Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 418 | An Inconvenience to Intersectionality: Asian-American Success | Guest: Kenny Xu

Episode Date: May 11, 2021

Today we're talking to Kenny Xu, author of "An Inconvenient Minority," about how the high rate of success among Asian Americans pokes holes in the Left's narrative about white supremacy in America. Xu points out the alarming decline in meritocracy in America, especially regarding college admissions, where institutional racism has returned in a bizarre way. --- Today's Sponsor: Annie's Kit Clubs has the Young Woodworkers Kit Club & the Creative Girls Club to help your kids develop actual skills, master real-world building or new crafting techniques while expressing their creativity. Go to AnniesKitClubs.com/ALLIE & save 75% off your first shipment! --- Buy Allie's book, You're Not Enough (& That's Okay): Escaping the Toxic Culture of Self-Love: https://alliebethstuckey.com/book Relatable merchandise: https://shop.blazemedia.com/collections/allie-stuckey

Hey guys, welcome to Relatable. Today I am talking to author Kenny Zhu. He wrote a book called an inconvenient minority. He is an Asian American and he talks about the success of Asian Americans and unfortunately how they are being institutionally discriminated against, especially when it comes to college admissions. I mean, his argument is basically that in the woke narrative of intersectionality, this idea that white supremacy reigns supreme in the United States Asian Americans are an inconvenient wedge in that argument, considering they have higher test scores, they have higher graduation rates, they have higher median incomes than white Americans. They also have higher family togetherness rates and lower rates of crime and teen delinquency.

And so if it is true that white supremacy reigns in the United States, it is very hard to account for why Asian Americans and even Asian immigrants, people, who are not born here but become Americans in their lifetimes actually end up across a variety of categories being on average more successful than white Americans. And so we talk about that and some of the struggles that Asian Americans are facing because of an assault against meritocracy, especially when it comes to academia. So super interesting conversation that I'm excited for you guys to listen to. Without further ado, here is Kenny Zhu. Kenny, thank you so much for joining us. Can you tell everyone who may not know who you are and what you do? Sure.

So I'm Kenny Shue. I'm the author of the upcoming book, an inconvenient minority. My book talks about the Ivy League admissions cases that are going on. If some of you aren't familiar, there's a group of Asian Americans who are suing Harvard University and actually various other Ivy League universities for discriminating against them. And, you know, the evidence is pretty clear cut that Harvard University. Harvard uses a racial preference system that actually negatively affects Asian Americans. And the reason why they're doing it is because they want to have preferences towards other minority groups.

So it brings up a really interesting issue about the diversity and the race ideology going today. And can you talk a little bit about what that process is at Harvard and some of the proof that you guys have or that this group has uncovered? when it comes to the admissions process? Yeah, so, I mean, this is a really interesting question. There's, at Harvard University, they basically grade you, for anyone who's applied to Harvard, actually the admissions documents were some of the key pieces of information that were released from this lawsuit. But they basically grade you on three or four different factors, depending on if you're

an athlete. They grade you on academics, obviously, from a scale of 1 to 10. Those are things like grades, SAT scores, course rigor, those kinds of things. Then they grade you on extracurriculars, right? They want, you know, well-rounded people. They want, you know, people who, you know, participate in clubs, who have leadership positions, you've won medals, those kinds of things. And then they have this final grade called a personality score.

And they grade you on personality. Actually, the Harvard admissions documents, according to a study by an economist, actually show that the personality score is what most influences the decision of Harvard to either accept or reject you. And it's really interesting when it comes to Asian Americans, because in Asian Americans, get by and large, much better academic and extracurricular scores than any of the other racial groups, even whites, which is kind of interesting. But for some reason, Harvard's personality score grades Asian Americans as the lowest significantly of all of the racial groups. That's below blacks, Hispanics, and white Americans. And so the focus of the lawsuit addresses this so-called personality score, which addresses characteristics that Harvard says are things like likability, humor, those kinds of things. Interesting. And you think that this is purposeful that they've set up.

at this scale to be able to have a, quote, legitimate reason to discriminate against Asian students? I think so. I think so. And the reason why is because this is not just having it Harvard. This is happening at pretty much every Ivy League university. It's kind of a cabal-ish institute. The Department of Justice a couple years ago found, in their fact-finding of Yale University as well, that they also discriminate against Asian-American. And actually the process for how they do that is that when your application gets sent to a reader, they give you a plus if you're black or Hispanic, which is a corresponding negative if you're white or Asian American. And then it passes to the second reader. They give you a plus. And then from that, they collect a subset and then they put it to the area committee.

