Yeah, so there’s a lot of stupidity in the world. So much that it’s probably not even worth it to write a post criticizing it. But yeah, whatever. The first part of this consists of stupidity on facebook, which there is way too much of to write about, but there are a few specific cases that I guess are stupid in a way that have some more meaning than just random stupidity, and thus can be analyzed. All the parts after that are whatever random crap I remember I wanted to rant about, but that probably won’t be much because I forgot all of it.
So starting off, one of my fb friends posted a story on his blog (the same one I quoted last time, actually), which then got posted on his facebook. It was about how he had an encounter with a random racist as he was pulling out of McDonalds, and described the yelling confrontation that occured between random racist and the guy’s dad. So, yeah, clearly, that guy is an idiot, both for being a racist, and for being a racist that lives in Arcadia. That’s like, I don’t know, a vegetarian entering a steakhouse. Or an epileptic going into a disco nightclub that also happens to be showing that episode of Pokemon. Or George W. Bush attending Harvard (Oh wait, that last one actually happened, stupid education system).
Well, that isn’t the main part I was talking about, it was actually one of the comments on it.
” These are the time when people clash, but almost 100% of the time, those Whites are the problem. drivers are mostly legal, pulling up is included. those guys cursing at you doesn’t have particular reason to say those stuff. It just that the…y want to satisfy their needs of raging to others to satisfy themselves, even though it makes others to rage. Chinese aren’t the only one. Japanese Koreans, Chinese, Taiwanese,………. there are too many people who are affected by these unforgiving words. But you have to remember, that you are proud to be Taiwanese, because once you lose that mind set, you won’t survive in this country. This country was said to be free, but when you look back at the history, you know the truth.”
Ok, uh, where to start…well, first off, “Chinese aren’t the only one…Chinese also!”. But yeah, beyond that, I see a bunch of flaws. First, clearly, that he seems to blame racism exclusively on white people. Even if “almost 100%” of racial conflicts in America are sparked by whites (highly doubtful, just look at how much violence resulted from Black vs. Hispanic conflicts, in addition to other cases), the reason for this is only because whites are the only group in America that can be so blatantly racist, because they are the majority. But they are by no means the sole proprieters of racism; lots of other groups express this racism as well, even if it isn’t as apparent. I know for sure that a lot of it exists within our Asian community. In fact, to blame racism purely on whites is, it seems like, a form of racism itself.
Quick kind-of-related sidetrack story. Kinda, not really related, but I want to tell it because it’s a great story. I heard this from my dad, who heard it from my grandma, who was told this from one of the people involved, so I can’t guarantee 100% accuracy, but it’s true to my knowledge.
So, this person my grandma was talking to, she’s a first generation immigrant, but speaks some English, I guess just from being here a while. She’s trying to help her mother-in-law get American citizenship. To do this, people have to pass a test, consisting of questions like, “Who was president during WWII.” The mother-in-law doesn’t speak English, but she is allowed a translator, in this case, the daughter-in-law. She had already failed the test twice before, but wants to try it again. They enter the place (Idk where these tests are, lol) and enter the room for the test. They see that the test-giver is an African-American man, and then the mother-in-law tells her daughter-in-law, in Cantonese “It’s this [derogatory Cantonese term for blacks] again”. The test-giver, I’m not sure if he speaks Chinese, or just knew that phrase, somehow understands, and immediately fails her, putting a note to not allow her to take the test again, as she displayed behavior not appropriate for a citizen.
Wow, that was kinda long. Anyway, back to the facebook comment…the other part of his post says that you “must remember to be proud of being Taiwanese to survive in the country.” Maybe this is just my belief on heritage (Tim knows what I’m talking about), but I argue again that this comment seems to consist of the same seeds of racism that it attempts to condemn. I don’t know exactly what the guy meant, if he just wanted to say that you should be proud of who you are, then that’s a good belief to have, but if he meant what I thought he meant at first glance, isn’t this kind of cultural/ethnic superiority the kind of thinking that causes the racial conflicts in the first place? There’s a difference between being comfortable with who you are, and feeling like you are better than others because of your descent. Maybe that specific post was not quite there yet, but the whole “I’m really proud that I’m Taiwanese!” thinking seems to be an origin of racism.
