Rant of the Exiles

Critical Race Theory (CRT) has been around for a long time. I pursued an education minor at UC Berkeley during the mid-1990s and Paulo Freie’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1968) was required reading in my ED190 class. Power dynamics is the bedrock of critical theory - the broader belief system for various types of oppression including racial, gender, socioeconomic, cognitive, disability, and sexual orientation. I vividly recall a class session where my instructor, a female graduate student, dressed in black leather, barked commands, and marched around the classroom, slapping a black riding crop on students’ desks. Her cosplay was exhibit A on the oppressiveness of traditional education. I remember classmates rolling their eyes at one another and taking it all in with amusement.  The non-role play class sessions were stimulating in other ways. We had good discussions and our instructor worked hard to treat us as peers and engage us in dialogue. This emphasis on dialogue as both a mea...

I’m not sure if I’m on the #YangGang bandwagon yet but I’m certainly intrigued. Yang is funny and self-deprecating. His humor is evident throughout his book “The War on Normal People” with lines like “This was back when people dated in college” and his mom’s endorsement of universal basic income (UBI). My favorite chapter is the first, titled “My Journey”. I love how he tells his growing up story in a couple pages and I resonated with his stories of being bullied with ethnic slurs. I couldn’t relate to his entrepreneurial success but admired how he “had gone from being an underdog to one of the guys with the answers, from finding the most marginalized or excluded person in the room to finding the richest person and making him or her feel special” (pg. 9). I love how he visited various cities - Detroit, Cleveland, and Pittsburgh among many - and personally witnessed the hollowing out of the middle class. These rapidly increasing negative effects on America’s cities, Yang calls the G...

It was 6:30 AM on a Saturday morning. Five-year old Tommy looked up from his Chinese homework and protested: "But mom why do I have to study?" Ai-Ling looked down and as she stroked Tommy’s hair affectionately, looked out the window at the sunrise and said:  "Tommy, studying is about learning. Learning is the greatest beauty. Some day you will attend an Ivy League school, take literature classes, and immerse yourself in the work of giants. Your mind will expand and grow as far as the horizon, like the radiance of the sun rising into the sky." The preceding sentence has never been uttered in an Asian* household. And yet I’m certain the scene of early morning studying has been replayed often. This the premise of Bryan Caplan’s book, The Case Against Education: Why the Education System is a Waste of Time and Money , that education is anywhere from 30-80% signaling. Signaling is communication. Education communicates to employers that you’re suitab...

My oldest son is now a high school junior. Amidst ministry and raising four children, my wife and I haven’t devoted significant time to college research and admissions. In a panic over this, I recently went to the library and checked out six test prep books for the SAT, ACT, and PSAT. I was overwhelmed by how much stuff is out there and realized I should have started preparing for this years ago. I’m fully aware there are parents out there who have invested many hours plotting out their child’s path to elite college admission and don’t even have children yet.  I want to jump on the college admissions treadmills and start sprinting as fast as possible to catch up.   I ’ve learned enough about myself that w hen I ’ m caught up in this  frenzy, it’s helpful to pause and ask, “Why am I doing this?" That ’s exactly the question my friend and fellow UC Berkeley alum,  Iris Chen, has been asking about her kids ’  education.  She  has two young ...

An awkward Asian American intellectual reflects on being a missionary exile in East Oakland Russell Jeung’s new book is called At Home in Exile: Finding Jesus among My Ancestors & Refugee Neighbors . An alternate title could have been "Nerdy Asianz in the Hood". Make no mistake about it - Russell Jeung is a nerd. He absolutely fits the model minority stereotype. How to tell? Exhibit A: When you graduate from world-renown Lowell High School in San Francisco, get a bachelor’s and master’s degree from Stanford University, and then later obtain a PhD from UC Berkeley. Check those boxes for Jeung. He now works as a sociology professor at San Francisco State University. I met Jeung for the first time at his book launch. Exhibit B: When you are decidedly unimposing physically. Jeung doesn’t wear glasses but his look fits the nerd mold. He is rail thin and doesn’t appear to do any strength training. His body language is awkward and although a fluid public speaker...

Students at Monta Vista High School in Cupertino Age group competitive soccer in the San Francisco bay area is essentially comprised of two social classes: the affluent, predominantly white families that at away tournaments eat at nice restaurants and stay at expensive hotels and the non-white predominantly Latino immigrant families that bring their own food and extended family to games. At a recent tournament, I made small talk with one of the dads as we attempted to fit into the first group. He's a middle-aged Russian immigrant and I asked him what he did for work. It turned out he's a data scientist who works for a large insurance company. He creates data models that predict things like bay area housing price trends. He in turn asked if I was a programmer. I told him I was a pastor but it was a good guess. He agreed. After all his algorithm had calculated the probability was high. I love immigrant candor. This question encapsulates why I live in the bay area. Wh...