What’s up, man?

“For example, why do many Asian Americans deal only with Asian American real estate agents?”

Hahaha…you know, I wish people wouldn’t look at the race of their agents and brokers. It would definitely make my life easier. It would definitely help towards integration.

That being said, I think people gravitate towards people who look like them. My old boss at my old company wanted to hire Hispanic loan officers because he wanted a piece of the growing Hispanic population. It’s usually the law of sales–people gravitate towards people like them. If we hired more Democratic LO’s, we’d get more Democratic customers. More African American LO’s=more African American customers. More car racing LO’s=more car racing customers. I think many times it’s affinity as much as racism.

For Asian people, it even breaks down along lines of ethnicity, which excludes people of other Asian ethnicities.

I also see what you’re saying about White salespeople, and I don’t know how to answer this. When I went to buy a car several years ago, all the White salesmen ran in the other direction. I finally got a Chinese salesman to help me, and as we were testdriving, he told me that he often got “stuck” with Chinese customers because they were more cautious about buying, and the White salespeople didn’t want to deal with it. People aren’t supposed to discriminate, but after seeing patterns, they eventually do.

For me, it’s a struggle. While Jeff correctly identifies unethical behavior by salespeople, there’s also a lot of unethical behavior among Asian customers too. You wouldn’t believe some of the dirty stuff I’ve seen. Sure, it dies down after a generation or two in this country, but aside from letting these cultural behaviors die through simply being here, how can we fix problems right now? This is a relevant question, especially given the Asian American reliance on immigration.

As for the church dude, I have no idea how successful his investing business is, but he makes serious dough as an engineer with a PhD. I think part of how he cheats these people comes from the fact that people see that he’s living large. Kinda like Bernie Madoff and all his houses and cars. That’s probably how the “prosperity gospel” people appeal to the common folk too. It’s sad.

For example, why do many Asian Americans deal only with Asian American real estate agents?

Because of a lack of a trust (that’s often justified) in non-Asian real estate agents who frequently steer Asian Americans to only houses in “minority neighborhoods” or don’t work hard on their behalf to get them the best deal. It’s the same issue with the immigrant generations of Asian Americans who stash huge amounts of money in their house instead of the bank - because American financial institutions up until recently had a history of racist behavior toward non-whites, including denial of loans and other services. I’m not saying that racism is a free pass to behave unethically or be unethical, I’m just pointing out that it’s a factor in many people behaving in that way.

Hopefully when our community begins addressing issues of racism (both institutional and personal), it will give people incentives to not engage in unethical behaviors. If people can trust that institutions and all real estate agents (not just Asians) are working on their behalf, they won’t feel the need for kick-backs or other unethical practices.

But yeah… personal integrity is a difficult for thing for all of us to manage. I think a lot of times, I myself fall short because I’m getting older, I don’t want to engage in conflict, or I’m cynical about racism, or I’m just plain lazy. But I think when we acknowledge our own personal shortcomings, it’s often a healthy part of the process toward becoming better people. To borrow a spiritual analogy, one can’t be truly transformed until one has truly repented.

BTW, that Christian sleazebag you mentioned makes me sick. Reminds me of “prosperity gospel” folks who fleece people’s hopes to get rich.