 Are Asians benefiting from being white? Or what about recently arrived Nigerian immigrants? Literally I have zero white European blood in me. Fitting into white systems as a cog and getting paid for it is an advantage. What they can do to help more underserved communities, whether that's underserved Asians or underserved non-Asian communities. Do Asians benefit from white privilege or are they succeeding despite a lot of anti-Asian racism? And are these even valid questions? Let's talk about it. Welcome everybody to the Hot Pop Boys. David and Andrew here. We got another viral and controversial article about Asian America. David, we're gonna break it down. What's going on? Oh my goodness. You probably could make a thousand videos about this. But Andrew, Natasha Kumar Warakoo wrote a piece in the Boston Globe that got the internet in a fur. We're talking about Reddit, Instagram, Twitter. She basically said, Andrew, in her article, do Asians benefit from white privilege and white proximity or do they have racism? I think it's complicated. And I'm telling you this, guys. People were not happy from the cover article to her tone to her thinking that she was Asian Malcolm X by saying it was balanced. We gotta break it down from the micro to the mid to the macro. This a complicated topic, but Hot Pop Boys not scared. All right, everybody, we're gonna break down the article. We're gonna give our analysis. If you're excited about this video, please hit that like button and let's get into it. All right, David. So I feel like most people are angry not because she didn't acknowledge that there was racism against Asians. She did, she said, oh, there's Asian discrimination, right? However, it was her argument that Asians might benefit from whiteness. So here's her argument right here. US immigration policy has meant that a large portion of immigrants from Asia come with college and even graduate degrees. High incomes enable a significant number of them to move to well-off suburbs historically designed as islands of privilege for upper middle class white people leaving integrated cities. I mean, absolutely. I will agree that Asians coming from educated backgrounds which is only a slice of Asians, like probably a third of them because I think you can break it down. Like 33% of Asians are trying to get into Harvard which I think is even an overshoot, but let's just give her that. 33% of Asians are more like community college, state school, you know, just trying to get a regular job. And then 33% of Asians are like living in poverty, right? She's like talking about only a third of Asians. It's probably less than that to be honest, but it's like, it's an advantage. And I think that fitting into white systems as a cog in getting paid for it is an advantage being able to do that if that's already your culture or that's your skill set. But I just don't understand how that is whiteness. Yeah, is it privilege if they come over here educated already from Asia? Like if they work their butt off in college in Asia, they come here to get their graduate school degree. Obviously they get a high paying job and then obviously they wanna move into a nice neighborhood so that their kids can get the best academic opportunities. And if those neighborhoods happen to be white which a lot of them are, does that make them like giving into white people or does that make them white adjacent just because they wanna be in those neighborhoods? Because there's a lot of Asians nowadays that are doing well for themselves moving to these now Asian dominant neighborhoods. So does that mean they're Asian, Asian adjacent? Or what about recently arrived Nigerian immigrants that also have an incredibly high rate of like grad school degrees and high salaries and high educational attainment. Are they also accessing whiteness because they're playing into a white run even though it's like liberal white run academic scholastic system? I mean, I think it's just way more complex than even the way she said it because it's almost like, Andrew, our dad came over as an advanced computer science algorithm engineer, you know, in aerospace, right? His boss and his boss's boss and his boss's boss could not do any of the things that our dad did but they made anywhere from like five to 30 X his salary. Our dad was like super underpaid for the value he brought to the aerospace industry and all the white guys that were doing sales at the country club being able to schmooze with other like Anglos were like making way, way, way more with like less studying. So like I just don't understand to me that's white privilege. You know, being in this country for eight, nine, 10 generations being able to speak natively, you know, native English and being able to schmooze and like be good at like delineating tasks or like being viewed as a good manager. So I just cannot understand why hard working engineers fall into like white privilege when it's work that white people have not wanted to do for like 30, 40 years. Listen, I'm not saying that there's not a small percentage of Asian-Americans that might benefit from whiteness like a small percent. You're talking about USC, like Lily Hez and Michelle Weasel. Yeah, I mean there's privilege Asians there's even Asians who are part white to be honest or they look white that they might benefit a little bit more from whiteness, right? And their proximity to it. Especially like, I mean, to be honest not to call them out but like some North Indians like Natasha Warakoo herself almost like look like they could be from Italy or something. Yeah, she looks like European for sure. And then so I'm just saying like, is it a privilege to work 30% harder than everybody else 40% harder but they get paid the same amount? Obviously you get paid well but you're also working your butt off like crazy. So I don't know to get underpaid and underrated that's