Recently, there has been increasing coverage of racist attacks against Asian Americans. The legacy press invariably put the blame for these crimes on former President Donald Trump, despite there being no connection. Over the same time period, the anti-Asian American policies and rhetoric of a trio of politicians — San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, and San Francisco School Board President Gabriela Lopez — have gone largely ignored due to their “progressive” bona fides.
There is a lot that could be written about Boudin’s history before he was elected district attorney. It is probably sufficient to say that before law school he chose to work for Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez. So perhaps it’s not surprising that since he became district attorney, he has been more sympathetic to thugs and murderers than to their elderly and infirm Asian and Asian American victims.
In late February, Boudin described the killing, caught on camera, of a 5-foot-6-inch, 84-year-old Thai visitor to San Francisco by a 19-year-old as “some sort of a temper tantrum.” While the district attorney insists that there is no way that the race of the victim could have been involved, the victim’s family thinks otherwise.
This was a year after the DA dropped charges against a 20-year-old man who had participated in the pipe beating of an elderly Asian American man. The ostensible reason for the beating was that the victim didn’t immediately hand over to the robber the discarded soda cans he’d spent the night collecting. The assailant recorded not only the beating but also the sound of someone saying how much he hated Asians. Boudin dropped the charges, claiming that the victim wanted to pursue a path of “restorative justice.” These are words more often associated with Yale-educated, Rhodes scholar attorneys than with senior citizens who spend their nights on the street collecting refuse for resale.
The de Blasio and Lopez situations are similar in that both were motivated by their dislike of the result of meritocratic systems that allowed Asian American students to do well at competitive public schools. The primary difference is that, so far, Lopez has been more successful because her position gives her direct authority over schools, whereas de Blasio had to ask the state Legislature to stop the use of a race-blind entrance test so that he could reduce the number of Asian Americans in schools. The Legislature wisely declined to act.
In 2020, the San Francisco Board of Education led by Lopez, or “Madame President,” as she calls herself on Twitter, used the COVID-19 pandemic as an excuse to cancel the use of merit-based criteria for acceptance to the city’s most academically focused school because she wanted to reduce the number of Asian Americans in it. (Lowell High School is part of a group of schools, including Abraham Lincoln High School, that may be renamed by Lopez’s board due to the purported racism of their namesakes.)
The previous admissions system primarily considered grades, but also test scores, and gave the student extra points if he or she were coming from an underperforming middle school. Under California law, race is not permitted to be considered in admissions. Then, in February of this year, the board voted to make the change to a lottery admissions system permanent, thereby removing consideration for whether students are actually prepared for a rigorous academic program.
Fortunately for Asian Americans, de Blasio is term-limited out of office this year. There is a promising effort to recall Lopez and some of her colleagues on the school board because of their efforts to destroy Lowell, their uninformed school renaming efforts, and their ineffective job in getting students back in the classroom. Despite the many reasons for removing her from office, it will be tough going, as signatures must be collected in person and COVID-19 has not yet receded in California. While there are also efforts to recall Boudin, they face longer odds for success as his ineptitude in office only becomes clear after his coddled criminals continue to commit crimes.
David Wu has served in several gubernatorial administrations and as acting assistant secretary at the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
