Caveat: no archive link and I'm not about to start paying the new Yorker to tell me how the world works, so might be missing context.
Hibino, I'm gonna guess, is Japanese.
The jokes don't seem like their punching down at Jose (the fictional Filipino). They seem to be saying; "no matter how hard Jose seems to work, nobody is ever impressed because they assume he's either getting handouts or his job is easy".
My take, like the parent comment, is that this is a joke on the admissions office, and the systemic racism in such institutions - not at the expense of Asians (esp. since the one sending the joke was Asian to begin with).
My take, like the parent comment, is that this is a joke on the admissions office, and the systemic racism in such institutions - not at the expense of Asians (esp. since the one sending the joke was Asian to begin with).
If the Dean of Admissions and a government official with detailed knowledge of Harvard’s admissions process both privately believe that Harvard illegally discriminates on the basis of race, that seems extremely probative in a trial on that exact issue.
Oh, for sure. I will be the last person on earth to come to the defense of an institution like this - I think that frequently, it's our social structures that are pathological before it's specific individuals.
People, on balance, are not all so racist, bigoted, short-sighted, greedy, selfish, etc. (with glaring outliers, ofc). Institutions are more often than not some, if not all, of these things. It's almost as if we encode the worst of ourselves in these social contracts and give them everlasting life.
As a sibling comment mentioned, it's also entirely possible for Hibino to be discriminatory himself. It just feels a little like there's not quite enough information to hang him specifically.
The email itself said "you're the only person who would understand this sort of humor" so it's important to look at this in context. The recipient of the email was asian himself.
Whether it can end careers? Sure people freely ignore context and socially burn people at the stake for much less. But IRL it's important to ask whether they were actually being racist with their satire. Which I personally think is a pretty thin argument.
The author was Japanese and the subject was Filipino. There's a lot of (racial? cultural?) animus there - it's a little like a yankee making fun of a white southerner. Among Asian people, Filipino and Japanese are often considered different races.
The Asian in the joke was practically superhuman, nothing was made at the "expense" of Asians. The joke was explicitly mocking Harvard's obvious discrimination against Asian applicants.
A similar parody letter based on stereotypes about black people will pretty much end their career, no matter the intent.