Jerry Kang
        Law

            Anyone reviewing the academic research of UCLA law professor Jerry Kang can’t help but be impressed by the density of the output.  One study, “Trojan Horses of Race,” weighs in at 105 pages, while the “Beyond Self-Interest: Asian Pacific Americans Toward A Community of Justice” paper he co-authored runs 53 pages. 

            Kang’s academic resume is similarly impressive; he graduated magna cum laude in physics from Harvard University, and magna cum laude (again!) from Harvard Law School.  Coming from South Korea at the age of six, Kang managed to scale educational heights in one generation that many white families, even the very rich, have not approached in multiple generations.  But don’t accuse Kang of being an all-American success story, much less use the dread phrase “model minority.”  Kang’s doing it all for the people, you see.  No, not his people (who suffered from the affirmative action he favors), but the nebulous proletarian entity known as the people.

Kang’s political stance begs one question.  Why would this Korean-American, who managed stunning educational achievements in spite of 1980’s-era racial preferences, favor a system that so manifestly harms his own ethnic group?  Kang has offered two public reasons, both of them rather inane.

            In both an interview with the Journal of Asian American Studies and his own article titled “Reflections of an Affirmative Action Baby,” Kang inadvertently reveals that self-interest, ironically enough, is the biggest factor in his love for affirmative action.  It all starts in 1993 when UCLA’s only Asian American law professor of the time, Mari Matsuda, left to take a position at Georgetown.  Typical for UCLA, this was viewed as a tragedy not because the school had lost a (presumably) strong scholar and teacher, but because the law faculty had been left intolerably bereft of Asian faculty.  In Kang’s artful phrase, there was “a vacuum to be filled.”  Immediately, an all-points bulletin went out: find us an Asian!  It was at this juncture that Kang, still serving a judicial clerkship, was recruited for this faculty position.  Not because, by his own admission, he was the best applicant, and not because his scholarship or promise thereof was eye-catching.  In fact, Kang was not even seeking a law professorship when he got the call.

Without putting too fine a point on it, Kang got his job because he is Asian.  But rather than skulking shamefully around the point, Kang is quite open about it.  As he notes, “when I was actually interviewing for the job, there was some interest in whether I would be able to teach a course that would talk about Asian Americans.”  In short, Kang’s race was made a proxy for his expected academic focus and intellectual contributions.  Kang evidently found UCLA’s racial pigeonholing to be copasetic, and took the job when it was offered.  This completed Kang's rather severe and sudden moral descent from the heights of hard-working model minority success to the depths of racial set-aside hell.  

            Turning the old saying around to fit Kang, there’s no sinner like the debauched religious man.  Like that sinner, Kang is determined to prove that the immoral standard by which he lives his life is somehow a boon for all mankind.  And as noted, Kang doesn’t fail for lack of trying, much less for lack of academic output on the topic.  It’s just that the academic arguments don’t hold up.  Consider the central argument behind his “Trojan Horses” paper: 

“[During discussion on the 2003 Media Ownership Order] the FCC repeatedly justified relaxing [local] ownership rules by explaining how it would increase, of all things, local news.  But local news is replete with violent crime stories prominently featuring racial minorities.  Consumption of these images, the social cognition research suggests, exacerbates our implicit biases.  In other words, as we consume local news, we download a sort of Trojan Horse virus that increases our implicit bias.  Unwittingly, the FCC linked the “public interest” to racism.”

            Anyone seeking quickly to dismiss Kang’s claims is bound to fail.  The research is dense, layered, and slams home its conclusion: repeatedly viewing reports of an individual’s involvement in criminal activities will cause the viewers of those reports later to discriminate, albeit usually on a subconscious level, against the entire race of the featured wrongdoers.  Kang, unfortunately, has to concede two resonant facts.  First, all racial groups, when tested, react negatively to the race of the reported wrongdoer portrayed in the news report, even when the viewer is of the same race as the reported criminal.  To emphasize that point: this alleged subconscious racism from which whites suffer s also an affliction for black and Hispanic people.  Thus, if a murderer featured in the news is black, even a black viewer will internalize negative associations about black people. 

An equally important aspect of Kang’s report is the highly theoretical impact of this subconscious racism.  The only significant real-world consequence Kang can name involves snap decisions of police officers involved in tense confrontations with criminal suspects.  The evidence in question comes from a test that placed subjects into the role of a police officer.  With little time for conscious decision-making, the subject was tasked with firing or not firing a gun based on his perceived level of endangerment.  The test (again, making no judgment on the methodology) purported to show that all test subjects, black or white, more often shot the innocent black suspect holding a wallet versus an innocent white suspect doing the same.  If we take Kang’s research at face value then, implicit racism (created and reinforced via, among other sources, crime-obsessed local news) can result in an indeterminate higher number of innocent black Americans being shot by cops who are overly quick on the trigger. 

