One of the biggest issues that nobody mentioned is people likely hired by Russia stealing their accounts and posting on websites.
No, Bangladeshi Americans didn't experience the same systemic racism that African Americans felt in the US.
Not aggressive at all and I don't mind responding. As I said as a group Asian Americans are doing well. I also stated why. Most of us came here after Civil Rights and we are among the most capable and highly motivated from our countries of origin. Consider why Indian and Pakistani Americans are among the most educated and well off Americans while the Indian Subcontinent is riven with poverty and ignorance. There is nothing innate about being Asian that leads to success but having a family that is already successful, educated, or just very ambitious certainly helps. Those are factors that drive not only most Asian immigration but immigrants in general. Also if we're talking about diversity Asians aren't a monolith either. As noted there are pockets of endemic poverty among Chinatowns but there are groups like the Hmong who are still struggling The Hmong came here as refugees with many illiterate having mostly been living as subsistence farmers in the hills of SE Asia. The US government and state governments has certainly done a lot for the resettlement of the Hmong having provided them with public housing (the projects) also providing with other government benefits. Without the aid of the US government not sure how the Hmong would've been able to survive the first few years here but they wouldn't even have been able to come here. There are other Asian groups here who have had to rely upon government aid to survive. For example in Houston many of the Vietnamese that came here in the late 70's and 80's also as refugees. To bring this back though to black Americans. Just as there is nothing intrinsic in being Asian that leads to success there is nothing intrinsic about being black that leads to failure. We can't ignore that history actually exists and history still shapes both perceptions and expectations. I've been thinking a lot about my life and George Floyd's life. If someone showed pictures of both him and I at age six with no other information and said that 40 years later one of these guys is going to be an ex con and be killed by an LEO I'm willing to bet that most people would pick Floyd. That is the expectations on us that neither of us created but shaped a lot of our lives. The expectation is that the black child will grow up dealing with poverty and crime. Consider that we hear all the time that even successful black men have reported being stopped and questioned by LE much more than their white or Asian counterparts that is perception becoming reality. Of course it's possible to defy expectations and create your own reality but that is always harder. The expectation on me was to be a good student and as such go to a good school and become a professional. As a child I resented and felt it was a burden but that was what not only my parents pushed me to but also teachers. From what I know of George Floyd's life the pressure on him was to be a good athlete and it doesn't sound like there was much expectation for him to do well academically. I'm not going to claim that if Floyd had been pushed in the ways that I had been his life would've been different but in both cases our lives ended up the way society expected us.
So white Americans, when faced with the choice of giving preferential treatment to either another white American or a Bangladeshi, never preferred the white American over the Bangladeshi?
Giving more people access to college doesn't make degrees worthless? Do you think college degrees from/in Germany, France, Austria, Denmark, Norway, Finland, Sweden, Slovenia are all worthless? Giving more people access doesn't not lower to educational requirements, it just eliminates the financial ones. But families need it? You think because they need it shouldn't be offered, you'd rather everybody just come from a perfect family who can afford to have mom stay at home? This is not America for the vast majority of people. Let me give you an example of this argument your making in a different area. Do you know who is statistically the most affected by poverty in America? The elderly. They rely on government assistance big time. Don't you hate the idea of a "government program" that substitutes a loving family and good retirement fund? Don't we wish the children loved their parents more? Or suddenly are be able to support them financially? Don't you wish elderly people would just suddenly start retiring with half a million in a retirement account? Let's end social security and all of that will magically happen! This idea that you are using the very need for such a program as a reason not to provide it is an awful argument. You would just have immensely worse living conditions for our elderly, more homelessness, more starvation, shorter lives, and all that extreme poverty entails. People can't afford the nuclear family life anymore, the American dream is not accessible to the vast majority of the working class. Half of all workers in America make less than 30k a year.
So when everyone has a college degree, what does that do to salaries overall? And how do you compensate those who in the past paid for their College Education out of their own pockets? Or are they simply **** out of luck? Well, I never said any such thing but hey, you keep beating that strawman! You know I could just as easily create ask you why you're so invested in having strangers take care of kids and the elderly? Would that be an honest assessment of your meaning? I doubt it. Anyways.... Funny you should mention the elderly and SS. I currently have my 93 year old mother living with me and have for the past 8 years. She does make a little from SS, but the vast majority of the money she brings in are off interest and dividends of the savings of my father made while he was alive. The 12 years prior to that, she lived on the same thing after my dad passed. Frugal living, smart investing, and years of sacrifice and hard work made it happen. They waited TWELVE YEARS to buy their first car. Saved until they could pay cash. My mom could easily survive right now without the SS. And my folks started out EXTREMELY lower middle class, never had more than 1 salary...raised 3 kids and lived in a house less than 1000 square feet with 1 bathroom. They also sent money to my grandmother every month who had ZERO income in her retirement because my grandfather died of MS in his 60's after his small business burned to the ground. When my grandparents ran their business, there was no such thing as Social Security or Medicare. They depended on family. That's it. Today, my mom also saves a tremendous amount of money by not being pushed into assisted living or nursing homes. We did that because we believe in being old fashioned about family. I don't trust others to take care of my loved ones. COVID has shown us to have been wise in our choices there. I am also on the way to financial security doing mostly the same things. There are challenges of course but I will manage. Certainly I can make it if my folks did. Do I hate the idea of a govt program that substitutes a loving family and good retirement fund? For those folks that have to manage that way..ya, I do. Those that depend on the government programs to be there are going to be in for an awfully big surprise one day when the govt simply puts up its hands and says....we got nothing to give you. Then what? I think you misunderstand my post. I wasn't necessarily advocating against it given the culture we have now. But I am advocating to encourage a culture that returns us to the ways we used in the past to address problems of both child AND elderly care. It's not only cheaper for the caregivers and society, its better for the child. And stating that people can't afford the nuclear family life anymore is complete crap. They can. They just aren't willing to put in the sacrifices necessary.
