lol go for it all my man. Declaring a national day for abortion rights would send a strong message. His work so far includes multiple dispatches on the protests at Standing Rock, the deportation of Korean adoptee Adam Crapster, the controversial theory ancient marble statues arent actually supposed to be white, and an early report on high school students adopting the national anthem protests against police brutality, a segment that was nominated for a Emmy award. Those questions echo louder than any other part of the book. Well, as he wrote in the book: The Chinese arent creative enough, the Nips dont have the balls or the specific brand of Korean crazy, which is really just the same as Irish crazy, because both peoples come from small countries oppressed for hundreds of years by assholes across the way. Chenxing Han discusses Buddhism and identity with writer Jay Caspian Kang. We need to figure out how to talk more realistically about a multiethnic country in which communities of color have very different politics from one another. The current zero-sum logic of equity, which goes as far as to label working-class Asian students as white-adjacent and comes up with fantastical reasons to link their academic success with white supremacy, must be changed, not only for electoral reasons but also because it simply does not make sense for the vast majority of families. To get more political coverage in particular, you can sign up for On Politics, a daily newsletter that unpacks and illuminates American politics from every angle. Terms of Service apply. Forget South Asians. Like most of the public schools with merit-based admissions that have come under fire over the past few years, Lowell is predominantly Asian, with many students coming from Chinese working-class families. The Creep of History Too much focus on the sins of the past can distract us from the injustices of the present. Privacy Policy and Later, Kang continues the thought: When you come up against the limit of your parents dreams for this country, where do you go? Expanding AmeriCorps could help us solve a number of pressing individual, social and economic problems. Things you buy through our links may earnVox Mediaa commission. Jay Caspian Kang | The New Yorker And anyone who thought that the national news media had invented a race war out of thin air needed only to listen to Ice Cubes 1991 song Black Korea, which warned: So dont follow me up and down your marketOr your little chop suey assll be a targetOf a nationwide boycottJuice with the people, thats what the boy gotSo pay respect to the black fistOr well burn your store right down to a crispAnd then well see yaCause you cant turn the ghetto into Black Korea. The cart he used to carry the days haul had been taken away from him. "What the struggle was and is remains largely undefined.". Jay Caspian Kang hard at work with his writing assistant, hisdog Chito, a Chihuahua mix. What doesnt exist now, or for that matter, didnt exist in 1992, is a language to discuss what happens when the attackers caught on video happen to be Black. And my interest in divulging these details would not be to instruct or to edify, or even to elicit empathy from fellow addicts. I will still be writing, but if youd like to stay in touch, please contact me at newsletterkang@gmail.com. "I felt a few years ago that I was starting to come to some conclusions I felt confident in and I don't think these conclusions necessarily need to be held up as statues," Kang said. [1] He grew up in Cambridge, Massachusetts, while his father obtained his post-doctorate degree in organic chemistry at Harvard[2] and at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Theres nothing that can be done. (26 minutes) By Jay Caspian Kang; Produced by Miki Meek Act Two How I Met My Mother Especially the limits of Asian American. Because the terms a bust. It captured a 68-year-old Chinese man in the Bayview neighborhood in a confrontation with a handful of Black people. Its been the honor of my career to work through them with you, my readers. '", "I've just stopped responding [to the online criticism], because there's nothing I can do about it," he added. The field of Asian American identity writing is troubled. Do You Hear What I Hear? - This American Life Weiss says it helps that Kang is a ball of contradictions interested in nonconformity, protest, social justice, and resistance of all kinds. Thats great. Theres more pressure [than writing] because your face is there, he says. He plays poker and says he once lost $9,000 to a stripper wearing heart-shaped sunglasses in Las Vegas. But over the past year, as Ive written about homelessness, education policy, nursing homes, and even dabbled a bit in the culture wars, a central argument began to emerge. His ambition is huge, and the bar is low. His dream was always to write scores for horror films. Jay Caspian Kang is a staff writer for The New Yorker, an Emmy-nominated documentary film director, and the author of "The Loneliest Americans." Prior to coming to The New Yorker, he was an. Jay Caspian Kang is an American writer, editor, television journalist and podcast host. 2. Such freedoms are rare in journalism, and while I was both excited and flattered by the opportunity to spill the contents of my brain on Mondays and Thursdays, I will admit that it took me a while to figure out what I wanted to actually say in this space. In doing that, he misses important context. Jay Caspian Kang isn't interested in writing "smelly lunchbox stories," however. Two of the most widely shared of these involved elderly men in the Bay Area who were shoved to the ground by Black assailants. A militant response, which takes, at least in part, its inspiration from the images of Korean shopkeepers patrolling their rooftops with guns during the 1992 Los Angeles riots, seems possible and should not be dismissed. Over the past