I read it that way too, even if he didn't explicitly say it. Probably because Takei is known to be very vocally anti-Republican or anti-right or pro-left or pro-liberal, not sure of the exact dynamic there. But the comment also said Takei is "liberal" and knows what it's like if "that kind of people" regain power.
To me, it's clearly an anti-Republic or anti-conservative jab, implying that "those people" shouldn't be allowed to regain power, else some poor minority will get put into camps. Using the argument that if Takei says so, it's because he's lived through it, so we should listen to him. Ofc, not to detract from what he went through, it's horrible.
Takei is so silly for not knowing which political party was in power during WWII. Thank God the internet exists to hold him to account for those crazy positions of his, which he so clearly holds that he doesn't even need to say them.
It's not a jab, rather the plain reality of the contemporary political landscape.
Speaking as a non-partisan libertarian - it is a fact that the contemporary Republican party has openly embraced white nationalism. Racism is a type of collectivism, which is attractive precisely because it's a lazy un-nuanced explanation for one's woes. The Republican platform used to have mainstream politicians that kept those urges in check, and while perhaps pundits courted those urges with dog whistles and the like on talk radio, they could still be said to have distance from the mainstream party. But part of Trump's "edginess" was openly saying what "couldn't be said", and so the dam holding it back has burst. This certainly does not mean that all Republicans are white nationalists, nor does it imply that Republicans with power will automatically enact white nationalist policies. But open white nationalism does now form a significant part of the mainstream Republican party.
Now since I must include an analogous analysis of the other political sports team, lest some partisan respond with "no that's not true and even if it is the other party is the same or worse" - It is certainly true that there is a large contingent of the democratic party that has openly embraced minority-favoring racism, and that is a terrible thing as well! But for the most part that discourse revolves around inclusionary racism (disadvantaged group #643 needs help) rather than exclusionary racism. We've seen the catastrophic results of exclusionary racism enough times to know where it leads, but it's much harder to know where inclusionary racism leads (apart from stoking more racism in general, these political teams are in ying-yang). Presently, the concrete results seem to be bureaucracy, language policing, and a new proto-religion to repeated if one occupies a politically sensitive position (and it's not clear how this could continue to snowball into society-wide exclusionary racism). These things are certainly not great dynamics, but they're a far cry from bottom-up lynchings and top-down concentration camps.
> It has very little to do with political parties directly, unfortunately those sorts of people tend to fall pretty cleanly into one in particular, at least in the US
FDR was a democrat. Jim Crow laws were put in place by democrats. Democrats filibustered against the civil rights act. Clinton was responsible for mass incarceration which primarily affected minorities. We’re currently witnessing the systemic destruction of minority communities in democrat run cities. It’s odd that Takei thinks that the liberals will do anything but exploit minority groups when in positions of power.
> President Lyndon B. Johnson, although a southern Democrat himself, signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965. The evening after signing the Civil Rights Act, Johnson told aide Bill Moyers, "I think we may have lost the south for your lifetime – and mine", anticipating a coming backlash from Southern Whites against Johnson's Democratic Party.[5]
Southern Democrats of 1850s through 1960s were the racist southerners, historically aligned with the Confederacy.
After the Democrats signed the Civil Rights act of 1964, the racists got out of the Democrat's party, and started to align themselves to Republicans. By the 1990s, it has become obvious that Republicans were actively courting this large group and drawing upon them for political power.
In the most recent election, assholes were targeting Chinese, Korean, and Japanese shops in my area with Graffiti, breaking windows, and effectively blaming the Asian community for COVID19. These racists absolutely exist and continue to function today. And its somewhat horrifying to me to see the Republicans actively courting them to pad out their votes and increase their political power. Furthermore, the mainstream Republicans turn a blind eye to it and try to pretend that this crap isn't happening.
That being said, I recognize that anti-Asian hate, while it exists, is kinda minor compared to other ethnic groups. But even in my day to day life today, I'm seeing the racists (and literally those racists shake their anti-Asian signposts at me. Because I'm Asian)
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> It’s odd that Takei thinks that the liberals will do anything but exploit minority groups when in positions of power.
Did you even see the anti-Chinese hateboner of 2020? It wasn't the Democrats.
I'm not even Chinese. But you know, people can't tell that so I kinda-sorta get wrapped up in it. I'm glad that it seems to have died down a bit (at least, in my area of the country), but I'm still surprised at how quickly anti-Chinese hate turned into anti-Asian hate and a problem for everybody.
