It was a thought I had in the past as a young Asian American person, that maybe other people didn't stand up for Asian people in America because we didn't really stand up for each other. Something I observed in other groups like African Americans and Hispanic Americans was that they generally will back each other up and give their group support without questioning it, because it's intuitively the right thing to do. Us vs them. On the other hand, Asians can be pretty divided amongst each other. Some even hate each other. A number of them hate themselves. The unity isn't there. So when someone like you would see another Asian person being systemically discriminated against, you wouldn't go to bat for that person. You'd tell him that they're unempathetic and that he should think about people who are worse off than him. And I can't help but think back over my life being online, at school, observing other people, other Asians, and realizing how often this was the case. I was even guilty of thinking like this in the past. Because I'm such an individual and I don't think tribally unlike those other minorities! I thought. And now I realize that wasn't really a good way to think. Because while other groups got together and fought for their rights in American society, us Asians were left behind. We left each other behind by not going to bat for the little guys in our group. We didn't want to cause trouble or bring negative attention to ourselves. That's how we were raised. And that's how we'll die.
If you don't grow up in an asian community or have a lot of asians at your work place, you wouldn't even have an opportunity to form a community, let alone start thinking that you need to prioritize the needs of that community.
The mental calculus to shift to a community-first mindset might be analogous to forming/joining a union. You give up some of your own individual upside to get better benefits together as a group. You'll certainly better improve the "floor" of the group, but harder to tell if doing so ends up improving or lowering the "average" of the whole group.
What happens if you're a rich Black or Latino kid in America? You Get Two advantages! You get to be raised in a wealthy family and you need to accomplish much less than other kids to be admitted to the same prestigious universities.
Trying to fight inequality from birth with racism is not the right approach.
Is it fair to be born into a racial group thats 50% or 25% less likely to earn a degree?[2] Perhaps taking a person's circumstances into consideration, while narrowly and individually unfair, is actually fairer in a broader sense. That goes for race, socio-economic status, and whatever else impairs your opportunities.
It's just disappointing to see the victimization being thrown around here, especially in contrast to the groups being vilified. The sad truth is that a sense of empathy and being able to see the bigger picture will get you a lot farther in life than the words on your diploma.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ethnic_groups_in_the_U... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_attainment_in_the_...