MICHAEL BARONE: Low percentages of ‘nonwhite’ police officers is not a major national problem as New York Times suggests.

The Times’s emphasis on the distinction between “whites” and “non-whites” is, I think, positively unhelpful in considering some of the municipalities in other metropolitan areas. In metro New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles, there are municipalities with Asian population majorities — “non-whites” in the Times’s argot — but very few Asian police officers. Is this a problem in Edison Township, N.J.(the nation’s leading Indian-American municipality), Fremont, Calif. (Asians from multiple countries), or Westminster, Calif. (large Vietnamese population)?

Asians tend to have very low crime rates, lower than whites in many areas. I very much doubt that Asian residents in Edison, Fremont and Westminster are simmering with resentment at their treatment by white police, and I would be surprised if even the most assiduous Times reporter, eager to find “whites” mistreating “non-whites,” could find evidence to the contrary.

Thus, the problem is ignored. Anyway, because they’re low-crime and high-achieving, Asians have been turned into “honorary whites.”