Kenneth Xu's Blog

This article originally appeared in the Daily Caller, dated March 25th.

***

A mass shooter faces 10 counts of murder charges in a disturbing attack on innocent civilians in Boulder, Colorado.

There are deep, affecting stories here to be salvaged in this tragedy, of both the perpetrator (who was “paranoid,” according to a former wrestling teammate of his) and of the ten victims, including a police officer, several grocery store workers, and a pilot trainee.

One unfortunate sub-story of this whole tragedy will likely be the so-called “racial identity” of the shooter. There may be a temptation, even, to blame the racial origin of the shooter for motivating the attacks.

“The [Boulder, CO] shooter’s race or ethnicity seems front and center when they aren’t white,” Democratic Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar tweeted. But Omar has little credibility to speak on this issue. She posted last week: “it isn’t hard to understand why it’s so normalized for law enforcement to protect the humanity of white mass murderers and their willingness to continually make excuses.”

In fact, some activists have attempted to shoehorn the Boulder, Colorado, shooter’s race into whiteness anyway. Before the name of the shooter was revealed, various Twitter platforms assumed the shooter was white and Christian. Actress Rosanna Arquette tweeted: “Call it what it is ..White supremacist domestic terrorism.” Michael Harriot, senior editor at The Root, tweeted, “Pointing out how white suspects get the benefit of the doubt without being stopped, frisked, beaten, shot or killed is not a call for harsh treatment.” Both those tweets remain undeleted.

All the while, there is actually evidence that the shooter was in fact motivated by perceptions of his non-Christian ethnic religious identity. According to a source in The Denver Post, the Colorado shooter “was often concerned about being targeted because of his Muslim faith.”

“He would talk about him being Muslim and how if anybody tried anything, he would file a hate crime and say they were making it up,” said a former wrestling teammate of the shooter.

Was animus against America, particularly white or Christian America and how he perceived it targeting a man of his background, a factor in the Colorado shooter’s calculus? Unclear. But we shouldn’t make hasty judgments about his motivations, especially his racial or religious motivations, until we find all the evidence. Contrast this approach with the frenzied one of the media during last week’s Atlanta shooting that killed 6 Asian Americans, 1 white American, and 1 Latino American. Despite the “diversity” of victims and the claims by the perpetrator that he suffered from “sex addiction,” the commentariat has proceeded to develop a racial framework of the attacks without the evidence to back it up.

The Atlanta attack was the gateway to a glut of coverage about anti-Asian racism that went from the thoughtful (“Asian females more targeted for violence than males”) to the cloying (“White supremacy is the common denominator between anti-Asian and anti-Black violence”) to the frankly insane (“racism is responsible forevery attack against a minority”).  Many times, however, especially with regards to tying the Atlanta violence into white supremacy, the coverage was simply wrong.

Look at how fact-free media narratives of white-on-Asian violence is: according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ 2018 data, the last known violence dataset that includes Asian Americans as a victim category lists the following groups as the likeliest perpetrators of violence against Asians:

Black – 27.5 percent
White – 24.1 percent
Asian – 24.1 percent
Hispanic – 7.0 percent
Other – 14.4 percent

If we were to craft a racial narrative around these statistics, it would be black Americans, not white, that would be most implicated. But we should never implicate an entire race – black or white – for committing crimes against another race – because every case is at its core an individual case, and racism runs from every color against every other color.

Attempting to tie every mass shooting into commentaries on race is sickening for the country and distracting from the real issues, just as the hypercharged race-based reaction to the shooting in Atlanta last week was distracting from potentially more important stories about sex trafficking in massage parlors, the mental health of the perpetrator or other human rights issues that pertain more relevantly to the actual community of immigrant Asian women in the Atlanta, Georgia, area.

Too many mainstream outlets seem so invested in fomenting a racial hatred narrative that they blatantly apply double standards in their coverage depending on the race of the shooter and of the victims.

What we should do is return to the standards of true journalism – stating the facts, gathering truly diverse perspectives, resisting the temptation to impugn the truth with your own ideological narratives. We must fight back against the dangerous racialization of already violent tragedies for the sake of clicks and ethnic foment. In doing so, we tear apart the country and turn tragedies into cultural disasters.

This article originally appeared in The City Journal, dated February 16th, 20201.

***

On his final day in office, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo criticized multiculturalism in a tweet. “Woke-ism, multiculturalism, all the -isms—they’re not who America is,” he wrote. “They distort our glorious founding and what this country is all about. Our enemies stoke these divisions because they know they make us weaker.”

Somewhat predictably, mainstream media sources blasted Pompeo for criticizing multiculturalism, with some implying that he was criticizing America’s varied cultural groups. “This country was built on multiculturalism,” said CNN commentator Keith Boykin. “That’s why a descendant of Italian immigrants like you could become Secretary of State. You should know this history. If you don’t, you should never have been Secretary of State.”

Boykin and other Pompeo critics misunderstand what multiculturalism truly means—not the mere fact of cultural diversity but, as the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy defines it, a rejection of “the ideal of the ‘melting pot’ in which members of minority groups are expected to assimilate into the dominant culture.” Multiculturalism denies the idea that there is anything uniquely desirable or morally worthy in American culture as compared with others. All cultures—even dead ones, or those we might consider depraved—are of equal worth.

Assertions of this kind immediately run up against several questions. If all cultures are equal, why does America’s attract the largest number of immigrants? If there is no morally relevant cultural difference between the United States and, say, Cuba under the Castros, why would more than 200,000 Cubans risk their lives in ramshackle boats to make the 90-mile journey to Miami?

Binh Vo, whom I interviewed for my upcoming book An Inconvenient Minority, is a first-generation Vietnamese-American. Just over a decade ago, Binh’s family members were barely-hanging-on businessmen denied better jobs because of their past affiliations with the U.S.-backed South Vietnamese government. In Vietnam, he says, “the Communist government has been sucking the resources out of Vietnam. If you are poor you have nothing. It brings out the worst in people.”

Upon arriving in America, Binh immediately found differences. “When I first got [to America] in 2009, I was waiting for the bus. A police officer stopped by and asked if I needed a ride home. Today I realized I should have said yes,” Binh says. “This country is so generous, and they are so welcoming. I do not see the racism in white people. I hang out with rednecks. I feel like liberal media has been pushing a strong image about America. I am more welcome here in the U.S. than in my own country.”

Taking in more than 1 million legal immigrants every year requires a culture of racial tolerance and a belief that in many parts of the world seems almost unnatural: that a complete stranger should be welcomed, because he or she has the potential to contribute something meaningful to the United State. This is what Binh means when he says that America is a generous country.

Ironically, to advance multiculturalism and deny American exceptionalism is to strike at the foundations of what makes America so appealing to immigrants the world over. What message should we be sending minority and immigrant youth growing up in a society where they don’t look like most people? Do we tell them that the American dream can be theirs, too, if they adopt our common language and a strong work ethic? Or that assimilation is fruitless, that this country will always reject them, and that they must never surrender the slightest bit of their culture?

