• Security incident: ISF was recently accessed by intruders. Please change your password, and change it anywhere else you used it. Read more

2020 Democratic Candidates Tracker - Part II

Status
Not open for further replies.
Cabbage said:
I think there's certainly a clear difference: Richards was throwing punches at others. Yang was throwing punches at himself.
Click to expand...

If he was talking about this, it wasn't even an attempted joke according to him:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2006/nov/22/usa.danglaister
"I was at a comedy club trying to do my act, and I got heckled and I took it badly and went into a rage," Richards said. "For me to be in a comedy club and flip out and say this crap, I'm deeply, deeply sorry. I'm not a racist. That's what's so insane about this.
Click to expand...

Jokes involving race can be funny, and that's not even limited to poking fun at one's own race/ethnicity. It's a matter of the spirit of what's said, if it's based on a more hateful, mean spirit, or a genuinely friendly, "loving" one.

Lisa Lampanelli explained it best:
https://wsf1027fm.blogspot.com/2011/02/lisa-lampanelli-interview-2008.html

I think it’s just a gradual build. Like, you say to yourself, “Okay, I’m gonna try this: Let me say ‘spic’ or let me call the Canadians dirty people from a country that’s inferior to us.” And when they actually laugh instead of getting mad, you’re like, “Ooh, I can take more of a chance! I can say the n-word, I could do this, do that.” But I always did it with the right kind of intention to kind of point out stereotypes and how retarded they are. And you just see the more you kind of commit to it and the more ballsy you are, for whatever reason you have to be doing this kind of comedy, the more you just stick to it and go, “I’m taking more and more chances.” Like, there’s nothing I won’t say now. I can’t even think what subject could possibly be “oh my God, I won’t touch that.”

GM: Really.
LL: Yeah. Because there’s a line in comedy of, “oh my God, don’t cross this line, don’t push the envelope”. But there’s no envelope, there’s no line; there’s funny and not funny. And thank God I can pull off the funny part so it always seems to be okay.

GM: There must have been some instances where people took it the wrong way.
LL: Oddly enough, I can count on two hands in 17 years the number of times people were vocal with me. I think the fact that it is okay, they sense real prejudice. I’ve talked to real black people – believe it or not, there are real black people in this world who speak English – and they’ve said to me, “Hey, if you know what’s behind it, if you know there’s warmth and no hate, we know how to take it.” And I’m like, yeah, it’s the fear-based comic who won’t go there that minorities and people that are outside our little white devil circle, they’re the ones that people are like, “Hmm.” They’re holding something back. But people can tell with me I wasn’t holding it back; I was kind of doing it for the right reasons. Really, like I said, a handful of people got pissed. And thank God because I’m not good pickin’ beating, I never have.
Click to expand...

Sorry for the derail. :)
 
To tell the truth, if what Yang said was a joke (and I don't doubt that at all) I don't really get it. Do Asians know lots of doctors? Are lots of doctors Asian? These are stereotypes I'm simply not familiar with.
 
Cabbage said:
To tell the truth, if what Yang said was a joke (and I don't doubt that at all) I don't really get it. Do Asians know lots of doctors? Are lots of doctors Asian? These are stereotypes I'm simply not familiar with.
Click to expand...

He was probably talking about this:
https://www.insidehighered.com/admi...e-become-more-diverse-primarily-because-asian
Data in the analysis show that medical school enrollments are much more diverse than they were 35 years ago. But the gains have largely been for Asian-American students. The share of black, Latino and Native American students is not close to their representation in undergraduate programs. And while the percentage of Asian medical school matriculants lagged the numbers for black and medical students in 1980, the Asian enrollment figure is now far more than black and Latino medical matriculants combined.
Click to expand...

I'm assuming Yang's 1% crowd is full of humor specific to their demographics.

ETA:
Nobody in the crowd got the joke either, and Yang looked so confused, like he was thinking "Ok, tough crowd". That was part of what made me laugh.
 
Last edited:
The Atheist said:
So, racism is ok if it's funny?

How'd that work out for Michael Richards?
Click to expand...

Pffft! If what Yang said is racism, then it is very mild. If someone said, well I’m Jewish so obviously I know a lot of lawyers would someone get upset about it?

As for Michael Richards, yelling ****** and invoking violence against black people on stage wasn’t even funny.
 
angrysoba said:
Pffft! If what Yang said is racism, then it is very mild. If someone said, well I’m Jewish so obviously I know a lot of lawyers would someone get upset about it?
Click to expand...

It's a very subtle form of racism, to remark on the success of your race. I do note that when any whites start talking about the success of the white race, people seem to hear the racism a lot easier. Funny that.
 
Brainster said:
It's a very subtle form of racism, to remark on the success of your race. I do note that when any whites start talking about the success of the white race, people seem to hear the racism a lot easier. Funny that.
Click to expand...

Can you give an example of something comparable that people got outraged over?
 
Brainster said:
It's a very subtle form of racism, to remark on the success of your race.
Click to expand...

