Woke Feelings Are More Important Than 900 Children

The offending tiles (Palo Alto Online)

Summer camp for 900 kids was cancelled because staffers quit over two tile swastikas that are at least 109 years old. [bold added]

the resignations are linked to three tiles built into the home of the farm’s founders in 1929. Two of the tiles include a stylized version of a swastika. The 12-inch by 12-inch tiles, the letter said, were bought by Frank and Josephine Duveneck while traveling through Asia on their honeymoon in 1913.

According to the letter, the tiles bear Buddhist swastikas and a lotus and are embedded into the wall of the historic Duveneck house on the property. The swastika, believed to be more than 7,000 years old, was a sacred symbol in Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and Odinism long before it was adopted as an emblem for the Nazis in 1920, according to the Holocaust Encyclopedia.

It's easy to take shots at the young staffers, who prioritize their feelings over the welfare of hundreds of children. This woke generation doesn't bother to look outside its bubble at other cultures or even try to understand historical contexts, accusations by the way which they freely level at the so-called dominant white culture.

We'll just close by looking at the couple who built Hidden Villa.

Born into Boston aristocracy, both Josephine Whitney and Frank Duveneck came to California to escape their "overbearing families." They bought a thousand acres ("Hidden Villa") in what is now Los Altos Hills and finished their house in 1930.

From the beginning of the Great Depression the Duvenecks opened Hidden Villa to minorities and the disadvantaged:

Hidden Villa became a center for social, educational, environmental, and humanitarian activities. It summer it was a youth camp, to which the Duvenecks brought minority and disadvantaged children, and minority counselors, which given the mostly white demographics of the San Francisco Peninsula, was particularly unusual and innovative.

It had the first youth hostel on the Pacific Slope. World War II refugees and Japanese-American victims of the World War II "relocation" - internment - were released to Hidden Villa. Gatherings included church outings, interracial parties, and fundraisings. Minority groups were welcome. The hostel accommodated a Moslem group which met to instruct children in Moslem faith and rituals. Native Americans met for dancing and feasts.

In the late 1950's Hidden Villa Camp was incorporated as a non-profit. Hidden Villa charged fees, but they were reasonable, although the Duvenecks generally paid the taxes, utilities, maintenance, and capital improvement costs.

The Duvenecks would undoubtedly weep if they knew that the Buddhist tile that symbolized the importance of Asian culture to them would cause such upset in the lives of hundreds of children this summer.

The Revolution Eats Its Own

SF School Board VP Alison Collins (Chron photo)

Viewing everything through the lens of race eventually pits non-white groups against each other.

Note: European history teaches how revolutionaries become ever-more extreme, end up killing each other, and inflict greater cruelties on the general population than the regimes they overthrew. The internecine battles of the Girondist vs. Jacobins and the Mensheviks vs. Bolsheviks in the French and Russian Revolutions, respectively, come to mind. I wonder how modern wokes plan to avoid these precedents or whether they even studied them in school.

Speaking of school, SF School Board Vice-President Alison Collins has been called out for her racist tweets against Asian-Americans in 2016:

In the tweets posted in 2016, Collins said Asian Americans had used “white supremacist thinking to assimilate and ‘get ahead.’”

“Where are the vocal Asians speaking up against Trump? Don’t Asian Americans know they’re on his list as well?” Collins had tweeted. Using asterisks in references to the racial epithet, Collins continued, “Do they think they won’t be deported? profiled? beaten? Being a house n****r is still being a n****r. You’re still considered ‘the help.’”

Collins, who is Black, said she wanted to again express her “sincere and heartfelt apologies,” although she didn’t specify further. In a previous statement Saturday, she apologized for the hurt caused by the tweets, which Lam called a “non-apology.”

For the record your humble blogger thinks that Alison Collins should not be removed from her job for tweets made before she was on the school board. And if she still believes that Asian-Americans should stop studying hard, she should say so and not cave to the outrage. If they want to remove her, let them do so by legal means and not bully her into resigning.

Alison Collins is one of the Board members who thinks Lincoln was too racist to name a school after him, so I gotta admit, it's kinda fun watching her squirm.

