Thursday, February 25, 2010
The Korean found this post on Truehoop about Omri Casspi, the first Israeli player in the NBA, to be very interesting. Korean Americans and American Jews are in a comparable situation -- while they call America home, they have a visceral connection with the places outside of America. The interplay between the two places, symbolized by athletes, is an interesting mirror into how a mind of an immigrant operates.
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You mean Jews and "Kews", as I just recently read in Bruce Cumings Korea's Place in the Sun. I thought that was sort of funny.
ReplyDeleteThe thing is, I always hear Koreans compare themselves to Jews, but as a Jew myself, I don't see the connection as deep as Koreans want it to be. Both have uniquely tragic histories, but they are very different. And while there is a division on the Korean peninsula, the division between Zionist and non-Zionist Jews is quite different. (I'm non-Zionist)
Still, I'm happy to have Koreans perceive me as being different than "every other American in South Korea," whether I personally accept that to be the truth or not.
That's why the Korean was careful to stay with the word "comparable" and nothing stronger.
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