Some critics of my most recent book have accused me of being a self-hater. Eugene Volokh deconstructed this argument here. Today, reader Richard J. Shinder points out that the accusation is based on an absurd assumption about Asian solidarity:

The left in general (and particularly leftist Caucasians) would have us believe in some sort of mythic “Asian solidarity”, whereby your defense of Japanese-American internment is doubly noxious because you are an ethnic Filipina (witness some of the protest signs at your speaking engagements, such as the Berkeley event — I really liked the “Sip Sip” sign you posted today). Despite the significant ethnic, linguistic, cultural and religious diversity extant on the Asian land mass, you are supposed to feel a relatively higher degree kinship with an ethnic Japanese (or Korean, or Vietnamese, etc.) solely because you or your forebears hail from an Asian nation.

If one were to apply this same standard to the European land mass, the results are laughable. How could I possibly support the internment [of] German-Americans when my own ancestors emigrated from the Netherlands and Russia?

A further irony is that some of the same Asian-Americans who accuse me of being self-hating support affirmative action policies in high school and university admissions that place Asian-American applicants at a disadvantage relative to whites. As I wrote last June,

In the more than a decade that I’ve been writing and reporting on the harm that government racial preferences causes Americans of all races and ethnicities, liberal Asian-Americans have gleefully labeled me an “Aunt Tomasina,” a “coconut” (brown on the outside, white on the inside) and a “sellout.”

But when you look at the numbers, when you look at the clear intent of the law, and when you cut through the smokescreen of politically determined “diversity,” it’s quite clear who is selling out whom.

Update: James Fulford of VDARE weighs in.