Do Not Attribute the Sins of Individuals to the Group

The 32 killed by Seung-Hui Cho in 2007; at least 27 (84%) were non-Asian. Was he racist?

Seung-Hui Cho will never be forgotten by the families of his victims, yet few in the general public remember his name 14 years after he killed 32 people, then himself, on the Virginia Tech campus.

Asian-Americans universally deplored the massacre, and some feared that they would suffer reprisals from other Americans. The story of Seung-Hui Cho was swept up in the anti-gun-violence crusade of the period, and no sweeping generalizations were made about Asian hatred and violence toward non-Asians.

Asian activists, however, do not hesitate to call the white gunman who killed eight people, six of them Asian-American women, in Atlanta on March 16th an exemplar of white culture. [bold added]

“This mass shooter was targeting Asian women and their businesses. This isn’t an isolated incident. There have been 500+ hate crimes targeted at Asian people this year alone,” social media specialist Mark Kim wrote on Twitter. “This Atlanta tragedy lies at an intersection of race, gender, class and the legacy of America’s history of colonization and violence in Asia,” journalist Elise Hu said on the site. “I don’t have the words. I’m just despondent. Protect Asian women, solidarity with sex workers, #StopAsianHate.”

So far the killer has claimed that his motivations stemmed only from hatred of sex workers. It's still possible that race was a factor, though even if it were, to assume that millions of white Americans hold the same beliefs is a gross generalization not supported by concrete evidence. Besides, if the society were so biased, how could Asian-Americans have succeeded in great numbers in the culture that activists decry?

America aspires to judge people by their individual words and deeds (obviously not always successfully), and not judge members of groups that wayward individuals share some characteristics with.

Asian-Americans should be grateful that the sins of Seung-Hui Cho were not attributed to them, and they should grant the same consideration to others who have nothing in common with the Atlanta gunman but their race.

Federal Government: Average Would be a Great Improvement

4 months to process, lucky
I'm not going anywhere

In the coronavirus era everyone must allow extra time to get anything done, which is especially true if one has to deal with the U.S. Government.

One prominent example: taxpayers have been granted an extra three months to file their returns--and I am grateful for the extra time--but the IRS isn't held to a deadline, relaxed or not.

We mailed Mom's paper return in March and have not yet gotten her four-figure refund. (The IRS2Go app says the IRS has not even received her return.)

The passport check cleared on March 18th.

Also in March I sent in my passport renewal application. The renewal was straightforward---no new documents were required except for an updated photo--because the last passport was issued less than 15 years ago.

Today the new passport arrived, four months and three days later. Yes, the safety of employees is paramount, but somehow other public and private organizations are managing to operate safely, with only a moderate diminution in speed. For the Federal Government just being average would be a great improvement.

[Note - June 6, WSJ:

“If you mailed us something, especially in February, it’s gonna be a while,” said Chad Hooper, an IRS worker in Philadelphia and president of the Professional Managers Association, which represents the agency’s supervisors.

Stewardship Isn't Easy

'Tis the season for giving, but J.K. Rowling says, Don't Give Your Time or Money to Orphanages [bold added]

(Time photo)

[Western volunteers and donors] brought foreign money into the country and we do know that some orphanages are set up literally to exploit children. The children are the bait for foreign donations and a volunteer experience, and the money is going into the pockets of the people running the orphanages....

I suppose I would say there are three big things that people can do watching this.

The first is and I’m sure by now very obvious, don’t volunteer in orphanages. Don’t give your time to propping up a system that we know does real, serious harm.

And then there’s the financial aspect. If you have money to give when you are travelling, put it into local businesses because that helps communities. That’s something real you can do when travelling. Don’t go and visit orphanages.

If you want to support charities or projects, just do a bit of due diligence and make sure you’re dealing with the root causes here: look at poverty and building community services and so on.

The last thing I’d say, and what we would love to see as an organisation, is to see businesses amending their social responsibility policies. We’d love to see those corporate policies changed to make sure they’re not supporting so-called orphanages or child institutions. That is something hugely powerful that everyone can do.