month, as reports of attacks on Asian-Americans, particularly Asian-American elders, have circulated, a new generation of scholars, writers and celebrities have tried to figure out not just what to do, but what exactly is even happening, and how to discuss it. (Not according to the newer literature around school equity, which increasingly doesnt include Asians when discussing diversity.) Amid the outcry, a new form of Asian-Americanness has begun to stand up, unsteadily, on its legs, still uncertain of where it will go. And more broadly: If we are the natural enemy of equity and racial progress, then why should we support it? [1] He says he spent more than 40 hours a week playing poker at the Commerce Casino during this time. Kang has his detractors. To revisit this article, select My Account, thenView saved stories, To revisit this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories. (22 minutes) By Jay Caspian Kang LaDonna sets out to understand how this place is run. This decision was mine, and it was a difficult one to make because Ive enjoyed the interactions Ive had with you, my readers. Is the pursuit of a more equitable America a zero-sum game? This change, juxtaposed with the recent attacks, expose, in microcosm, the deep, discomforting tension that sits at the heart of progressive politics around race: Why would we give up our spots at selective schools to benefit the same people who attack us in the streets? Perhaps more than those of any other network on television, the stars of Fox News are more or less interchangeable. Kang noted that he decided to write the book after more than 10 years writing on Asian American issues and that he only decided to write The Loneliest Americans versus as a way for him to more deeply "interrogate" his own ideas and engage with previous research. When Kang speaks to Al in person, he writes it like a trip through the fun-house mirror: Our fathers went to the same elite high school in Korea and came to the United States in the late seventies to pursue graduate degrees. Its a stamp of authenticity (and a monolith). Mr. Kang is a writer at large for The New York Times Magazine. [15], In the spring of 2020, Kang began co-hosting the podcast Time to Say Goodbye with E. Tammy Kim and Andrew B. The work has been seen as a turning point in Kang's career. But the relatively easy process, Kang says, makes him feel a little entitled and a bit of a douchebag. Cancer had afforded me a short honeymoon with my childhood, he later wrote of the experience. The book is all-new material, with chapters touching everything from the writers own history in South Korea and the U.S., to early Asian American activism, to Asian-run tutoring centers. Abandoning his introspective tone, Kang dips into a rant: These kids he sees from afar seem completely uninterested in making friends with people of other races or backgrounds. At a time when our industry is imploding and everyone is losing their job, youre very aware the end may come and you might have to do something with your life where all the connections youve built are somewhat irrelevant, he says. That was like the quintessential example of how I wanted us to be thinking. I just get this real intense feeling of inferiority, and then it just stews a bit. The New Yorker may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers. In 2021, he published The Loneliest Americans, a memoir and reported work examining Asian American identity. The portrayal of him in the press as an anomaly, as someone who doesnt fit the usual Asian American narrative, actually says less about Choi than it does about how narrow and sclerotic that narrative can be.. What exists, instead, are videos that show Asians being attacked in cities across the country. Kangs attention to diverse voices isnt a recent phenomenon. Do you agree? Jay Caspian Kang is a staff writer for The New Yorker, an Emmy-nominated documentary film director, and the author of "The Loneliest Americans." Prior to coming to The New Yorker, he was an. I wish I had taken acting or elocution lessons. And how does the binary way we think about race limit the opportunities for true coalitional politics? I didnt really set out to write about race at all, he tells me. A reader could live with this, savoring the specifics when Kang goes deep on L.A. Koreatown, tutoring centers, and the real-estate origins of Flushings Chinatown. But I recognize that in this time of crisis for Asian-Americans, this message of nationalism and self-protection, with all its implied calls for law and order and incarceration, will be heard by millions who are still trying to figure out what Asian-American even means. Viral outrage usually requires sustained propulsion: One video usually isnt enough because it can be written off as an isolated incident, but two videos released just days apart, both showing horrifying acts of violence, can create a narrative. Much of this focus has been on the Asian American immigrant population, but I believe much of the analysis holds for Latino and Black immigrants as well. With us today to discuss that are Jay Caspian Kang, a Korean American writer whose work can be found in publications like The New York Times and Vice. A cause of death has not been confirmed as yet. The story centered around Philip Kim, a young, disgruntled Korean-American man working at a social media site who gets caught up in the details of the murder of his elderly next-door neighbor. For Kang, the most enjoyable aspects of his positions at Grantland and then at The New Yorker were finding young writers, figuring out story ideas during meetings, and collaborating with other editors. (Here, theyre almost exclusively Chinese and Korean.) ". Do our lives not matter? Hes revisiting Joan Didion, like any good recent East Coast transplant, and he is not quite sure how he fits into the place she describes her vision of