It's not about them.

I found this video over at unfogged. Pretty cheerful.

Are you going to say it, or do I have to?

Maybe the reason there are no brown people in this video is because they all didn't want to stay after work for the shoot. The Asians had to go practice violin. It's New York City, right? Maybe they've all gone incog-negro, invisible amongst all the t-shirt wearing white kids with expensive haircuts.

Over about 8Asians I read a while ago how Asian Americans raised on the East Coast are stunned by the level that Asian Americans have integrated into West Coast society. They're stunned to see older generation Asian Americans with jobs that are not restaurant/grocery/dry cleaning. They're surprised when they see older generation Asian Americans speaking American English.

So while Law & Order makes me think of New York City as a gritty, vertical jungle where people of all races and colors come together to deliver frantic monologues and commit and solve horrible murders, the video above reminds me that it's still possible somewhere in America to have a dot.com entirely devoid of dark skin.

I guess I shouldn't be surprised; prime time sitcoms tell me that it's perfectly normal to go an hour or half hour without seeing the part of society that I live in.

Ok, readers, I know some of you are thinking that I'm victimizing the poor, innocent white people of that cheerful video above. You know what? They're gonna be fine. They're young, they're creative, they're attractive, they're white, and their dry cleaning is going to be ready on time. Nobody is suggesting they're a bunch of Asian-hating nazis....

But you noticed. Didn't you?

No, JP, I don't see whiteness, I just see NORMAL people.

Well, there you go. No brown people = normal.

What Did I Just Tell You?

My friend S called, her in-laws are visiting from France, so I have to dust off my sparkling French conversation. Je sais que ça va être dificile d'abord, mais ça fait rien. Je sais bien que je fait des betises quand je parle, et ça va jamais changer. Je suis étranger, quand même comment est-ce que vous croyez que je dois parlez, alors?
******
An epistle to my non-brown friends:

How many times have I had this conversation before? A lot.

I don't really want to talk about Don Imus, because he is trash. He has a First Amendment right to be trash on the radio, to lose popularity, to alienate his sponsors, and lose his job. The First Amendment is a describes a right, not a safety net.

So now the media monkeys are screaming all over the place, talking about double standards, why Black people (i.e., rappers) are allowed to call black women "nappy headed hos" but white men are called racist when they do. Poor, rich white Imus, a victim of discrimination.

Bullshit. Nobody in any community calls the Rutgers Womens Basketball team "nappy-headed hos." They are neither nappy headed, nor hos. They all seem to have made hair choices that are not nappy; there is nothing to suggest that a single one of them are hos. Find me one person who has referred to them as "nappy headed hos" before Imus, and I will stand corrected. Well? No? That's what I thought.

Rappers tend to use degrading language because their music tends to be about (some would say glorify) a certain lifestyle in which calling someone a 'nappy headed ho' makes sense (however degrading). Was Don Imus rapping?

But JP, why should Snoop get to say words that Imus can't say?

Because it's not about words. It's about racism and misogyny. When Snoop is talking about someone being 'nappy headed,' no one suspects him of being racist.

So why can't us white people say these words without being suspected of being racist?

Because you don't have the credibility.

I get away with talking about cultural and ethnic differences all the time; yes, all the time, and sometimes I say things that my white friends would not dare to say for fear of being labeled racist. I get away with it because I tend to talk about cultural and ethnic differences with affection. There is no danger in anybody's mind that I will use the differences I notice to oppress somebody or discriminate against them. Zero.

White people, not so much. First, white people, especially white Americans, when describing cultural and ethnic differences, tend to sound like they're criticizing. You tend to make differences sound negative. I have yet to anyone make the argument that Imus was referring to 'nappy headdedness' as an endearing quality. Second, it doesn't take any stretch of the imagination to assume that white people will discriminate or oppress.

Is it fair? Probably not. So either you can just live with it, with this curse of perpetually being a potential oppressor... or you can work to gain credibility; that is, learn about brown people, listen to us, be comfortable around us, help us. Be one of us. Don't worry, in our club, you get to keep your heritage.

What about when Snoop calls them 'hos', how is that less misogynistic than when Imus says it?

It's not. It's always misogynistic to call a woman a ho.

Is it misogynistic to call a prostitute a ho?

What did I just tell you?

By the way, Snoop wants you to stop comparing him to Imus.

Keep your shirt on...