Everyone wouldn't have a college degree? And if we get to a point to where the vast majority of our children do then fantastic? You are giving me the sense that you find it important to manufacture inequality in our systems. Our systems should provide the opportunity, regardless of cost, and whoever can take advantage of that reaps the benefits. Yes, those who paid for college in the past would be "**** out of luck" until their kids or grandchildren, or nieces and nephews go to college free of charge. I'd be for the canceling of current student loans though. You specifically said you don't like it because you don't want people to get things they need from a gov program, you want them to get it from having a nuclear family People don't have to let teachers and nurses take care of their children/parents, if they can afford it, they can keep them at home, but if they CAN'T AFFORD TO DO THAT, then the option to put them in safe quality programs is REALLY important for the parent, grandparent, and child. I'm happy things have worked out well for most of your family, but your individual situation has absolutely nothing to do with the greater country as a whole. The elderly are the most impoverished group in this country, a massive number of them need SS and simply can't afford retirement. Again why would you hate a program that gives vital support to those we need it the most? SS isn't covered by the government it's covered by US, we pay for it. As long as our society is functioning these programs will have money, if we get to a point where our society crumbles we will have a whole lot more to worry about then just SS. I hope I am misunderstanding your post. You can advocate for people to live in different ways however you want, this won't change the financial reality everybody is facing. Most people simply can't afford to quit their job and take care of their parents, or their children. People have to work and they usually only make enough scrape by. I would love for everybody to be so financially comfortable that they could take care of it all as well buddy. For the last line utter horseshit. The median American family today cannot afford to live off of a single income.
I appreciate your thoughtful response, but you didn't answer the questions. You talked about why Asian immigrants would have been or were successful in their home countries. You said they were capable, highly motivated, educated, and ambitious. That tells me they would have thrived in their home countries because all people with those characteristics thrive in whatever environment they are in. Of course, relative to the people in those places not to how they thrived in America. You basically told me why Asian immigrants thrived, not why Asian Americans are thriving. You shared who the Hmong are, that they are still struggling, and how they receive government assistance. You told me of the Vietnamese in Houston and how they struggled at first, but the Vietnamese are certainly thriving now. BTW, what do you think of the portrayal of Hmong people in the movie, Gran Torino? If it is at all accurate, those people will find their way in this country because of their rich culture. I think knowing that Asians rely on each other, assist each other, and that Asian men are prominently involved in the home and community is instructive. That's why I asked those questions. Their community is strong and secure and they don't allow anyone else in. I learned that first hand dating a couple of Asians back in the day.
Asian immigrants live pretty cheap. I remembered rocking Payless shoes in elementary and getting laughed at it. Dream's Etonics couldn't save me. I can't imagine kids these days watching streams of thousand dollar MENS shoes that will never hit the pavement. There are countless of stories of scrimping and saving that I had to explain or completely overwrite when dating outside my race. White people either don't get it or think it's completely out of the ordinary to reuse things like grocery bags for trash bags or toilet paper for wiping your nose. Total opposite of whatever boujeeness Starbucks represents. Don't buy coffee at 5 bucks. Don't buy crazy cable packages. Don't upgrade your cell phone every 18 month. Invest time in your kids over private schools. Buy a boring but reliable car. Problem is nowadays middle class people would rather drop dead than doing that, so they acheive their dream by working 60 hrs a week. I suspect that self-deprivation/attainment is a main reason for the lack of empathy towards lower class people who pull in two min wage jobs. I also live paycheck to paychek...I work my hours, so should you. People just go with the flow of overconsumption and over competition for trivial status symbols As for sacrifice in the family values sense, I was reading the other replies and I thought of how my parents bickered constantly and would likely be divorced in the present day, but they stuck together to raise my and my sister. That didn't do us any favors when it comes to disfunction and the thought that they were only keeping up pretenses for other people. I wouldn't wish that on anyone, but it does count as sacrifice. A big one for YOLOers. But it swings to the other end too. People expect a lot out of marriage and their spouses these days. There's a lot of twisted ideas of what a perfect husband/lover/best friend should be and how it encompasses one person. Some professional women feel they need to do it all themselves, which seems exhausting and annoying when the social media feeds give the illusion its possible and universal with that one annoying friend. Why settle for less? Everything is achievable. It's like mass media took Frost's Road Not Taken into an allegory for driving everywhere with a Land Rover. Our culture is ****ed up.
