Letter: Asian Americans run smack into left-wing obsession with equity

The Asian American community has run smack into the left-wing obsession with equity, victimhood, and Critical Race Theory that sees every disparity between individuals or groups as a matter of racial privilege versus racial disadvantage. 

Subscribers to this paradigm cannot acknowledge that the academic success of Asian Americans relative to other groups might have to do with stable two-parent families, emphasis on education and hard work. 

To do so would require that they transcend the myopic racial privilege/racial disadvantage dichotomy and acknowledge that values, cultural mores, and individual effort inform both success and failure.   

It is entirely logical therefore that San Dieguito Union High School District Superintendent Cheryl James-Ward would claim that Asians do well in school relative to other groups because there has been “. . . an influx of Asians from China, and the people who are able to make that journey are wealthy.” 

And to be consistent with the liberal left paradigm, she had to find a rationale for the disparity between Asians’ academic performance and that of other groups that would eliminate personal merit on the part of the most successful and remove personal accountability on the part of the less successful.

Disparities in excellence and achievement must be attributed to disparities in privilege as opposed to disparities in values and application.  Attributing the disparity to Asians being “wealthy” was the reflexive, easy way out.

The acolytes of equity reject notions of individual responsibility and accountability.  The notion that we are responsible for who and what we become in life is anathema to them. 

Hence James-Ward’s simplistic, erroneous, almost instinctive assertion that Asians are more academically successful than other ethnic groups not because of their values and hard work, but simply because they are — purportedly — wealthy.   

William Espino

Carlsbad