Thomas Sowell puts it best: “The biggest losers in [multiculturalism] are those members of racial minorities who allow themselves to be led into the blind alley of resentment and rage, even when there are broad avenues of opportunity available. And we all lose when society is polarized.”

Yet woke intellectuals like Ibram X. Kendi propose that assimilation “standardize[s] the cultures of White folk.” They chastise those who dare to leap beyond their surface-level racial identity into a truly multiracial American identity, one that takes people from all backgrounds and builds them into fully realized citizens.

In doing so, the multiculturalists create another yawning inequality in our society: between those who believe in and benefit from America’s cultural melting pot and those who reject it and become strangers in their own land.

This article originally appeared in The Federalist, dated February 15th, 2021.

***

Lowell High School in San Francisco, California, has long been known as a public school dedicated to developing excellence in its students. Its educational resources have attracted many high-achieving families to the area. Lowell’s academics rank among the best in the nation, placing in the top 1 percent of California schools in math performance while producing such distinguished alumni as Justice Stephen Breyer and three Nobel Prize laureates.

Recently, however, “equity and diversity” activists have dismantled Lowell’s admissions system, leading a cadre of school board members to vote 5-2 to eliminate the merit-based admissions. According to the latest figures, Lowell is 50 percent Asian American, 18 percent white, 12 percent Latino, and roughly 2 percent black. The activists say this proves, not that black, white, and Latino children need much better academic preparation, but that Lowell’s admissions program systemically excludes black students in favor of white and Asian applicants.

A new resolution proposed by Lowell High School board members will permanently replace the school’s admissions system based on grades and test scores with a random lottery.

Lowell High School is the only high school in the San Francisco Unified School District with a merit-based admissions system instead of a lottery for entry. Indeed, the merit-based process is critical for the school to earn its reputation as a center of excellence whose students will ultimately go on to serve their community positively.

Julian Chan, a 2010 Lowell graduate, explains, “What they are doing would mean there would be no more Lowell High School. It’d just be another San Francisco public school, and we all know Lowell is not just another San Francisco public school.”

Yet “equity” activists made the devolution of the only public high school in San Francisco with merit-based admissions requirements a major thrust of its agenda. Citing the lack of black students, the school board released a proposal on Feb. 2 entitled “In Response to Ongoing, Pervasive Systemic Racism at Lowell High School,” suggesting the school’s admissions process reinforces “segregation” of black and Latino students.

The San Francisco School Board also took lessons from antiracist lecturer Ibram X. Kendi on how Asian American dominance on standardized tests reflects “racism” against black students:

[Advocates for standardized tests] will claim white and Asian kids on average score higher on tests because they are smarter or work harder. Meaning Black and Latinx kids are not as smart or not as hard-working. Meaning white and Asian kids are superior.

Board member Allison Collins was one of the school authorities taking her cues from Kendi, muttering in one town hall meeting with defenders of the merit-based process: “I’m listening to a bunch of racists.”

This is the kind of awful logic that unfairly blames Asian Americans for playing by the rules of the game. If standardized tests are a metric for entry into an academically excellent public high school, then it is not “racist” for Asian American students to study for them to get in. On the contrary, it shows both intelligence and preparation — meritorious characteristics we need to see reflected in moreAmerican students — to perform well on a standardized test.

But the biggest reason, it seems, that the school board is acting so quickly on eliminating the merit-based admissions program to Lowell High School is because the idea of merit itself is odious to its most fervent of today’s “social justice” advocates.

“Lowell High School has often been referred to as SFUSD’s ‘elite’ ‘academic’ high school,” the board wrote, “[but] San Francisco Unified School District does not believe that any student or school is more or less ‘elite’ than any other school.”

The hard truth is, however, Lowell High School has been referred to as an elite academic high school because it is an elite academic high school. Lowell’s mission was always to train the brightest students and offer a place for gifted students to achieve their full potential in the San Francisco region.

The school’s website asserts it is “one of the highest performing public high schools in California” and a four-time National Blue-Ribbon school of excellence. Without Lowell, parents of gifted children would likely be forced to dig deep in their own pockets to send their kids to private schools that can hone and refine their abilities.

Due to the coronavirus lockdowns, Lowell High School eliminated the merit-based admissions process for one year. Tellingly, a Change.org petition of concerned families with more than 11,000 signatures, reveals that Lowell High School alumni and parents feared back in October of 2020 that “the transition will become permanent and remove one of the two remaining academic and merit-based public high schools in the city.” Sadly, it appears their apprehensions were warranted.

The school district has also aggressively moved to implement other parts of a broadly “antiracist” agenda during this time, including  San Francisco Schools (including a school named after Abraham Lincoln) and adopting “ethnic studies” curricula in all of its high schools focusing on “African American Studies,” “Latino American Studies,” and “Asian American Studies.”

Ultimately, the elimination of Lowell’s merit-based system represents, yet another victory for the “equity” advocates who use the narrative of systemic racism to tear down San Francisco’s centers of excellence in the name of diversity and desegregation. Sadly, unless more Americans stand up to the schemes of leftists, Lowell will undoubtedly not be the last bastion of distinction to be toppled.

This article originally was featured in The Federalist, dated January 18th, 2021.

***

Former Democratic Party presidential candidate Andrew Yang announced his candidacy for New York mayor on Jan. 14, and it’s time we set the record straight on him.

Despite a colorful ad featuring New York bodegas, his Asian-American credentials, and his fundraising prowess, Yang’s run for mayor is nothing like the barnstorming presidential candidacy in which he presented new ideas and interesting credentials as an entrepreneur and nonprofit founder. Yang has become a standard Democratic candidate who now upholds very standard and uninteresting Democratic positions.

His signature issue, universal basic income cash payments of $1,000 a month, has lost its luster as more Democrat candidates in New York City have co-opted the proposal. We have also seen the limited effects of universal cash payments, as the Trump administration has carried out effectively the same policy to perverse consequences, such as inflation, that would be worse if payments are carried out over the long term, as Yang proposes. Consumer prices for groceries remain up even as the supply chain has righted itself, and the average American will pay roughly $400 more in 2021 for groceries than she did in 2020.

Other than a universal basic income, Yang’s policy priorities for New Yorkers are uninspiring. He wants to form a government-run bank to pick and choose winners and losers in business. He wants to add new teachers to a public school system mismanaged by outgoing Mayor Bill de Blasio. Although he has some other interesting ideas, such as fostering a startup incubator with $100 million in private capital, it is unclear where that money comes from or if he has the skill to raise it.

Yang’s most disheartening attribute is his quick descent from independent-minded freethinker to Democratic Party shill and coattails-rider. The quirky former presidential candidate came into national politics with concerns about automation taking away American jobs, admirably writing in his 2018 book, “The War on Normal People”: “America is starting 100,000 fewer businesses per year than it was only 12 years ago, and is in the midst of shedding millions of jobs due primarily to technological advances.”