They give you a plus if you're black or Hispanic, minus if you're Asian. And then they give it to a final review committee. They give you a plus if you're black or Hispanic and a minus of your Asian. So the race penalty is actually compounded four times in the emissions process. Wow. Is this something that has been around as long as affirmative action has been around? Or is this something that's become more prevalent in more recent years? 20, it really started actually about 20 years ago.

Actually, Asian Americans used to be among the preferred races, the racial minority groups. You would think, oh, you know, because a lot of, The whole idea of diversity and inclusion, the kind of things that are going around today, has been as an artifact of 50 years of affirmative action policy. And Asian Americans used to be included in this affirmative action policy, especially for colleges and universities. But somewhere around the late 80s, early 90s, that started to change as Asian American applicants came to this country more and more. And, you know, the results and the fruits of their educational values were continued to be realized. You know, Harvard and Yale and some of these other universities decided, oh, dang, there are so many Asians coming into these universities.

We have to find some way to basically create a ceiling. And so Asian Americans became about 20% of Harvard University in around the late 90s and has never gone up beyond that ceiling ever since. Wow. You know, in the conversation, especially the one that we're having recently about intersectionality and equity and the conversations that we have about critical race theory, it seems like Asians and Jewish people are kind of placed off to the side. Like when it's convenient for critical race theorists to use them as a minority in a press group, then Asians and Jewish people are. but when it's not, when it comes to something like the admissions process or looking at, for example, median income across different groups in the country, then it seems that Asian Americans and Jewish Americans are put on the privileged side, is the side of the oppressor, if you will. Can you talk a little

bit about that? Is that something that you've noticed? Does that trouble you? Because, quite frankly, it just confuses me. Yeah. Well, I did write a book, and it is called an inconvenient minority. So I guess you could say it troubles me a little bit. It does trouble me a little bit because, well, more than a little bit, because, you know, the idea of this country is that you should be treated on the basis of the content of your character, not in the color of your skin. And as an Asian American, what Harvard does in our culture, and by the way, so many Asian Americans are, you know, and parents are obsessed with Harvard, they want their kids to get

into Harvard and those kinds of things. And I acknowledge that. And maybe that's the fault in our Asian American community as well. But that doesn't give the right for Harvard to discriminate on the basis of race and actually to even use, you know, vicious anti-Asian stereotypes, you know. Right. The idea of Asian Americans being math nerds and test-taking nerds with no personality. Yeah. I mean, the whole idea of a personality score in itself, what is that supposed to measure?

It's very subjective, right. Because if you look at the data, the Asian Americans actually score equally on par with what? in alumni interviews, in teacher recommendations, and all of the objective measures that you could extrapolate into personality score. And yet, for some reason, they end up on the wrong side of the personality score pile. It's very, it's interesting and it's actually quite damaging, I think, to Asian Americans here. And can you kind of push back on, if this is what you believe, this idea that Asian Americans have been on the side of the privileged, the just, you guys are the success that in general, of course, we're speaking in generalities,

the Asian Americans, even immigrant Asians have enjoyed in this country is a result of some kind of privilege or some kind of lack of oppression. Is that a true assertion? I'll give a couple reasons why some people might find that true. Some people might find that true that Asian Americans are like a privileged minority because, you know, they see our grades and their test scores and they see the fact that we have higher incomes than white Americans. And they're like, oh, well, look, they've achieved middle class stability even better than whites. You know, they must be a so-called privileged minority. But I'm going to push back on that for just a moment because Asian Americans, when they come to this country, they lack a few certain things that

benefit a lot of other people of privilege, including actually other minorities. One, we lack the length of experience in this country, right? And, you know, as we know, as I actually talk about in my book, cultural experience in this country, in length of time in this country actually matters a lot in terms of cultural capital, in terms of your ability to socialize in this country. And Asian Americans don't have that, too. A lot of us lack language skills, you know, when you are a Vietnamese American, you're fleeing oppression, you're a poor farmer, you're coming over here. You don't have acts, about 80% I think of first-gen Vietnamese Americans don't come here with any, with proficient English language skills.

