Cesar Chavez to organize a grape boycott, to Yuri

Kochiyama's friendship with Malcolm X, and her advocacy for marginalized people

of all backgrounds.

And yet, a prevailing narrative... that most people hear regarding Asian

Americans is one of conflicts between them and other communities of color,

like during the 1992 L.A. uprising.

And look, it's not that those tensions aren't very real, but it's not the whole

picture either. And it's also a narrative that fits into a much larger

pattern, in which white America has actively pitted Asian Americans against

other communities.

And that brings us to the second half of this sentence, and the model minority

myth. The idea of the model minority emerged over half a century ago, in part

because some Asian Americans were strategically typecasting themselves in

a bid to enhance their demands for racial equality, and they did so by

promoting their communities as upstanding and hardworking. And as

immigration law began selecting for skilled and educated Asian immigrants,

the credentials of those new arrivals seemed to conform to the stereotype,

which then...

took on a life of its own, especially in the civil rights era, as whites,

unnerved by black Americans' radical challenges to the system, held up

Japanese and Chinese Americans and their success as evidence that they claimed

disproved systemic racism.

Very basically, America prioritized wealthy, more educated Asian immigrants,

then turned to black people who'd been subjugated for centuries and said, see,

they're educated and successful, why aren't you?

And using Asian American success to downplay American racism is a trend that

very much continues to this day.

If America were such a hate-filled, discriminatory, racist society filled

with animus against Asian Americans, how do you explain the remarkable success of

Asian Americans in Oakland?

Their mindset is to just work really hard. It's not to protest things and not

to shut things down. It's just to work really hard.

The Asians...

The whole reason why they kick ass is because they don't spend any time on

petty bullshit. Asians are concerned about hate crimes, but they're very

upwardly mobile, very success-oriented, very business-oriented.

They're model citizens in many cases, in my view. Probably the most admirable

ethnic group we have.

Wow.

Congratulations, Asian Americans.

Dick Morris thinks you're the most admirable ethnic group we have.

That's so sweet of him to say.

If you want to write Dick a thank you note, just address the envelope to shove

this right up Dick Morris' ass, New York, New York, whatever zip code Dick

Morris' asshole is in.

A central premise of the model minority myth is that the key to overcoming

American racism is simply strong values and hard work.

With the implication being...

that groups that haven't succeeded simply haven't tried hard enough.

And putting aside how offensive that is, the truth is, whether or not you're

successful, living a life defined by a racist fantasy just isn't good for you.

Striving to maintain the idea of a model minority has really severed my self

-esteem. It really makes me feel that I'm nothing more than someone who could

get good grades, someone who was supposed to be perfect and be mum about

everything. Right.

Trying to be perfect your whole life is going to be too much to bear.

That is why I made a promise when I started this show that I'd always get

one fact in every story completely wrong.

Is that responsible?

Absolutely not. But it is what keeps me looking young.

And the model minority myth is especially galling for some members of

groups like those whose families came as refugees whose lived experience doesn't

remotely match the stereotype.

The truth is...

that kind of pressure can do real damage.

Suicide is the leading cause of death for Asian Americans between the ages of

15 and 24.

And yet, apparently, only 8% of Asian Americans sought help for their mental

health, which is less than half the rate of the general population.

And that is not just a result of cultural stigmas around mental health.

It's also what happens when you're consistently told to quietly and happily

accept discrimination because your version is the nice racism.

But there is no nice racism. There is no silver lining to it, and there is no

working your way out of it. You are still perpetually treated as a

foreigner, still asked where you're really from, and Asian Americans always

seem to be just one geopolitical crisis away from becoming the targets of

violence yet again.

Whether it's those internment camps for Japanese Americans, or the spate of

attacks on South Asians after 9-11, or all of the recent racial violence during

the pandemic.

So the model minority myth is both a tool of white supremacy and a trap.

And as with so many things in this story, with a community this diverse,

there are going to be different perspectives on how to handle it. Andrew

Yang has annoyed some by leaning into it with self-deprecating jokes and his

fucking math hat.

And he also angered many when he responded to the Trump administration's

China virus rhetoric by writing an op-ed in which he claimed,

That argument prompted a backlash with Eddie Wong tweeting, And

I do get that.

Because it's pretty insulting to suggest two centuries of racism could be

defeated by serving Uncle Sam realness.

So, all of that is, very simplistically, too broadly, and probably too quickly,

an abridged version of how we all got to where we are right now.

So, where do we go from here?

Well, what is clear is we have to find a way to have smarter, more nuanced

conversations about the reality of the Asian American experience, and we cannot

do that without access to high-quality, disaggregated data that can help better

fit public policy to the actual needs of individual communities.

But that is not all, because Asian Americans have been warning for decades

about all of this.

Just watch a man tell a reporter, five years before I was even born, what I've

been trying to tell you tonight, during yet another...

of those old model minority profiles.

But I suggested that compared to the black and the Chicano, the Japanese

American has it made. He can get a job, a place to live.

It's a situation where I think the question is not material making in terms

of economics, but a question basically of human dignity.

You know what I mean in terms of human dignity?

Like, for example, we've been set in a certain category, and many people argue,

man, you got a good stereotype. You got a stereotype to get you apartments where

you don't have to pay a cleaning deposit because you're so goddamn clean. That's

our stereotype. But it's an infringement. It's a violation of our

human dignity because they don't view us as individuals, as human beings. We fit

into a certain category. We fit into a certain box.

That's how they view us. He's right.

It's a category, it's a box, but the thing is, you don't learn anything from

it unless you bother to look inside.

Because obviously, no group, community, or indeed individual is just one thing.

And when you reduce the Asian American experience to that of a model minority,

you are omitting a history that includes exploitation and exclusion, but also

includes activism, some infighting, challenges with issues like immigration,

education, and access to social services that continue to this day, and an array

of interests and achievements that go far beyond these two guys to be as vast

and diverse as America itself.

By the way, can you see who's in there?

I told you, Kareem! I told you I got your back!

I see you, Kareem!

And look, I know this story has barely skimmed the surface of this subject, but

I hope that it's at least introduced some of you to a bit of the history

involved here. As well as what I think we can all agree is the world's most

fuckable bee.

That's our show. Thank you so much for watching. We'll see you next week. Good

night.