"the only Asian I know"

kjkhoo at softhome.net kjkhoo at softhome.net
Sun Jul 21 22:23:22 PDT 2002


Ulhas Joglekar wrote:
>Francis Hwang:
>> The only Asian she knows? She's a 52-year-old leftist intellectual
>> who lives in New York City. How could she not know any other Asians?
>> Is my conception of the left intellectual scene here completely off,
>> or are there just not many Asians around?
>
>I can't say anything about Ms. Pollitt, but North American Left does seem
>rather clueless about Asia. Obviously, there are some exceptions and some N.
>American Leftists are well informed about Asia. But they are exceptions.

I don't think Francis was talking about Asia Asia (a suspect idea covering as it does minimally India to the Philippines, Indonesia to Mongolia) but rather New York City Asia, quite a different matter.

Whatever, it is quite astounding, if she actually meant it, that she knows only one NYC Asian, or Asian-American. Unless, of course, she meant that "knows" in the biblical sense.

By the way, it does distress me a bit that so much effort should be spent on Katha Pollitt's revenge, or lousing up Chomsky and Castro, and not-so-new defences of Nietzsche and relatively little on the ongoing debacle of American capitalism, or even the Stiglitz/IMF spat, even some little gossip as to Stiglitz sparing the WB from his salvos.

I'm halfway across the world. Many of you are well up on this stuff, literally sitting in the centre of it. Can't there be some views of this that someone like me can forward around in answer to friends who think that 'unbridled capitalism' is the answer to our crony woes, our lack of transparency and accountability, etc. etc. Not that I'm looking to excuse our crooks, but there's a lot of people out here who, because of experience with government, think neoliberalism is the needed cure. And believe it or not many do think American capitalism an answer, and the present circus just an aberration of a few greedy characters, while others simply revel in the come-uppance which isn't particularly useful for understanding either...

In the meantime, the most accessible stuff coming out is Krugman, Kevin Phillips and the like. Where is the US left?

kj khoo



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