Yes, my friends, the San Patricio Limerick Festival has been over for days. I promise that eShamrocks will be awarded soon, as soon as the distinguished panel of judges... the judge... well, just me, so.... as soon as I get a chance. Right now I have to grade storyboards. So keep your shirts on.

Do you teach high school Spanish literature? Consider a storyboard project. Or consider it as a step in your video project, especially if your videos are turning out horribly.
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Did you hear Tom Delay today on NPR? He chuckles when Dick Army criticizes him for endeavoring to create a permanant Republican majority in American government. I know it's not illegal, but to me, trying to ensure a permanent majority through ways other than, say, satisfying the voters with just and visionary government, is totally contepmtuous of the idea of representative constitutional democracy.

Or is it just me? Elected officials are supposed to serve at the pleasure of their constituents. Working actively to loss-proof your party through redistricting and other devices procedures, which were meant to guarantee fair representation in the first place... Does it seem right to you?


______

In other news in my life, I've recently been introduced to scotcheroos; I had never experienced them before. My students assure me that it is a "white thing."


I've lived in this country, among the white people, for all of my 34 years, and I am still discovering their culture. They are a complex and mysterious people.

How Bizarre.

What am I doing watching a show called Bizarre Foods?

I would call it 'Ethnocentriful! The Unexamined Cultural Presumptions of a Jolly Bald American Man.' That's what I'd call it.

He travels the world and eats things that White Americans consider 'bizarre.' The 'White American' part is assumed. It's a given.

So in the last episode, he was in the Philippines, eating balut, dinuguan, and giant tree worms. Which, of course, he was happy to eat.

What he couldn't eat was an ice cream sandiwich in Quiapo. Too unusual. Well, unusual for White Americans. Ube and cheese ice cream on a hamburger bun. Sure, it's not what he's used to.

The funny part is that a crowd had gathered around his shot, he handed off the ice cream sandwich, unable to finish it, and said to a guy in the crowd, "this is unusual."

That's right! He was in Quiapo, and handed an ube and cheese ice cream sandwich on a hamburger bun to the first guy he saw... a Filipino dude... and said "this is unusual."

If I was the dude, I would have yelled at him. No, THIS is not unusual. This is an ube and cheese ice cream sandwich on a hamburger bun from a street vendor in the Quiapo district in the heart of Manila. THIS is perfectly normal. YOU are unusual, you freaky tree-worm eating land beluga. YOU are unusual Andrew Zimmern, you crazy gringo puñetero.

Grr. Masakit ang puwet ko.

He's in Morocco next week. I might watch it, to see Morocco, but I'm not really excited about all the crazy shit he eats.

I wonder if there are shows about all the crazy stuff Americans eat, like peanut butter, or root beer floats, or Chicken McNuggets. Or a corn dog. That kind of stuff would send the French television audience over the edge.

"Discrimination = entertainment" or "...a caveman could do it"

You can see all the caveman ads over at WankelRotaryEngine.

First of all, count how many Geico campains are going on now. 1) Caveman 2) Gecko 3) Celebrities help non-celebrities 4) Tiny House... Are there more? I wouldn't be surprised.

I'm sure my highly educated readers, the ones academic ones who are angry all the time, will be better able to articulate this than I am. Regardless....

Let's talk about the caveman ads. I love them. The making-of. The ultra-modern caveman apartment. The apology at the restaurant. The airport. The therapist. The FOX News interview. I love every single one. It's all about a caveman, a character whose species does not exist in the modern era. But if his species did exist, it would be as an under-the-radar minority. And like all minorities in America, our hero has to deal with ignorant white people.

Yah, yah, it's sapiens vs. neanderthal. And that's why white people are not up in arms about being mocked. But it's the thinnest of veils. Do they not see it?

Those spots are all about the ethnocentricity of white America, and what a minority has to deal with even when assimilated; the insensitivity, the ignorance, and (as demonstrated by the FOX News spot) open hostility.

But I thought discrimination= bad? Why do I find these ads so entertaining? If they said "so easy a woman could do it!" or "so easy a Jew could do it!" wouldn't we all be angry? Well, wouldn't we?

And then, on another level: how ironic is it that we mock white America by pointing out how they mock other ethnocultural groups at all levels of assimilation?

And then, on another level: is it right to mock white America, which is obviously an ethnocultural variety, just because it's the dominant one?

