American society is so focused on race that it is blind to class

This strikes me as a feeble attempt by Democrats to refocus the conversation on what people say and/or think and away from the system of legalized discrimination they endorse.

Conservative populism isn't some uniquely "nativist, racist, and supremacist" threat. Trump people are for the most part just insular in the same way most people in my home country are insular: https://www.outlookindia.com/national/rohingyas-camps-becomi.... Democrats--with their affinity for diversity and change for their own sake--are the ones who are radically different.

You're right that, all else being equal, Asians should prefer the folks who don't make fun of foreign-sounding names. But all else isn't equal. The people who are nice to your face want to create a racial hierarchy that will prejudice Asians legally and economically. It is illogical to me for Asians to support that, just because some white Trump voters in Kansas say the same things their folks back home in India or China would say if the shoe were on the other foot.

> Most of the geographical US has places where non-white people basically feel not welcome.

I grew up in a Virginia House district that went Republican by 30-50 points the entire time I lived there. I have been all over the south and midwest. I live in a precinct that went decisively for Trump in 2016. I have never felt "not welcome" in those places. Now, I don't know what white people say behind my back, but I also don't care. They should hear what my parents say about non-college educated white people.

Indeed, the most racism I have encountered in my life has been from white liberals in the last 5-6 years. It's not Trump-people making me write diversity statements about "tell us about how you're not from here and are different from white people." Give me a guy in a MAGA hat who assumes I don't speak English any day of the week over a condescending white liberal who sees my identity as a vehicle for advancing their ideology.

1) The ivy leagues (and many other colleges of the US) shifted from a purely meritocratic assessment to an "all rounder" vetting process of potential candidates simply to eliminate the "undesirables" (at that time, mostly jews).

> The first thing to understand is that everything we know about selective college admissions today is less than a century old. So if you go back to 1910 or 1920, the Ivy League schools were not particularly expensive. They were not particularly desirable, in that they didn't have five or 10 or 20 times as many applicants as there were spots. And they weren’t particularly rigorous about vetting students ... So how did we get from there to here today, when these schools are desirable, expensive, and have a very rigorous vetting process?

> The answer is that most of those measures came about as part of the effort to limit the percentage of Jews in the student body. The extensive college application of multiple pages came about because they added questions to figure out if an applicant was Jewish, including What’s your religion? What is your father’s occupation? What is your mother’s maiden name? Where were your parents born? At some schools, they asked you to attach a photograph. Some began to require an interview. And that was in part so they could try to suss out if you were Jewish or not.

(Source: America’s most prestigious universities became elite through policies designed to keep Jews out of them. - https://newsletters.theatlantic.com/deep-shtetl/632c8ea068f6... ).

> ... the Ivy League didn't really want them. Being first-generation students, these applicants didn't have rich alumni parents who would be likely to donate big bucks. Being from an ethnicity not associated with America's governing class, they didn't help the Ivy League with its biggest selling point — that going to college there provides an opportunity to rub shoulders with America's governing class. And they were seen as boring grinds who studied too hard and weren't much fun.

> The result was a change in admissions criteria to reward "leadership," and "well-rounded" candidates — a thin disguise for "WASPs" — and, following closely on, actual quotas for Jewish students, so that no matter how many applied, their numbers on campus would stay just about the same.

Source: Asians get the Ivy League's Jewish treatment: Column - https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2014/11/23/ivy-league...

Yeah, it looks like they are doing the same thing with the Asian-Americans today (who have a similar immigrant cultural values like the jewish immigrants of the early 20th century - strong family ties and cultural importance to getting a good education).

2) If you are rich and have money to bribe these colleges, the "minimum qualification" will be "adjusted" to accommodate you. (Source: How elite US schools give preference to wealthy and white 'legacy' applicants - https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jan/23/elite-school... ).