You would have more folks not buying houses they can’t afford in groups but moving into neighborhoods that they could afford on their own. They wouldn’t take a job washing dishes even though they know they got the one they have because of someone they or their family member knew or because of their culture identity. Let’s be real here.

If folks were up for this idea when they know they gained things because of their culture identity but someone else deserved it more, they would pass the plate. Never heard of any of these cases. SWEET

I’ve also been thinking about what you said about racism. It’s true that sometimes in living here, I’ve reacted to others racism with a kind of momentary anger that seems like it might also contain some racism. I guess we are all guilty of generalizing from particular incidents. I try to remember that everyone is different and try to accept each one on their own merits, but I don’t always succeed. I think I can do it best with people I have come to know here. I can clearly see their differences, and there are many. Not many would have treated you like that man on the train. Not everyone calls me “foreigner” all the time after I have let them know I don’t like it. Many are so kind, like one of my students, a busy housewife and worker, who will hand deliver homemade o-sechi to my house today, making a special trip from her home miles away. I think of her when I have to hear mutters of “eigo this and eigo that” on the train I travel to work each day and want to immediately find the nearest airport and exit Japan once and for all. But I guess I would have to exit the world if I wanted to escape racism because it’s still alive and well in the country in Canada. too, though it seems to be growing a little less over the years.

Since there is no real escape from racism, either being on the receiving or giving end, I guess we had better do as you suggested, use some time to think about it and consider what we can do, rather than congratulating ourselves on our tolerance. I know I have been thinking since you wrote this and probably will continue to for a long time. So I am saying that your writing is important and probably does much more than you realize.

May 2006 be a year of reading more wonderful writing, thinking and more thinking, and doing what we can. Happy New Year to you, and to all who write words of inspiration.

The whole Blog Against Racism exercise has gotten me thinking a lot about the way I see others and my own role in the whole shebang. I think it is important that those who so often see others as bigots (non-whites, feminists, righteously religious, patriots, wronged elderly, the handicapped…) stop and take a good look to see if they themselves have perhaps crossed over into the world of intolerance. But so few people are willing to be completely honest and admit that they harbor quite a few prejudices themselves, often militantly so.

Take the idea of “anger” at those they see as blocking their “empowerment” (an empty word I passionately hate because it is arbitrarily used for any situation where the one who is using it sees an advantage over another and often uses it blindly and interchangeably with “equality”, “compassion” and “understanding”, which it shares no relationship with). When the anger gets so vitriolic, or at times even violent, and that person no longers sees the person they are directing their anger at, are these “wronged” people not doing exactly the same thing that they accuse their so-called oppressors of?

I think it is very dangerous for anyone to consider themselves outside the human capacity for cruelty and injustice. The moment you do so you set yourself up above others and thereby take on the exact characteristics of a bigot.

Cheers!