Yang broke boundaries (not just racial) in his presidential campaign, appearing on Fox News, Joe Rogan’s podcast and “The View” to articulate his ideas, and he attracted young and tech-savvy voters known as the Yang Gang. At times, Yang wrote as an independent-minded and even admirable personality.

During the height of the lockdowns in 2020, Yang asked Asian-Americans to step up and become leaders in their communities, showing a gentle patriotism mixed with understanding about Asian-American fears. He wrote: “We Asian Americans need to embrace and show our American-ness in ways we never have before. We need to step up, help our neighbors, donate gear, vote, wear red white, and blue, volunteer, fund aid organizations, and do everything in our power to accelerate the end of this crisis.”

But after his presidential campaign ended, Yang ingratiated himself with the Democratic mainstream. He became a stump speaker for Joe Biden, who is hardly a reformer or changemaker by any stretch of the imagination, and capitulated to leftist identity politics by saying that a Biden-Harris win would be Asian-Americans’ best hope. He directed followers to move to Georgia for Senate candidates Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock before the runoff elections.

Now in his New York City mayoral campaign, he is promising free everything: from free money to free business bucks (at the mercy of the government, of course), to free college and forgiveness of college tuition. He has become a caricature of himself as free stuff Santa.

All the while, Yang has drifted further and further away from the concerns of ordinary Americans. In one interview at the start of his mayoral campaign, Yang said to The New York Times, “We live in a two-bedroom apartment in Manhattan. And so, like, can you imagine trying to have two kids on virtual school in a two-bedroom apartment, and then trying to do work yourself?”

It was a classically Yang kind of thing to say, but criticism mounted immediately over his out-of-touch words, especially since Yang owns a second home far away from the city in which he camped during the pandemic. Over Twitter, New York critics compared his comments to “let them eat cake.” Yang responded feistily: “Anyone who thinks my New Yorkness is in question,” he said, “should come and say it to my face.”

An early poll shows Yang up among the candidates for NYC mayor. But pitfalls can also follow high initial name-recognition. His record—or lack thereof—will be put through the meat-grinder in the New York political machine. Without a truly independent brand, Yang may prove to be ultimately indistinguishable from either his more liberal or conservative opponents.

Yang’s evaporation is surely disappointing. A promising outsider, a family man, and a man with intellectual credibility about the decline of middle-class America has become a shill for the Democratic Party, and New Yorkers shouldn’t expect much more.

This article originally appeared in , dated December 11th, 2020.

***

Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Arlington, Virginia, is widely considered the best high school for math and science in the region. It is the No. 1 ranked high school by the U.S. News and World Report in the entire nation.

“That place is so difficult and so rigorous, that you’re just beaten,” says Asra Nomani, the mother of a Thomas Jefferson student and the leader of the Coalition for TJ, an education advocacy group for the high school. “You don’t even know if you’re going to make it, like as a family, because your child is slogging so much.”

It’s not a school made for just anyone. But the Fairfax County School Board believes that the school needs to diversify at all costs, even at the cost of excellence. 

On Monday, the school board decided that it was going to drastically change the admissions process to Thomas Jefferson to force more black and Hispanic students in the school, which is 70% Asian American.

Fairfax officials are proposing two systems: either “holistic evaluation” that gives preferences for being black or Hispanic, or a lottery for admission for anyone with a 3.5 grade point average.

The previous system, which was reliant on grades and test scores, relies on methods that supporters say perpetuate “privilege,” such as standardized exams that can be test-prepped. 

Virginia Education Secretary Atif Qarni called test prep the equivalent of “performance-enhancing drugs.” Washington Post reporter Hannah Natanson even called the fight over the admissions process “a reckoning over racism.”

These are vast exaggerations that only serve to undermine the nation’s best public school, the home of future scientists and engineers that will invent the next great discoveries.

The issue of opportunity in Fairfax County is not that the admissions process for a single public school is racist against black and Hispanic students. 

In fact, one analysis, albeit from 2005, by a George Mason University law professor showed that admissions officers accepted 90% of black students who made it to the second round of the application process, while only accepting fewer than 50% of white students who made it to the second round, suggesting evidence that the bias might in fact be in their favor.

The issue is that the number of black students who made it to the semifinalist round of the application process in the first place was so low. 

The semifinalist round is the minimum standard for admissions—it signals you have the requisite academic qualifications to enroll at Thomas Jefferson. In 2005, 507 white students made it to this semifinalist round, compared to just 11 black students.

The problems of too few black and Hispanic students in the semifinalist rounds of admissions cannot be fixed with racial quotas. Not only are quotas in violation of our ideals and laws, but they also paper over the underlying causes of the achievement gap in education—such as the lack of school choice, or high out-of-wedlock rates that leave many children without a father in their lives.

Rather, solving these problems requires addressing them at every level of education.

But the liberal chattering class doesn’t want to hear this logic. They would rather dispense with the idea of meritocracy in general. 

The Fairfax County School Board’s own analysis for its merit lottery program predicted an upsurge in admitted candidates for blacks, Latinos, and whites. The Asian population, on the other hand, would drop by a projected 27%.

A coalition of parents analyzed the data and found a steeper drop admittance rate for Asians: 55%. In contrast, the white population would shoot up to 45% of the total student body. And the black and Hispanic representation would both remain in the single digits.

The messaging of woke students, and the woke school boards propping their ideas, is loud and clear: Asians suffer, but that’s OK, in the name of “diversity and inclusion.”

Mind you, it did not matter that these Asian students put in hundreds of hours of work in their school lives and sacrificed social life to give themselves the best shot to enter a school known for its brutal work hours.

This gets at the heart of this battle over race in America. Who does the left consider a “minority” in America? Who are the people the left wants to redistribute privileges to? What does “diversity and inclusion” really mean, if Asian Americans are unfairly penalized by policies enacted in the name of diversity and inclusion?

Or does anyone question the most fundamental fact of it all—the fact that a “merit lottery” would inevitably result in a drastic decline in overall school performance? 

The simple mathematical facts beget this utterly logical conclusion: If before you selected the most meritorious in rank order, and now have reverted to selecting from a lottery of students above a lower cutoff point, you sacrifice one immediate, clear principle.

Sacrificing that principle will have a powerfully distortive effect on the overall excellence and reputation of your school, your community, and your world.

That principle is meritocracy.

Rather than lean on “merit lotteries” and “holistic evaluations” in an attempt to ensure that specific groups are proportionately represented in highly ranked schools, we should be working toward a country in which every individual—from any and every group—can realize their full potential, and can go as far as their own merit takes them.