a privilege. Obviously I'm not saying there doesn't need to be racial reconciliation. There doesn't need to be like racial equity but just calling Asians like success patterns white privilege or white adjacent is pretty just a wild reach to me. All right, so to back up her argument she talks about benefiting from positive stereotypes. Of course Asian Americans are diverse and working class Asian Americans do not experience the benefits of living in well off neighborhoods even if some may still benefit from teachers positive stereotypes about Asian Americans academic capabilities. So it's a privilege to have positive stereotypes? I don't know, man. I'm not saying there's not like a shred of truth to what she's saying. I'm like maybe a 10 to max 15% truthiness rating but literally this was a crazy reach and I'll tell you this Andrew she made some people on the internet really mad with this comment Andrew. Andrew a Southeast Asian person on internet said you in particular need to keep working class yellow folk out of your upper class academic white adjacent mouth. It's really an academic bubble moment that you're using a cover a photo of Asians protesting literal murders lives lost of island racism mostly in low income and first generation communities to talk about Harvard emissions. So basically Andrew she got roasted for only focusing on like the Lilly Hez and the USC business crowd and the Harvard academic crowd as pretty much her characterizing all Asian Americans this way literally she was ignoring in this article probably the reality of about 75 to 80% of Asian Americans just to prove her point. Now I'm not saying she didn't come from like an elite Hindu Brahmin family herself which is like amongst some of the highest earners but she cannot speak for everybody in the 100% pie when she comes from a top 10% slice. Trust me this argument doesn't fully have legs especially when you look at the poverty rates of a lot of Asian groups. So long Cambodian people they actually have higher rates of poverty in America than black Americans and actually David even Chinese the fancy educated Asians oh my gosh 12% poverty rate in America. On a statistical basis I'm not saying there's not inequities and I'm not saying that a lot of black and brown people were not put in worse positions or like their environments are very tough to gain academic success. I 100% agree and those things need to be addressed in the funding of better public schools. However I'm just saying there's a lot of poor working class Asians out there and I don't know if saying that they benefit from positive stereotypes is helpful at all. Yeah that's crazy to think that like Jaden Smith is like oppressed but then like a poor Cambodian and Long Beach is not oppressed because they're Asian. I'm pretty sure they actually get hit with more negative stereotypes than positive stereotypes if you made me guess. And then another excerpt backs up her argument again the history of residential segregation between black and white Americans ironically enabled Asian American professionals to reap the benefits of living in communities segregated by class and previously by race. Some see evidence like this as meaning that Asian Americans are white adjacent. Some people see it as evidence I personally do not. Listen man if you are raised in a rich neighborhood you're gonna have like see rich things and your environment is gonna be rich right. And there's different types of rich there's old money there's new money you know there's like systems and non systemic rich. Anyway most people are middle class right. They're living in a mixed neighborhood where there's a lot of poor people there's a lot of middle class people and there's a few rich people. And then of course there's people growing up in the hood whether that's a hood suburb or a hood like inner city. You're gonna be subject to that environment and each of those environments has a statistical range of probable outputs mathematically due to the environment due to different factors and cohesive families broken families. So basically based off the neighborhood you grow up in compounded a little bit with your like culture at home which is your like I guess ethnic culture or whatever culture your parents come from which is daily behaviors. You're going to get a range of realistic outcomes. So I just don't like saying because a lot of Asians or certain Asians have like a middle class to upper middle class like range of outcomes probabilities that that's like white adjacent. What about white people like that are born into like crazy wealth because they like bought all these things and some of it was even driven by like evil means you know so I'm just like whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa why is there all of a sudden focus on Asians working themselves into the middle and possibly upper middle class. I mean, you know as an Asian person who is 0% white my DNA test show us I am 0% white. It is kind of weird to be told I benefit from whiteness when literally I have zero white European blood in me. What are your final takeaways? Here's my takeaways man. Listen, I understand that this issue is incredibly complex and I will give Natasha Waraku, you know some sort of like props in the sense that's what she ended off with even though she had literally no actionable solutions no like race or like socioeconomic class specific suggestions or anything like that. Society is like a ice cream cake, Andrew. Like it's such a complicated ice cream cake I can't even tell you what flavor American society is because each flavor of ice cream cake has so many different layers you got the frosting, you got the strawberry layer the chocolate layer, the white layer the base layer, the cookie crunch layer and it is so complicated to say what is what I would say that Asians benefiting from some things that are