Matthew Shen Goodman - The Power Seeker Andrew Yang’s Asian A | Марксизм и критическая теория (Marxism and critical theory)

Matthew Shen Goodman - The Power Seeker

Andrew Yang’s Asian American nonpolitics

A miraculous font of earned media, Yang is known, one should stress, and known such that a mentally unwell man assaulting a photographer at one of his campaign photo-ops in February paused upon seeing the candidate to give hail: “Yang For New York!” Though quickly pacified that day, he would later attack an elderly Asian person, Yang claimed during one of these interminable mayoral forums, this time held under the auspices of the Asian American Federation. That such a person could publicly endorse Yang seems revealing of the current Asian American moment, marked as it is by rudimentary salutations and sudden ambushes. Here I’ll point to my middle name to clarify membership in a demographic only now breaching American public life, if you were to go by the past few years of op-eds and news stories, not to mention our self-declarations. Rather suddenly, we are winning Oscars and climbing bestseller lists and growing faster than any other group of eligible voters nationwide. All this, having been so voiceless before, so inchoate now! “Amid Awakening, Asian Americans Are Still Taking Shape as a Political Force,” runs a recent Times headline; “We’re not taught to speak out,” goes a similar piece in the Guardian. You get the idea.

https://thebaffler.com/salvos/the-power-seeker-shen-goodman