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You're listening to The Political Scene, a show about current events and the political forces driving them.

I'm Michael Luo, the editor of New Yorker.com,

filling in for Tyler Foggett. This weekend, a man shot and killed 11 people at a ballroom

dance studio in Monterey Park, California, an Asian enclave outside of Los Angeles. Then, less than 48 hours later, in Half Moon Bay, California,

another man shot and killed seven people, at least some of whom were of Chinese descent.

Mass shootings take place with mind-boggling regularity in America. These two attacks also happen

amid an alarming rise in hate crimes targeting people of Asian descent.

I called my colleague Jay Caspian Kang because I wanted to process these twin tragedies with him.

Jay is one of the most insightful writers in the country on the politics of immigration and identity.

He's the author of the book, The Loneliest Americans, which tells the story of Asian immigration

to the United States since 1965. Hi, Jay. Hey, how's it going? So Jay, let's start with Monterey Park.

The news of the shooting there broke basically in the middle of the night. I woke up early on Sunday morning on the East Coast and saw one news alert about it on my phone. At first, all we knew was that it happened in Monterey Park, a community with the large Asian population,

and that it took place after a big Lunar New Year celebration in the community.

...