perceived to be like kind of white and then Asians getting murdered in the streets especially in low income or first generation neighborhoods they both have some truthiness to them I would say it's more true that Asians go through racism than even that were white privilege but there's some truthiness to them but they exist on completely different geometric planes that do not intersect they're on different layers of the cake and it's sort of like this analogy I had Andrew back in the day where it's like life is kind of like Hunger Games mixed with Cannonball Run mixed with like the Tour de France mixed with Zelda and like which peaks do you want to shoot for and which peaks are you happy at and do you want to just chill at this plateau and it's just like it's so crazy that somebody studies race and studies Asians for like 20 years Andrew and literally their arrival point is like hey Asians we're not just want to be whites like that was the final takeaway I'm like yo guys the conversation got to be like way beyond this at this point I mean we just got to have a better IQ for this discussion I agree and I do think that there is a conversation to be had with Asians about what they can do to help more underserved communities whether that's underserved Asians or underserved non Asian communities because I do feel like that there is a feeling amongst a lot of other people that they're like you know when Asians are successful or build rich systems they don't benefit other minorities as much because maybe white people since they kind of run everything like they have been able to still reward a lot of like black and brown people for being elite or exceptionally good at something right like let's say sports and entertainment right like that's still white people still own those fields or like dominate those fields on a back end but on the front end there is a lot of black and Latinos in the NBA NFL I mean MLB things like that yeah and so I think that there's just a conversation of like oh if Asians are going to be so successful what are some things that they can do to help other people out and I think that is a legit conversation I do not think Asian success leans on the fact that they stepped on other people's heads to get here I actually don't think most of the time that's true maybe in rare occasions but I really don't think it's true so I do think that there is a conversation that we can have but that's the conversation we should have not that oh are Asians benefiting from being white? Man David I don't think I've ever benefited from being white. Yeah I mean I think you gotta look at the white people that have been in America for 10, 9, 8 generations that like own all the companies and land and like assets and are part of like the military industrial complex et cetera et cetera that Asians really have nothing to do with any of those things Asians are still relatively new money in America yes there were Asians here like since the 1900s yes but most of the Asians who are doing well are fairly new and not even all the Asians are doing well like we said there's a pie chart and even if you were to over represent successful Asians at 33% there's still the middle tier ones and then there's still the lower tier ones still really going through it going through the same things that are holding back anybody that's in a tough situation Long story short man I just really don't like it when upper middle class Asians like Esther Wang or Natasha Warku just act like they came across a crazy epiphany because they're almost like not wrongfully but they're almost holding the discussion back by acting like the discussion was at a 1.0 or 2.0 level we're trying to get to 5.0, 6.0, iPhone right now why are you trying to rewind it to like iPhone 3G Bro it almost feels like for the first time in their life they're like I met some poor Asians who felt scared in the streets and that finally has changed my mind and I'm like The last thing I will say just so people don't think we're going too hard on like Esther Wang and Natasha Warku because I am tending to be like a very balanced person I will say that a lot of Asians that really are in tune with like the real Asian experience it's true we don't become writers and we're not prolific and we're not like navigating those journalistic media systems so obviously the people who end up navigating it are from a certain type of background and certain type of perspective and have seen a certain amount of reps in life so it kind of goes both ways those people knew to do a better job of understanding the holistic Asian pie because they're from a narrow slice but obviously people from like the other less privileged slices of the Asian pie maybe we got to do a better job of being proactive and not only reactive All right everybody we're going to end it right there please let us know in the comments down below what you think about all this is there even a good argument to make about Asians being beneficiaries of whiteness I just don't think she made the arguments here these were not good arguments but let me know in the comments down below obviously and also let us know the conversation of like what are some things like let's brainstorm some ideas of like how successful Asians and particularly obviously successful Asians can help other people you know I'm not saying that Asians don't got their things to work on too for sure it's not a perfect group of people like could be more caring yeah so let us know in the comments down below guys and of course you know the hot pot boys we are not afraid of these hard hitting topics no no no we want to talk about them want to put them out there because we think that there are helpful conversations but just a lot more helpful than whatever this article said all right everybody thank you so much for watching the hot pot boys and until next time we out peace