Interesting interview. But Bari, why do you use rhetoric like "we must fight China"? Let's focus on our own problems instead of creating a boogeyman out of 1+ billion people.
Interesting interview. But Bari, why do you use rhetoric like "we must fight China"? Let's focus on our own problems instead of creating a boogeyman out of 1+ billion people.
Right, we constantly demonize the Chinese and accuse them of cheating and stealing and spying. Meanwhile we have an education system in this country that's completely failed to educate its Black and Hispanic students. Our neoliberal pundits love advocating for elite immigration from places like South Korea, China, or India, while remaining almost completely silent on America's shameful inability to educate its non-Asian minority population. It's almost like we use elite immigration as a means of masking our domestic failings, while at the same time bashing the countries where those immigrants come from.
Census data from a few years back suggests that the percentage of the under 15 population has already become less than half white. Progressives are constantly reminding us that Americans have a bright and diverse future ahead of us and that the country will become majority Black and Hispanic by the 2040s. Yet almost no one seems concerned that our failure to educate our Black and Hispanic students to the same levels as their white and Asian counterparts portends badly for our future ability to compete against China, particularly given that we seem hellbent on decoupling from China and presumably elite Chinese immigration altogether. The relative deficit of Black and Hispanic students is also an integral factor behind our present-day culture of insane anti-meritocratic wokeness.
One of my favorite heterodox thinkers is the economist Glenn Loury. He frequently refers to the enemy within when he discusses how Black Americans should focus less on historical and structural factors and more on introspection and self-improvement as a means of uplifting the masses of the African American community. As Americans I feel like we should engage in similar self-introspection and also grapple with the enemy within. Our internal problems are manifold and the constant demonization of China is just a lazy way of us avoiding having to do the hard work.
I'm far less convinced that we have to rise up and fight China than I am that we have to find a way to course correct and address our various social maladies. If we fail to do the latter, then I worry that America truly will end up relegated to the ranks of the second class in the decades to come.
Interesting interview. But Bari, why do you use rhetoric like "we must fight China"? Let's focus on our own problems instead of creating a boogeyman out of 1+ billion people.
Right, we constantly demonize the Chinese and accuse them of cheating and stealing and spying. Meanwhile we have an education system in this country that's completely failed to educate its Black and Hispanic students. Our neoliberal pundits love advocating for elite immigration from places like South Korea, China, or India, while remaining almost completely silent on America's shameful inability to educate its non-Asian minority population. It's almost like we use elite immigration as a means of masking our domestic failings, while at the same time bashing the countries where those immigrants come from.
Census data from a few years back suggests that the percentage of the under 15 population has already become less than half white. Progressives are constantly reminding us that Americans have a bright and diverse future ahead of us and that the country will become majority Black and Hispanic by the 2040s. Yet almost no one seems concerned that our failure to educate our Black and Hispanic students to the same levels as their white and Asian counterparts portends badly for our future ability to compete against China, particularly given that we seem hellbent on decoupling from China and presumably elite Chinese immigration altogether. The relative deficit of Black and Hispanic students is also an integral factor behind our present-day culture of insane anti-meritocratic wokeness.
One of my favorite heterodox thinkers is the economist Glenn Loury. He frequently refers to the enemy within when he discusses how Black Americans should focus less on historical and structural factors and more on introspection and self-improvement as a means of uplifting the masses of the African American community. As Americans I feel like we should engage in similar self-introspection and also grapple with the enemy within. Our internal problems are manifold and the constant demonization of China is just a lazy way of us avoiding having to do the hard work.
I'm far less convinced that we have to rise up and fight China than I am that we have to find a way to course correct and address our various social maladies. If we fail to do the latter, then I worry that America truly will end up relegated to the ranks of the second class in the decades to come.