big WOWO

I remember working my first retail job in New York.  I was working selling computers for a crappy, fly-by-night storefront, and it was my first time working in a truly multiethnic environment.  We were talking about college, and one of my black male coworkers remarked about my alma mater: “They gave you a degree?  Man, they must be giving out degrees to just about everyone these days!” Everyone burst out in laughter.

I was shocked.  I didn’t know what to say.  I was out of words before the war of words even began.

One of my black female coworkers quickly shot in, “Well, Jamie [I think that was his name], they didn’t give one to you!”  Everyone laughed again.  Once everyone dispersed, my female coworker said, “Byron, you gotta defend yourself.  Put him in his place!”

Coming from a monoethnic background (haha…white), I later learned that many African Americans play a game when growing up called “Playing the Dozens.”  In the game, people throw playful insults back and forth in front of a public audience.  It helps develop wit, quickness, and confidence.  It explained a bit about how easily Jamie owned me, and how easily my female coworker shot him down.

Just last week, King mentioned another game that some in the African American community play.  It’s called “Working on Your Mack.”  In this game, boys and girls playfully exchange flirts and rejections.  I’ll reference King’s words:

In my neighborhood (African Ameican) growing up, there was an old tradition of “workin’ on your mack” which was kind of a game. Every guy tried out all the most ridiculous lines on the girls—it didn’t matter if you liked them or not. The guys threw out the macks, the girls always shot them down, and it was kind of a joke that everyone enjoyed. Guys thinking of creative and clever ways to mack up the girls, and girls thinking of even more clever ways to turn down the guys. But since it was a game nobody took the put-downs personally. You were going to get a “no” either way and this annulled any pressure . Every now and then, a guy came up with something so creative, so smooth, so dap, that everybody had to give him props. But success was rare and hard to come by.

But by time we were in our mid- teens, we had been soundly rejected so many times and so badly, that we really were all quite immune to it. If a girl said “no”, it was “no,” but we didn’t really sweat it, because it was just like in our little game, you try again with something better later. Also, the girls all got used to guys asking them out and throwing pure BS at them. In the end, the boys turned out bolder, and more confident, and the girls ended up wiserm confident, and knew how to deal with male BSers.

I think games like this are great.  As King later mentioned in the thread, games teach us a lot that we need in life.  In this case, “playing the dozens” and “working on your mack” both achieve the same goal–they teach confidence, quickness on one’s feet, and fast creativity.  Jamie owned me because he was faster than me, and my female coworker owned him because she was faster than him.  We have all this talk in the AA blogosphere about PUA, canned lines, negging, AMOGing, and all these other dirty tricks.  This kind of negative thinking appeals to some Asian men because our culture doesn’t have the games in adolescence that build personal speed and display personality.  How great it would be if we could somehow change our culture to incorporate similar games in order to help our young men and women today?  These games wouldn’t just help Asian men either.  They could help Asian women develop similar speed and performance ability to stand up for themselves as well.

What do you all think?

(I actually had a lot more to say about this.  I was going to talk about stereotypical sales styles and flirting styles among Asian American men, etc., but I’ll just open the floor for more enlightened contributors.)

Has everyone been following all the craziness with the Tea Party?  They only started last year.

I just learned through the New York Times that the very first Tea Party activist was a young 30 year old woman named Keli Carender.  That’s right, she was the very first in a growing list of protesters.  Her political philosophy is to have less government intervention in markets, and from the article, it seems that her very first political act was to try to get Senators to vote against the stimulus bill.  Thank God they didn’t listen to her.

Some biographical info:

The daughter of Democrats who became disaffected in the Clinton years, Ms. Carender, 30, began paying attention to politics during the 2008 campaign, but none of the candidates appealed to her. She had studied math at Western Washington University before earning a teaching certificate at Oxford — she teaches basic math to adult learners — and began reading more on economics, particularly the writings of Thomas Sowell, the libertarian economist, and National Review.

So she’s been studying politics for…two years?  And she gets her info from the National Review?  I may be acting like an elitist, but doesn’t this say something about the movement?  (Although it does sound like she knows more about economics than Sarah Palin…)  I do appreciate that despite her desire to cut, she still thinks about Medicare and Medicaid.

From CNN:

Evolutionary psychologist Satoshi Kanazawa at the the London School of Economics and Political Science correlated data on these behaviors with IQ from a large national U.S. sample and found that, on average, people who identified as liberal and atheist had higher IQs. This applied also to sexual exclusivity in men, but not in women. The findings will be published in the March 2010 issue of Social Psychology Quarterly.

