Asian Americans and the Futility of Race Hustling

Plus an important update on paid content and the future of this Substack.

Well, that slogan unsurprisingly went nowhere.

Foreign Perspectives is gradually shifting into more paid content. Certain columns will remain free for all subscribers, but articles like these will be exclusive for paid subscribers. If you enjoy the work I do, please consider upgrading to a monthly or yearly subscription. Your support is greatly appreciated and ensures that this Substack can continue to deliver high quality pieces.

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Paid content and Substack housekeeping

If only freelance writing in real life was as profitable as the stock photos.

That’s right, finally an article for paid subscribers of Foreign Perspectives! Don’t worry, I haven’t forgotten about you. Free subscribers should also stick around because there are some essential updates regarding how pieces are going to be posted on this Substack for the rest of 2025. The important information is above the paywall line and there’s a preview for this week’s article afterward, so do keep reading.

First, this piece is being published in the place of this week’s Bonus Perspectives column. It’s an article reviewing the book Unassimilable by Bianca Mabute-Louie which was initially commissioned by the British online magazine UnHerd. I’m a regular contributor to them and this article was supposed to go up last month, but it never got published because the higher ups felt too much time had passed since the book released. The piece was fully edited and I received a 50% kill fee. I attempted to pitch it elsewhere, but none of my regular stomping grounds were interested. No big deal, that’s just how things go in the unpredictable world of freelance writing.

Instead of letting a perfectly good article go to waste though, I’ve decided to publish it here for paid subscribers of Foreign Perspectives. While ostensibly a book review, I’m proud with how it turned out as a greater commentary on the divisive topic of race in America. I’ve included the experiences of myself and that of my late father, so it ended up being quite personal. The book itself is pretty dreadful, but even the worst rags can offer a good counterexample of what not to do or think. Personally, I believe the whole race hustling fad which peaked around 2017-2020 is on its last legs and most Americans are tired of it. My piece explains why.

Is it finally socially acceptable to point out the obvious that these people are cranks?

Next, I need to talk about Bonus Perspectives. Regular readers of this Substack will know it as my weekly column where I discuss one piece of international news, one piece of Japan-related news, and two pieces of media recommendations. I started this series last summer and it has been a joy to write each week, but unfortunately I’m going to have to put it on ice for a few reasons. It started out with the intention of being supplementary content to everything else on Foreign Perspectives, but it’s now reached the point where it’s pretty much the only content being posted here apart from my column on war films.

I can’t in good conscious keep asking for readers to become paid subscribers if there are no articles being posted for them. I’m not making much of a profit and you aren’t getting what you paid for, so obviously that’s not how this business model is supposed to work. With each column of Bonus Perspectives getting close to 4,000 words each, it’s taking away from the time I could be devoting to a more diverse slew of pieces — free and paid alike. By the time I’m done with one BP article, the week is already up and I have to work on the next one. As a result, things have to change. With a heavy heart, I will be retiring Bonus Perspectives in order to focus on multiple, shorter pieces that get published each week.

Bonus Perspectives was doing fine numbers-wise, but it was my full columns on the righthand side that really drove growth on this Substack. It’s time to go back to that.

My current idea is that more researched articles which offer insights on geopolitics or Japan will generally be for my paid subscribers, while pieces related to pop culture or media recommendations will be free for all. Of course, that isn’t a strict rule. I will strive to deliver high quality content for both paid and free subscribers, but if you want access to everything and enjoy the work I do, then I highly recommend you consider upgrading your subscription. Also, A Bit of Film and War, my column series on war cinema, is NOT going away. Since that’s just one light article a month and I enjoy writing them, it’s still very much doable. In fact, I can announce now that this month’s edition of A Bit of Film and War will be on the Rambo series, so stay tuned for that.

Regarding the bread and butter of Foreign Perspectives, each week will continue to feature writing on various topics related to the news and my interests. I think the format of pieces hovering around 1500-2000 words or even less will be more digestible for all readers, while it also encourages me to be pithier. I still have the last part of my travelogue mini-series about traveling through Japan to finish, so there will occasionally be longer pieces too. With all the freelance pieces I have to write for other outlets though, I need to manage my time better and strike a balance.

A realistic depiction of my time management skills.

Lastly, an update about my personal life. While freelance writing is my main source of income now, I’m a full time student in the middle of his fourth year of an international relations PhD. Very soon I will write my doctoral thesis proper, so my time to do other things will be limited even further. I have to additionally write one more academic article to graduate by March 2026 and begin job hunting for entry-level university positions well in advance around the summer. Apart from a brief vacation with my wife that is already have planned for our anniversary in April, 2025 is going to be a serious grind.

I will do my best to keep this Substack updated during this is very important transitionary period for my career and long-term plans, but there will likely be times when I will have to scale things back to meet non-negotiable deadlines. The sheer amount of commitments I have is all the more reason why Foreign Perspectives needed a serious shake-up with how articles are written, scheduled, and posted. I once again thank everyone who has supported this enterprise up until now and appreciate your understanding that things have to change. It really means a lot that I have readers who consistently show an interest in what I have to say. With all that said, let’s get into my latest piece.

Unassimilable isn’t just terrible, it’s unfeasible

This was one of the most tedious reads I’ve had to subject myself to in a long time.

Music, they say, can save lives. But in my father’s case, this is true far more literally. Born in 1954, he came of age during the nightmare of the Cultural Revolution. Amid the chaos of Mao Zedong’s disastrous socialist revolution, which cemented China as a totalitarian dictatorship under the Communist Party, it’s estimated that at least 1.6 million people died between disastrous economic policies, political suppression and state-enforced violence. Universities were closed and private businesses were abolished, including my grandfather’s music shop.

Yet thanks to that same grandfather, he ensured my dad knew the violin. Dropping out of school, he spent the remainder of the Cultural Revolution as a professional musician with the Peking Opera. Following Mao’s death, in 1976, China’s universities reopened and Dad graduated from the Central Conservatory of Music. From there, he secured a scholarship from Yehudi Menuhin, one of the greatest violinists of the 20th century, and a ticket to the West that would change his world forever.

Dad died in 2021, but not before becoming a naturalized US citizen and a passionate defender of the American Dream. I was reminded of him, and his success, while reading Bianca Mabute-Louie’s Unassimilable: An Asian Diasporic Manifesto for the 21st Century. From the title alone, I expected to disagree with much of Mabute-Louie’s worldview, and I was soon proved right.

Yehudi Menuhin and classical music are why I’m alive, but if you believe the tripe activists like Bianca Mabute-Louie constantly spew, Asians apparently can never benefit from Western culture.

Despite her fatuous race-grifting, however, the book is still worth reading. Not because the arguments it makes are convincing: this is yet another volume of tedious ramblings up there with the likes of Robin DiAngelo’s White Fragility and Ibram X. Kendi’s How to Be an Antiracist. All the same, Unassimilable achieves two important things. First, it reminds Americans that those of Asian descent are also part of these conversations — and that Asian Americans should not get on the race hustling train.