I'm not sure if it's right, but when I see the therapist spot, I lose my shit when the therapist realizes she realizes her own ethnocentric ignorance and can't answer him ("because therapists are smart?") . And then she is saved because the 1) caveman has a cell phone which rings at that very moment; 2) he reads the caller ID and 3) he suggests putting his mother on speaker phone, because obviously he's familiar with freudian psychology. So the caveman is thoroughly modern and sophisticated to the point of ennui, but the stupid therapist is five seconds behind, still struggling with the implication that a caveman offended by an insulting commercial is somehow oversenstitive.

In other words, it's funny because the white people are less evolved. Than a caveman.

Yep. It's a joke at the expense of an ethnic group. And I'm laughing.

Dear White Guy...

Dear Anthony Bourdain,

I find your vocabulary and your crass commentary entertaining. It's fun to watch you piss on tourist-bureau traps, eat lips and assholes, and be impatient with boring people. It's good tv.





Here's a question for you.... Why can't white people learn to eat with their hands? All over Africa, the Middle East, South East Asian, Mexico, etc... people eat with their hands.


Clean hands! It's a technique! In fact, the shape you make when you're eating with your hands is the EXACT SAME shape you Western chefs make when you chop vegetables: you pull your fingers together, and you push the food under your fingers so that it meets the blade.


To eat with your hands, pull your fingers together and then use your thumb to push your food into your mouth! It's not hard! Just remember a) wash your hands, b) cut your nails short, and c) remove your jewelry, watches, etc.


So why, Anthony Bourdain, does it seem so hard for white people (like when you went to Malaysia) to eat with their hands? Are you kidding? Your friend is sitting next to you, doing it correctly; you sloppily pick up the food with the sides of your fingers, food falling into your palm, rice falling all over your face?

What is your problem?

First you complain that it's hard, and then you DON'T DO IT.

You know, not knowing how to eat makes you look like an ass. Sorry. We do have patience for beginners. However, willfully refusing to learn when someone is showing you? That is inexcusable. Learn how to eat. It matters. I'm not sure why they didn't start beating you right then and there.

Dear White Guy...

Dear White Guy,

Why haven't you been beaten you to death yet?

There are dozens of ways this video is wrong.

Thanks a lot, Angry Asian Man.

______

Today I had school. Dang it! If they don't call a snow day tomorrow, I might eat my shoe. Tomorrow is our Dr. King assembly, and I'm in charge of morning prayer, but I've still got my fingers crossed for a big deep freeze.

Today I had a meeting from 4 to 7, and snack was Ezell's. I teased one of my students for looking exactly like the guy on freecreditreport.com, which I won't link to because it's a scam. It's a scam in that it's not free at all. Incidentally, the youtube comments seem to show that the actor, "I'm thiiiiinking of a number between 450 and 850...." that the guy is a math teacher named Mark Swanson.

At 7pm after the meeting, it was snowing hard, so I offered to drive B home, rather than let her take the bus for 5 hours. We finally made it to SeaTac Mall, where I dropped her off, since the rest of the way was dangerous hills. Her husband came and got her in a minivan with chains. That was around 9pm, and it took me another hour to get back home.

For dinner I made myself two pancakes, some brown n' serve sausages, and a fried egg. That's right, for dinner, so what?

And now I'm tired and I want to go to bed.

"It's not that bad. "

The local anchors are teasing the weather wonk about wearing shorts in the cold weather. "It's not that bad," says the weather wonk.

In grad school, we invented a mythology, and one of the characters was "that white guy" who always wore shorts no matter how cold it was outside. Invariably "that white guy" would respond, "actually, it's not that bad."

It's now a little before seven, and my school's late start still hasn't been listed on tv. I'm sure the website hasn't been corrected either.

I cranked up the heat, to see if my heater would respond. It has. Why did it punish me for the two coldest days of the year? I'll have to turn it down again when I go to work.

This commercial cracks me up.

No Freshwater Sashimi

A few years ago, I had a part time gig on the Eastside (shudder) and I had several friends who were born and raised in Nebraska. One of my friends often asked me cultural advice; she lived and worked on the Eastside and was terrified of the "wierd people" in the city.

You know what she's talking about. Nouveau-mohawks. Lesbians. Bikers. Metrosexuals.

