Personally I find it frustrating whenever anyone gets summarised as their cultural appearance, biological sex, chosen gender, political affiliation, or anything else like that. When we get headlines like "Asian attacked by black person" it becomes far too easy to lazily read that as "Asian people are victims. Black people are violent." The root cause of this incident might have nothing to do with either person's cultural background, but headlines this this one make it very difficult to think about issues any other way.
It's unquestionable that certain demographic groups are seeing a disproportionate level of violence. It's unquestionable that some of this is caused by naked, explicit racism. But not all of it. Poverty and social class plays a significant role too; unfortunately this has correlations with other demographic markers.
The media and politicians find value in advancing a narrative that racial conflict is escalating in America.
Fearful citizens are more easily to motivate to vote reliably, and without questioning more complex policy positions. Moreover, racially motivated voters seldom demand anything of substance from their leaders aside from the appearance of "standing up".
TV and online media similarly love racial conflict because it drives high user engagement and ad revenues, while similarly lowering the bar for producing any meaningful content.
The self-destructive path we are on should be greater cause for alarm. There is no evidence that the escalation racial violence will abate any time soon.
This is common to the point BART in SF started to censor surveillance videos of vicious attacks because it would "create a racial bias against minorities". [1]
If attacks don't fit the prevailing political narrative, they're buried immediately and sometimes covered up completely.
Sadly, doing this might only further perpetuate the racial biases people already hold; only now they're imbued with the feeling that the government is trying to suppress the truth because the situation is so bad. And in this case, they'd be right. Not a great situation...
One way to fight these biases is to remind ourselves that it’s a very small percentage of any demographic that commits violent crimes. It might be more useful, then, to say “99% of X people are never violent versus 99.2% of Y people.”
Not officially, but the song has finally been pulled from various platforms as recent as 2 months ago.
The YG concert in Oakland a few years back actually had lots of Asian people there. As an Asian, I don’t want to excuse the song. It was just made in bad taste, before everyone became so sensitive.
What irks me is not the song itself or YG, I like his music, but the double standard and hypocrisy of people applying cancel culture only when it’s convenient to. For example, if an asian person made a song in the reverse. I’d rather get rid of cancel culture altogether
Here's another perspective. Am not American, not Asian. But I like YG's music. Obviously, the cancel politics behind that song has little personal meaning to me on this side of the world, but it does mean that history in popular culture can be re-written when it's convenient to some group of people.
Social ostracizing is a tool, so I doubt cancel will go away.
You’ve noted that cancel culture is rather one-side: I feel Asians tend to be fairly moderate, in which case there is plenty to dislike whether looking into Democrat and Republican.
So here’s the thing: Asians including East Asians need to become far more involved in politics, rather than simply taking cues from MAGA, BLM, or other self-serving interests.
If Asians are a small minority, consider also that both sides are eager to court Asians for the moral high-ground.
tl;dr; Asian Americans may be the moderating voice that the US needs.
Actually usually its over-reported as most crime is not interracial. Most crime is Black on Black or White on White etc... this is far more common than Black on White but the myth of the Black Sexual Predator has literally driven US politics for the greater part of the last 100 years.
>assaulting Asian people has become a trope in hip-hop over the past couple of years (e.g. “ling-ling boppin’”).
>It's hard for me not to believe you just made this up. "ling-ling boppin" doesn't return any Google results.
1 video, with 1100 views is in no way indicative of a "hip hop trope".
I used to love HN, now I can see that there are a large number of intellectual cowards here. On a site full of engineers that understand statistics, a video with 1100 views being seen as a trope within the context of hip hop is patently absurd.
I literally cannot find a single wu-tang video with less than millions of views, but one no-name rapper with 1100 views is a "trope". Yet that comment will receive 0 downvotes because it's a victim narrative that HN wants to believe. That is dangerous and intellectually disingenuous. I was ashamed of the "Michael Brown - Hands Up Don't Shoot" narrative because it was simply untrue, but it was a narrative adopted by the AA community because it supposed a popular and often valid position. I always expected better on HN, it truly saddens me to see this here.
Readit News
It's unquestionable that certain demographic groups are seeing a disproportionate level of violence. It's unquestionable that some of this is caused by naked, explicit racism. But not all of it. Poverty and social class plays a significant role too; unfortunately this has correlations with other demographic markers.
Fearful citizens are more easily to motivate to vote reliably, and without questioning more complex policy positions. Moreover, racially motivated voters seldom demand anything of substance from their leaders aside from the appearance of "standing up".
TV and online media similarly love racial conflict because it drives high user engagement and ad revenues, while similarly lowering the bar for producing any meaningful content.
The self-destructive path we are on should be greater cause for alarm. There is no evidence that the escalation racial violence will abate any time soon.
If attacks don't fit the prevailing political narrative, they're buried immediately and sometimes covered up completely.
[1] https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2017/07/09/bart-withholdin...
Isn’t Youtube still hosting it?
The YG concert in Oakland a few years back actually had lots of Asian people there. As an Asian, I don’t want to excuse the song. It was just made in bad taste, before everyone became so sensitive.
What irks me is not the song itself or YG, I like his music, but the double standard and hypocrisy of people applying cancel culture only when it’s convenient to. For example, if an asian person made a song in the reverse. I’d rather get rid of cancel culture altogether
You’ve noted that cancel culture is rather one-side: I feel Asians tend to be fairly moderate, in which case there is plenty to dislike whether looking into Democrat and Republican.
So here’s the thing: Asians including East Asians need to become far more involved in politics, rather than simply taking cues from MAGA, BLM, or other self-serving interests.
If Asians are a small minority, consider also that both sides are eager to court Asians for the moral high-ground.
tl;dr; Asian Americans may be the moderating voice that the US needs.
>It's hard for me not to believe you just made this up. "ling-ling boppin" doesn't return any Google results.
1 video, with 1100 views is in no way indicative of a "hip hop trope".
I used to love HN, now I can see that there are a large number of intellectual cowards here. On a site full of engineers that understand statistics, a video with 1100 views being seen as a trope within the context of hip hop is patently absurd.
I literally cannot find a single wu-tang video with less than millions of views, but one no-name rapper with 1100 views is a "trope". Yet that comment will receive 0 downvotes because it's a victim narrative that HN wants to believe. That is dangerous and intellectually disingenuous. I was ashamed of the "Michael Brown - Hands Up Don't Shoot" narrative because it was simply untrue, but it was a narrative adopted by the AA community because it supposed a popular and often valid position. I always expected better on HN, it truly saddens me to see this here.
https://twitter.com/vincentkangnow/status/139344934049724416...