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Google adds a tag to identify Asian-owned businesses in Search and Maps

theverge.com

16 points by AinderS 3 years ago · 63 comments (60 loaded)

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plastic_bag 3 years ago

> Google is doing this to stand in support against violent acts that have targeted the Asian community, and COVID-related business closures over the last couple of years.

Doesn't labelling businesses as Asian-owned make it easier for the attackers to target them in the future?

  • mc32 3 years ago

    If you look at FBI data it’s not a widespread problem. But I guess instilling fear and then offering comfort sells. I see the “stop hate” in places where there is the least likelihood people would be attacked, you know richer suburban areas with very little crime…

  • exolymph 3 years ago

    My guess is that the people randomly beating up Asians aren't doing a whole lotta research beforehand? Opportunistic, not strategized.

    I could be wrong though! Anybody else have actual intel on this? I'm just going off the chatter on /r/sanfrancisco and /r/bayarea.

    • charlieyu1 3 years ago

      Burglars, on the other hand, are known to do their research while picking their targets. They use chalks to draw symbols to mark houses that are easy to break into (eg symbols to mark the owner is elderly, woman, nobody at day time etc)

bilalq 3 years ago

What is "Asian"? Growing up as a Pakistani kid in the US, people would always say how I'm not really Asian. To them, only people from east or south-east Asia counted under that label. Any census-style questions still had me marking as Asian, but there was always a bit of dissonance there.

I can maybe see the desire/appeal for a label that means "all Asians except those from the Indian subcontinent, middle-east, or central Asia", but it's always been curious to me that society in America just adopted the word "Asian" for that purpose while excluding so much of "Asia" from falling under that label.

  • bilalnpe 3 years ago

    >desire/appeal for a label that means "all Asians except those from the Indian subcontinent, middle-east, or central Asia",

    That used to be referred to as 'oriental'. Now 'East Asian' is used.

  • charlieyu1 3 years ago

    Asia consists of at least 4-5 different geopolitical groups/races that are completely different from each other.

    Then again, what’s the point of these labels?

logicalmonster 3 years ago

So there's special tags for woman owned, Asian owned, Latino owned, and Black owned businesses.

Any groups missing?

  • mc32 3 years ago

    They should let people self label any label they like such as “Jovian” or “Mercurial” “Martian”, etc.

  • solardev 3 years ago

    "Onsite free parking" would be nice.

    • josephcsible 3 years ago

      There are too many people who unironically think that having enough parking spaces is a bad thing for this to ever happen.

      • BirdieNZ 3 years ago

        Who are these people who think having enough parking spaces is a bad thing?

        The closest I can think of are people who think parking minimum regulations should be removed, so that stores and house owners can decide for themselves how much parking they want to put in; certainly a far step different from not wanting an adequate number of parking spaces.

        • josephcsible 3 years ago

          I've been to places where it's been $30 to park in a garage that was a 10-minute walk from where I needed to go (and I walk fast). This seems like a clear example of "not enough parking". This city had a parking minimum which was already only barely being met, so removing it would have made this already bad situation way worse.

  • ergocoder 3 years ago

    White?

    Also, Asian is kinda a big category.

    • jjeaff 3 years ago

      White supremacists burned that bridge (or cross) long ago. The idea of being "proud" to be white only conjures up one thought for even the most lightly informed about our nation's history.

      Usually, the point of identifying minority owned business is to allow people to perhaps help make up for historical (or even modern) oppression and help people from those groups overcome systemic issues that have likely made success more difficult for them. White people as a group have not been systemically oppressed.

      • logicalmonster 3 years ago

        Conflating wanting the equal and non-divisive treatment for all with white supremacy is very ugly.

        • jjeaff 3 years ago

          I think it's pretty ugly to get a head start in a race and then feign harm when anyone tries to boost up the people that got held up at the starting line so they can at least get within range of those that got the headstart.

          • logicalmonster 3 years ago

            > I think it's pretty ugly to get a head start in a race and then feign harm when anyone tries to boost up the people that got held up at the starting line so they can at least get within range of those that got the headstart.

            A gold star for your effort Jjeaff, but I'm still about 110% convinced that holding any group of people back for the sins of others is racist and morally wrong, not effective, counterproductive, and certainly no longer necessary.

      • mbg721 3 years ago

        Why should I care what white-supremacists (other people who happen to have a similar skin color to mine) think? I have nothing of any substance in common with them.

      • klipt 3 years ago

        Thing is, labeling all the minority owned businesses obviously makes it easy to also find white owned businesses by elimination.

      • _-david-_ 3 years ago

        How long do minority owned businesses get this benefit? 10 years? 50 years? 100?

        • jjeaff 3 years ago

          I don't know, but we have what, 2 or 3 years so far? Is that just really getting to be too much for you already?

          • _-david-_ 3 years ago

            I'm not a fan of any racial discrimination, but if we are going to have it I would prefer to know the end date.

        • nullfield 3 years ago

          Forever.

          Once you’re “historically oppressed” or “disadvantaged”, that never goes away.

          • _-david-_ 3 years ago

            Since Google is not doing this with white owned businesses that means whites are now disadvantaged so white businesses should now get this forever?

      • skyde 3 years ago

        > White people as a group have not been systemically oppressed.

        you are either very bad at history or you are racist if you think white have never been a victim.

      • hegemon8 3 years ago

        Even the Irish?

      • AinderSOP 3 years ago

        > The idea of being "proud" to be white only conjures up one thought for even the most lightly informed about our nation's history.