I told her, newsflash: the "wierd people" in Seattle are not from here. They came here from all over All Over America to escape, well, you. And to a certain degree, so did most of us. But let's be clear; the "wierd people" you speak of came from rural and suburban White America. And no, we do not fear them. Like them, we fear you.

Anyway, another thing she asked me once.... she was very curious about sushi. Curious and skeptical. How do you know its fresh? How do you know if it's gonna make you sick? What about parasites?

I told her, you can tell when fish is fresh. Its something you learn. A good indicator is if there are Japanese customers in the restaurant.

She was skeptical. Yes, JP, but how can you be sure?

I don't know, sweetheart. How do you know if the hamburger and fries you order is not gonna make you sick? And don't say "because it's cooked" because a whole bunch of people got sick in Seattle in 1993 from cooked hamburgers. How do you know that any of your food is safe?

Oh, guess I never thought of that.

Well, the reason I flashed back to this conversation is because today for breakfast I went to a Tony's Deli and ate something delicious. Some delicate, wide noodle with ground pork folded into them, topped with toasted garlic, fresh herbs and sprouts, and then drizzled with that orange fish sauce. Topped with three thin slices of some Vietnamese deli meat, it was the bomb.

Of course I don't know what it was called, so I googled it and got this lame... maybe "lame" is too strong, I got this pedestrian review from a food blog in LA. You know, I'm sure asian food is just not her strength, and I don't fault her for it, it's a big world, and knowledge is a journey....

So no matter where you are on the spectrum of sushi knowledge, I want all of you to know what some of us just thought was common sense: NO FRESHWATER SASHIMI.

In English: if it came from a river or a lake, COOK IT.

Seriously, kids, diversity is a safety issue. We'll talk later about eating foods on a dare. Hmph.

Survivor 13: White Privilege

I won't even bother coming up with a snazzy new title, Orange beat me to it! I've never been a fan of reality tv, so I've never watched Survivor. Orange doesn't either, but she couldn't resist watching the first race-based competition. Check out her analysis; the white folk are so white-priviledged, they don't seem to notice their own homogeneity.

I'm not sure why anyone thought this would be a good idea, other than all the blogospheric buzz that segregation will bring them. Apartheid may not be good enough for the regular people, but when attractive people are competing for money....

To be fair, I heard on Entertainment! Inside! Extra! that the contestants were told the night before the competition started that they would be grouped, you know, according to White America's racial constructs. So they all had a good night's sleep to decide if they would racially exploit themselves for America's delight and for a big cash prize, or go home with nothing. I'm sure I would have agreed to go on with the competition as well, and then later endured criticism from ethnic studies majors.

It's only a matter of time until it becomes Survivor: Men vs. Women. then Survivor: Sectarian Violence. Survivor: Holocaust. Survivor: Abortion Debate. Survivor: Abuse Victims vs. Their Abusers.

I made witch cookies!

My post about witch cookies to support the witch trials/The Crucible unit is over at BitchPhd. Thanks for inviting me, M and J!

Enjoy!

Distractosaurus Friday

Changeseeker has a guide for White people on how to be an ally. Not bad. (Thanks, Professor Zero).

Bitch PhD was horrified to watch Barbara Walters describe Plan B as a chemical abortion, and is urging us to write in and encourage her not to misinform a national audience.

Nos queda tres leccioncitas en el texto de chino y una semanita para terminarlas. Si hubiéramos podido terminar Lección 8 hoy habríamos podido teminar todo el libro el semana que viene. Pero hoy es viernes, y a pesar de ser excelentes estudiantes hasta nosotros no somos capaces de enfocarnos en el tema cuando hace tan buen tiempo aquí en Seattle. Bueno, yo sí puedo estar muy seriocito, pero no puedo solo. Los demás se distraen facilmente.

Hoy al llegar a la escuela el pescador cuya vida me afascinaba llegó afeitado y con pelo cortado, lo que me quedó desilusionado. Cuando él tenía la barba y el pelo selvaje, yo me imaginaba a mí también con pelo selvaje y barba fuera de control, allá sobre el mar, trabajando duro para un sueldo tan grande que me permita pasar semanas o meses sin tener que trabajar. ¡Qué vida!

Pero al verle al pescador sin barba y con pelo corto, cayó un poco en mi mente la imágen romántica de su vida. No es que yo quiera ser cómo él que digamos, es que quiero tener el pelo selvaje. Ahora se ve... normal... lo que me aburre. Estoy seguro de que sea buena gente, pero ya no tengo ganas de pedirme que me enseñe la vida de pescador.