college-football games giving way to counterculture, which has now given way to a Whole Foods parking lot. Jay was a big part of it, Simmons says. Football is not really like war, regardless of what its legion of ex-players and commentators will tell you. By Jay Caspian Kang Deshaun. But I think its more like an attempt to build on sand. Playing the hit video game Stray made me think that hyperrealism is overhyped. He was very good at spotting talent on top of everything else.. During his brief time at The New Yorker, Kang regularly met with other non-white staffers in the Cond Nast building to talk about how much the company, and the industry at large, lacked diversity even at the assistant level. I cant be as cavalier as I was five years ago., A recent op-ed made a very important point about the word collusion, How Golf Makes You Confront Your Mortality, exhaustive, daily recordings of the unessential, scientific evaluation of the greatest divas of the last 25 years, The High is Always the Pain and the Pain is Always the High. [17] Later in the year he published The Loneliest Americans, a part memoir, part reported work on Asian American experience. Featuring pointed personal reflections, unflashy collections of jokes, and snow globes. He received his undergraduate degree from Bowdoin College[3] and received his Masters of Fine Arts (MFA) degree from Columbia University in 2005. Whom do you hate the most? The videos of the two assaults in the Bay Area, for example, coincided with national scrutiny over the place of high-achieving Asian students in public schools. Last year, he added broadcast to his rsum, joining HBOs Vice News Tonight to report stories about civil rights and injustices involving race. He believes that Asian-Americans should be politically active like right-wing Cuban-Americans in Florida. And not even the videos themselves are reliable images of what was described as an attack on a second elderly Asian man, released shortly after the shoving of Mr. Vicha, prompted another round of outrage, including a $25,000 reward from the actors Daniel Dae Kim and Daniel Wu for information that would lead to the capture of the assailant. , Jay Caspian Kang tries but fails to restore meaning to an empty term. Hes written about the superiority of a particular baby stroller, and on why he thinks the term Asian-American is mostly meaningless. His features often include deep reflections on his identity and his past, and humorous references to his quirky range of interests. The musicians in the orchestra for Phantom of the Opera tell reporter Jay Caspian Kang about what it's like to play the exact same music every single nightfor decades. At the heart of The Loneliest Americans are several questions; among the most prominent is whether the categorization Asian American, a term so broad that Kang says it encompasses everyone from "Indian Americans, who have the highest incomes of any group of Asian-Americans to people from Cambodia, which tend to have much lower incomes on average," is futile. Its very hard to pin him down and predict what he would say.. And so, we are left with the videos, which transcend language and cultural barriers and exist in a space outside mediation and intervention. Thank you for reading the Jay Caspian Kang newsletter. Jay Caspian Kang That's a violinist named Kurt Coble. Take Over Hotels", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Jay_Caspian_Kang&oldid=1159051997, This page was last edited on 7 June 2023, at 22:39. The evidence is all over social media. It is difficult to put these videos into a context that makes sense of them, leaving us with several unsatisfying interpretations. He then posed a question to himself: "Do I really want this child to have to read this and to know about the anxiety of her parents?". Over the past year, Ive also written on a few occasions about my belief in community colleges and the integral part they could play in creating a truly equitable education system. I find that I just write better when Im writing about something that feels a little bit more personal, he says. So a couple weeks ago, he's a college professor and he's preparing a lecture for a class. The usual explanations, invoking the history of this country, the model minority myth, and the need for solidarity against white supremacy, can be forcefully stated. Kang says the task, commanded by his mother to ensure chore completion between the ages of 5 and 14, led to exhaustive, daily recordings of the unessential: what he ate for dinner or why he didnt like the hot summers as a child in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. It was inspired by a moment Kang had in 2007, after he learned the shooter behind the Virginia Tech massacre was Asian, and instinctively knew the person was Korean. Helplessness and confusion over where to place their political energy had resulted in an angry, largely incoherent, and shallow radicalism. But these past months have also shown the limits of the rote progressive language about race and its assumption, in practice, of a binary between Black and white Americans. The San Francisco Board of Education recently voted to end merit-based admissions to Lowell, the citys premier public high school. Here are some tips. [13] Previously he was a founding editor of the ESPN sports and pop-culture blog Grantland,[14] and then served as editor of the science and technology blog Elements at The New Yorker from April to November 2014. ", There were "those who wrote straightforward narratives about oppression and whose work should be studied through an anthropological lens. Subscribe now Like him or not, he is often right about the big stuff. "[21], Kang is married and lives in Berkeley, California. The American public still doesnt know all that much about the millions of immigrants that have come into the country since 1965, nor do they fully appreciate how the