Ignorance is taught

I do not normally post things that happen to me on this blog because I like my privacy. However, I encountered a situation recently that made me step back and wonder just what is happening to the world today and whether I am missing something or perhaps there is more I should do to prevent such situations in the future. So, first, a little background. I have a wonderful wife who means the world to me and a son who is no less important. My wife is not of the same ethnicity nor language and, while it has sometimes given itself over to troubles in our life together, it has also forced us to work harder to overcome those differences. As anyone in a multi-cultural relationship can attest, there are difficulties that are not always obvious nor easily resolved - beyond the means of a monocultural relationship. However, I support my wife completely and she the same. So, enough background and onto the situation.

While with my son and several other boys his age, some of whom I was not immediately familiar with (and who were not familiar with us), one of the boys kept referring to me as "Don's" dad. After it was pointed out to him that I was not Don's dad but my son's dad on several occasions, he finally looked at me and my son and stated, "I see 'Mike' (my son) has darker skin but you have really white skin. How can you be 'Mike's' dad?"

Ok, I think to myself, I can see past this as an innocent mistake, though not one that we've encountered in his near 12 years. "'Mike's' mom is from China. He has his mom's skin."

"Oh, is she black?"

Say what?! This is an 11-year old boy and he's just been told that someone is from China and his first question is whether she is black?! Frankly, my nerves were beginning to be plucked at that point but I persevered with patient responses. After all, he's only 11 and I don't know if perhaps he has some issues with his intellect. Though, it would be very hard to imagine my son as having any black ancestry from his appearance. Frankly, most people have assumed he is white though they have wondered about perhaps some Hispanic or Asian roots in his background based on his appearance. So, again, I respond, "No, she is Chinese."

That was not enough for him. "Oh. Does she have a green card?"

Taken as a single statement, this would probably not have been too bad. On top of the already ignorant questions this child had asked, I could only wonder if he was not either deliberately obtuse or profoundly mentally deficient. Mentally, my first response was, "Oh, so all Chinese must be immigrants and therefore need a green card?! Only white people are able to be native-born Americans?! Seriously?!" Instead, I answered with as much patience as I could muster, "No, she is a US citizen." I could have gone further and pointed out that she is a first-generation immigrant who came to a brand-new country, has worked hard to learn its language and its customs and has tried very hard to fit in to what, at times, has been a very alien culture to her, but it would have been wasted effort on my part. In the end, it was just as well I didn't for this boy's final statement answered the questions that had been building up in my own mind about his mental acuity.

"Oh, so she's like President Obama. He was born in Africa, y'know."

This boy was simply parroting what he had heard at home. At that moment, I almost felt sorry for him. Almost... He is a product of his environment - and his environment is his home. But this child will likely grow up to be as ignorant as I feel his parents to be. To him and them, non-whites are all foreigners (and apparently all black) and America's first black president is illegitimate despite significant evidence to the contrary. (I do not intend to argue for or against the "birther" discussion, I simply state that there is significant evidence that the president is a native-born American from Hawaii.) It is an attitude from an uglier time in America and one that I had hoped had faded to the background - I am not so naive as to believe that racism has been erased. But I had hope that it had receded and was less acceptable. Instead, it seems that it has been thrust into a new paradigm using code words and phrases to delegitimize people based on something they cannot control - the color of their skin. I only hope that the recent situation described here is the aberration.

Derailed Plans

I actually had started making up my collection of thoughts on the Republicans running for president (in a biting, sarcastic format that I was really enjoying as I thought about it) when I suffered a catastrophic hard drive failure on my primary desktop at home. And, since I only write on this blog from home, that was obviously going to be a problem. As it stands, I'm currently writing this on my home laptop - the same laptop that I really hate using since it runs slower than an insurance company paying on a claim and runs on Windows Vista (I guess that could be another blog post all unto itself).

Mind you, this desktop is less than a year old and already has a hard drive failure. I suppose I've been lucky that I've never had a hard drive failure previously (though I have crashed a machine or two). And, discovered today that I could at least retrieve the data from the drive so that is a good thing - my book is currently on that drive so I'm going to have to come up with another plan for saving that data. I may have to finally break down and get an external drive. I know, my own fault if I lose anything but live and learn. Or, as I've been told I can be at times, live and don't learn. Oh well...

Maybe once I get that situation straightened out, I will get back to working on my original thoughts... Cain's suggestion that China was on the brink of possessing nuclear weapons (ALREADY?!) and Perry's inability to remember the names of the the government departments he would shut down if he were elected (hey, the Dept of Energy was so unimportant since he's going to get rid of it, there's no need to remember its name) were the two most immediate ones. I just wish there were some more Democrats to pick on. I hate not being able to be an equal opportunity offender...

Political Disgust

It's only a year until the next presidential election and already I am tired of it. The pursuit of power in this country has become a big game between the rich and powerful and the more rich and powerful. It is nothing more than the pursuit of a new trophy to put on the mantle of those who achieve it. They claim to work for the people but it is, in reality, they work for themselves alone with a veneer of humble public service - and not much of a veneer sometimes. They are often bland personalities who cannot think for themselves and shout rhetorical platitudes designed to inflame passions and reduce logical thought. And, based on the reactions of their frothing partisans, it seems to work. Unfortunately, it is the smaller partisan groups that tend to dominate because they are such a vocal minority and they override the moderate, middle majority who so desperately wants true public servants who are willing to serve for a short time and in the best interests of all not the narrow interests of just a vocal few. And, because they do dominate in such a fashion in the political arena, those who pursue power cater to them and leave rational discourse until the very end - when the general public has become so embittered with the extreme positions staked out by the candidates that those who vote do so only out of a sense of responsibility rather than a sense of genuine trust of their chosen candidate.

There are those who argue that the candidates are as trapped as the general public by the extreme positions of the most rabid politizens (I wonder if this is a new word and, if so, I want the credit for it!). In order for the candidates to win their respective parties nomination for the general election, they must cater to the extreme positions. Even the candidates with the most reasoned and nuanced positions must swerve to the sides of heated rhetoric in order hope to get to the general election within the party framework that has come to command the political system in the US. And as soon as they swerve to one side, all hope of moderation is lost and the debate has moved from one of being in the interest of all to the interest of the few. And, as the nation continues down this path, it is only a matter of time before the many move from their continued blind devotion to the ideals of the republic to the recognition that their public servants are no longer acting in the best interest of the nation as a whole but in the interest of those who wish to maintain power simply for the sake of power. And, upon that time, the issue becomes what will that majority do?

This is not to sound negative nor to imply that this is a fait accompli - merely a scenario that seems to be a likely occurrence given the way things progress today. I hope not.