They basically have to learn it all themselves. So we don't have the social connections, we don't have the cultural capital, and we don't have the English skills and communication skills, meaning that for Asian Americans to succeed in this country, we have to disproportionately rely on our merits, right? Our skills, what we can bring. And usually those are things like, you know, those are dynamic math skills or economic skills and those kinds of things. But the issue is that when you have this ideology today, this diversity and inclusion and this woke ideology that is basically anti-merit, it's basically anti-merit. They're against gifted programs. They're against gifted and talented programs. They're against gifted and talented

programs, they're against the idea that people, you know, have objectively better certain academic characteristics than others, which, by the way, is not, you know, a statement on the worth of a person, but if you want to contribute positively to the economy, you better have some good skills. But when you have this ideology that, that rails against that, it is my belief, and I argue this in my book, that Asian Americans are going to be disproportionately affected by this woke ideology, that it is really going to cause us a lot of pain. Yes, you mentioned something that I do think is so important that a lot of critical race theorists and social justice activists, they say that something like meritocracy is unfair,

that you actually have to be, you have to treat people unequally to achieve some kind of equity. And they define equity as everyone ending up in the same place. And what that means, Thomas Soul talks about this a lot. it's in his book, Quest for Cosmic Justice, is that you have to punish some groups of people or some individuals and you have to uplift other groups and other individuals, not based on anything that they have actually done or not done, but based on this very intangible and I think impossible goal of everyone reaching the same place. And so that completely gets rid of something

like meritocracy. And you're saying that disproportionately affects or can affect Asian Americans, correct? Yeah, and it doesn't, and if it's funny, you use the word uplift. And it's interesting because actually the result of policies like affirmative action for blacks and Hispanics have not given the promise that they're supposed to do. Yeah. What are the colleges who have the highest proportion of black doctors and black engineers and black people in STEM and those kinds of things?

They're actually not colleges like Harvard and Yale who use these affirmative action policies to boost these minorities. They're actually HBCUs. You know, they're actually universities that are actually attuned to some of the cultural elements of the black imagination, so to speak. And actually what you find is that especially, you know, things like law school admissions and those kinds of things, black Americans who are admitted because of race preferences actually tend to do, graduate in the lower segments of their classes. They tend to, you know, get disproportionately discouraged and suffer from higher mental health issues. And sometimes the effect of that is that they actually choose, they actually, they actually, uh, choose different majors from what they intended. So there's a

lot of black people, black Americans who want to be doctors, who want to be engineers, who are, who are discouraged by that subject, whereas if they're matched accurately to the school where they, you know, are a good fit, then they would have the chance to do a lot better. So this, this idea of uplift, I don't think these policies hurt any, I mean, help anybody. They definitely don't help Asians and they don't help the people who are necessarily being uplifted by them. Well, certainly not. I mean, if you described these kind of policies going on for at least 20 years and we're still talking about these major gaps in outcome and gaps in admission, then, I mean, what else is there to do? We're already discriminating against who these colleges

think are unfairly privileged white Americans. Asian Americans, and we have been for a very long time, and we're still hearing about how it's an inequitable process, how it's not fair, how they are systemically discriminating against not Asian and white Americans, but Hispanic and black Americans. And so I don't know if you know the answer to this, but my question is, I mean, what more are they going to try to do to rectify the situation? I mean, if Harvard still thinks that there are too many white and Asian students who are being admitted and not enough black and brown or black and Hispanic students that are being admitted, how much more can you discriminate against these so-called privileged groups

in order to help these underprivileged groups? Like, where do you see all of this going? Right. What's the line, right? Well, I can tell you one thing, this, the new Biden administration, what they're doing with these equity-based policies. If you guys are familiar, and I know, Allie, you talked about this in your previous podcast about equity versus equality. This is a word that really needs to be broken down because equity really is about all races ending up in the same position. This is exactly what Kamala Harris said before she got elected. Equity is about all races ending up in the same place.