The IQ differences, while statistically significant, are not stunning — on the order of 6 to 11 points — and the data should not be used to stereotype or make assumptions about people, experts say. But they show how certain patterns of identifying with particular ideologies develop, and how some people’s behaviors come to be.

I’m semi-liberal and totally atheist, so maybe my IQ is on the order of 3 to 5.5 points higher?  Or do I get extra points for being semi-liberal?  Men who are sexually exclusive tend to be smarter than those who aren’t, which shows that statistically people like me should be smarter than Pick Up Artists.  Although if you look at what I spend on diapers and the like, some PUAs would have a good argument to refute that.  I know I refute that every time I give the clerk at Babies R’ Us my credit card.

A professor not affiliated with the study says that he believes that the preferences have something to do with wanting to show superiority or elitism.  He may have a point.  I think lots of liberals are elitist.  Granola-eating tree huggers tend to have a snobbery about them that even rich Republicans don’t.  It’s amazing, really.  As much as I hate to admit it, atheists tend to be more elitist than evangelical Bible thumpers–although to be fair, there are more thinking and reading atheists than Bible thumpers.  This is not to say that all Bible thumpers are non-thinking–C.S. Lewis was brilliant–but there are many more thinking atheists (which is basically what the study confirmed).

Kim Yu-Na

Check out the article here–the South Koreans are celebrating like crazy.  I think everyone saw it, but if you didn’t the women’s free skate, check out the NBC Olympics website.  I was nervous the whole time, but in the end Kim delivered.  It’s amazing how she was able to perform so well under pressure.

bigWOWO Rating: Asian American Gold

Transparency is a collection of short stories written by Frances Hwang. I picked it up at the suggestion of Akrypti, who said that she loved Frances Hwang.

The short stories contained within the book often deal with immigrant issues and questions of acculturation. Many of the characters do not fit within the society in which they live, and the stories deal with their attempts to make sense of who they are. There is the mother dealing with an older Taiwanese father in the the short story The Old Gentleman, the man dealing with his lost voice in Transparency, and the woman dealing with psychological displacement in Intruders. All of Hwang’s characters seem somewhat off-center, and the narratives describe their attempt to make sense of the world.

There was a lot to like about this collection. Frances Hwang is a gifted storyteller, and her rhythm, delivery, and choice of words kept the pages turning. Her writing style inspires me. The book also had a Reading Group Guide at the end. I loved what Hwang says about studying writing with a community:

“As a writer, you face rejection at every turn, and what’s worse, people often regard you as naive, lazy, and unfortunate.”

I laughed so hard when I read this. I was thinking about the Talent post, and I realized that if I don’t get this novel finished in five years, to the rest of the world, it will be as if I just shut myself in a room for five years and did nothing. People see writers as lazy, naive, unfortunate, and maybe even stupid. What people don’t understand is that novels take time. They really do. I’ve written about 50,000 words so far, but with all the writing and rewriting, I only have about 25,000.

Hwang also talks about how studying at Montana helped her to read more contemporary fiction and to “come down from the ether.” She says her favorite writers are Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Chekhov, and Alice Munro. Notice that Hwang’s literary heroes are all White. There’s nothing wrong with this, of course, but I do think it shows in the way her stories treat the concept of race. Hwang’s thinking on race is post-racial. People have a race but are not much affected by it. In the story Blue Hour, for example, there’s a story of two Asian women dating two White guys, but the only mention of race is when the main character talks about being mistaken as her friend’s sister by people who think Asians look alike. It was a bit frustrating at times to read this post-racial racialism, since most Asian Americans I know have a much more profound relationship with the racial hierarchy in America. That being said, most of the protagonists in these works are Asian American women or older Asian American men, and I can see how it is entirely possible to be part of either of these two groups without being affected by race. It’s an entirely believable world. Young Asian women have a complex relationship with acceptance/non-acceptance, and old Asian dudes have other things to worry about besides racial injustice or disparities.

I thought this book pushed the envelope on style and existence. It didn’t push the envelope much on deeper racial and ethnic questions, but it still contributed to the dialogue that we need to build. I enjoyed it.

Check out the video above.