I can't believe I'm even getting into this humorless nonsense, but Yang wasn't remarking on his own race, positively or otherwise.

The stereotypical "Asian doctors" are...immigrants. From India.

https://yaleglobal.yale.edu/content/indian-doctors-help-fill-us-health-care-needs

In the US, Indians and Indian-Americans make up the largest non-Caucasian segment of the American medical community, where they account for one in every 20 practicing doctors. In recent years, they have become a more vocal and visible presence, undertaking charitable activities and political lobbying.
Click to expand...
Even those who do get visas for advanced medical education are asked to return to India after their training unless they agree to set up practice in underserved areas, where medical specialists often have difficulty earning a living. Discrimination may also complicate the task of Indian physicians- some say they face prejudice when applying for residency programs.
Click to expand...
These problems come at a time when a continued influx of Indian doctors may prove vital to the US, which is dealing with a shortfall of physicians to cope with a growing and aging population. Onerous visa requirements and discrimination towards Indian doctors, concludes Raymer, only exacerbate “a looming national healthcare crisis”. - Yale Global
Click to expand...
 
I suppose if a white candidate were to brag on stage about dodging a heavy jail sentence because of being white that might get some flak. Not sure if it is comparable. And kellyb makes a good point that Yang might have been poking fun at the blanket nature of the term “Asian”.

From what i know of Yang, his references to being Asian are almost exclusively tongue-in-cheek. I don’t see him using his identify as, for example, a demand that other Asian people vote for him or that people of colour, in general, vote for him. He’s not identitarian in that sense.

The only serious use of his ethnic background that I have seen his use is to point out that his family were immigrants and that they bought into the American dream and were a net benefit to the country, arguing, by extension, that immigration itself is a benefit to the country and not something that should be scapegoated as the cause of problems such as unemployment.
 
kellyb said:
The stereotypical "Asian doctors" are...immigrants. From India.
Click to expand...
There's no chance at all that an American who meets the American use of that word meant to use it in its British usage which most of his American audience wouldn't even be aware of while talking about himself. You're spinning so hard you're making yourself dizzy.
 
Delvo said:
There's no chance at all that an American who meets the American use of that word meant to use it in its British usage which most of his American audience wouldn't even be aware of while talking about himself. You're spinning so hard you're making yourself dizzy.
Click to expand...

What are you talking about?

https://www.census.gov/topics/population/race/about.html
Asian – A person having origins in any of the original peoples of the Far East, Southeast Asia, or the Indian subcontinent including, for example, Cambodia, China, India, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Pakistan, the Philippine Islands, Thailand, and Vietnam.
Click to expand...

You don't think Andrew Yang knows that immigrants from India in the US are classified as Asians?
 
angrysoba said:
I suppose if a white candidate were to brag on stage about dodging a heavy jail sentence because of being white that might get some flak. Not sure if it is comparable. And kellyb makes a good point that Yang might have been poking fun at the blanket nature of the term “Asian”.

From what i know of Yang, his references to being Asian are almost exclusively tongue-in-cheek. I don’t see him using his identify as, for example, a demand that other Asian people vote for him or that people of colour, in general, vote for him. He’s not identitarian in that sense.

The only serious use of his ethnic background that I have seen his use is to point out that his family were immigrants and that they bought into the American dream and were a net benefit to the country, arguing, by extension, that immigration itself is a benefit to the country and not something that should be scapegoated as the cause of problems such as unemployment.
Click to expand...

I mostly agree with what you're saying, but I'm pretty sure he's a fan of strong border security, and only having high (new) immigration rates specifically for highly skilled, high income immigrants.
 
angrysoba said:
I suppose if a white candidate were to brag on stage about dodging a heavy jail sentence because of being white that might get some flak. Not sure if it is comparable. And kellyb makes a good point that Yang might have been poking fun at the blanket nature of the term “Asian”.

From what i know of Yang, his references to being Asian are almost exclusively tongue-in-cheek. I don’t see him using his identify as, for example, a demand that other Asian people vote for him or that people of colour, in general, vote for him. He’s not identitarian in that sense.

The only serious use of his ethnic background that I have seen his use is to point out that his family were immigrants and that they bought into the American dream and were a net benefit to the country, arguing, by extension, that immigration itself is a benefit to the country and not something that should be scapegoated as the cause of problems such as unemployment.
Click to expand...

I agree that his references to being Asian are tongue-in-cheek. He also likes to say "the opposite of Donald Trump is an Asian man who likes math"
 
Bernie Sanders wants rent control:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/14/us/politics/bernie-sanders-housing.html
I think it is great Sanders wants to spend billions of dollars on the homelessness crisis. It is an extremely expensive problem even when we do nothing at all about it but rent control is the last thing in the world we should do to fight it. It doesn't work.
In my opinion Sanders is an example of the righteousness fallacy. His protectionism is another example of that. The intention is good, but the results are not.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Share this page

ISF - Join now!

Every member here is approved by hand. No bots, no spam, just people who care about evidence and honest debate.

Membership is free!

Create your free account

Back
Top Bottom