    With the development of the app Angel, misunderstanding and spite were eradicated from the land.  Foul and offensive speech were eradicated from the land.  People became perfectly pleasant towards one another.  Black got along with White, and White got along with Yellow, and Yellow got along with Brown just the same.  There were no tribes; tribes were figments of unenlightened minds in other, far off lands.  When someone laughed, everyone laughed.  There was no hate.  When you walked the dog in the morning, every neighbor you passed by you liked.  Whenever someone had a party, everyone was invited.  Sometimes people came; someone people didn’t come.  It didn’t matter to the party hosts.  Even if no one came, the party hosts were never offended.  They would just barbeque and laugh all by themselves as the crab dip was attended to by nobody.  Everyone trusted each other.  Everyone liked each other just the same.

    “Hi, Bob,” Larry said.

    “Hi, Larry,” Bob said.

    “Boy, the weather is great today.”

    “The weather is great today.  

    “Great to see you, Larry.”

    “Great to see you, Bob.”

    There was no need for a police force, because there was no crime.  Everybody knew what to do at all times.  They knew because of Angel.  Angel was always with them.  Angel was with them since they were 1 years old.  Some of the older folks, the really old ones, they remembered a world without Angel.  Life back then was scary.  You never knew who you were going to run into, or worse, what kind of political views they had.  What if they were mean – or worse, racist or sexist?  What if they weren’t explicitly racist or sexist but implicitly racist or sexist?  That would put you in danger.  The older folks remembered in the old days many years of protesting.  The government twiddling their thumbs.  They remembered years of race wars, class conflict, politicians saying empty and dishonest things like ‘we should all try to understand each other’ while actually just sowing hatred and spite and misery.  There was a lot of misunderstanding and bad things in the world back then.  But not anymore.  Thanks to Angel.  

    Larry walked down the sidewalk and saw his Black friend Kathy.  Larry had many friends.  In fact, everyone was Larry’s friend.  Including Black people.  Black people were definitely Larry’s friend.  

    “Hi Kathy,” Larry called from across the street.

    “Hi Larry,” Kathy called back.

    “Kathy, I wanted to let you know that I respect you as a person.”

    “Me too, Larry.”

    “I am your ally, Kathy.”

    “Thank you, Larry.”

    That was a great conversation for Larry.  He continued to stroll across the street, smiling and waving at all of his friends.  Black, White, Yellow.  Larry was very glad to live in a diverse community.  So glad he told all hi frisends.

    “Joon Wong,” he said to his friend Joon, “I am so glad to live in a diverse community filled with diverse people like yourself.”

    “Diversity is important,” Joon said, nodding and smiling.  “I am glad to add to the diversity of this population.”  

    “Well, goodbye to you Joon!”
    “Goodbye to you, Larry!” 

    In those days, no one was married.  Marriage meant people liked each other too much.  It was preferential treatment, really, and Angel’s developers couldn’t allow that.  If a man preferred a woman, what next?  Would he then prefer his own kids?  And his kids’ kids?  Would they not then form a tribe and prefer others within their tribe?  That could not happen in a land without tribes, where everyone understood each other.  So the solution was obvious.  No one gets married.  No one has kids.  However, to keep the population growing, every man would send in sperm and every woman would send in their eggs to a government lab.  They would all be fertilized at the lab.  Then, all the kids were born to nurses who would treat all of them exactly equally – with the help of Angel’s direction, of course.

    Larry understood the logic of why no one should get married.  He was usually pretty content with that logic.  If you like someone too much, you might prefer that person over someone else.  And preference always leads to competition.  And competition leads to disliking others.  And disliking people is bad.  Really bad.  Larry understood this logic very well.  In fact, the Angel app on his phone would repeat it to him every night while he was sleeping between the hours of 2 am and 3 am.  That’s how well he understood the logic.  

    Still, sometimes Larry would glance across the street and see his neighbor, Georgia.  She had long, dark, straight hair and thick eyelashes.  Georgia was a nice lady, like every lady.  She was not married.  No one else was married, so of course she wasn’t.  Sometimes when Larry would pass by Georgia’s house and Georgia was mowing the lawn or sitting on the porch or something, he would wave, but his heart rate would go up.  The Angel app would notice this and suggest Larry say something like “Hi Georgia!  I hope you’re having a pleasant day!  You are a great friend!”  And Georgia would say back, with a bit of a Spanish accent, and accent that Larry would sometimes mull over himself, “Hi Larry!  You are a great friend as well!”  The genius of the Angel app, the reason why it works, say the developers, is because it can process both sides of the conversation.  Make both sides of the conversation as pleasant and non-intrusive as possible.  

    Larry passed by Georgia’s house today again, and Georgia was at the mailbox, getting mail.  The mail was basically always from the government; ever since the government adopted the Angel app as its main peacekeeping directive, it exclusively sends out feel good messages about how great and inclusive this land was.  Georgia was reading the letters in front of her mailbox.  

    “Hi Georgia!”  Larry said, waving.

    Georgia turned towards Larry.  “Hi Larry!”  Larry noticed for a brief second that she had a polka-dotted dress on.  It was purple and gold.  His heart rate went up.  The Angel app responded by sending a message through the earbuds Larry wore to listen to Angel messages.  I hope you’re having a pleasant day!  You’re a great friend!

    “I hope”- Larry stopped.  Georgia was closer to Larry than he had ever really been to her before.  Normally they would just wave from the lawn or the porch.  Now, Georgia was only about six feet away.  He could even touch her.  

    You’re having a pleasant day.  Angel reminded him.  

    It wasn’t good to touch a woman.  Touching a woman was bad.  It led to sexism, actually.  Even if it didn’t, it often led to misunderstanding.  Larry knew this ever since 2nd grade.  His teacher always said: misunderstanding people is bad.  And Angel would repeat in the children’s ears: misunderstanding people is bad.  And the children would say: “misunderstanding people is bad!”  So Larry was very proud of the fact he was never misunderstood.  Everybody liked him and everybody liked him equally.

    You’re having a pleasant day.

    “I hope you’re having a pleasant day,” Larry said, smiling.

    You’re a great friend.

    “You’re a great friend,” Larry said.

    Georgia smiled back.  “You’re a great friend too, Larry.”  And she turned to her driveway and walked back to her house, where she lived alone.  He, too, lived alone.  He wondered briefly why he needed all that space to himself.  He was always capable of sharing.

    Good job, Angel said.  You earned 10 peace points.

    When Larry went back home, he took off his earphones.  Georgia said his name.  Larry.  He didn’t care, of course.  Everybody said Larry’s name.  Everybody liked Larry, and so did Georgia.

    But he didn’t mind.

    Congratulations, Larry.  You earned 23 peace points today.  You can spend it on a peace trophy.  

    Larry had a whole collection of peace trophies in his living room.  Nearly a hundred, actually.  Every time they came they came in a different color and had a different andogynous-looking plastic figure put on top of the trophy.  It was a pleasant trophy.  He had 97 trophies.  Only three more to one hundred.  Once he got one hundred peace trophies, he could receive a certificate of inclusivity.  That would be an accomplishment!

