You're bending over backwards to excuse what is quite clearly racial discrimination.
Discrimination against people born in mainland China is apparently fine because they're a security risk - perhaps they're suspected of disloyalty. Discrimination against people whose parents were born in China is apparently fine, because they might have family who could theoretically be taken hostage.
If you follow this logic, discrimination against anyone with familial relations in China is fine. That essentially means discrimination against all Chinese Americans is fine - but of course, this is completely kosher and not in any way racist.
This is the same logic used to justify the internment of Japanese Americans during WWII, to accuse Irish Americans of disloyalty (because of the Vatican), and the same argument used by antisemites to argue that Jewish Americans are disloyal (because of Israel).
> your parents could be British, Indian, American, Japanese, or whatever
But those aren't the ethnic groups being targeted in the US right now. If there were widespread paranoia about India, just as there now is about China, and if there were calls to discriminate against anyone with Indian relatives, then I would also be alarmed about that.
> just trying to stir up conflict using race as a cover.
Not in the slightest. I'm genuinely alarmed by how far attitudes in the US have changed since Trump came into office. Hostility towards and paranoia about China have reached levels I never would have imagined possible, and that is now putting Chinese Americans at risk in the US (not to mention the fact that it's increasing the likelihood of war between China and the US).
Just to give one example: the FBI has a major initiative that focuses on ethnic Chinese academics in the US. It was launched under Trump, but it continues under Biden. There have already been several disturbing cases, including that of Anming Hu,[1] a Canadian citizen born in China, who taught at the University of Tennessee. The FBI first tried to pressure him into spying on China, and after he refused, tried to investigate him for espionage, told his university he was a spy (leading to him being fired), and harassed him and his son for over a year. When the FBI found there was no evidence whatsoever that he was a spy, they charged him with whatever they could dig up - in this case, failure to disclose some minor honorarium. The guy's entire life has been turned upside down and he's been branded a spy in the public mind, all because some overambitious FBI agent wanted to find a Chinese spy and started trying to dig up dirt about the first Chinese academic he could find.
> You're bending over backwards to excuse what is quite clearly racial discrimination.
Blatantly false. I used actual logic to show how the other posters' points were not racism, and then challenged you to cite the exact words of their comments that were racism.
You failed to cite anything. You didn't use any logic whatsoever - you merely repeated the "it's racism" claim without any evidence at all.
Again, HN readers from the future: this is textbook "duck and weave" at work - don't respond to the other's points at all, just repeat your claims of racism like a broken record in hope that it'll stick after the tenth time.
You know who's bending over backward to try to make something that is factually not racism seem like racism? You.
> Discrimination against people born in mainland China is apparently fine because they're a security risk - perhaps they're suspected of disloyalty. Discrimination against people whose parents were born in China is apparently fine, because they might have family who could theoretically be taken hostage.
Yes - neither of those things are racism, because they are not. Discriminating. Based. On. Race. Why is this so difficult to understand?
> If you follow this logic, discrimination against anyone with familial relations in China is fine.
Correct. Again, this is logical, because those people are a security risk, for reasons mentioned above, which you have completely and utterly failed to address.
> That essentially means discrimination against all Chinese Americans is fine - but of course, this is completely kosher and not in any way racist.
False. "Chinese American" has nothing to do with having family in China. You can be a Chinese-American with all of your family outside of China (and, against someone arguing in good faith, I wouldn't have to point out that there's a limit to this (e.g. at some point, you'll have fifth cousins who are in China), but you're clearly not acting in good faith, as evidenced by your refusal to actually use logic, and instead merely repeat "racism" over and over and over again), or you can have absolutely zero Chinese ethnicity and have all of your family in China.
Let me repeat again: whether your family is in China or not has nothing to do with race.
Moreover, as further evidence of your bad faith - your sarcastic "but of course, this is completely kosher and not in any way racist." is clearly meant to imply that it's actually racist, but again, like every single comment you make, you fail to provide any evidence or logic whatsoever.
> This is the same logic used to justify the internment of Japanese Americans during WWII, to accuse Irish Americans of disloyalty (because of the Vatican), and the same argument used by antisemites to argue that Jewish Americans are disloyal (because of Israel).