> After the Democrats signed the Civil Rights act of 1964, the racists got out of the Democrat's party, and started to align themselves to Republicans.
Note that this was the last of several splits between the White supremacists and the Democratic establishment; why this one stuck but others didn’t is that, unlike with, say, the Dixiecrat split in the 1940s, the Republicans actively courted and shaped their message to appeal to the disaffected racists after the 1964 Civil Rights Act. In previous splits, the racists who wanted any influence had always coming slinking back to the Democrats because of structural duopoly and the fact that the Republicans were not welcoming to them. In the 1960s, that changed.
One politician flipped an entire party’s platform? What about the 20 democrat senators who voted against the act and stuck with the party?
A campaign of FUD regarding states rights (the basis of democrats own secessionist arguments) and conservative policies and blindness to continuing racist liberal policies is more likely (including the current president).
To be fair, no one caught the perpetrator who did the anti-Asian attacks in my area. But given the nature of the crime, it was obviously anti-Asian hate.
So now the question is: which party has more anti-Asian hate?
What I can say, is that about the same time, my sister who is a doctor was getting chewed out by her patients who wouldn't believe they had COVID19, they didn't want the "Chinese Doctor" (let alone a "Clinton supporting woman"), and were demanding to get useless ivermectin to treat their symptoms. Because "obviously" my sister being a female doctor proves she's a Clinton supporter or some bullshit like that.
Over, and over again. The anti-chinese hate (and again, we aren't Chinese. But bigots are blind to these issues...) was from people who were prouding proclaiming themselves to be Republican.
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I'm well aware of the anti-Asian hate of the African American community in the 90s too. Back then I will tell you that it was Black people who looked down upon Asians (and I understand the population dynamics associated with the LA Race riots). But 2020 is a different time.
This is absolutely, a right-wing thought process. They blamed China for COVID19 (and Asians who kinda-look Chinese to them, got wrapped up in it). Add on a bit of anti-Clinton misogynists and yeah. Its a pretty obvious which side of the political aisle was causing me, and my family, issues.
And again, I get it. Its not that "All Republicans" do this. But what I'm trying to point out that by ignoring these obvious truths and obvious realities of just 2 or 3 years ago, you're enabling these assholes to be racist again. So its important for me to talk out about it, and its important for the non-Racist Republicans to be aware that these things happened. And that you need to clamp down on the racists in your party.
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And the anti-Chinese protester who was yelling at me to go back to China and leave this country (and again, I'm not Chinese so this is completely insane... but whatever). Okay, I dunno which party he was part of, but I'm _guessing_ he was Republican. Sound like a safe bet?
> These bigots never disappeared. They just are being courted by the Right / Republicans today.
Normally, I’d respond to this with something addressing the chain of events starting with the signing of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and subsequent electoral strategy, but just to mix things up I'll go simple:
This is the reason that when you see rallies of overt racists, or people storming a government building waving confederate flags, or people arguing about, how, akshully, slavery in America was good for the slaves and their descendants should be thankful rather than resentful of it, in the 21st century, they aren’t backers of the Democratic Party.
> It is important history--which is why you shouldn't use it to attack your political opponents by drawing false equivalences, as you just did.
Can you be precise in stating exactly how you believe I did this? My point was simply that Takei has strong views for a reason worth respecting.
> As a brown guy, I certainly didn't feel safer in 2015-2016 when folks tried to turn Trump's ban on refugees from certain countries designated by Obama into a conversation about internment of Muslim Americans.
This is a bit vague, too, since Trump wasn’t in office in 2015 or 2016. Are you referring to the way some of his people cited the internment camps as positive precedents? The problem there certainly doesn’t seem to be the people who believe Japanese internment was wrong.
> Also, I'm skeptical that Americans are even equipped to teach this history in context. Imagine if the shoe had been on the other foot. Japan had a large population of Americans, and America had just launched a surprise attack on Japan. What would imperial Japan have done to those Americans within their borders?
Can you expand this idea? I’m failing to see why that matters in the sense that throughout my life it’s seemed pretty broadly accepted in both parties that we should be freer than WWII-era Japan and Germany.
> As a brown guy, I certainly didn't feel safer in 2015-2016 when folks tried to turn Trump's ban on refugees from certain countries designated by Obama into a conversation about internment of Muslim Americans.
As another "brown guy", I'm absolutely comfortable with this necessary conversation happening. Especially since Trump immediately ramped up forced internment of legal immigrants, some of which we later discovered amounted to literal ethnic cleansing via forced sterilization practices.
