What’s the argument for supporting organizations in this cause area? If you’re just trying to purchase fuzzies for yourself or other community members, that seems fine, but it’s hard for me to see it making sense to prioritize anti-Asian violence as a cause area by the usual EA metrics.
But maybe there are other related causes that are more promising from an EA perspective, like lowering US-China tensions, or otherwise reducing the risks of a US-China war...
For me personally, it’s symbolically important to make some sort of donation as a form of solidarity. It’s not coming out of my EA budget, but I’d still rather spend the money as effectively as possible. It seems to me that practicing the virtue of effective spending in one domain will only help in other domains.
Edit: I also found Asian Americans Advancing Justice—this seems to be one of the biggest civil rights charities focusing on low income Asian Americans. They seem to have a good track record. One can donate without paying any fees via PayPal Giving Fund here.
Might also be worth to ask @chloecockburn who had some BLM recommendations.
Thanks. I’m currently planning to donate to Laaunch as they seem the most disciplined and organized of the groups. I couldn’t actually tell what Hate is a Virus wants to do from their website—for instance a lot of it seems to be about getting Asians to advocate for other racial minorities, but I’m specifically looking for something that will help Asians. Laaunch seems more focused on this while still trying to build alliances with other racial advocacy groups.
They being Laaunch? I agree they do a lot of different things. Hate is a Virus seemed to be doing even more scattered things, some of which didn’t make sense to me. Everything Laaunch was doing seemed at least plausibly reasonable to me, and some, like the studies and movement-building, seemed pretty exciting.
My guess is that even within Asian advocacy, Laaunch is not going to look as mission-focused and impact-driven as say AMF. But my guess is no such organization exists—it’s a niche cause compared to global poverty, so there’s less professionalization—though I wouldn’t be surprised if I found a better organization with more searching. I’m definitely in the market for that if you have ideas.
Though I wouldn’t be surprised if I found a better organization with more searching.. I’m definitely in the market for that if you have ideas.
I don’t have direct ideas for the stated goal, but some brainstorming on the purpose of why you are interested in Asian advocacy might be fruitful? If you are interested in things that help Asian diaspora have better lives, have a wildly flourishing future, etc, I’d bet that the same general (human-focused) cause areas that EAs are interested in (scientific advancement, reducing existential synthetic biology and AI risk, etc) are in expectation better for Asian people than Laaunch or the other orgs above.
If you want things that disproportionately benefit Asians (eg, because “I want to show support for Asians so I want to do basically the same thing I was planning to do anyway” is a bad look/ serve poorly as an honest loyalty signal), I’d probably look into ways to improve health and other outcomes in countries with a lot of Asians, or affect a lot of Asians. Plausible targets include outdoor pollution, smoking cessation, deworming, and lead poisoning. I’d also more speculatively suggest donating to reduce nuclear risk, since I think the majority of potential flashpoints for nuclear risk is in Asia.
If you want to donate to organizations that disproportionately benefit upper-middle class Asians in Western countries (because this is the relevant group of friends/collaborators/students/etc that you wish to express solidarity to), I’m pretty stuck on ideas, yeah. I think there’s a fairly high difficulty in finding charities in this space with any nontrivial and positive tangible outcome (even more so than normal for charity selection).
Speaking personally, I do think the impact of racism on me is nonzero and negative. But almost all of the experiences of racism in my adult life looks less like explicit and obvious racial prejudice and more like statistical disparate impact, in both my corporate and social life. In no individual case would there be obvious racism, but collectively a (murky) picture is painted. Eg, I have to apply to X jobs to get offers I’m happy with, whereas I suspect my demographic twin of a different race only have to apply to ~Y jobs to get the same number of offers, visa approvals to the US are harder for Asians than for Europeans*, stuff like that. This is only my own anecdotal experience, but I suspect it generalizes well to East Asian people** who are likely to be your friends/coworkers/etc.
It seems pretty hard to meaningfully improve on the disparate impact stuff without a clear theory of change, and I don’t think there are obvious quick fixes (eg, I sure don’t want to work in any job that I have to sue to get!). I’d maybe weakly endorse a variation of Dale’s comment here and suggest organizations that lobby for greater standardization/legibility in admittance to universities and prestige jobs (under the assumption that illegibility and informal systems almost always disproportionately benefit people with power, and harms minorities). But I’m hesitant to recommend donating to any specific group that works on this without at least doing some due diligence on their theory of change.
Thinking farther afield, I’d also be interested in great power stuff and other things that mitigate potential future ethnic tensions.
* And people who are ethnically Asian are more likely to be from Asian countries than from European countries.
** I’m less sure about generalization to eg, West Asians because I can imagine a lot of anti-Arab and Anti-Israeli sentiment that’s more direct.
I just wanted to say that I really appreciated this comment. In particular, I think the first part is an excellent and well-phrased example of the “universal solvent” property of EA thinking that I think is both hugely valuable and quite emotionally challenging to many people in cases like this.
Thanks, and sorry for not responding to this earlier (was on vacation at the time). I really appreciated this and agree with willbradshaw’s comment below :).
I agree that LAAUNCH seems quite high upside because they do research which I feel is often more neglected and can be quite high impact (e.g. they conduct “A comprehensive, national assessment of attitudes and stereotypes towards Asian Americans in the US – one of the few such studies in the last 20 years”).
