You're forgetting who the audience is. The audience is Harvard admissions staff. That changes the nature of the joke quite a bit in my opinion. Since it is an inside joke for only Harvard's people and their ideologically-aligned "regulators," it reads to me as more of an acknowledgement and acceptance of the practice of anit-asian discrimination, and at most a suggestion that they tone it down a bit.
If this were a parody written for the daily show (for example) or something else intended for a wide audience, it would absolutely have been criticism of Harvard, but the audience really does change the joke.
Personally, I think this is one of the more racist things that I have seen recently, and large swathes of both Harvard's admissions staff and the folks "investigating" them need to resign.
Caveat: no archive link and I'm not about to start paying the new Yorker to tell me how the world works, so might be missing context.
Hibino, I'm gonna guess, is Japanese.
The jokes don't seem like their punching down at Jose (the fictional Filipino). They seem to be saying; "no matter how hard Jose seems to work, nobody is ever impressed because they assume he's either getting handouts or his job is easy".
My take, like the parent comment, is that this is a joke on the admissions office, and the systemic racism in such institutions - not at the expense of Asians (esp. since the one sending the joke was Asian to begin with).
My take, like the parent comment, is that this is a joke on the admissions office, and the systemic racism in such institutions - not at the expense of Asians (esp. since the one sending the joke was Asian to begin with).
If the Dean of Admissions and a government official with detailed knowledge of Harvard’s admissions process both privately believe that Harvard illegally discriminates on the basis of race, that seems extremely probative in a trial on that exact issue.
Oh, for sure. I will be the last person on earth to come to the defense of an institution like this - I think that frequently, it's our social structures that are pathological before it's specific individuals.
People, on balance, are not all so racist, bigoted, short-sighted, greedy, selfish, etc. (with glaring outliers, ofc). Institutions are more often than not some, if not all, of these things. It's almost as if we encode the worst of ourselves in these social contracts and give them everlasting life.
As a sibling comment mentioned, it's also entirely possible for Hibino to be discriminatory himself. It just feels a little like there's not quite enough information to hang him specifically.
The email itself said "you're the only person who would understand this sort of humor" so it's important to look at this in context. The recipient of the email was asian himself.
Whether it can end careers? Sure people freely ignore context and socially burn people at the stake for much less. But IRL it's important to ask whether they were actually being racist with their satire. Which I personally think is a pretty thin argument.
The author was Japanese and the subject was Filipino. There's a lot of (racial? cultural?) animus there - it's a little like a yankee making fun of a white southerner. Among Asian people, Filipino and Japanese are often considered different races.
The Asian in the joke was practically superhuman, nothing was made at the "expense" of Asians. The joke was explicitly mocking Harvard's obvious discrimination against Asian applicants.
If it was intended as criticism, then one would expect the joke's author, who was the regulator in charge of ensuring no racial discrimination, would have offered the much more direct criticism of taking regulatory action.
The joke's author did no such thing. And was careful to make sure it never got to anyone who might be inclined to criticize Harvard's admissions practice.
Furthermore the fact that Harvard admissions HAD slang like "Just another AA CJer" is pretty strong evidence of discrimination.
Maybe, maybe not.
Could also be read as the very real racism / discrimination of East Asians towards Southeast Asians. Especially a white collar educated East Asian vs a more recently immigrated working class Southeast Asian family.
Analogy would be a white guy named Bob Smith working a fancy office job, living in Manhattan making jokes about slack jawwed Cletus the farmer from Alabama.
Do you mean the joke? I read it as criticism of the policy to do racial discrimination.