And my pushback against that is my pushback against that is you can't have equity. without eliminating free choice, without actually doing violence towards the choices of people. Because I'll give you an example just from my Asian American culture. If Asian Americans choose to be academically excellent, we know why Asian Americans choose to be academically excellent, because they have to, because they don't have the connections in the social, you could call social networks and privilege that would help them to survive the decline in meritocracy. They have to use their merit to gain an extra advantage and edge in this society today. And that's the result of their free choice, you know.

And so by discriminating against them in the name of equity, you're actually eliminating or you're actually discouraging the ability, you know, for people to make the free choice and enjoy the fruits of their choices. Right. Yeah. And I think that, sorry. Go ahead. I think that you touched on a really good question about, you know, where is this going?

you know, where is this, where is this culture going? I, it's funny because these policies have been happening for over 20 years, so you can actually start to see a lot of the effects with Asian Americans. But if you continue as a country to go in these directions, you're going to see a lot of other racial groups be affected as well. But I'll tell you what's happened, what's happened in my culture, in my culture over the past 20, 30 years. A lot of Asian Americans in my culture,

the competition culture for Asian Americans is ramped up to 100. It's ramped up to like 150. You know, you have kids that are trying to do every extracurricular, trying to get into every club, trying to fill out every thing on their common app resume, because they know that they're not going to be competing with the general population. They know that their competition is other Asians.

I mean, think about what that does to Asian American identity. You know, if you have Asian friends and you start to think, oh, them in the college admissions process, not against, you know, other people. I mean, it damages you as an Asian American. It really hurts, you know, your ability to think of yourself as a self-actualized individual. And so when you see the progression of these equity-based policies that will soon

affect other groups that, you know, once many Latino and Hispanic Americans also achieve parity with whites in many places, which they actually are. They're really approaching, you know, whites in terms of where they are. You know, they will find themselves on the opposite end of these equity-based policies as well. And that's going to have a severe effect, I think, on the way that they perceive themselves racially. Yeah. I think so, too. Unfortunately, I think progressivism has a different view of human nature. They kind of eliminate the idea of choice. There's never the, the possibility that some people are where they are because of choices they made. It's always society either gets credit or society either gets blame. And society is just kind of this very

generalized term for the system. And they have to have society as a boogeyman or, for example, white supremacy as a bogeyman to be able to campaign and to say, look, I'm going to change society. I'm going to change the system. I'm going to dismantle white supremacy. I'll dismantle the patriarchy, all of these very like intangible, inexplicable big bogeyman systems that are apparently keeping people down. And of course, there are examples throughout history of institutions holding people back, discriminating, ensuring that, for example, black Americans cannot get ahead. Certainly Asian Americans throughout our history have received discrimination as well. So of Italian Americans and Irish Americans and all of that.

So, of course, that's certainly true. But today, that doesn't actually seem to be the case. It doesn't seem to be like there is this big system or this big monster of white supremacy that is pushing some people down and lifting other people up. And yet that's what we're hearing over and over again. That's the justification for so-called equity executive orders in all of these social engineering policies to hold back groups like Asian-Americans, and try to push forward other groups.

And like you said, I don't think it's going to work. I actually think it's going to end up with a lot of self-loathing and resentment between groups. Yeah. I mean, you're so right. It's funny how you mentioned the systemic oppression narrative, this narrative that they're latching onto that to be a minority inherently means that you, are not able to participate fully in the benefits of American society and the American dream. I mean, think about what that does if you actually believe that. And by the way, I know many

people who actually believe that and are very bitter about that, many minorities who are, you know, bitter about that. And I've interviewed several of them in my book. It creates a culture of bitterness and resentment against the world. And it just, it breaks my heart. I mean, it really does. And now you see in this narrative, particularly with regards to Asian Americans, a lot of the Asian Americans who go through these, you know, college diversity and inclusion programs are basically taught to view their academic success as privilege and are taught to feel guilty about that. They're taught to feel guilty about that. I saw, I talked with a friend, I interviewed a friend about, you know, going to a gifted and talented magnet school. and he basically said, yeah, like, I had no reason why I was there. I was lucky. You know, I, and those kinds of things. And maybe he was lucky. Maybe he was lucky.