What’s the argument for supporting organizations in this cause area? If you’re just trying to purchase fuzzies for yourself or other community members, that seems fine, but it’s hard for me to see it making sense to prioritize anti-Asian violence as a cause area by the usual EA metrics.
But maybe there are other related causes that are more promising from an EA perspective, like lowering US-China tensions, or otherwise reducing the risks of a US-China war...
For me personally, it’s symbolically important to make some sort of donation as a form of solidarity. It’s not coming out of my EA budget, but I’d still rather spend the money as effectively as possible. It seems to me that practicing the virtue of effective spending in one domain will only help in other domains.
JPAL had some links to some orgs here:
Asian Americans Advancing Justice—Atlanta
stopAAPIhate.org
hateisavirus.org
laaunch.org
Edit: I also found Asian Americans Advancing Justice—this seems to be one of the biggest civil rights charities focusing on low income Asian Americans. They seem to have a good track record. One can donate without paying any fees via PayPal Giving Fund here.
Might also be worth to ask @chloecockburn who had some BLM recommendations.
Thanks. I’m currently planning to donate to Laaunch as they seem the most disciplined and organized of the groups. I couldn’t actually tell what Hate is a Virus wants to do from their website—for instance a lot of it seems to be about getting Asians to advocate for other racial minorities, but I’m specifically looking for something that will help Asians. Laaunch seems more focused on this while still trying to build alliances with other racial advocacy groups.
They (EDIT: Laaunch) seem to be doing a lot of different things and I’m confused as to what their theory of change is.
(Tbc I only had a cursory look at their website so it’s possible I missed it).
They being Laaunch? I agree they do a lot of different things. Hate is a Virus seemed to be doing even more scattered things, some of which didn’t make sense to me. Everything Laaunch was doing seemed at least plausibly reasonable to me, and some, like the studies and movement-building, seemed pretty exciting.
My guess is that even within Asian advocacy, Laaunch is not going to look as mission-focused and impact-driven as say AMF. But my guess is no such organization exists—it’s a niche cause compared to global poverty, so there’s less professionalization—though I wouldn’t be surprised if I found a better organization with more searching. I’m definitely in the market for that if you have ideas.
I don’t have direct ideas for the stated goal, but some brainstorming on the purpose of why you are interested in Asian advocacy might be fruitful? If you are interested in things that help Asian diaspora have better lives, have a wildly flourishing future, etc, I’d bet that the same general (human-focused) cause areas that EAs are interested in (scientific advancement, reducing existential synthetic biology and AI risk, etc) are in expectation better for Asian people than Laaunch or the other orgs above.
If you want things that disproportionately benefit Asians (eg, because “I want to show support for Asians so I want to do basically the same thing I was planning to do anyway” is a bad look/ serve poorly as an honest loyalty signal), I’d probably look into ways to improve health and other outcomes in countries with a lot of Asians, or affect a lot of Asians. Plausible targets include outdoor pollution, smoking cessation, deworming, and lead poisoning. I’d also more speculatively suggest donating to reduce nuclear risk, since I think the majority of potential flashpoints for nuclear risk is in Asia.
If you want to donate to organizations that disproportionately benefit upper-middle class Asians in Western countries (because this is the relevant group of friends/collaborators/students/etc that you wish to express solidarity to), I’m pretty stuck on ideas, yeah. I think there’s a fairly high difficulty in finding charities in this space with any nontrivial and positive tangible outcome (even more so than normal for charity selection).
Speaking personally, I do think the impact of racism on me is nonzero and negative. But almost all of the experiences of racism in my adult life looks less like explicit and obvious racial prejudice and more like statistical disparate impact, in both my corporate and social life. In no individual case would there be obvious racism, but collectively a (murky) picture is painted. Eg, I have to apply to X jobs to get offers I’m happy with, whereas I suspect my demographic twin of a different race only have to apply to ~Y jobs to get the same number of offers, visa approvals to the US are harder for Asians than for Europeans*, stuff like that. This is only my own anecdotal experience, but I suspect it generalizes well to East Asian people** who are likely to be your friends/coworkers/etc.
It seems pretty hard to meaningfully improve on the disparate impact stuff without a clear theory of change, and I don’t think there are obvious quick fixes (eg, I sure don’t want to work in any job that I have to sue to get!). I’d maybe weakly endorse a variation of Dale’s comment here and suggest organizations that lobby for greater standardization/legibility in admittance to universities and prestige jobs (under the assumption that illegibility and informal systems almost always disproportionately benefit people with power, and harms minorities). But I’m hesitant to recommend donating to any specific group that works on this without at least doing some due diligence on their theory of change.
Thinking farther afield, I’d also be interested in great power stuff and other things that mitigate potential future ethnic tensions.
* And people who are ethnically Asian are more likely to be from Asian countries than from European countries.
** I’m less sure about generalization to eg, West Asians because I can imagine a lot of anti-Arab and Anti-Israeli sentiment that’s more direct.
I just wanted to say that I really appreciated this comment. In particular, I think the first part is an excellent and well-phrased example of the “universal solvent” property of EA thinking that I think is both hugely valuable and quite emotionally challenging to many people in cases like this.
Thanks, and sorry for not responding to this earlier (was on vacation at the time). I really appreciated this and agree with willbradshaw’s comment below :).
I agree that LAAUNCH seems quite high upside because they do research which I feel is often more neglected and can be quite high impact (e.g. they conduct “A comprehensive, national assessment of attitudes and stereotypes towards Asian Americans in the US – one of the few such studies in the last 20 years”).