Helpfully enough, Kang himself has previously passed judgment on a similar highly abstract chain-of-consequences style controversy.  In an op-ed discussing racial profiling of Arab-Americans in airline security procedures, Kang noted its high unlikelihood of catching a would-be terrorist.  Observing that it was a mere 19 hijackers who executed the combined World Trade Center, Pentagon and Pennsylvania attacks (out of a U.S. population of approximately 3.5 million Arab-Americans), Kang delivers the flippant line that 1/100^th of 1 percent is still virtually zero.  In other words, from a mathematical standpoint, the sheer unlikelihood of catching an Arab terrorist through racial profiling in airport checkpoints meant that the practice should simply be abandoned.  Kang, however, accepts no such cost-benefit analysis on the question of eliminating the implicit racism of police officers, or the entire public at large, assuming that such elimination would even be possible. 

Not that his proposed measures for ending implicit bias are any less massively invasive, in their own way, than racial profiling.  Under the banner of regulation “in the public interest,” Kang would call for a Big Brother-esque set of ideological standards and goals for local television news, all with the end-game of less coverage on violent crime committed by minorities.  Were this done, Kang’s logic chain argues, the level of implicit bias among whites would drop, finally resulting in the concrete outcome that a white police officer would be less likely (how much is never quantified) to shoot an unarmed black criminal suspect.

An article which details the fallout from the implicit bias issue delivers some unintended laughs.  One academic who took the Harvard University implicit bias test was so horrified by her poor showing that she took to placing within close eyesight postcards and other photographic representations of African-Americans famous in arts, literature, sports, politics, and other fields.  Her motivation for doing so points up the comically theoretical nature of the implicit bias tests upon which Kang’s research rests.  As it turns out, the test is masterable for disciplined individuals who temporarily internalize mental “counter-stereotypes” before test-time.  The test results are similarly affected if the subject is, before testing, shown clips of widely respected African-Americans like Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. or comedian Bill Cosby.  But worse than the pliability of the test, or the highly abstract consequences of this implicit racism, is that it distracts from the real work of addressing overt racism.  Kang would do himself, his scholarship, and his political movement a great favor if he were to focus less on white psychological guilt and more on the actual people responsible for clear racial division, no matter what their skin color.

            Kang’s other notable academic paper, co-authored with three other Asian-American academics, is “Beyond Self-Interest: Asian Pacific Americans Toward A Community of Justice.”  Kang’s op-ed of the same period, titled “Proposition 209: Its Meaning for the Future,” provides a passable summary of the “Self-Interest” paper.  In it, Kang and his co-authors purport to show that Asian-Americans, by voting 76% against Proposition 209 (which ended affirmative action in all California state business), had made an intentional declaration in favor of racial minority solidarity.  The vote, Kang posited, was a clear rebuke of those dastardly conservatives who had attempted to use affirmative action as a wedge issue between Asian-Americans and their fellow (albeit lesser-achieving) minority brethren.  In the voice of Asian Californians addressing white Californians, Kang declares, “I am willing to bear the same burden that you bear caused by affirmative action [sic].  I am willing to share this burden to help us get beyond racism, to reach a fairer society.  I am willing to go beyond my self-interest in order to strive for a community of justice.”  Kang then finishes this imaginary conversation with white Californians with the blunt question, “Are you?”

            As rhetoric goes, Kang’s work is skillful, but the meaning and logic of the statements continually recede from view as you move forward for a closer look.  Take Kang’s challenge for white California to move beyond self-interest.  Kang presents no valid reason why this question could not as easily be asked of the Hispanic and black beneficiaries of affirmative action.  The only real point of Kang’s argument, if there is one, is that all this division over racial preferences could end if only the whites who are harmed by it would just clam up.  Again taking the converse, we could as easily point out that this debate would also not exist if those who benefit from the system would give up their fight to preserve it.  But the worst aspect of Kang’s argumentation is that he tosses around loaded terms as if he was the winner of an international strongman competition.  Notably, Kang uses the terms “justice” and “self-interest” as if they were settled points of reference.  Kang characterizes justice as resulting in an equality of outcome rather than an equality of opportunity – a very much disputed understanding of the concept.  Kang has a similarly warped view of self-interest, which he portrays as a bad thing when exercised by the victims of a discriminatory system, but praiseworthy when practiced by those who unjustly benefit from a preferential schema.

            Kang’s claim to speak for all Asian Californians would be a lot more plausible were his argumentation not marred by statements that wouldn’t pass muster in the lower division classes of a political science department.  Kang opened his “Proposition 209” op-ed by stating that, because the measure passed by a mere 54.5%, “there was no overwhelming mandate in its favor.”  For that matter, Kang reminded readers, “the final tally was so close that a mere 5% shift in votes would have changed the outcome.”  Let’s all take a deep breath and remember that Kang is superbly educated in the disciplines of both physics and the law, and, with shabby analysis like this, clearly not conversant in political science.    

In electoral politics, 50.1%, 51%, and perhaps even 52% majorities, are what can rightly be termed ‘narrow victories,’ though they are victories nonetheless.  But even the cautious sort of political scientist would be hard-pressed to view a 54.5% majority as anything less than a near-landslide.  Moreover, the victory came despite a significant Democrat Party edge in California voter affiliation.  In fact, since 1930, the Democratic Party has never led the Republican Party in affiliation percentage by less than 7%.  In the election in question, California Democrats boasted 6.8 million registered affiliates, while Republicans could only claim 5.3 million registrants.  This massive edge in Democrat affiliation makes the 54.5% margin that much more impressive, and makes Kang’s “no overwhelming mandate” thesis look that much more foolish.