I guess racism is an issue that may never truly die down. We’ve definitley made a lot of progress over the years, and I hope I live to see even more, but I guess it’s still always a natural instinct of humans to reject those that are different. At least now, very few actually discrmininate or act out on their prejudices, and, like I said, I hope this one day is gone entirely, but I doubt we can ever be totally free of any prejudice within our thinking.
Ok…uh…still on facebook…
The earthquake in Japan was a terrible tragedy, and I could mourn the victims here, but much of that has been done already, and this blog isn’t really the appropriate forum for it. What I want to discuss is the facebook response to it.
Apparently there were some group(s) where people apparently joined to “support Japan.” I don’t know how these worked, because upon slightly closer inspection, the group seemed to have no actual point, other than getting people to join. I didn’t see how it in any way actually supported the victims in Japan. Maybe the only point of it was to allow people to feel like they were doing something. This kind of thing seems to be quite common now, in this connected technology age, with people all joining up to apparently demonstrate something, whether it actually supports that thing or not. I guess our school “wear pink” thing could be an example, though it is already on the better side, since the teaches/administration could actually see the demonstration.
A more concerning response to the disasters on facebook, however, came through a comment thread on a post from one of my religious fb friends. He usually is pretty cool and not preachy in real life, but about half the posts he comments on or likes involve some religious comment by his friends/family. I would just block it, but it’s not that space consuming, and he has some interesting non-religious posts. Well, anyway, some friend of his, on some post about the earthquake in Japan said, “All you can do is pray.”
And yeah, I would think that even religious people agreee that that statement doesn’t make much sense. You could also, you know, donate money to relief efforts. I don’t have too much of a problem with religion in cases where the person keeps it to themselves and doesn’t allow it to lead them to stupid beliefs actions. What I am against is when people use religion as justification for atrocities (KKK, Al Qaeda, pedophile Catholic priests) or to press forward their stupid ideas (“America’s government should be based around Christianity”, “global warming isn’t real because it isn’t in the bible”, Westboro Baptist Church [look it up if you feel like getting angry]), or in this case, leading them to not do anything except “pray”.
I don’t really get the whole point of prayer, and how it’s supposed to somehow influence God or whatever. Well, I guess I don’t really get religion. I could go on a whole rant right now about religion/prayer, but let’s not. I’ll just say that the even more stupid religious idea related to the earthquakes was that somehow this is part of God’s plan and Japan deserved it and is getting punished. Yeah…I know there are reasonable religious people out there, but I’m starting to get really sick of the idiotic ones. Enough said. For now.
So, onto local news…it’s a bit late, but the big topic in Arcadia has been the pink slips and teacher lay-offs. Now, I’m sure I’ve been quite vocal on here about the incompetency and stupidity of many Arcadia teachers, so it might seem to you that I would support teacher lay-offs (Actually, it probably won’t seem to you that way, but assuming a stupid audience allows me to use sentences like that to set up the argument). However, I, like everyone else, oppose the layoffs, because these teachers being given the pink slips are in most cases the good ones. They are competent, and more importantly, they actually try and do their job. As much as I hate the bad teachers, it makes me appreciate the good ones more.
However, I cannot completely take the teacher’s side on this, that everything is fine, and they should continue to be paid the same, and education should not be messed with. As I said before, and as we all know, and I think even the teaches all know, there are many that are incompetent and don’t do their job. They must be eliminated. Some sort of performance review must be put into place, at the very least, and not just the “let’s look at how your students do on this stupid standerized test!” performance review. You could put a dead walrus as a teacher, and AHS students would still do well on anyone tests thrown at them.
Of course, that isn’t going to solve all the education problems. As we’ve mentioned many times on here, education is a complex issue. I would like to mention one point though, that a city council member at the Gov Team meeting made (Also mentioned by Obama in the State of the Union, and I’m sure many others). He said that there is no better, no more honorable and helpful profession teaching. This is true-if the teacher is a good teacher. But, if like many, the teacher chooses to abuse this position of such great power and responsibility, nobody deserves more shame. With that much influence over the future, teachers have a duty to do their job, and those that do so, or beyond, should be rewarded. Those that don’t, shouldn’t.
Hm, I’m sure I had a lot more stuff to rant on…I can’t really remember though. And this is starting to get close to 2000 words. I really should learn to write more concisely.