inroads made by these populations have come in a short period of time, not just in terms of economic mobility but also in terms of geography. He can be a nuanced reporter and a stylish essayist. It infuses Wesley Yangs writing, half digested into misogyny, morbidly fascinating at best and disturbing at worst. There is an opportunity to reshape that language to address the contradictions inherent in the lives of millions of immigrants and to create a reality that acknowledges the size of the rift between Asian and Black Americans, but does not fall into a zero-sum game in which everyone loses. Lewis Capaldi Cancels Tour Due to Impact of Tourettes Syndrome, It became obvious that I need to spend much more time on getting my mental and physical health in order., Julian Sands Confirmed Dead After Human Remains Found. According to Kang, what is the traditional "paradoxical yet symbiotic relationship" (para. To stop saying Asian American when we mean something specific, to insist on a politics that works without althoughs. And so last July, Kang returned to New York and a full-time career in journalism to join Vice News Tonight as a civil rights correspondent. And now, the decades of repetition in the Phantom of the Opera pit are finally coming to an end. We didnt pay, so I dont know why he wanted to write for it, Friedman adds. This time, there is no easy line to draw from the history of a Korean merchant class setting up in Black neighborhoods to a girl lying dead on the floor of a convenience store; no buildings are being torched in retaliation. The same day, The New York Times Magazine wanted Kang to write 3,500 words about poker for $2 a word. A few stories in particular helped him turn a small but loyal following into a up-and-coming voice editors craved to work with. One can certainly understand the desire to reduce tensions and provide some path toward mutual understanding, but many of these calls for unity, especially those expressed in the endlessly nuanced, overly caveated language of that eras academy, read in hindsight like desperate attempts to paper over the immensity of the divide. Jay Caspian Kang - Wikipedia Thinking around Blackness, hardly intractable, is constantly evolving through conversations around privilege, immigration, colorism, and who gets left behind. Born in Seoul, South Korea, onNew YearsEve, Kang began writing at a very young age, but it would be hard to find glimmers of his narrative talents or his literary ambitions in the content of his childhood journals. Its so privileged. The killing of a tech executive reveals the cycle of outrage that puts enormous pressure on progressive district attorneys. The musicians in the orchestra for Phantom of the Opera tell reporter Jay Caspian Kang about what it's like to play the exact same music every single nightfor decadesand how they've learned to make their peace with it. Blackness is intractable, he writes. Paramount+ Takes Aim at More Streaming Casualties. I am sad to announce that this will be the last edition of this newsletter. Good Christ. Instead of the capitulations and endless contextualizing offered up by progressive, second-generation Asian-Americans, he and his fellow activists simply asked: What about us? Binary thinking in politics, race and inequality has distracted us from processing everything else that takes place in the country. Want more stories like this one? https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/01/opinion/farewell-to-readers.html, the worst attack on our democracy in 160 years. This is not to say that all Asian-Americans believe that these attacks are racially motivated, nor does it mean that some silent majority now believes that Black people are waging a race war against them. Access your favorite topics in a personalized feed while you're on the go. Jay Caspian Kang is a writer at large for The New York Times Magazine. These are not sophisticated questions, but they are being asked over and over again. a b Jay Caspian Kang collects basketball sneakers. Stay up to date with what you want to know. As Kang details in the book, the term "Asian American" originated from the political activism of Berkeley students who founded the Asian American Political Alliance (AAPA). Hes not impressed with the look of the school: stately but not especially beautiful. But its where he notices them. What happened there was a systemic failure. But what do we mean by that? [18] It was named to NPR and Times lists of best books of 2021. "The Loneliest Americans," a provocative new book out this week from journalist and author Jay Caspian Kang, examines questions about Asian American assimilation and identity. 2023 Vox Media, LLC. In the aftermath of the 1992 Los Angeles riots, a dedicated group of community organizers, activists and academics banded together to address what the press had called the Black-Korean conflict. Their work, which included a march through Koreatown demanding peace and the publication of several studies, aimed to tell a story of mutual misunderstanding and media distortion. When he insists other minorities cant relate to our flailing, he ignores the struggles over racism and representation within the Latinidad. Theres very little room for earnestness here, very little room to just be without elaborate justification. I hope my own answers to these questions have been useful and clear. By Jay Caspian Kang Jay Caspian Kang The Case for Mandatory National Service. Every Korean man I know whos under 40 listens exclusively to rap and identifies, at least in part, with black and Mexican American culture. This project was always supposed to be free-flowing and open to my own interpretation. So Kang signed up to be a contributor for The New York Times Magazine on a freelance basis and worked for the advertising firm Wieden+Kennedy in Portland, Oregon.

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