    Larry smiled.  His microwaveable dinner was finished.  He took it out of the tray and put it on the table.  It was roast chicken with vegetables.  He sat on a chair and looked at his dinner.  Across from him was another chair.  It was a sturdy chair, made out of mahogany wood and leather, different from the plastic chairs everyone else got.  One time there was a merchant from a far away land who came to the town square.  He didn’t seem to be from around here, but of course, that didn’t make him a bad person.  All immigrants were welcome to this land.  He sold furniture, but he wouldn’t accept peace points like the other stores did.  He wanted dollars.  Dollars were not illegal to spend – nothing was illegal in this land – but the government stopped printing them about ten years ago.  Still, Larry had a few dollars that he had kept around, and he gave the merchant a few of them to buy a set of four mahogany chairs.  He was lucky he bought them when he did, because the next day, the merchant vanished, and he never saw him again.  Oh well.  He had all of these other friends around.    

The empty chair across from him carried some appeal, however.  Maybe he could invite Georgia over for dinner.  After all, they were friends, right.  Or maybe he could invite her to that one restaurant he liked to go to every month, the nice steak restaurant you have to mail in a coupon of entry to get into.  The government wanted to make sure everything was fair, so they would mail coupons of entry to every person in the neighborhood every month.  But Larry didn’t go to the steak restaurant last month, so he had an extra coupon.  Maybe he could give one of his coupons to Georgia and maybe Georgia could come to the steak restaurant with him.  The waitresses there were nice.  Everyone was nice.  The steak was good.  Larry wondered if Georgia liked steak.  

Larry, the Angel app said on speaker, please put your earbuds back on.  

Larry did.

***

    Larry loved going to parks.  All the parks were sparkling clean here.  Nobody ever vandalized them.  Vandalization was not something people did anymore.  Why would someone write something hurtful, or even racist, on a piece of public property?  That would be a great misunderstanding.  And that would be bad.

    Larry was walking along a trail in the park when he turned the corner, and saw Georgia.  Georgia was running almost straight towards him.  She looked fit.  Her dark hair was tied back in a ponytail.  Larry stepped back in surprise.  “Georgia.”

    Hi, Georgia, Angel corrected him.

    “Hi, Larry!  How are you?”

    I’m good, thanks.  How are you?

    “I’m good, thanks.  How are you?”  

    “I’m good too.  So nice to run into you.  I like your shirt,” Georgia commented.  

    “Why, thank you.”  Larry beamed.  He had on a dark blue polo with birds on the cover.  He particularly liked the way Georgia pronounced ‘shirt.’  The subtle Spanish flavor, he liked it.  He really liked it. 

    Good to see you.

 “I like your necklace,” he said, bypassing Angel.  Georgia was wearing a bead necklace that looked rather ancient.  He wondered if it was produced here.  “What country does that come from?”

It was at this point when Georgia winced.  Larry could actually hear Georgia’s earbuds make a muffled sound.  Was it a sharp noise?  What was Angel transmitting?  Georgia seemed to be battling with something, some noise, some pressure in her ear.  Maybe it was a malfunction.  Larry wanted to take off her earbuds so she could hear him clearly.  He reached over and touched her shoulder to try to get them off.  Immediately Georgia recoiled and lept back.  Larry retreated too, horrified.  His eyes grew wide, a rush of something very unpleasant coming down in him.  He hadn’t felt something this unpleasant in many years.  He felt like he had broken her trust.  Violated a code.  He shouldn’t have touched a woman.  And yet he felt exhilarated.  

“You’re a great friend,” Georgia said, but she wasn’t smiling.  She was sweating.  One of her hands was clutching a large boulder behind her.  The other was raised up almost like cat ears.  She kept looking at the spot where Larry touched her, on her left shoulder.  This was not peaceful, Larry realized.  This was not peace.

You’re a great friend too.

“You’re a great friend too,” Larry said, confused and mesmerized by what he had just done.  But somehow, for some reason, he felt even bolder than before.  

“Good to see you.”  Georgia began to back away.

“Do you want to go to dinner with me?”  Larry leaned forward as if almost to grasp the words from the air as they came out, but they were there, and it was too late.

A jagged silence came over them.  Georgia, her hand on a boulder, Larry, his feet planted, dug into the dirt, bracing for impact.  The only thing that broke the silence was a barely audible sound of Georgia’s Angel earbuds mumbling something to her.  

Georgia’s mouth froze in place as she absorbed what Larry was asking her, and then absorbed what Angel was telling her.  Her eyes darted to the left, then to the right.  

“Larry, I like you as a friend.  I think you’re a great guy, and I think we should keep being friends.  I value your friendship.  Let’s continue to be friends.”

Larry looked down.  Now this was unpleasant.  Now there was definitely something brewing in his stomach.  Something he knew was bad.  He would come to reflect on this moment, months later, and realize it was for moments like this why Angel was invented.  So there would be no misunderstanding.  No tension.  Just peace.

And it was that moment when Angel washed over him, calm, soothing, with the right, the exact words to say.

I absolutely respect what you say.  I will absolutely be your friend.  I never wanted anything to come between us.  Let’s just drop this and forget about it.  No hard feelings at all.

Larry said every word that Angel said to him.

“Of course, Larry.  I’m glad for your friendship.”

“And I’m glad for your friendship too, Georgia.”  

    “Goodbye, Larry.”

    “Bye, Georgia.”  

    Larry did not see Georgia for several days after seeing her in the park.  He would pass by her house on his daily walks, but she wouldn’t be there.  He would not bother her.  There were many other friends he could see.  His friend Joon, for example.  He liked to talk about diversity with Joon all the time.  It was a very pleasant topic.

    “Diversity is great, isn’t it, Joon?”  Larry would say.

    “Of course.  Diversity is great,” Joon would say back, and they would both smile.

    Larry would more or less amble around the neighborhood and to the store over the next few days.  Until about seven days after encountering her on the trail, Larry noticed a large truck in front of Georgia’s house.  It was packed with furniture and clothes and dresser drawers.  Georgia was coming out of the garage with another chair and a set of plates.  When she saw Larry she set down her plates.

    “Hi, Georgia.  What’s going on?”  Larry said from across the street.

    “I’m moving, Larry.”  Georgia walked towards the edge of the driveway so she could lower her voice.  “I got relocated to a new job.”

    “Where?”

    Georgia paused for a moment, allowing Angel to say something.  “Somewhere nice,” was what came out of her mouth.  