I shouldn't have to explain that that's in invalid use of logic, but because you're not capable of seeing that: it's an invalid use of logic. There are two arguments that could be made: (1) people with family in Japan are security risks (which is valid) and (2) ethnic Japanese are security risks (which are invalid).
Point (1) is valid, but doesn't have anything to do with racism. Point (2) is invalid, and also not the thing that the parent posters were arguing. This sentence has nothing to do with the parent posters' points - you literally just brought it up to try to make it seem like they were being racist by association/similarity.
> But those aren't the ethnic groups being targeted in the US right now.
That's completely irrelevant. Racism is racism, regardless of who's being "targeted" - and non-racism is non-racism, regardless if you think a group is being "targeted".
> Not in the slightest.
If you were serious ("genuinely alarmed"), you would use logic, you would be able to cite the parts of the other commenters' posts that were actually racist, and when you failed to do that, you would have realized that you were incorrect, and stopped trying to pull allegations out of thin air. You've done none of those three things.
> That's where this kind of thinking leads to.
No, that's where thinking from confused and illogical minds that are unable to separate racism from security risks leads to.
Your entire argument has been "it sounds kind of racist, therefore it is." As far as I can tell, you haven't made a single sound argument in this entire thread. You are inciting - driven by emotion and fear and rage, instead of actually using your mind to think carefully and inquisitively. HN is not meant for this kind of illogical blathering.
That's not a valid reason to not use it. Why? Because, just like there are some really malicious people who will call anything they see "racism" without there actually being racism, there are also really malicious people who will be racist for any reason at all, without even needing some cover like "national security".
Racism is already illegal, and some people are going to be racist without a good excuse anyway, and given the massive amount of IP theft coming from the CCP (and Chinese nationals), and the coercion campaigns that we've already seen happen (Operation Foxhunt and the Canadian "prisoner swap" being the two biggest) - there's a really strong argument for taking the measures described above.
Now, provided that you don't call "wolf" like the GP poster - you should look at what our leaders are doing, and call them out if they're doing something wrong. But maybe figure out what that looks like, first...
Discrimination against people born in mainland China is apparently fine because they're a security risk - perhaps they're suspected of disloyalty. Discrimination against people whose parents were born in China is apparently fine, because they might have family who could theoretically be taken hostage.
If you follow this logic, discrimination against anyone with familial relations in China is fine. That essentially means discrimination against all Chinese Americans is fine - but of course, this is completely kosher and not in any way racist.
This is the same logic used to justify the internment of Japanese Americans during WWII, to accuse Irish Americans of disloyalty (because of the Vatican), and the same argument used by antisemites to argue that Jewish Americans are disloyal (because of Israel).
> your parents could be British, Indian, American, Japanese, or whatever
But those aren't the ethnic groups being targeted in the US right now. If there were widespread paranoia about India, just as there now is about China, and if there were calls to discriminate against anyone with Indian relatives, then I would also be alarmed about that.
> just trying to stir up conflict using race as a cover.
Not in the slightest. I'm genuinely alarmed by how far attitudes in the US have changed since Trump came into office. Hostility towards and paranoia about China have reached levels I never would have imagined possible, and that is now putting Chinese Americans at risk in the US (not to mention the fact that it's increasing the likelihood of war between China and the US).
Just to give one example: the FBI has a major initiative that focuses on ethnic Chinese academics in the US. It was launched under Trump, but it continues under Biden. There have already been several disturbing cases, including that of Anming Hu,[1] a Canadian citizen born in China, who taught at the University of Tennessee. The FBI first tried to pressure him into spying on China, and after he refused, tried to investigate him for espionage, told his university he was a spy (leading to him being fired), and harassed him and his son for over a year. When the FBI found there was no evidence whatsoever that he was a spy, they charged him with whatever they could dig up - in this case, failure to disclose some minor honorarium. The guy's entire life has been turned upside down and he's been branded a spy in the public mind, all because some overambitious FBI agent wanted to find a Chinese spy and started trying to dig up dirt about the first Chinese academic he could find.
That's where this kind of thinking leads to.
1. https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/06/27/1027350/anming-h...