But if you are blessed with the ability to, you know, to pursue academic excellence and those kinds of things, then you should do it. You should take responsibility for that and you should be proud of that. You shouldn't have to apologize for yourself and apologize for being academically excellent. Society is counting on you. People are counting on the next generation of scientists and engineers and mathematicians and writers to produce the next great works and to help humanity and to help society, you know, and pastors too.

And it's just, but doing so requires you to have some confidence in your ability, not to believe that you've got it because of, you know, privilege or that you feel guilty about it. Yeah, it's one thing to be humble, which I think is good for all of us. It's another thing to feel guilty and to deny the hard work that you've put in or deny the talent that God gave you. And I could definitely see how if you think that everything that you have is just because of privilege that society has given you, that nothing that you have has been earned, then that does create almost the kind of embarrassment and a shame over being successful or having good grades. And I don't see how that lack of confidence from one group benefits another group. It doesn't transfer confidence to another group.

I think that it's all just going to end up with a bunch of very insecure people. What do you think, like, what do you think the end will look like? Do you think that if these court cases, if the students win these court cases, if you, or do you see any kind of like positive change in the direction of re-accepting meritocracy, not on the basis of skin color, just on the basis of what you've done? Do you have hope and optimism and going that direction? Ali, I really do. And I'll give you an example.

in California this year in 2020 during the 2020 elections, there was a proposition that was created, a California constitutional amendment that was basically created by a legislator who, you know, talked about this equity principle and talked about, you know, fighting systemic racism. And basically, the rationale for all of that was simply to propose an amendment that repealed California's non-discrimination clause on the basis of race. She wanted to repeal California's non-discrimination clause. Okay. The clause says you cannot discriminate on the basis of race or ethnicity. It was created in the 1990s. She wanted to repeal that, you know. And so obviously, so members of certain races, we get preferential treatment over others. And that was this one of the most liberal states in the country.

And, you know, I chronicled that in my book, the fight against Proposition 16. It was that they were the no on 16 campaign, which was the campaign against that, was outspent 13 to 1. And there were tech billionaires on the yes on Proposition 16 side, the wife of the Netflix billionaire. Um, various, you know, many educational associations were for this Prop 16. All of the sports teams, the 9 49ers, the Raiders, all of them were for Prop 16. And on election day in this vote in one of the most liberal states in the country, voters rejected this amendment 57% to 43%. Wow. And to me, that just shows that when these things actually come to popular vote and when these things actually are understood by the American

public, you know, the American public will reject it. Yeah. I'm very, I'm very, I'm very, encouraged by the story in California, I remember hearing that. Why do you think, I know we can't necessarily assume people's motives, but in your analysis, why do you think some of those billionaires, those education associations, football teams were for a proposition like that for discrimination against certain people just because of their skin color? Yeah, so this is something I talk about in my book a little bit. There's a couple of things here. There's a couple of things here. Obviously, the whole we want virtue signaling, we want to be a part of, you know, the social justice movements of today. Obviously, there's a lot of financial capital there, but you have to, I would even go a little

further. I would even go a little further. And if you would allow me to make this claim, it's human nature, almost, that when you are competing with a group that looks vastly different from you, you began to experience a little resentment against them. And I tell this story in my book. In the 1800s, during the gold rush, there were white miners who wanted to come to California to mine for gold. But then there were actually a lot of Chinese who actually started to come to America for the same purpose because they wanted to bring money back home and those kinds of things. And the Chinese, they worked their butts off because that was their only hope in this country. They didn't have unions or anything like that. And the white miners began to