    It was all nice in this land.  There was no one place better than the other.  Larry didn’t see a reason for her boss to have relocated her exactly, but he didn’t see a reason for why he wouldn’t have, either.  After all, everyone is friends with each other equally in this land, no matter who they are or where they live.  And every job is equally important, too.  No job or place carries more honor than the other.  Larry remembered that being taught to him at a young age.  Sometimes, people move.  Don’t feel sorry for them, his teacher said, because they will go to a place where they will meet all new friends, friends just as good as the old friends they had.  Friends they would value in the exact same way.  That made Larry smile.  How nice.  Georgia was going to meet an entire group of new people who would become her friends.  It was nice to be her friend while it lasted, but it was all for the best.  That’s how we have peace in this land.  Knowing that whatever happens, it’s all for the best.

    Good luck, Georgia, Angel said to Larry.

    “Good luck, Georgia,” Larry said.  

    “It was nice to be your friend, Larry.”  Georgia said, before turning back to her garage, her body now in shadow.  

    “It was nice to be your friend, too,” Larry said, this time only to himself.  

    Georgia moved away that day.  Larry sat at his table, eating another microwaveable chicken dish by himself.  He thought to himself maybe he would miss her.  No – she wanted to be his friend.  Friends don’t miss each other, because you would be expending useless energy missing someone when you could be friends with the people who you don’t miss.  Besides, missing someone is like preferring someone.  Preferring someone leads to tribalism.  And tribalism is bad.

Someone once told him a long time ago, at a library back when there were libraries, that Angel was a Demon application.  Except he pronounced it weird.  He said Damon.  Maybe he had a Spanish accent.  He said that Angel would run background processes that required no intelligence.  He said that that was constitutive of a Damon app.  But that was silly, Larry remembered thinking, because Angel was an Angel, not a Demon or Damon or however he pronounced it.  He remembered the jingle that got everyone to download the Angel app: let us be the angel on your shoulder.  That was good.  He liked having angels on his shoulder.  

    The question, however, did dart into his mind, briefly, unexpectedly, a question he didn’t even think was ethical to ask himself, because it might interrupt the peace he was feeling that day.  But he let the question manifest itself in his mind.  Was it possible – did he dare proceed? – was it possible that had Angel not spoken to Georgia in that moment, that Georgia might have come to a different conclusion about his question?  

    Not that it mattered, Larry apologized to himself, because it didn’t.  Larry shook his head and tried to forget about it.  

    Occasionally, through the next months, Larry would circle back to that question.  He remembered, in that frozen moment when he asked her to dinner, Georgia listening to both Larry and Angel.  He remembered the open mouth.  The shock.  The recoil.  Maybe in that moment Georgia… maybe in that moment… something could have happened.  He didn’t know what.  He was even confused as to what he was even expecting.  

    Although he would struggle with it in spurts, eventually Larry would reconcile himself to the notion that his feeling of disappointment over Georgia’s offer of friendship was irrational.  After all, friends are good.  They’re really good.  They mean peace.  They mean harmony.  They mean a great quality of life.  In contrast, that feeling he got that day asking Georgia to dinner was unpleasant.  He didn’t like feeling unpleasant.  Unpleasant feelings can lead to hatred, bitterness, and jealousy.  That leads to misunderstanding, and then there would be no peace.  Better to stay away from those in general, he reasoned.  Better to listen to Angel, who unfailingly provided pleasant experiences for him.  

    Larry stared at his meat.  It was half-eaten.  It wasn’t restaurant-quality, but now he had two coupons to the steak place.  He could treat himself twice this month.  That would be nice.  

    Angel buzzed.  Congratulations, Larry.  You have earned 42 peace points today.  You may spend it on a peace trophy.  

    Larry smiled.  Peace trophy number 98.  Just two more to a hundred.  

This article originally appeared in The Daily Signal, dated November 20, 2020.

***

When it dawned upon newscasters that President Donald Trump was going to win Florida on election night, one famous county zoomed into focus: Miami-Dade.

With a demographic that is approximately 70% of Hispanic-origin Americans, composed of Cubans, Venezuelans, Mexicans, and Columbians, just to name a few immigrant groups, Miami-Dade County was expected to deliver the margin that could lead to a victory for Joe Biden in Florida, having gone for Hillary Clinton by 20 points in 2016. Instead, the county’s margin for Biden was only 7 points.

Trump carried Florida by 2.6 more percentage points than in 2016 despite a 1.5% slide among voters 65 and older. How? Because of an extraordinary performance by Trump in immigrant-dominated Miami-Dade County, where the message was sent: Immigrants are not a monolith.

In California, a state that Biden easily won, conservatives nevertheless found something for which to cheer: Korean-born Young Kim’s victory against liberal incumbent Gil Cisneros in the immigrant-dominated Los Angeles suburbs.

Kim, a California state assemblywoman and business owner, fell just short in the 2018 midterm elections against Cisneros, losing 49.2% to 50.8%. But in 2020, she surpassed Cisneros with about 51% of the vote.

What is even more extraordinary is the fact that in California—one of the most diverse states in America—voters rejected the ultimate race-based liberal policy objective: Proposition 16, which—if passed—would have repealed the state’s ban on race preferences in admissions and employment. 

The vote wasn’t even close: 55% of voters voted to strike down the measure, which was promoted by liberal bastions like the University of California and even California professional sports teams.

Indeed, although Biden may still ultimately carry the 2020 election, Trump and the GOP’s down-ballot victories in immigrant hubs present a future for the conservative movement that could be much more immigrant-heavy than projected back in 2016, when Trump won his first victory off of “working-class whites” in Wisconsin and Michigan.

And, although the mainstream media narrative seems to point toward “immigrants” fueling Trump’s projected loss in Arizona, the reality, according to the exit polls, speaks differently.

Among “non-white voters,” Trump actually did better than in 2016, winning 38% of non-whites in Arizona this year compared to 32% in 2016.

Where did Trump fall off, then? Actually, white voters.

Trump won 51% of white voters in Arizona this year while winning 54% of them in 2016. Voters older than 65 (who tend to be whiter) in particularly handed Trump the cold shoulder: Only 50% of them voted for Trump in Arizona this year, despite 55% of the same demographic voting for him in 2016.

Although these polls might shock initially, the reasoning behind them is perfectly intuitive. The coronavirus pandemic likely agitated many at-risk older whites against Trump. 

However, younger immigrant voters, who had seen their businesses and their schools shut down by left-of-center public officials, gravitated toward Trump’s understanding of the pandemic, which was fundamentally about rejecting a cure that is worse than the disease.

It is no wonder that people who had seen national emergencies being utilized by dictators in their home countries to consolidate authoritarian power would be more naturally skeptical of liberals’ response to the coronavirus, which has closed down churches and businesses in the name of “public safety,” while allowing Black Lives Matter protesters to storm city squares uninhibited. 

Despite the narrative of the conservative movement getting “older and whiter,” conservatives do have a path forward that can genuinely appeal to immigrant voters tired of the left’s zero-sum rhetoric and government control. But their work is hardly done yet.

Central to this courtship of immigrant voters will be the continual reemphasis of the American left’s vile trend toward both socialism and racial identity politics, two themes under which immigrants have historically suffered and left to come to America.