The thing that makes me feel unsafe is the fact that this stuff is happening, and has been happening for years, and that by and large people don't talk about and instead ignore it, not the fact that people very occasionally try to use relevant history to shine a light on the shadows under which we still live.
> Also, I'm skeptical that Americans are even equipped to teach this history in context. Imagine if the shoe had been on the other foot. Japan had a large population of Americans, and America had just launched a surprise attack on Japan. What would imperial Japan have done to those Americans within their borders?
This is a really disingenuous presentation of what actually happened, so yes, I agree that you are probably not equipped to teach this history in context, but that doesn't mean everyone is.
What do you mean people don't talk about it? I may be misunderstanding what you mean by "it" specifically, but if you're referring to some sort of targeting of ethnic/religious/racial groups, then it most certainly is being talked about. A lot even, even to the point of many groups pushing back against it because they think it's unwarranted.
"Trump immediately ramped up forced internment of legal immigrants, some of which we later discovered amounted to literal ethnic cleansing via forced sterilization practices."
> Tuesday's report said investigators did not corroborate "allegations of mass hysterectomies." But investigators said they did find "serious issues" regarding medical procedures and policies at the Georgia facility and the conduct of Mahendra Amin, a doctor whom Irwin County detainees accused in 2020 of performing questionable medical procedures, including, in some cases, without the patients' full consent.
White guy immigrant in a "brown" African country here - Politicians doing anything for votes by stoking subtle hate, jealousy and in-group preferences in a voting population don't make a distinction when it comes to skin color, nationality of origin, religion, immigration status or wealth. Those are just convenient tools in their arsenal of divisiveness.
> You're much more likely to encounter someone with an Indian accent on Wall Street or in Silicon Valley than someone with an Appalachian accent.
Yes, because one of those groups is two orders of magnitude larger than the other in number and can't make it to Wall Street or Silicon Valley without a visa that is incredibly expensive to get and explicitly filters for the trifecta of wealth, income, and formal education. That doesn't invalidate racism against against them; it just means that you're not comparing apples to apples.
This is an incredibly disingenuous set of arguments you're trying to make, and you've been called out for it many times before - it's classic flamewar bait, which is against the site rules.
> Literally the very first sentence of the link you cited contradicts what you're saying
> With heavy immigration fueled by U.S. immigration law changes in 1965 and the influx of over 700.000 Indochinese refugees since the Vietnam War ended
Do you think those “Indochinese refugees” were affluent educated professionals?
The 1965 Act actually caused a decrease in the percentage of Asians working in high skill jobs: https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2018/07/12/income-... (“The surge in Asian immigration followed the Immigration and Nationality Act in 1965, which favored family reunification, and the end to the war in Vietnam in 1975, which brought in a wave of refugees. One result was that the share of new Asian immigrants working in high-skill occupations decreased from 1970 to 1990, and the share working in low-skill occupations increased.”). It wasn’t until the 1990 H1B changes that this trend reversed.
But these low Asian groups nonetheless did well. In the 1970s, Vietnamese Americans had a poverty rate higher than black Americans. Today, they have a lower poverty rate and higher median income than white Americans.
And even the skilled immigrants during that period didn’t come here with portable “wealth, income, and formal education” as stated above. The class people you’re thinking of—the children of wealthy business people in India and China who send their kids to go to school in America—was virtually non-existent in the 1960s through the 1980. That class is a product of India and China’s exponential growth since the 1990s. Being wealthy before that meant being like my mom’s family in Bangladesh—having land and social status, neither of which was very portable to America.
> I don't know why you are doing this but you're not contributing positively to the site.
Why are you so invested in the myth that Asian Americans are successful in the US primarily because of selective immigration? Why do you want to erase the—well documented—experience of all the Asians who came to the US as refugees or based on family reunification and went from poverty to being middle class or affluent?
Have you ever looked at stats re the Hmong American demographic?
I’m intimately aware of yellow privilege in police stops but would love to see the data on poor Asians being nearly three times more likely to escape poverty than poor whites round these parts.
I don’t think white racists can tell the difference between Hmong and Vietnamese, who have quickly matched other Americans income-wise despite being one of the highest poverty groups in the 1980 census: https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/vietnamese-immigrant....
Re: income mobility: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/3/21/17139300/e... (“Among children who grew up in the bottom fifth of the distribution, 10.6 percent of whites make it into the top fifth of household incomes themselves, as do 25.5 percent of Asian-Americans.”)