“Ooh hoo, you so handsome!”  Please.  There ain’t nothing “fobulous” about this “approach.”  Girl didn’t know she was being filmed, but man, watch out fo’ Rice Chasahs!  (You can google the douchemeister if you want to know what I’m talking about.  Trust me, it won’t make you feel any better.)

I love how the woman says she has a boyfriend, and douchemeister continues.  He even tries the “hug-close,” and he has to downgrade by asking her to hug him in her mind.  He has no respect for her, otherwise he would respect the fact that she has a boyfriend.  On the douchebag’s posting of the video, he claims that the woman actually showed up for a date, but who knows?  Many of these guys are pathological liars.  They’ll say whatever they can to not look like douchebags, even though that’s exactly what they are.  As one of the wise women from the 44s once said, “These PUAs should get over themselves.  Some people just aren’t meant to procreate.”

I remember back in the day when the 44s had their discussions with the Asian PUAs, and one thing Xian kept saying was that they had no empathy.  I agree 100% with Xian.  It was absolutely flabbergasting to me how they would harass women, encourage men to lie to women, and then somehow expect sympathy for being sexually oppressed as Asian men.  They’d abuse women, and then claim that they were trying to be better people, all while not apologizing for their sexist transgressions.  Please.

What I might add to Xian’s comment about empathy is that many PUAs often have no boundaries.  Boundaries are good.  They help define exactly who a person is.  I’m convinced: if you have no boundaries, you have no soul.  If you have no boundaries, you are almost by definition only in it for yourself.  In other words, if you have no boundaries, and if you’ll trample on anyone to get ahead and to help yourself, you’re a douchebag who isn’t meant to procreate.  Those who lie, steal, and abuse women need to get boundaries.  They don’t need to get “good with women,” instead they should try to get “good” period.

I don’t know any PUAs where I live, but I do know people who embody the PUA mentality.  These people view others as objects.  They move and manipulate people in order to get what they want, much like the interplay of sarging, negging, and AMOGing that the PUAs employ.  With people like this, you can’t appeal to their better sense of what’s right and what’s wrong because they’ll justify the means with the ends, which, in most cases, will be anything that helps them.  They’ll treat you the way they treat the women they sarge–they’ll listen to what you have to say while trying to respond in a way that will get you to act according to their interests.  Even if you see right through them, communication becomes pointless.

I saw the above debate this morning. It’s pretty entertaining. It seemed (and I don’t know this for a fact since I didn’t time it) that Anderson Cooper was giving Steve Perry a bit more time to talk than Randi Weingarten, but the question is interesting–what do you do about a school that is somehow failing?

In general, I would agree with Steve Perry. When groups don’t perform, it’s sometimes best just to change the leaders and/or players, and with a cut for those making above $72k a year in a poor school district, you’re most likely going to take out leaders. Shutting the school down isn’t necessarily a bad thing either; if people associate a school with failure, it may be most efficient just to start over again. At the very least, it will send a message to underperforming teachers and difficult teaching unions.

That being said, kids are a long-term investment. I think it’s hard to give people money and then expect things to change overnight. Especially with schools, longevity and loyalty are good things. Kids ought to feel that their school will be there for them. Loyalty to schools is different from loyalty to, say, one’s favorite clothing brand. It’s a hard, multifaceted issue.

Thoughts?

Seventh Olympic Medal

Congratulations, Apolo Anton Ohno.  With his bronze medal in the 1000 m short track, Apolo Ohno surpassed Bonnie Blair to become the most decorated U.S. Winter Olympian in history with a total of seven medals.  He has two more events to go, two more opportunities to further increase his medal count.

Scotty Lago from the United States won the bronze medal in the halfpipe a couple days ago.  To celebrate, an eager Asian sistah helped him polish his halfpipe….I mean, medal.

TMZ posted the pic, and now Scotty is heading home.  Beam me back home, Scotty.

(Thanks, BcB)

Saw this yesterday morning: Judge Keeps His Word to Immigrant Who Kept His.  This guy Qing Hong Wu confessed to a string of muggings when he was fifteen.  The judge told him to clean up his act.  Wu did, serving three years in the pen and eventually rising to become the vice president of a national company.  But when he applied for U.S. citizenship at the age of 27, and in doing so, ironically, he found out that he was deportable based on the crime he committed more than a decade earlier.

Now the judge who presided over his case is trying to appeal to Gov. Patterson to exonerate him.  Hopefully he will.  If he doesn’t, hopefully Obama will.  There’s no reason to deport a guy who has made amends.