The "status quo" is racial discrimination, which the person who said that is presumably subject to. The idea is that the word lists make people feel like they're helping, when those people aren't actually doing anything to fix actual problems and actually keep the system going.

I see lists like https://s.wsj.net/public/resources/documents/stanfordlanguag... as ridiculous.

Tarball? “abusive relationship”? “war room”?

This is way beyond the obvious racial discrimination and micro agressions.

What are my kids going to deal with when they get into Uni?

If it meant breaking the status quo on more meaningful quality of life metrics, like being able to get better jobs or better mortgages, I'm not sure the answer is so obvious.

It doesn’t.

The NY Times put a moratorium on anti-Asian aggression by Black Americans during the early days of COVID.

Yet they made an exception for a White on Asian, but all that did was mask the actual problem in society.

Growing up as an immigrant, the racism in non-White American circles is also very real but never spoken of.

Consequences of punching down may be different than punching up. Even if the ideal is no one throwing punches.

Would you care to elaborate on what you mean here?

Whites are a majority. So aggression from them toward a minority like Asians would be "punching down".

Immigrants are typically a minority, so if they were discriminating or being aggressive towards the majority then it'd be considered "punching up".

So what about black american on immigrant discrimination?

Regular punching I suppose. Regardless all punching is bad. It's just that there is some nuance in how it's dealt with. Much like big kids punching much smaller kids (and vice versa) on the playground.

This reduces to making discrimination and prejudice acceptable for certain groups.

A better analogy would be the smaller kid finding yet another, even smaller kid to beat down.

Then avoiding any mention of the smaller bully, because they were being bullied by someone larger. Nothing positive or nuanced about this position.

I think its because its much more likely that the friend is a reluctant beneficiary of signaling, not part of the powers that be

his point is that such signaling is annoying on its face (it’s smarmy and patronizing) and also annoying because it doesn’t benefit him: especially compared to, say, competitive job offers, recruitment efforts at HBCs, etc. Actions that aren’t primarily focused on “showing”, but are concerned more with “doing”.

HBCUs

yes, agreed