So the usual racist arguments were made against using race as a factor in college admissions for the University of California system -- "our" people deserve the majority of college admissions slots because "our" people are more intelligent, superior, and harder working than "those" people. "Those" people were under-represented in the U. Cal system because they're lazy. Because they're just inherently stupid. If we let "those" people into our universities, "our" people, the people of the "smart" race, will be punished for being superior to everybody else.
The only real surprising thing is that this argument wasn't made by mouth breathing Okies from the Central Valley with a habit of prancing around in the woods wearing bedsheets. No. It was made by Asian-Americans, talking about why it was okay that the number of Hispanic and black students in the U. Cal system has plummeted to historic lows not seen since pre-civil-rights-era days.
I've heard all these arguments before, of course, from mouth breathing inbred white trash cretins in my home state of Louisiana, many of whom are my relatives (sometimes on both sides of my family). What was surprising was hearing them here in California from people who historically were discriminated against on the basis of race. I wasn't surprised that they held these attitudes, of course -- I find that many of East Asian descent have an opinion of Hispanics and blacks that basically views them as savages, animals, subhuman, not as good as them. Sheriff Harry Lee of Jefferson Parish, a man of Chinese-American descent whose Sheriff's department had a habit of stopping anybody of dusky complexion who dared drive in his parish after dusk, was pretty blunt to his constituents -- "those" people were always "up to no good". And they loved him for it, and elected him by huge margins.
But still, it was surprising to hear these arguments said in public -- and to hear not a single word noting the obvious: That these arguments are racist. Which brings up an annoying blind spot for my fellow liberals: They view people of color through a prism as an aggregate, not as a collection of unique individuals who are as susceptible to diseases such as racism and conservatism as whites. I've heard many, many derogatory comments about Hispanics from black people, and vice-versa. And President Obama is another example -- my fellow liberals seemed to believe that any person of color is automatically a liberal even though there was nothing in the content of Obama's speeches nor in the content of his campaign web site back in 2008 that would have indicated anything of the sort. Finding out that Obama is instead more of an Eisenhower moderate has shocked, shocked them I say.
The problem is that this keeps us from pointing out racism on the part of people of color when they are, in fact, being racists. As is what is happening now with the college admissions issue in California. At some point, however, we have to point out that the arguments that they are making are the exact same ones that I heard about black people back in my youth in the segregation-era South -- that "those" people are "inherently stupid", are "lazy", are "not capable of advanced work", "lack intelligence". The only difference between then and now is that at least the term "porch monkeys" has fallen out of use, and there hasn't been any watermelon references. Still, 1964, 2014... it is disconcerting, to say the least, to see the exact same arguments fifty years later that I had thought were long dead and gone. And even more disconcerting to see no prominent liberal voices pointing this out -- because, of course, people of color can't be racist, can they?