Comments:
1) Westerners, and Americans especially, are suckers for good sob-stories, more so now that there are visuals. (By the way, me too.) Just use the same level of due-diligence that you would use for your investments.
2) Actually, more due-diligence because there is no SEC regulating charities. With U.S. non-profits there's some limited oversight by the IRS, but assume there's none with overseas organizations.
3) J.K. Rowling argues that capitalism is the best way to pull people out of poverty ("put it into local businesses"). Of course, identifying these local businesses can't be easy either.
4) Giving away one's wealth should require as much effort as earning and saving it, that is, if one cares about how the donations are used. Stewardship isn't easy.

The Ugly American 2.0

The cover I remember (Amazon)

One of the most influential political books in the 50's and 60's was the Ugly American: [bold added]

The authors were disillusioned with the style and substance of U.S. diplomatic efforts in Southeast Asia. They sought to demonstrate through their writings their belief that American officials and civilians could make a substantial difference in Southeast Asian politics if they were willing to learn local languages, follow local customs and employ regional military tactics.

In the book the "Ugly American" was actually a praiseworthy character who "got his hands dirty" working with the natives---it's cited as one of the influences on JFK to start the Peace Corps.

Subsequently the term came to mean the reverse of a good guy:

"Ugly American" is a term used to refer to perceptions of loud, arrogant, demeaning, thoughtless, ignorant, and ethnocentric behavior of American citizens mainly abroad, but also at home.

One of the standing jokes through the 1970's was about how American tourists expected everyone to speak English, and, if the natives didn't understand, the solution was to speak louder. Later, American arrogance became chastened by Vietnam, Watergate, the Arab oil embargo, and political turmoil. The Ugly American stereotype receded, or so everyone thought.

Today Ugly Americans have not only come back, the arrogance on display--and it's all over the Internet--is even greater. Getting others to learn English is no longer the goal, they want non-English speakers to change their own language. We noted this phenomenon last year:

One source of amusement is the translation of gender-neutral English into Romance languages, where gender is all-pervasive.

(Gif from NBC News)

An example of this trend is the use of the term Latinx to replace "Latino" and "Latina".

If you follow politics closely, chances are that you have encountered the word “Latinx” in recent years. From freshman congresswoman Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) to the DNC to left-wing outlet We Are Mitu, it has become a popular term among progressives who say it’s a more inclusive way to refer to people (like me) [writer Giancarlo Sopo] of Latin-American ancestry.

Another Spanish-speaking person responds:

Spanish is not a gender neutral language. There are feminine and masculine words because that is how it has been spoken and read for centuries.

Hispanics will not accept completely changing their language just to avoid possibly offending some Social Justice Warriors. In fact, what is truly offensive is non-Spanish speaking SJWs demanding to change and completely upend the language of Cervantes.

Spanish speakers are perfectly capable of defending their language against these latter-day imperialists.

I just hope that they understand that we're not all Ugly Americans v 2.0.

Mitsuwa Meandering

In the age of Amazon one way for retailers to survive is to specialize.

Mitsuwa Marketplace, a Japanese chain with outlets in California, Illinois, and New Jersey, is one such enterprise. Its prices on familiar brands are higher than other markets', but that fact is irrelevant; one goes there for the hard-to-find Japanese imports.

I like to wander the aisles looking at the signs written in Japlish. Yes, they're amusing but not in a ripe-for-mockery sense (after all, their English is miles better than my Japanese). Just try writing genuine Japlish, dear monolingual reader, you can't do it, much like good singers have a difficult time singing off-key.

Meanwhile....hope Christmas filling holidays merry cheer!

Go East, Young Man or Woman, Go East

The Economist - it's easier to become a billionaire in Asia than the USA:

The American dream of going from rags to riches appears more achievable in developing Asia than in America itself, which seems ever more in thrall to vested interests.

Not only are more billionaires being created, they are less reviled:

This may be because emerging-market billionaires seem more dynamic: more than half of them are under 60 compared with less than a third in the rich world. But it is partly because in the emerging world ordinary people have been getting richer alongside the billionaires; in the rich world ordinary people have seen their incomes stagnate.

