Of increasing concern to me as I read up on Derbyshire's repertoire is the extent to which the man has written about China, about Chinese America, and the paternalistic and deeply racist relationship he holds to the country and its people (for those who don’t know, his wife, with whom he has two children, is a Chinese American who immigrated from the mainland). In an article, titled “On China, America, and the Chinese in America,” Derbyshire acts as the White tour guide to an essentialized, exoticized China, describing the “Chinese national character” as one marked by conformity, and, quoting Linnaeus, “‘severe, haughty, desirous [by which he meant acquisitive]’ and ‘ruled by opinion’” (clarification his). Moreover, he cites the “high average IQ of the Chinese immigrant” — a statement he reiterates in many of his posts, in support of allowing in more “good” foreigners.
He continues this appropriative and White Gazing stance in “Understanding China and the Chinese”, and “Thinking About Internment”, the latter of which sees him attempting to legitimize the forced incarceration of Japanese Americans, and stating that he would be in support of a similar measure being done to Chinese Americans, should a war ever break out between China and America.
“I hope the camps will not be very uncomfortable, for I shall be there too,” he concludes, but this superficial identification with Chinese-ness serves less to grant his argument integrity than illuminates the deeply insulting relationship he holds to China and Chinese America. How dare you consider yourself Chinese, John Derbyshire, when your work actively not only 1.) reduces China to a static block and foreign object for the white man to understand, 2.) misrepresent Chinese Americans and Chinese people in America such that they serve as your trope of the “good minority” against which to compare African Americans and Latinos, and to police the standards of whiteness? How dare you call China your “country-in-law,” and yourself its veritable tour guide to your audience of white supremacists at American Renaissance when every single piece of your work serves to denigrate its people and distance them from the collective liberation to which they are intimately tied?
John Derbyshire’s so-called admiration of China is a false one: the superficial privilege he coerces onto Chinese folk is an oppressive one, and I fear it extends to much of the rest of Asia. Who the f*ck are these docile, “educated,” and assimilative foreigners you speak about, Derbyshire? What about the undocumented, and the incarcerated? What about the Chinese Americans and immigrants who have been deprived of educational opportunities, who suffer the brunt of the anti-immigration legislation and are systemically disenfranchised and stripped of their ability to defend for themselves?
You don’t get to expand your umbrella of racial supremacy to include Chinese-ness, or for that matter, Asian-ness, Derbyshire — my fellow Chinese Americans, and more broadly, my fellow Asian Americans, who would similarly qualify under Derbyshire’s disgusting label of “desirable Others,” let us not forget the long history of legal, economic, and physical violation against our people in this country. Let us work to shake off white supremacy’s hold on us. No matter what “racial privilege” it tries to coerce unto us, at the end of the day, we are still its subjects, held by its whims. Our liberation is tied directly to the liberation of our fellow Black and Brown communities, and it is they who we must support, and it is they who we must work with to reclaim our right of self-determination from the unrelenting hold of white supremacists like Derbyshire.
