Asians: Part 7,562,3945

I cannot but be dismayed at my interactions with Asians this semester, and, as my facebook status update indicates, they are driving me batshit crazy at every turn.

1) On the law journal, two of the article editors (who happen to be Asian girls) are driving their co-editors crazy. They behave meekly, they won't make decisions, they don't take responsibility for their actions, and they're causing all of the responsibility to fall squarely on the shoulders of their co-White Girl editors. We're getting complaints daily about their constantly disappointing performance, and I've already made several mentions about instituting a no-asian-girl policy for promotions. One of them, however, seems to be ok. And, of course, my co-executive editor is an Asian female, and she's great. But, still.

2) I am working on projects with actual Asian men. The first project is writing a chapter on the Chinese financial system for a professor's textbook, on which have been staffed two Chinese LLMs. Both highly accomplished individuals who work for the People's Bank of China, the China Securities Regulation Commission, and the Agricultural Bank of China. These are actual Asians. From Asia. And they are driving me crazy.

Besides being kneejerk super reactionary defenders of China when anyone deigns to suggest that reality and the facts prevailing in the Chinese economic and political system are as they are and that the facts indicate that China is still in developing stages and is in fact NOT a utopian society where lemurs fetch your daily wank job handmaid on emerald dragonboats and the regulatory system hums along in utter perfection in a manner far surpassing those of the most sophisticated economies in the world, they cannot seem to grasp that not every forum is the place to argue about or justify why China is in the state that it is. (long sentence. wow.) They've been drinking the Red Kool-aid with such enthusiasm that it terrifies me to imagine what work product I'm going to get back from them when I have to finally pull this whole chapter together. I delegated this work to 3 other people, and yet I've written 85% of the chapter myself, receive continual confusion about the whole process, and constantly get challenges on the parameters I have given them to work within.

This is not to say that I don't listen, nor is it to suggest that the parameters I have laid out are perfect. It is more to establish the fact that more than anyone else in the world, foreign students have a bizarre tendency to "fight the hypothetical" so to speak, and simply refuse to accept what is being asked of them. For example, if someone were to ask you, would you save a drowning old man or an infant from the ocean, you would generally understand that my question is not logistical. I am asking you a philosophical question about your values, how they are expressed, and what choice you will make. For some reason, when these sorts of questions are asked to these students, the responses invariably include questions like:

"Well, how deep is the water? What if there is a sandbar underneath the old man? Does the baby know how to swim? How long until low tide? Is there a motor boat around? What color is the water? Is this a world where God directly intervenes and could just like, save them both? Can I see if Seman is around?(Sea Man!)"

Anyhow, you can just tell I spent like 1 hour with the ex-deputy director of the People's Bank of China who drove me up the fucking wall...and now, apparently, he's on my "team" for this project which can only end in humiliation, shame, and absolutely ass-wrenching stress.

(I typed in "FOB" to try find some Asian pictures to supplement this post, but all i came up with was pictures of Fall Out Boy, which annoyed me even more....so no."