Hoy durante la clase empezó a tocar la orquestra de la Navy en la plaza a la que da la ventana de nuestro salón. Tocaron, y tocaron muy bien, el tema olímpico de John Williams. Yo en secreto quería que tocara un tema de Aaron Copeland o algo así, pero seguían con marchas militares y patrióticas. Aparte del tema olímpico la única cosa que me interesaba fue Sing Sing Sing. Las demás canciones eran tan over arranged que tuve que reírme a voz alta durante la clase.

Después de la clase, esperé mediahora para que saliera la C, con la que iba a almorzar. La cola para Salumi alcanzó la calle, y a patrona de Takohachi no nos dejó ni entrar. Entonces fuimos a Hing Loon lo que le encanta a la C. Pedimos chow mein al la Hong Kongita con pollo y col chino, y broccoli chino con carne y ajo. Los dos platos estaban muy ricos.

Mi barrio por ser tan cerca del Lago Washington se está preparando para la corrida de los hydroplanes. Ay ya! Y siguen los aviones sobre mi techito. Yo debo programar una salida de urgencias.

part one: Skinner Box; part two: Big Mistake

I love learning Mandarin. Love it, love it, love it.

I felt a little sad today, when I realized it would end next month. So I thought about getting the Rosetta Stone program, because sometimes spending money makes me feel better. A friend of mine called it 'the best marketed program out there.'

Well, I let the kid at Northgate Mall give me his best Rosetta Stone pitch, but I left without buying it. I couldn't put my finger on what was wrong.

I realized on the drive home what it was; it was all just a bunch of fancy operant conditioning. Dr. Skinner would be so proud.

Eventually, though, the end result of operant conditioning is not language acquisition; at best, I would become really good at the Rosetta Stone task itself. Maybe it could support the language acquisition that's already happening, but there is no evidence that anything could help (or even have any impact at all) on the instinctual process that takes every human child from zero to relative clauses in six years with negligible explicit instruction.

You better check out Other One Spoon if you think that explicit correction and teaching has any effect on language development.

-------

Today I bought a bagel sandwich for breakfast. One of them looked like wheat, so I said, "Is this wheat?" and the lady said happily, "Yah, but they're so good, you can't taste that there's any wheat at all!"

Anyway, you know how I feel about bagels, but it was that or no breakfast at all.

Mistake.

I do have to admit that the post-diahrreah relief and euphoria was acute.

Don't Talk About People's Mamas.

Thanks, BitchPhd, for the discussion about Zizou's famous headbutt.

Sometimes, when brown folk get together, we talk about white people. We talk about how fearful some of them are of us, we talk about how theye're always drinking dairy, we talk about how they seem to love their mamas less than we do. Maybe it's not true, but that's what it seems like sometimes.

Once, in college, I was eating a hamburger at the fraternity house, and a guy named T came in and started telling mama jokes. Yo' mama jokes. I was like, man, don't talk about people's mamas. Of course he loved it, he told jokes about everybody's mama in the room. And everybody laughed good naturedly. Ha ha, oh T, that's a good one.

When he got to me, I said, don't. Don't talk about my mama.

And then he told a mama joke about my mama, so I said, take it back. Take it back, or you're going to wear this hamburger.

He made another joke, and I threw my hamburger onto his shirt. Mustard, onions, relish and grill grease, all down his front.

Hey! He cried angrily, it was just a JOKE! You ruined my SHIRT! It was just a JOKE.

I told you, T, with words: take it back, or you're going to wear this hamburger. I couldn't have made myself more clear.

It was a fucking JOKE, he said, this was a BRAND NEW SHIRT. You're going to buy me a new shirt!

You don't talk about my mama. I don't give a fuck about your shirt.

I walked out of the room, fully expecting to some kind of disciplinary complaint to come up during the week. They were going to call me before the chapter, and lecture me about my temper. And yes, I do have a temper. But my temper is not the problem.

The problem is that I value my mama, more than I value T's shirt.

So I was prepared to get kicked out of the fraternity that week. Seriously, why would I want to live in the same house with some white guys who loved a shirt more than my mama? What would have been the VALUE in holding my temper? A new shirt and a hamburger?

I was surprised that it was never discussed again, not even by my friends. I learned later that those guys all feared me.