Again you are comparing a population that went through a mostly merit based selection filter to a population of people who's lineage traces back to bring forcefully sent here for slave labor. You understand that in any type of genuine analysis between these two groups, there are far too many confounding variables right?
I never replied back to you on that one reply to me but aren't you the poster who compared the modern predicament of African Americans and how their unrest can result in things like riots to Southern Plantation owners who fought against our country because they wanted to keep their free labor and continue breeding black people? Didn't you try to compare those two as equivalent to make a point that the US should use the same burn it down strategy they had for the Southern rebels who were rebels because they wanted to continue slave labor with the rioters?
Uh no, but thanks is for trying. But you do have a habit of spewing nonsense and then when you are called out you disappear.
Called out? Is this high school? I don't think you are willing to go into nuance here but you did expliclty compare the plight of modern African Americans to Confederates to make an argument that I am hypocritical in the use of federal action to suppress these ideas or movements. Im going to predict from here on out you are going with platitudes about how you owned me rather than discussing the subject matter. I've hardly ever engaged with you in a debate so I don't know how you know my posting patterns unless you are a follower of my posts which would be flattering I guess?
Lol, come on.. You literally did this in your previous post. You are hypocritical. And the comment (in which you are blowing way out of context to the point it is made up to suit your agenda) was nothing in the sense of the way you just attempted to spin it. Thanks for playing. Uh no, but thanks for showing your immaturity. This isn’t “high school”. There is no debate with people like you. You’re a liberal socialist on here. What countries has liberal socialist governments that don’t have a caste system of some sort? You are familiar with a caste system right? Otherwise you wouldn’t be here per your earlier post in this thread. You believe it is ok to burn down buildings, beat up people, murder people, loot, and destroy people’s livelihoods over something you only have a one track mind about. If anyone doesn’t agree with you, you just stop replying or spin things to fit your agenda. As in the example which I originally quoted and you so ineloquently replied too. As far as a follower of your post, far from it pal. All I have seen from the few post I have read is - you’re either you talkin **** about James Harden or you’re vomiting your “cancel culture” behavior all over the D&D.
So instead of hurling labels let's define them first so we can have a conversation rather than yelling over each other. First define what "socialist" means because I don't consider myself a socialist. Second if we want a good faith conversation you probably shouldn't start with claiming I support looting.
I'm not clear then what you're asking. You asked if Asians use government assistance they do. Just to note that the poor Chinese living in Chinatowns are heavily dependent on government aid too. Asian Americans as a group are thriving because they are among the most capable and ambitious of those who came here. Would they be thriving back in their home countries possibly yes but there are other barriers to success there. For example while Indian Americans as a group are among the most successful in this country while India still suffers from rampant poverty with things like violent sectarian differences and corruption. It sounds like you're making an argument that family structure and unwillingness to look for outside help is what leads to Asian success. I can't really answer that question. Again Asians aren't a monolith. Asians have broken homes, get divorced, abandon children like other groups. Whether they do so on less of a basis than other groups I really don't know. Also keep in mind for many of the immigrants such as my family that came here in the 60's and 70's there weren't many other Asians. I grew up in a white neighborhood and for most of my time in school went to school with white people. None of my oldest friends are Asians. When my family moved to Houston there just weren't enough Asians to really form a community. For immigrant groups like the Hmong and Vietnamese who came here en masse they have tended to cluster together and form tighter communities. This isn't something particular about Asians. Nearly all immigrants have done that. That is again why well into the 20th Century there were towns in America where most people spoke German as their first language and as an everyday language. Regarding the depiction of the Hmong in Gran Torino there is a lot of truth to that. The story was written by someone in St. Paul, a non-Hmong, but is loosely based on some true events. There was and still is a problem with Hmong gangs. As far as the Hmong as a group are doing better as the next generation has gotten more educated and is more adapted to life in the US. They are still lagging as a group behind other Asians. Just a side note an interesting comparison in MInnesota is the Somalis. The Somalis have been here for a shorter time than the Hmong but relatively have adapted faster. While there is still a lot of friction and problems the Somalis have been more entrepreneurial than the Hmong and most impressive is the amount of political success they have had with getting Somalis elected to several local and state offices in MN along with of course Ilhan Omar to US Rep. A lot of this has to do with that while Somali is a horrible war torn country the Somalis that came here did come from cities and weren't illiterate subsistence farmers like much of the Hmong. So while the Somalis are black and are beset by both anti-black bias and anti-Muslim bias they are following the same path towards immigrant success that many other groups have.
I'm going to apologize for derailing this thread into a discussion about Asians. Of course some posters would say that is my MO anyway.