“For a long time, the prevailing theory on the left was that an increase in turnout among Latino and immigrant communities would mean an increase in their vote share,” Gil Guerra Salcido, a commentator and co-host of a podcast on Latinos and conservatism, told me in an interview. “What we saw in 2020 was a historic increase in the share of Latinos who voted, and a dramatic rebuke of the Democratic Party compared to their margins in 2016.”

There is a significant realignment of the conservative movement that cannot be overlooked here. It runs counter to every narrative of “conservatives are getting older and whiter” you have heard over the past four years. But conservatives need to seize the moment. They cannot let this opportunity to broaden their coalition go to waste.

The conservative movement does not need to “lighten” its message in order to appeal to immigrants. It merely needs to explain why illegal immigration hurts legal immigrants, why leftist policies reinforce socialist “Chavista” ideology, and why the narratives of systemic racism in our country will harm minoritiesmore than they will help them.

If conservatives do this, they will see this groundswell of immigrant support become a coalition for decades to come.

This article originally appeared in The Daily Signal, dated October 09th, 2020.

***

If you thought racial identity politics were just a fleeting flirtation of the radical left, California’s new laws suggest otherwise.

On Sept. 30, California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed into state law a bill setting up a nine-member board to study the amount of reparations that should be owed to black people for slavery and Jim Crow. 

The bill signing was followed by this tweet:

But that’s hardly the only racially divisive law California has passed this year, since the Legislature convened in a coronavirus-racked session in June. 

The same day, Newsom signed a bill to establish diversity quotas on corporate boards for racial minorities. Corporations with between four and nine board members will now be required to have at least two racial minorities, while corporations with more than nine board members will be required to have at least three represented. 

This is identity politics at its most extreme level, setting racial quotas for prominent positions of influence.

Newsom also signed a bill that would mandate that the California State University system establish a social justice course requirement for all students. According to the bill’s text, schools in the California State University system will be required to have students take a course in either black, Hispanic, Native American, or Asian studies, with professors in the departments uniformly dominated by the academic left.

But no measure may be more insulting that the one the Legislature passed earlier in the year, a California constitutional amendment ballot measure that would—unless rejected by voters on Election Day—repeal California’s anti-discrimination ordinance known as Proposition 209.

Proposition 209, enacted by voters in referendum in 1996, reads:

The state shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education, or public contracting.

Fortunately, according to one poll, the repeal measure, Proposition 16, is trailing badly in the polls.

But the California Legislature does not govern according to the will of the voters. It has shown throughout 2020 that it governs through the narrow prism of identity politics. 

And in that prism, several radical progressive leaders have taken the lead. Chief among them is Shirley Weber, a San Diego-area assemblywoman who sponsored the Proposition 209 repeal, the ethnic studies requirement, and the reparations task force bill. 

“We’re here because, for 400 years, African American men and women in this country have been disrespected,” she said. “This country has taught itself to hate African Americans and to deny the history that has brought us here.”

Not every law enacted this session in the name of social justice specifically invokes race. One of those is a law signed by Newsom that will eliminate some fees that are typically collected from and billed to people who are arrested and jailed, and put through the trial system.   

The difference between that law and the aforementioned “social justice” laws is that the debt-elimination law applies to all ex-convicts, while the other laws explicitly call for dividing—even discriminating—against people based on their race, ethnicity, or other demographic characteristics. 

Those in political power in California seem intent on passing laws that would have the effect of dividing and racializing the government. Perhaps they sympathize with the neo-Marxist theory that assumes that there are two competing groups that must perpetually be in conflict with one another. That kind of thinking does not incentivize reconciliation and mutual trust. It prefers that people remain divided and that group lines harden.

Or it could be that they see themselves as leaders of their so-called identity group to gain more power and influence, on the assumption that people in their identity group tend to think a certain way—that is to say, their way. 

As such, it’s not a surprise that Weber is also the chairwoman of the California Legislative Black Caucus, which claims to “advocate for the interests of black Californians.”

But one of the consequences of identity politics ideology on people of different ethnic origins is to make it difficult for them to think they can participate fully in the American experiment. 

In his new book “The Plot to Change America: How Identity Politics Is Dividing the Land of the Free,” Michael Gonzalez of The Heritage Foundation writes that it is to neo-Marxist schools of thought that “we owe the view … that certain groups—workers, minorities, women, and others—are ‘marginalized’ and that these groups participate in their own oppression when they perpetuate the hegemonic metanarrative of the privileged.”

That means that, according to the neo-Marxists, minorities who buy into the idea that America is in fact a land of opportunity are actually participating in the ideology of their oppressor. Neo-Marxists would rather fashion minorities into perpetual victims, subject to the helping hand of the government. 

That’s not the path of opportunity for minorities who really need opportunity. That’s the path of perpetual grievance politics, locking in a mindset that will hurt, not help, their aspirations. 

Making matters worse, California is a liberal bellwether and what happens there is highly influential across the rest of the country. California’s descent into identity politics wokeness likely will have similar adverse consequences for other liberal states.

This article originally appeared in The Daily Signal, dated September 2nd, 2020.

***

A group of parents filed a lawsuit Tuesday alleging that the public school system in Montgomery County, Maryland, discriminates against Asian American students in the admissions process for gifted and talented programs.

The group of mostly Asian American parents, organized as the Association for Education Fairness, is asking a federal court in Maryland to find that changes to the admissions process violate the Constitution’s equal protection clause and to prohibit continued enforcement of the changes. 

After the parents had petitioned the Montgomery County Board of Education for several years, Pacific Legal Foundation filed the suit on their behalf against both the school board and Superintendent Jack Smith in U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland. 

“If you have a neutral and fair admissions process, we shouldn’t care what the racial outcome is. And we shouldn’t be manipulating it to get to the point where we want a racial outcome,” Chris Kieser, one of the foundation’s lawyers on the case, told The Daily Signal on Wednesday morning.

Without court intervention, the parents say in the suit, their children “will be denied the opportunity to compete for admission to … magnet middle school programs on an equal footing with other applicants on the basis of their race.” 

A spokesman for Montgomery County Public Schools acknowledged The Daily Signal’s request for comment on the suit Tuesday evening, but had not responded at publication time.

Montgomery County is an affluent, Democrat-run jurisdiction just outside the District of Columbia.

In 2017, Montgomery’s school system implemented major changes in the admissions process on the recommendation of an education consultancy called Metis Associates.  

Administrators replaced the old process of admissions, which was based on a combination of cognitive test scores, grades, and teacher recommendations, with a new “field test” that automatically screens a student’s qualifications using a secret formula that takes into account his or her “peer group.” 

MCPS so far has refused to release the full data on the variables used in the field test to determine admissions. 

In the one-year span between 2017 and 2018, the percentage of Asian Americans participating in several gifted and talented programs in MCPS middle schools dropped. 

