Is it Too Soon to Stop Punishing 17 Year-Old Asian Kids for Slavery?
They shouldn't have done it, but when have they been punished enough?
Slavery is America's original sin. It was a crime of unthinkable brutality, a moral abomination whose effects are still being felt. Sometimes, when I see a person of Asian descent in the 16-to-18 age range, I’m tempted to ask: “Why did you do it?”
Politeness precludes that sort of question, but I’m sure we can all agree: Some sort of punishment is in order. We need corrective measures to remedy the centuries-long system of oppression that these kids perpetuated since their birth during the second George W. Bush administration. That's why Harvard developed a race-based discrimination system that many felt was a just sanction for Asian children’s myriad crimes. The Supreme Court just declared that system illegal. And that forces me to wonder: Should we craft new penalties to check the privilege of, say, the neighborhood kid who watches my cat when I’m gone? Because he’s really had an attitude since his dad got of out jail in Myanmar.
We, as a society, must improve the prospects of the victims of slavery and Jim Crow. And we all know who those victims are: White kids with one Hispanic grandparent. We must move mountains to ensure that white kids with one Hispanic grandparent have preferred access to this country’s elite institutions. The same goes for Andover-educated children of professional-class Nigerians who emigrated in 1998 and kids whose parents are from, like, Lebanon, and everyone’s too polite to ask “Aren’t you…white?” Those people must have special consideration that takes their disadvantage into account.