grow very resentful of these Chinese Americans. And they used because these Chinese Americans would work day and night. And the white miners didn't necessarily want to work day and night. And so they used their political will, the political capital they had to pass the Chinese exclusion Act that banned Chinese Americans from coming to this country for, you know, a period of nearly 50 years. And these, and I think there's a, there's an inherent resentment that that's there. And so when you look at today's elite liberal population, you know, the elite, mostly white, liberal population who lives in enclaves like San Francisco, New York, and those kinds of things,

you have to understand that the minorities that they're competing with are, you know, and this actually, this is actually like not a fun thing for me to say, but minorities that they're actually competing with are actually Asian Americans, a lot of them, because they're, they're the ones who are getting into, you know, doctors and going to be doctors and engineers and, you know, and have the math skills to, you know, compete in those kinds of things. And so there is an inherent, I think, natural resentment and a natural competition culture that comes in. Now, the whole idea of America is that, you know, we're supposed to live in a tolerant and

inclusive country, the actual term inclusive country where we shouldn't judge people based on that. But sometimes human nature wins. You know, it's unfortunate that it seems like we've moved so far away from, a premise that we at least all theoretically agreed on that we judge people by the content of their character, that people should be rewarded based on merit, not the color of their skin. And of course, like I said, there have been different parts in history where we have had to legally rectify injustices in wrongs that were being perpetrated, for example, like Jim Crow.

There have been times like that. But it's been a very long time since institutionalized discrimination against particular groups has actually been legal. But now it's kind of been switched. There is institutionalized racism, but it just happens to be against different groups and for different reasons. It happens to be against, for example, Asian Americans. What kind of advice do you give to people who are worried about this? They're discouraged about this. Whether they're Asian or not, they just don't want to live in a country where merit doesn't matter, where you're almost punished for having merit and working hard and for maybe being a part of a group that is traditionally more successful,

they don't want to live in that kind of a country where meritocracy is taken down in the name of equity and critical race theory. What can they do? What can they do in their everyday lives to kind of push back against that? Well, that's a good question. I would say, I mean, for Asian Americans, a lot of Asian Americans have, I guess, accepted the reality that they're going to be treated twice as difficult in the college admissions process where, you know, in some cases, magnitudes of even more than that. I would say maybe stop being so accepting. And this is a weird statement to make, but maybe stop being so accepting of that. The thing is, you know, the reason why this is allowed to continue to occur in part is because no matter what Harvard does for Asian Americans,

Asian Americans are going to continue to flock to Ivy Leagues, continue to be, want to be admitted into these kinds of places and those kinds of things. You know, even admits these discrimination policies because there's prestige and social status that goes for that. It is a limited piece of prestige and a limited piece of social status. Actually, if you are a math or STEM major, going to an elite college or a first-tier elite college doesn't have that much effect on the rest of your life compared to if you went to a different college.

if you actually are majoring in those in the STEM fields actually does not matter as much. So I would say Asian Americans learn the, learn the, and other people, you know, who are worried about this, you know, learn the facts and, you know, try to, I guess, understand that, that you don't have to exceed to what society wants to tell you and what society artificially builds up. Yeah, definitely. Okay, for people who want to buy your book to learn more about all of this, you said, know the facts. And I know your book has a lot of facts. They want to follow you on Twitter. How can they buy your book?

How can they follow and support you? Absolutely. Well, you can buy my book. You can pre-order my book. It's coming out soon on Amazon, Barnes & Noble. Follow me on Twitter and Instagram at Kenny M. Shoe, M. Like Mary. And actually, Ali, I'm also starting my own inconvenient minority podcast. podcast coming soon where I'm actually talking with many other minorities and maybe, you know,

some members of the so-called majority who in some way or another inconvenience of the woke narrative on race today. I'm going to go in depth on their life stories. You know, I'm talking with nonprofit activists, intellectuals, public commentators. So I would encourage you to follow me and then stay tuned for those details. Awesome. Well, we will put the links to all of that in the description for this podcast. An inconvenient minority, that's the name of your book, the name of the name of your podcast, and also everyone can follow you on social media as well. Thank you so much, Kenny, for taking the time to talk to us today. This is a very important subject, and I just hope that you keep hammering on because your

voice is a very important one. Thank you, Allie. I really appreciate all the work that you do, too. Thank you so much.