Happy Monday

Time to get this stiff body of mine back to yoga class. It has been a busy vacation season, with plenty of exercise, including two major hikes just in the past week. We did Kilauea Iki up at the park yesterday in the driving rain.. It's the cold and wet more than the exercise, I think, that has me really feeling achy this a.m.

One of our guests, who is from Portland,  is a musician/ songwriter who has written a vampire musical. He brought a vid of a rehearsal. It's  excellent work, showing off his considerable musical skills and the talents of the young actors.  Several times, as we watched this, I was moved to remark, "This is so Portland!" I'm telling him he should play up the Portland aspect of it, calling it something like "White Folks Living in the Dark." More later, if and when this goes to production.

On that note, so to speak, here is an excellent piece by Scot Nakagawa on how Bill O'Reilly thinks Hawaiian Asian-Americans have gone to hell in Paradise and become liberals. He says he tries to ignore O'Reilly, who he speculates does this racism stuff to get attention, but this really burned him up.

Talk to you later. Have a nice day!

More.  This vid from the Ed Show with George Takei, who is way cool.  Just the way Ed Schulz mangles Colleen Hanabusa's name should indicate that there is some educational work to do even with liberals! Takai mentions the poverty he and other Japanese - Americans endured after the war, when they were released from internment.  Their communities on the Mainland were shattered and never recovered. Japanese-Americans in Hawaii fared better. What especially offended me was that O'Reilly showed footage of  the backsides of young Asian women and some girls in very high heels. This is the white guy fantasy about Asian women that is so disgusting and demeaning. How dare he? Really!!! What an awful, awful man Bill O'Reilly is! It's really too nice to him to say he's just doing it for the money. He's revolting.

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  More: I have been asking myself all day why this latest O'Reilly outrage upset me so much. There is plenty to be furious about, after all. Then it occurred to me that, as a white person, I could be implicated by association with his racism. It astonishes me that so many white people seem not to notice that white racists reflect badly on all white people. I strongly desire not to be associated with racism.

 

Comments

[barbara]

Good points in your Ed video also the last post had great videos with Oliver Stone and his new series. So much going on -- you help us to keep up with it all.

[Hattie]

Barbara: Thanks. There is so much out there, for sure.

[Musings]

Oops! Actually, his name is George Takei, not Takai. :-)

Not all Japanese-Americans fared very well in Hawaii. Influential leaders and teachers were sent to internment camps. My uncle's father who was a general manager/Vice President for what became the Hawaii Times Ltd. Japanese language newspaper was very ill-treated. So were the reporters that my mother met later and many of the Buddhist priests she knew. It was horrifying to read what they went through. Art's aunt actually wrote a book titled Ganbare detailing that sad time.

[Hattie]

Kay: Is that book available? I would like to read it. I suppose in the light of the terrible treatment others endured it's possible to believe that Japanese in Hawaii did not have it so bad. But the ex mayor of Hawaii Island, Harry Kim, a Korean American, remembers community leaders being sent away and his father admonishing him not to succumb to prejudice. Times were very tough on the Big Island during the war, and I have heard some stories. I'll fix the misspelling.

[Cop Car]

I am, to a certain extent (though, not intentionally) racist. Obviously, I "know better", intellectually. I think it is in our evolutionary, tribal knowledge that people who are not like "me" are dangerous. We each struggle to overcome this tribal "knowledge" in our own way.
I, too, cringe at being associated with white racists; but, I'd make two points - 1) most white racists of my acquaintance are also sexists, so I'm probably biased against them to start with and 2) there is non-white racism.
I have lived (military "barracks" were not segragated during my service and I've lived in two neighborhoods in which I was a minority), attended school with (starting in college, I hasten to add), worked with (My supervisor at my first full-time job was a female of minority ethnic extraction and my direct-reports in my last position represented Native American/African/Mid-eastern/Asian/"white" American extractions--hmmm--no Hispanics?!), socialized with, liked, loved, and dis-liked, people of varied ethnic backgrounds. One-on-one, people strike me as being amazingly similar regardless of background.
These cans of worms can become very discomfiting.

[Hattie]

Cop Car: Certainly the case that it isn't something we want to confront without comforting stereotypes and cliche thinking.

[Brandon]

@Kay: Is this the book?

http://www.amazon.com/Ganbare-Example-Japanese-Spirit-Patsy/dp/156647678X

[Musings]

Ahhh... You found it! Yes, it is. She was Art's father's sister.