I leave and everyone writes... some issue huh.
What does "1337" mean?
Most Extreme Elimination Challenge was the game show, Adam. You're right that the show capitalizes on American’s underlying anti-Asian exclusionary sympathies, and plays up every conceivable stereotype, but the show is not alone. Think about all of the major American television shows; at some point each one bad-mouths someone. Those accepted by the American majority culture are all comedies, and thus non-threatening. The non-threatening-comedian figure has led to a feedback loop that for decades has been significantly altering the nature of African American culture. What makes shows like the Chapell show, or networks like UPN insidious is that they allow blacks to be the agents of our own mockery. Don't get me wrong, I laugh... moreover, I can get away with quoting what's said... but I still am uneasy with the overall cultural trend, especially how broadly it reaches.
I agree that the most socially acceptable stereotype is of the intelligent Asian; if David Koh got the only 100% on some trig test (last year this was often the case) no one was alarmed by remarks such as "It's because he's the Asian," while I certainly would have been offended if my (relatively low, say) 76% was justified as "It's because he's the black." The remarks do carry different cultural weight, but such weights have different effects on how you are able to interact with peers of any and all social or racial groups, and how you treat yourself. Aside from one type of stereotype being negative and the other positive, my lot lies with the "model minority" theory because when you hear "Minority" do you even think of Asian Americans? I bet it takes a good moment.
I agree entirely with what has been said about differentiating between racism and socio-economic background, but would also like to add a term that I picked up from (maybe an essay by) Shelby Steel; Passive Nondiscrimination. This kinda fits into what Brian said about becoming separate not through identification, but by non-identification. Each group does not have to necessarily exclude other types, merely fail to include others into the same situation.

Chicago is a persistently segregated city. Oak Park (prides itself on accepting everyone, and having a large homosexual population) has fought "white flight" and housing discrimination for three-quarters of a century. Consequently, when a child goes to an Oak Park public elementary school, there are persistent rumors of inequity in public schools, but one never sees it. Suddenly at Jr. High (O Magnum Mysterium) the children Autosegregate. friends. lunch tables. work ethics. At the time of puberty, students in a highly integrated school system separate like chlorophyll in a pigment chromatogram, or sand and iron filings in an asymmetrically magnetized centrifuge (ha). As I've come to understand, children are fairly egalitarian in youth, but as they become semi-autonomous, they begin to try and establish a self. American culture puts an emphasis on color, and thus children pick people who look like their parents as friends, and base their cultural (and cultural includes everything from shoes to homework ethic) orientations around what their friends are doing.
For Jared, I say there are a lot of Jews in this area. We have a lot of everything I think, everything accept for conservatives, who were mostly scared away by the Nutbush, local gay-bar. There are a lot of "you're so jewish/polish/white/blonde/greek" and so on jokes, but then again there are proportionately as many "what can you expect, I'm so mexican/so irish/ or I'm black" jokes. I want you to note the slight differences in phrasing, because they make a huge difference in how one internalizes the remarks in life.
I probably wrote this poorly, but I am of the opinion that American society, in its efforts to make everything look equal in the media, serves to highlight how unequal things are in reality. Your typical token persons--a sprinkling of the planeteers--creates a hypersensitivity among us, forcing us to evaluate where we are. The obvious solution, and I am not kidding is hybridization. On that note, I just got back from my cousin's wedding in Seattle, and I was hitting on my redheaded cousin. How's that for funny.
Aside from sleeping through a transfer flight and ending up in Las Vegas instead of Seattle on Saturday, I went to Washington University in St. Louis for this John B. Ervin Scholarship Weekend. I bring this up because I think the criterion are pertinent to our conversation. The student must be "a Black American."
I applied to like four scholarships there, and because (out of those) I was highest ranking among the Ervin applicant pool I became ineligible for the leadership, science, and art scholarships. While you can think of the results of this sort of selection among scholarship applicants, I want to return to what "a Black American" or for that matter a "White" or Hispanic or Asian or any other demographic identification really means.
My mother has freckles and all of my father's side has hair that hangs. Neither side of my bloodline is all African, and I certainly do not absorb enough light to be deemed the color black, but I am melinated, colored. Negro sum. While the terms that we've been tossing around may be useful in conversation, biologically the only true dimorphism among humans is sexual: all other characteristics are merely degrees of variation. It is hard to pick out an Anglo-Saxon Englishman in Oak Park, or a German, or a Dutchman, or an Irishman, or a Frenchman (need I go on). These groups are so thoroughly mingled that a student says "I'm part Polish and Russian Jew, and some other stuff" and stops there. White Means loosely "Of European Descent" and I say loosely because a little contamination from an Arab or a Korean doesn't bar people I know from that category. My friend Kate has an Arab father and a blonde mother, but by her dark hair and huge eyes, people guess she's French. This dude, David, on Track, based on his behavior and social identification is esteemed to be "Black," though his mother is irish, and his hair is brown/red. Today Anthropologists race to same "seed population gene" samples by taking blood from people in isolated regions of the world. In a few generations we will all be hybrids, and if everything was random, it would only take 213 generations to recombine the peoples of earth. Since I am on the verge of sleep (but really at my mom's office about to do an essay) I think I'll put my head down.

Yay for the Onion. Yay for panties.


Hey, what has everyone heard from schools?

posted by Adrian   [12:59 AM]

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