A Significant Step

(Graphic from cato.org)

Republicans may finally help Barack Obama achieve passage of a major bill, one that is sure to have long-lasting effects [bold added]:

The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) would link 11 economies of the Pacific rim—including Japan and Singapore—with America. These 12 countries together account for 40% of world GDP and one-third of trade. As well as dismantling tariff barriers, the TPP is meant to tackle tough issues such as intellectual property, labour and environmental standards. American trade negotiators predict that by 2025 the TPP will make the world $220 billion a year richer.

While the TPP is supported by majorities in both parties, it has encountered opposition from both the left and the right. Some Democrats say that more American jobs will be lost to cheap-labor countries that have lax worker and environmental protections, while some Republicans worry that controls over immigration will be greatly loosened:

The TPP....allows for the free migration of labor among the signatory nations...it would override national immigration restrictions in the name of facilitating the free flow of labor.

More troublesome is the secrecy that has surrounded the negotiations ("secrecy may now be so strict that it ends up irritating everyone"). Republicans still rankle at the lack of transparency in the passage of Obamacare (Speaker Pelosi: "we have to pass the health care bill so that you can find out what is in it"), the IRS' selective scrutiny* of Obama opponents, and other matters foreign and domestic. Republicans will need to take a leap of faith to believe Administration assurances about the TPP's provisions.

None of these concerns appear to be insurmountable, however, and it's likely that free trade will take a significant step forward this year.

[*Update - 4/26, Glenn Reynolds: "With so Many Red Flags, Why Isn’t the IRS Auditing the Clinton Foundation? Probably the same reason they’re giving Al Sharpton — and, apparently, the entire on-air staff of MSNBC — a pass."]

Caveat Emptor

After a decade that introduced Sarbanes-Oxley, increased disclosure, and increased regulation "America's pre-eminent forensic accountant" says that public company financial statements can be as misleading as ever.

Howard Schilit doesn't accuse companies of fraud or even technical accounting violations; in fact auditors seem obsessed with compliance with the letter of the law, especially rules about disclosure.

In general, the auditors' focus is on a legalistic interpretation. So, if you tied up your neighbor and robbed his house, but you disclosed it in footnote No. 23, it's okay.

When one reads the entire Barron's article, however, one is left with a reasonably sanguine impression of U.S. financial reporting. (The U.S. examples of questionable accounting relate to reclassification--not adjustment, there's a big difference--of items on the income statement and the treatment of contingent consideration, a liability that in this humble observer's view has offsetting mitigants on the asset side of the balance sheet. I can see your eyes glazing, so I'll stop.)

The examples from the wild, wild East are more troublesome: the tendency to switch accounting methods (e.g., depreciation, percentage-of-completion vs. completed contract) in an obvious attempt to hype earnings and the ability to book gains on asset purchases. To those who are thinking of investing in Asia an ancient phrase is appropriate: caveat emptor.

Jeremy Lin

We remarked below how "unknown" point guard Jeremy Lin has risen to the top of the sports universe this week by leading the New York Knickerbockers to victories over the Jazz and the Nets. He did it again last night against the Washington Wizards:

Jeremy Lin, the undrafted Harvard economics graduate, has now played 111 meaningful minutes of NBA basketball since the weekend. He's scored a combined 76 points, become a national phenomenon, won three games and blown a few minds.

He is part Steve Nash, part Paul Bunyan and late Wednesday night, after the Knicks beat the Washington Wizards 107-93, Knicks coach Mike D'Antoni called him "for real." So stop rubbing your eyes—it's not a dream.

Three attributes widely regarded as positives in the rest of society--Harvard degree, Asian-American, 6'3" height--were obstacles to Jeremy Lin's acceptance by NBA teams; it is an understatement to say that expectations for him were low.

His underdog status, his performance on the biggest media stage during the quiet period between the Super Bowl and the NCAA tournament, his sincere understated Christianity, and his growing international (especially Asian) following make Jeremy Lin a public relations dream.

The Value of Land and Life

Economist Tyler Cowen links to this video with the comment that it is about the value of land. True, but it's also about what it's like to live in a place where no one is concerned about your safety except you (and there are probably not many lawyers).