Kal Penn is gay? Who knew?
Well, everyone close to him, apparently.
But the actor, who did a two year stint in the Obama White House, decided to tell the entire world on Sunday in advance of his new memoir out today, You Can’t Be Serious. He and his partner, known to the public only by his first name, Josh, are also engaged. This was no secret, however. “I’ve always been very public with everybody I’ve personally interacted with. Whether it’s somebody that I meet at a bar, if Josh and I are out or we’re talking to friends,” he told People. “I’m really excited to share our relationship with readers. But Josh, my partner, my parents, and my brother, four people who I’m closest to in the family, are fairly quiet. They don’t love attention and shy away from the limelight.”
The performer known as Kal Penn was born Kalpen Suresh Modi in Montclair, New Jersey, of Gujarati immigrant parents with big dreams for their children—none of which included their son getting famous for pretending to smoke weed in films. But Modi, as he prefers to be known outside of entertainment, has gone on to do much more than bring Kumar Patel of the Harold & Kumar stoner comedy franchise to life. (His other credits include recurring roles in the television shows House, Designated Survivor, and How I Met Your Mother.) His memoir promises to delve into his unlikely career as a brown skinned Asian man who thrived in roles that eschewed damaging stereotypes. “If you’ve always grown up seeing people who look like you on screen, I totally understand why a lot of people are like, ‘Well, what’s the big deal?'” he told CBS Sunday Morning. “But to be invisible, it kind of makes you feel like your possibilities might be limited.”
Modi has turned that visibility into a platform.
He’s been an outspoken advocate for representation and equity in entertainment and beyond, has taught at the University of Pennsylvania, and surprised his manager when he left acting to work for the Obama administration as a member of the Office of Public Engagement, engaging with Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders on voting and policy.
“I don’t like politics; I like public service,” he told CBS Sunday Morning. “And that goes back to my grandparents who marched with Gandhi in the Indian independence movement. And those were the dinner table conversations that we had.”
Modi is now representing in a new, and equally important, way.
For South Asian LGBTQ people around the world, the announcement was much needed validation. The news was “the most thrilling kind of surprise,” Naveen Kumar, a 39-year-old gay man living in New York, told the BBC. “For me, it’s now a person in pop culture that I can point out to my parents. Here’s someone who they have been watching on TV and movies since the 90s.”
Like many, Kumar is hoping for Modi to have a “big, gay Indian wedding,” though that may not happen. “Josh who hates attention, has said, ‘Or we could just do quick 20-minute thing with our families and that’s it.’ So we have to meet halfway in the middle,” Modi told People.
Modi appears delighted by the response. On Sunday, he acknowledged his fans in an Instagram post. “Thank you for all the love on social media today! That’s so nice.”
Ellen McGirt
@ellmcgirt
Ellen.McGirt@fortune.com
On Point
The college debt problem in Black and white Two expert sociologists, Louise Seamster and Tressie McMillan Cottom, team up on this special episode of The Ezra Klein Show to explore in the policy roots and solutions associated with student loan debt. Specifically, the impact of a pre-existing wealth and future income gap that leaves Black students disproportionately more burdened by student loans. Seamster is an expert in wealth creation; her research formed the cornerstone of Senator Elizabeth Warren’s loan forgiveness plan. Cottom, well known to raceAhead readers, is a writer who focuses on higher education, policy, wealth and beauty, among many other topics. A must listen and share.
The Ezra Klein Show
UN Summit: Who will represent the most vulnerable in climate change planning? My amazing colleague Katherine Dunn is on the ground at #COP26 in Glasgow — you can follow her reporting journey on Twitter here. Yesterday, as she got settled, she described to a Fortune Connect session via Zoom a disorganized scene with some key players missing. “Plenty of representatives from poorer countries couldn’t get here, largely from lack of vaccines.” The perils of this is spelled out in this piece from the Los Angeles Times. Without face time with world leaders, vulnerable nations like Fiji — which has survived 13 cyclones in the last five years — may be forgotten. Here are the key players to watch, Katherine’s coverage of the deforestation pledge made by world leaders — and the skepticism from NGOs and scientists, is below.
Fortune
Police traffic stops, violence, and a reliable revenue stream This investigation delves into the hidden-in-plain-sight problem of the police tactic that turns trumped up traffic stops unrelated to public safety into revenue streams for cash-strapped municipalities. “A hidden scaffolding of financial incentives underpins the policing of motorists in the United States, encouraging some communities to essentially repurpose armed officers as revenue agents searching for infractions largely unrelated to public safety,” write Mike McIntire and Michael H. Keller. The problem? These stops increase the likelihood that otherwise law-abiding motorists will be beaten, Tased, arrested, and saddled with crushing fines and fees. This piece studies policing practices in three states that have been the center of past controversy, Ohio, Oklahoma and Virginia. Said the lawyer who represented a 65-year-old woman who was Tased for refusing to accept an $80 ticket for a broken tailight, “You’ve got to fund the government somehow,” he said, “and that’s exactly how they do it: through fines and fees.”
New York Times
This edition of raceAhead was edited by Wandy Felicita Ortiz.
On background
Saying goodbye to a neighborhood treasure The San Jose Flea Market—also known as La Pulga—is one part food emporium, with spices, nuts and vegetables from California, Latin America and the rest of the world, one part swap meet, and many parts a throwback to an earlier time when Silicon Valley was a dusty agricultural community, whose many orchards fed the stalls. Now, the site of the market has been rezoned to make way for a multi-use community which promises some low-income housing. But plans are unclear. “The design shake-up is likely to have dire consequences for the long-running family businesses that have established a base at the flea market—that rely on the place for steady income,” reports KQED.
KQED
A national Juneteenth museum is coming and we have Miss Opal Lee to thank. In 2016, then 89-year-old Lee walked from her home in Fort Worth, Texas to Washington, D.C. logging 2.5 miles a day in honor of the two-and-half years that Black Texans remained enslaved before they got the news of emancipation. (That, I fully agree, was a sentence.) Lee stood by President Biden when he signed the holiday into law last year, and I fully expert her to be there when the museum opens in 2023. For locals, it will be on Rosedale Street in Fort Worth's Historic Southside neighborhood. "To have lived long enough to see my walking and talking make an impact is one thing, but to know that a state-of-the-art museum that will house the actual pen that President Biden used to sign the bill, and many other exhibits, is coming to pass as well — I could do my holy dance again," Lee said in a statement.
Travel and Leisure
Moodboard
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