Have you noticed a lack of sympathy for Asians from other minorities?

The idea that “non white” minorities are competing among themselves to be the whitest is absurd. The lack of sympathy you haven’t noticed would, if it existed, be absurd too but racism isn’t based on reasoning.

I’ve heard claims, decades ago, by some white people, that there were resentments between Asian and African-American people, but I have not directly observed much of that myself, except that in general non-white people do sometimes also make over-general statements about ethnic groups that are tied up with nasty US race relations…

What I might say is that it seems to me that pretty much everyone in the US would like to be treated with respect and dignity as an equal human and not stigmatized by their ethnicity, gender, skin color or sexual orientation, or class, age, etc. And since our culture still fails to do that very well except for adult straight non-impoverished white males, there’s some resentment and jealousy that can come up around that. And part of the way we often fail with that, is to make over-general statements about how other groups behave.

And this question is about a supposed over-generalized example of that.

I have heard non-white people talking about race relations in the US and other ethnicities, and some of those people falling into some weird ideas and making over-broad generalizations about ethnic groups, but It all seems like a huge mess to me and every person has their own set of ideas, none of which I would myself choose to reduce to generalizations about what one ethnicity tends to think about another ethnicity.

That is, the question has me thinking about it more abstractly, that there’s a general behavior of “Blue people tend to act like this”, and this question is in the form “Have you noticed Blue people tend to do X toward Green people?” but the question is doing Y toward other-colored people, and the whole form of thinking is something I’m cautious about engaging in as truth.

I think the generalization part is being a bit over-emphasized. I’m not asking “is this how minorities behave?” I’m really asking “have you noticed this happening at all?” The answer to the latter question for me would be yes, I’ve noticed it, directly from a friend I’ve discussed it with and in other cases read about. It’s a perspective that I’m not really understanding, that’s why I wanted to ask about it. But if you haven’t come across it, you haven’t come across it.

I also would be interested in hearing from any Asian American users here.

Yes, it’s all over social media, like Asian tiktokkers getting called out for posting the ‘Stop Asian Hate’ were told they never posted BLM or anything so they’re getting pushback.

PS Remember some of the users here are older, myself included, they may not see it in the places we do.

@KNOWITALL That is exactly the kind of thing I was talking about, yes. The person I was talking to (who is black) said he did not perceive much support for BLM from the Asian community at the time, so he has trouble sympathizing with Asians now.

@Desmosthenes I will say that some Asians also have some prejudices. One friend said lighter skin is a better class, that Laos and Thai were grossly dark. I was shocked! So I can’t imagine all races are treated equally, like anywhere else.

Also, Asians do seem more insular in our communities, with little interracial marriages, group events, group sports, etc… So that could also be perceived as uncaring or unsupportive of others. For my friends, many just didn’t come with great English so as they learned, they got more confidence speaking up.

@KNOWITALL People with dark skins are considered inferior in China because they are usually outdoor manual workers or farmers. It is a class distinction not a racial distinction, not that that justifies it.

@flutherother Makes sense.