However, consistency has never been Kang’s strong suit.  In 2003, the Supreme Court’s upheld, after a fashion, the University of Michigan’s affirmative action admissions process.  Despite the one-vote margin of 5-4, and the muddled, narrowly drawn precedent which resulted, the decision sent Kang out to the verbal balconies, throwing beads and sucking down yard-long margaritas, wildly predicting that the possibility for an electoral reverse of his bete noire, Proposition 209, had increased “substantially.”  Indeed, if you can believe that Proposition 209 did not represent a mandate, then it’s only a few more steps to believing that a bitterly divided 5-4 Supreme Court decision did. 

In a further example of his consistent inconsistency, Kang took a slap at authority in ending his op-ed against the racial profiling of Arab-Americans at airport checkpoints.  Kang noted,

“Isn’t this [concern about equal justice] precisely what the U.S. Supreme court claimed to be doing when it struck down useful affirmative-action programs because they allegedly violated the rights of innocent Whites?  Let's hold the conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia to his word: “In the eyes of government, we are just one race here.  It is American.” 

To Kang’s way of thinking, merely pointing out your opponent’s arguable inconsistency on the issue at hand constitutes logical victory for your side.  In this case, the supposed mote of inconsistency in Scalia’s eye arises from his approval of racial profiling and rejection of affirmative action.  As they say on the elementary school playground: so what?  Kang is equally inconsistent in reverse, given his clear love for affirmative action and hatred of racial profiling.  Ultimately, Kang’s seemingly strong rhetorical point is nothing more than a case of the pot calling the kettle black. 

As already noted, Kang seems prepared to spend the rest of his academic career putting a rationalist gloss on the history of his profoundly irrational, race-centric recruitment and hiring as a UCLA law professor.  Little surprise then, that besides being one of its leading apologists in California, Kang got dirty in both the Proposition 209 campaign, and the subsequent legal campaign against it.  During the electoral campaign, Kang defended affirmative action on the grounds that it brought together students of various races in common social interaction, thereby teaching these students that “people are people, that individuals are individuals, that we each have faults and virtues, and that none of this has to do with the color of our skin.”  This admission comes in Kang’s declaration filed in the anti-209 ACLU lawsuit  that sought to defend affirmative action.  Such a line of argumentation would be entirely appropriate for a Dinesh D’Souza or a Ward Connerly.  Admitting that “individuals are individuals” and that race has nothing to do with who we are as a person, well, it’s not exactly a point you want to concede when you’re arguing in favor of racial preferences.  To point out the obvious, affirmative action doesn’t treat applicants as individuals, but rather as members of a collective group, with some groups designated as winners and some groups as losers.  As a piece of political spin, though, Kang’s declaration is quite masterful, almost Clintonian in its bold willingness to appropriate the arguments of one side in defense of its opposite. 

            Like Clinton, Kang is the sort of fellow who feels people’s pain.  Or at least has internalized the historical tragedies of one group as though they were his own.  Thus, we find Kang waving the bloody shirt of Japanese internment every chance he gets.  In an op-ed that rumbled ominously about the laughable prospect of Arab-American internment camps, Kang glowered, 

“we overestimate the threat posed by racial “others” (in WWII, Japanese Americans; today, Arab Americans, Muslims, Middle Easterners, immigrants, and anyone who looks like “them”).  Simultaneously, we underestimate how our response to those threats burden those “others” (in WWII, shattering lives through the internment; today, intimidation and violence by individuals, and racial profiling by the state).” 

Kang’s strange preoccupation with this historical footnote is in defiance of all reasonable history.  Kang was born in South Korea, a country that (in its original undivided form) suffered for 50 years under a harsh imperial Japanese occupation.  Moreover, South Korea was a country saved from Communist despotry by the United States not less than a decade after our brief use of Japanese internment camps.  Yet when Kang came to America, and against serious odds became an almost instant success, he latched on to the peaceful four-year internment of 120,000 Japanese-Americans as conclusive proof of America’s perfidy, taking up the internee cause as though he had suffered personally.  In all likelihood, Kang’s passion for the issue did not arise from concern for the actual victims.  Rather, their travails present, as they do for many other radicals, a convenient excuse for attacking the American experiment as a racist, imperialist sham.  Never mind that Americans fought and died to keep his native country free, allowing immigrants just like him to become wealthy and successful.  Kang is in love with an idealized, infinitely just America; reality will never quite measure up to the fantasy.  Thus, every day that Kang rises and sees a country still pocked with income inequality, homelessness and squandered opportunities, he is angry afresh.  Unlike most people, however, Kang has channeled that rage into a specious brand of political activism and wrongheaded academic research that every day pushes us farther away what we can be in the direction of a utopian future we will never reach.