        Twice defending Vienna from Ottoman sieges? Retaking Spain from the Moors? The failed last stand at Constantinople before the city, and Byzantium itself, fell to Muslim conquerors? Ending the Barbary slave trade, that raided Europe for centuries, kidnapping two million slaves into the Muslim world? Holding off the Mongol invasion? Or maybe you mean inventing antibiotics and the tractor? Or germ theory and the transistor?

        Of course you're right. The trans-Atlantic slave trade (ignore the Arab trans-Saharan slave trade) is the only thing "white pride" conjures up. The propaganda has been incredibly effective, erasing all white history from the public mind except that which can be used to shame them.

        > White people as a group have not been systemically oppressed.

        Yes, all the barely or not-at-all held-off invasions I listed aren't oppression. Nor was the blood tax much of eastern Europe had to pay the Ottomans [1], nor the Pontic genocide [2]. It was always all sunshine and rainbows for the white man, that has never faced an external threat in all of Europe's history.

        You could say this is the founding ideal of the US ("founding" since 1903, when The New Colossus Poem was mounted on the Statue of Liberty). All the battles for freedom and survival are reduced to "storied pomp", and the Colossus of Rhodes, built to celebrate the defence of that city, is re-interpreted as an ode to violent conquest, "With conquering limbs astride from land to land;". Your country has asked you to believe that Europeans and European-Americans never faced an external threat, never had to fight for survival, never lost such a battle, and never contributed anything to the world but violent conquest.

        And you obliged whole-heartedly obliged, because you are a good person.

        [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_the_Ottoman_Empire#...

        [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_genocide

        • OOD 3 years ago

          Obviously talking about white Americans, not Europeans. White Americans have never been systemically oppressed. Your reaction to the OP is a textbook case of white fragility [0].

          [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Fragility

          • AinderSOP 3 years ago

            White Americans are descended from Europeans, and the post was talking about being proud to be white, not "white American". Though I don't see why oppression is a requirement for pride - does achievement not suffice?

            And "white fragility" is simply a way to dismiss objections without addressing if they are factual. So in that sense, your use of the term is correct. Any resistance is "white fragility", and the only way to avoid that accusation is to submit to and agree with every attack against whites.

            • OOD 3 years ago

              >White Americans are descended from Europeans, and the post was talking about being proud to be white

              White Americans have never experienced oppression in America. Full stop. Europeans typically are not racialized and do not identify as white, instead as Italian, German, etc. This discussion is obviously about whites in the US.

              >Though I don't see why oppression is a requirement for pride - does achievement not suffice?

              It's not an achievement when you spent centuries conquering, colonizing, and extracting everything you can from BIPOCs. When you start out so far ahead in a race it's not an achievement when you win.

              >And "white fragility" is simply a way to dismiss objections without addressing if they are factual.

              I addressed them, you're not factual. White Americans recoil to the facts that they created and live in a society that upholds their supremacy.

              • LunaSea 3 years ago

                > White Americans have never experienced oppression in America. Full stop. Europeans typically are not racialized and do not identify as white, instead as Italian, German, etc. This discussion is obviously about whites in the US.

                Wow, this is an incredibly stupid comment.

                If you simply looked at the history of Italian and Irish immigrants you would know so.

                • jjeaff 3 years ago

                  Italian and Irish were not considered "white" at the time. They were oppressed by the white majority. Lucky for them, after assimilation into American culture, they became impossible to distinguish from the white majority and so their persecution was relatively short lived.

                  • LunaSea 3 years ago

                    > was relatively short lived

                    Well besides all that canal digging and train track building you know.

                    And even after all this oppression they managed to succeed.

              • AinderSOP 3 years ago

                > Europeans typically are not racialized and do not identify as white, instead as Italian, German, etc.

                This is obviously false, as shown by the different reactions in Europe to immigration from countries within Europe, to those outside of Europe.

            • ChainOfFools 3 years ago

              If you are proud of your strengths you're compared to a violent conqueror. If you complain about unfair treatment or representation you're called fragile.

              Nothing but heads-I-win-tails-you-lose bad faith arguments.

  • jazzyjackson 3 years ago

    maybe it would be easier for them to consolidate everything under "minority owned" and then let me filter them out of my search results, that would be progressive right?

  • skyde 3 years ago

    arabic :-)

CodeWriter23 3 years ago

Cool. Big Tech driving more division and hate.

ralusek 3 years ago

My informal definition of racism is "utilizes race as a parameter in a decision making process."

badrabbit 3 years ago

Is a Shawarma shop asian because the middle east is in asia. How about Afghan food, it is solidly central asia. Is sri lankan asian how about indonesian or malay? Indian?

I mean I think all these are asian it would just feel inappropriate if this ended up with only east asian places labeled as asian. Why not just use the country's name? I hope Googlers know "asian" isn't a race outside of "social construct" regional similarities in cuisine hower exist so maybe southeast-asian but I would prefer to know what country. Are they serving kimchi for sure or nah??

  • themodelplumber 3 years ago

    Country is awkward too. Like I know a Japanese place owned by a Korean guy who has Vietnamese staff. Food is delicious

    • badrabbit 3 years ago

      I only thought of the cuisine they served not who owns it or works there. Why would I care about that?

      • themodelplumber 3 years ago

        You can't think of a reason? For example: You bring your friend there, they are from that country, they try their language, it doesn't work, embarrassing moment for everybody.

        And about 1000 other reasons.

    • mc32 3 years ago

      Similarly taco joint owned by a “Korean” man. Food is Mexican owner is American but of Asian ancestry…

syspec 3 years ago

Did you know, that basically everything to the east of Israel is technically Asian?

1shooner 3 years ago

What could possibly go wrong?

computerfriend 3 years ago

When are they going to roll this out in Asia?

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