In 2017, 40% of the students admitted to the selective Takoma Park Middle School were Asian; in 2018, that percentage dipped to 31.4%. 

In each of the other gifted and talented programs that conducted the field test, the results were the same across the board: a steep decline in the proportion of Asian students accepted, while the numbers rose for all three other races.

“Now, the county is entitled to and should take steps to help boost the opportunity of those who are underperforming to attend the magnet program,” said Kieser, the Pacific Legal Foundation lawyer, adding:

But it’s one thing to increase opportunity by offering test prep or increasing programs in the low-performing schools. It’s another thing to change the admissions process to prioritize low performers because you don’t like the racial balance of the school.

Eva Guo, one of the leaders of the Association for Education Fairness, said she suspects implicit racial balancing is going on.

“The Board of Education and Superintendent Jack Smith have made no secret of the fact that the changes they have implemented to the magnet program admissions policy … are intended to reduce the proportion of Asian American students enrolled in these programs,” Guo said Monday in an email to the Daily Signal, “because they thought Asian Americans are ‘overrepresented’ in the programs.”

Montgomery County Public Schools has made no secret of desiring to increase the percentage of black and Hispanic students in admissions for gifted and talented programs.

 “We’re not doing a very good job of bringing in African American and Latino students,” school board member Patricia O’ Neill said about the gifted and talented programs in 2016.

As the battles in school board meetings grew more tense, however, board members, who are elected without party affiliation, appeared to show hostility toward Asian American rights and dreams. 

“Your pursuit of the American dream is not necessarily everyone’s pursuit of the American dream,” then-board member Jill Ortman-Fouse said in 2016 in response to the Association for Education Fairness.

“In our country, we have experienced decades of horrors and atrocities against our African American families,” she said, seeming to imply that the value of the African American narrative in this educational context outweighs the Asian American one. 

Parents involved in the Association for Education Fairness say the school board’s rhetoric grew more confrontational and dismissive of Asian American concerns about the fairness of allowing the school district to exercise more expansive control over admissions in the name of race.

In 2016, then-school board member Chris Barclay commented to the local Bethesda Beat newspaper:

In this region, [which] unfortunately is very addicted to power and ranking, there is a reality of folks wanting to be on top or have more than others. … How are we going to have this conversation so it’s not just again the usual suspects that end up knowing everything and then end up being able to leverage their knowledge to being able to get what they want for their children.

Barclay’s reference to “the usual suspects” meant the local Asian American community, the Association for Education Fairness says. 

After the school board made the changes in the admissions process, the school system turned down Asian kids in for the gifted and talented program in middle schools despite their scoring as high as the 99th percentile in the tests administered for admissions. 

The Asian American parents’ suit alleges this is due to the school system’s stated principle of considering a person’s score “within the context of his or her peer group.” 

This was another way of saying that the school system applied local norms to its schools, pledging to select similar numbers of students from each school despite the vast differences in academic excellence among schools in Montgomery County.

The schools with more Asians enrolled tended to do significantly better across all metrics than the schools with fewer. However, Asian enrollment also tended to cluster in a small number of schools, parents say, so “local norming” the students would allow the school administrators to systematically exclude large numbers of high-performing Asian kids.

In the end, the parents who brought the suit allege, the Montgomery County school system’s intended result was to suppress Asian admissions, and those efforts largely were successful.

At least, that is, until the Association for Education Fairness sued. 

“In my humble opinion on academic admissions, all students are supposed to be treated equally and judged by their characters and academic performance regardless of their race,” Guo told The Daily Signal in the Monday email. 

“If we win this case,” she said, “it means that our justice system is still alive and effective; if we win, my son will not have to worry about being denied by [gifted and talented] programs just because of his race.”

This article originally appeared in The Daily Signal, dated August 28th, 2020.

*** 

A Change.org petition organized online by a group opposed to racial preferences in California is satirically demanding that professional sports teams in the state allocate 15% of their roster spots to Asians.

The petition, which says that would make Asian representation on the teams proportional to California’s Asian population, as of Aug. 28 has collected more than 3,500 signatures.

The petition was organized by Jason Xu (no relation to the author), a member of the No on 16 campaign, which was started to oppose California Proposition 16, a ballot measure that would repeal Proposition 209, California’s nondiscrimination ordinance passed in 1996.

Proposition 209 added the following language to the state’s constitution: 

The state shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin.

Proposition 16 would legalize racial preferences for what its backers call “underrepresented minorities” (that is, blacks and Hispanics) in college admissions, government hiring, and public contracting, which is currently banned under Proposition 209.

The petition was spawned by a recent San Francisco Chronicle article that stated that the Bay Area’s seven professional sports teams have all lined up to endorse Proposition 16. The NFL’s San Francisco 49ers and the NBA’s Golden State Warriors are among those teams. 

“Asian Americans are the overwhelmingly [underrepresented minority] in pro sports,” the petition reads. “Therefore, we (the undersigned), DEMAND that Warriors, [San Francisco] Giants, [Oakland] A’s, SF 49ers, [San Jose] Earthquakes, Oakland Roots, [San Jose] Sharks allocate 15% roster spots for Asians (California Asian population) starting in 2020-2021 season, and guarantee no less than 15% of total game time.”

Although the petition is facetious in nature, it sheds light on some uncomfortable truths about the racial-preferences ballot measure.  The justifications for racial preferences in college admissions and hiring are said to stem from the desire to increase “equity” and representation for so-called underrepresented minorities. 

But in pro sports, those minorities—blacks, in this case—could be said to be overrepresented. The NBA is 75% black, while the NFL is 70% black. Asians of any nationality make up just 0.2% of the NBA players and just 1.9% of the NFL’s.

The petitioners have a point. After all, if the logic is that underrepresented minorities need a leg up, and Asians are underrepresented minorities in the NFL and NBA—two leagues that enthusiastically throw their support behind racial preferences—then shouldn’t Asians get that same treatment?

One of the comments by one of the signers of the petition reads: “Yes – it is my lifelong dream to play for the NBA although I am 5’ tall.  I hope they will make special consideration for me, as Asians are underrepresented in the NBA and MLB.”

Ward Connerly—the leader of the original Proposition 209 campaign to ban racial preferences in the state back in 1996 and who is himself black—is the president of the No on 16 campaign.

Connerly released a statement that read:

Americans oppose discrimination of all kinds and want government to treat everyone equally.

That is what Title 6 of the 1964 Civil Rights Act so clearly explains, and this is why grassroots activists all across the country are fighting for equal treatment in the most proud institutions of American life.

The implications of reimposing racial preferences in California are potentially enormous, and no community has advocated against them more passionately than the Asian American community.

Asians have done car rallies, protests outside the state Capitol, and media campaigns to publicize the dramatic effects that racial preferences would have in increasing the racial divide and exacerbating divisive “identity politics.”

“I want people to judge me by the content of my character, not the color of my skin,” Xu said.