Know Your Enemy
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Cancel Jay Caspian Kang (w/ Jay Caspian Kang)
🕑 Added 2022-01-20 15:27:47 +0000 UTCAuthor, podcaster, and New York Times Magazine staff writer Jay Caspian Kang joins Matt and Sam for a spirited discussion of some treacherous topics: identity politics, critical race theory, and cancel culture (oh my!). Jay is our charming, intrepid guide to these touchy subjects, those that liberals and leftists are sometimes loath to engage, offering his idiosyncratic (though not contrarian!) takes on each — and inspiring some of our own.
Can we have substantive discussions of such issues without simply giving ammunition to the reactionary forces that invoke them in bad faith? Well, we can certainly try. Enjoy!
And please check out Jay's excellent podcast Time To Say Goodbye with cohosts Tammy Kim, and Andy Liu. It's great.
Further Reading
Jay Caspian Kang, The Loneliest Americans (Penguin) Oct 12, 2021.
— "'People of Color' Do Not Belong to the Democratic Party," NYTimes, Nov 20, 2020.
— "Can We Talk About Critical Race Theory," NYTimes, Nov 11, 2021.
— "The Myth of Asian American Identity," NYTimes, Oct 5, 2021.
— "Let Marjorie Taylor Greene Keep Her Social Media Accounts," NYTimes, Jan 6, 2022.
— "Noel Ignatiev's Long Fight Against Whiteness," The New Yorker, Nov 15, 2019.
Sam Adler-Bell, "Behind the Critical Race Theory Crackdown," African American Policy Forum, Jan 13, 2022.
— "Facebook Is Removing Protest Pages. That's a Terrible Precedent," OZM, Apr 24, 2020.
Comments
bene
Just wanted to say I liked this ep :). Jay’s takes resonated with me. I appreciate the recognition that cancel culture is slippery and refers to a lot of different things. The right seems to be great at creating their own vague incendiary terms that everyone can pin whatever anger they have to. But the left need to counter with precision and reframing, not just deny that stuff exists. People trying to destroy other people with no power over something that doesn’t affect them for a sense of control absolutely happens. 4 years ago I would have agreed the right is just making this stuff up, but it’s gotten pretty scary at least since the pandemic. Leftists can be smug and judgy, but it’s lethal in mainstream liberal culture. There definitely is a condescending, entitled, cop, manager-conjuring vibe to it. Once you experience the life-altering anxiety of a mob threatening you, it’s more iron golem than a straw man. People seem to feel increasingly justified to destroy anyone outside of the lines of any politicized issue (which includes most things now).
Jack Wolfe
i felt like this episode was success insofar as it did what it set out to do... PISS ME OFF! JK. i thought jay was a great guest and he got me thinking. but i must make 3 points: 1. i feel like episode asked us to both give up both the idea of being "politics manager" AND the idea of being a person who just gets upset about politics. which sorta leaves us with just... giving up? 2. i guess this a corollary to the first point... but i just don't think the democrats need to be told to acknowledge the vague senses about race and school and CRT and cancel culture people have after ingesting local news night after night. i feel like the party is doing plenty of that on their own! and it just results in getting creamed by the side that has crafted the narrative, set the agenda, defined the terms, etc. 3. love you guys but i gotta say the free speech segment was a little disturbing. there's this interesting conversation happening about the limits to the "marketplace of ideas" (osita of course does this well, but i think also of malcolm harris and others) that seemed pretty dramatically misrepresented here. all of which is to say is that the kids SHOULD yell at charles murray-- that there is a major difference between that and the social media platform stuff (which i agree with jay about, i think)
