We have previously noted the apparently acceptable racial discrimination against Asians in the United States, and how white liberals not think that black and Hispanic students “have what it takes to compete on merit,” but they dismiss the achievements of students of Asian ethnicity as “white adjacent.”

From The Wall Street Journal:

The Revolt of the Unwoke

Three progressive San Francisco school board members are targeted for a recall.

By William McGurn | July 26, 2021 | 6:26 PM EDT

If the land of woke has a capital, it’s San Francisco. Which makes it all the more extraordinary that the City by the Bay has now become ground zero for a revolt by unwoke moms and dads.

I, of course, haven’t had much sympathy for the #woke, having said in the past that I believe them to be dumber than a box of rocks.^[1]From Wikipedia: Woke (/ˈwoʊk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from … Continue reading Sadly, it seems that they go out of their way to prove me right.

Part of this is Asian-Americans awakening to progressive plans to sacrifice their children in the name of equity and diversity. Another part is ordinary citizens pushing back against the dividing of America into white oppressors and nonwhite oppressed. Still another is parents and alumni alarmed by the board’s lowering of standards at one of America’s most elite public high schools by elevating race categories over merit.

The article continues to note that three members of the San Francisco school board are threatened with recall elections.

What has the board done to make itself so unpopular? Consider what it didn’t do. San Francisco was one of the last public school systems to reopen. It was so bad, at one point the city itself sued the school district.

Meanwhile, in January the board found the time to vote to strip 44 public schools of their names, including Abraham Lincoln High and Dianne Feinstein Elementary, over alleged complicity in racism or oppression. This was followed by an embarrassing about-face when it emerged how flimsy the criteria were. Alamo Elementary School made the list even though it was named not for the Texas battle but for the Spanish word for poplar tree.

Abraham Lincoln was complicit in racism and oppression? Surely he was the Great Emancipator, but, alas! Mr Lincoln did not believe in the equality of the races; he only thought slavery was a moral wrong. In 19^th century America, his ideas were common; in the 21^st century, well, they’re sufficiently racist enough to take his name off of schools.

And the board wouldn’t be woke if didn’t also manage to punish Asian-Americans. A month after its infamous name-change vote, the school board scrapped merit-based admissions in favor of a lottery system at Lowell High School, crown jewel of the city’s public system. The idea was to increase minority representation at the school.

But as critics noted, Lowell was already 82% nonwhite. It’s just that progressive math excludes Asian-Americans. Apparently it never occurs to the woke that the regular use of diversity to penalize Asian-American children for their hard work and achievement might itself be a form of systemic racism.

“The denial of equal rights to educational opportunity for Asian-American children by those claiming progressive values is particularly tragic in light of the recent pandemic of violence against Asian-Americans,” says Lee Cheng, a co-founder and director of the Asian American Legal Foundation. “The street thugs and the educrats in San Francisco share many characteristics and prejudices. Both are racist. Some are just better dressed.”

The problem is simple: the success of students of Asian descent, like those of Jewish ethnicity in decades past. The various Asian communities in the United States have pushed the cultural values that we have always said were American values: work hard, starting in elementary school, to get the best grades, to prepare yourself for a more successful adult life, and in pushing that cultural value, students of Asian descent were, Heaven forfend! outperforming not only other non-white minority groups, but whites as well.

All three of the school-board members targeted for recall voted to drop merit from Lowell admissions. Ms. López, the president, also asserted that a merit-based system is inherently racist.

As for Ms. Collins, she has been too much even for her colleagues. She was stripped of her vice president title and committee assignments when tweets from 2016 emerged, one of which accused Asian-Americans of using “white supremacist thinking to assimilate and get ahead.” Yet she remains on the board, which she is now suing for $87 million on grounds that she is the victim here.

By saying that a merit-based system is inherently racist, Mrs López is saying, inter alia, that she simply does not believe that racial minorities are as capable as white people; by lumping in Asian-Americans with white supremacists, she has dismissed them from her thinking, because it is simply anathema for the #woke to consider that a non-white minority can get ahead based on their own efforts.

After all, if one non-white minority can do so, then so can others . . . which might mean, horrors! that those non-white minorities which don’t get ahead are responsible for their own lack of success.

What all these moves have in common is that instead of lifting achievement and giving black and Latino parents more alternatives to help their children compete, the answer is simply to take seats from Asian-Americans and reassign them by race.

Let’s face facts: it is far easier to throw roadblocks in the paths of successful people, to hinder their progress, than it is to lift up those who have not been as successful.