Every Sunday Morning, a place where various things get thrown out, shot at, cut open, and dissected. Topics of interest: psychological, and medical anthropology, privatization, globalization, excess, language, humor, hip-hop culture, jazz, brain and mind, memory, urban space development, Los Angeles, the Chicago Bulls, UCLA Bruins, FC Barcelona, and mankind.
Author's Rendition of statement: "Bill Wennington got wurped"
Actual statement: "Bill Wennington got worked."
The etymology of the word stems from a shellacking the 1996-1997 Chicago Bulls took from the hometown Los Angeles Lakers team in the game of Professional Basketball. "Wurped" is merely a mispronunciation of the word "worked", however by mere fact of the aforementioned shellacking, combined with the author's inability to say anything in defense of the Chicago Bulls, "wurped" functions to intensify the sense of defeat, or loss (i.e. salt on the wound).
Four years ago there was a graffiti park called Belmont Art Park near downtown Los Angeles on 2nd Street and Glendale.
I first came across it during a Huell Howser special. The context was right in front of the downtown vista of buildings. It used to be the site of the transit station. I can't believe I'd never seen this place. Huell spent the program interviewing some Latinos in the park playing some kind of ball game from Mexico or whatever, overviewing the art, speaking to some kind of tour group, and interviewing the artists.
I checked it out one day, then another day, and then another day (which is not documented). First day was when there were people playing that ball game I saw in Huell Howzer. Second day there were gates, but we pushed through anyway. Third day, there was no way of getting past the gates and we could only see the park from behind the gates. A few conferences, article readings later, I came to learn gradually that there was some deep history and precedence to it if Huell didn't already impart that into mind.
Many of the lot’s constantly replenished murals have been featured in magazines, photography books, art history textbooks and documentaries. Taggers come from all over – San Francisco, Chicago, New York, London – to paint there and document the murals. Art students from Japan make the pilgrimage to the lot where 2nd Street and Glendale Boulevard meet in the shadow of downtown to soak up the atmosphere.
From the 1980s, up until last November, the site was a popular neighborhood gathering place, outdoor art gallery, ancient Mexican Indian ballgame court, and a profitable film shoot location. In early 2003, planning began for building a 276 unit apartment complex on this site, but the community was not alerted of these plans until August of 2004.
Part of the site used to be a Shell gas station in the 1940s. Underground Storage Tanks have been buried for all these years, but only recently leaked gasoline into the soil and groundwater, when they were removed, illegally, by the developers.
Interestingly enough, Belmont Art Park is the site where Edward Doheny discovered oil. The Doheny of the Doheny Foundation and Doheny St. in West Hollywood. I guess it's only a fitting history to a fitting end...
The historic and cultural importance of the graffiti was not recognized by the city. Only the tunnel, the yard, and substation were declared historic and cultural, not the layers upon layers upon layers of sweat and paint. They decided to monumentalize a substation, a place which handles the utilities of the transit system. Utilities which have long ceased to be functional. It's like worshipping your nearest non-working fire hydrant. They will celebrate the yard's cultural history and heritage by making it a new pee reservoir/dog park.
Belmont Art Park was closing down was to develop 276 housing units, 20% of which would be allocated for affordable housing. Initially, before the LA Times was writing about this, somehow I was led to believe that the condos would be developed for low-income housing. Young, dumb, beating the drum. I knew at the time that we needed affordable housing, but I'm not sure why affordable housing advocates were fighting for this as if it was some kind of solution to homelessness.
The lot has been used for tarasca, an ancient Mexican ballgame, and as a canvas for elaborate graffiti murals that have gained international notoriety and been the backdrop to films and commercials.
But other community activists argued the development would help solve a long-standing need for affordable housing in the dense neighborhoods that surround downtown.”I am tired of seeing people on the street,” said Alvivon Hurd, a downtown resident and member of ACORN, a housing advocacy group.
“As much as I like the park, I can’t take that position.”
The planned complex calls for 55 affordable housing units, an after-school tutorial program and surplus parking.
Alas, the Los Angeles Downtown News now reporting on the new development called Belmont Station at Glendale and 2nd St.:
Almost one-third of the residents who pre-leased market-rate units at Belmont Station are USC students, but Essex expects the property to be popular among young professionals and families who work Downtown, Prayonsirisak said.
"I thought an obstacle was, we were out of Downtown, but a lot of people were okay with that because Downtown, it's busy, it's crazy, there's so much stuff going on," she said. "Whereas here, when you leave from work even though we're just blocks away, it's kind of like the suburbs of Downtown."
Somehow, I don't think those affordable housing advocates from 2004 envisioned USC students, who usually can afford a $30,000 education and live kinda far from their campus, young professionals to be the big beneficiaries of the "suburban" developments.
In fact, there's class snobbery inherent in the discourse of the blogger trying to sell us on the new development.
Aside from its historic connections to the old Belmont Tunnel, the development is notable for its generous allotment of affordable housing - 55 of the 275 new residences have been set aside for low-income families.
I'm not quite seeing how "generous" things are when a family needs to make almost $60,000 a year just to live in the "affordable" studio with the lowest rents at $1600+. And only 20% of the units are priced at that "affordable" rate. Not quite seeing how the $4000 a month condos will do anything either to mitigate the nation's largest homeless population.
Equally intriguing is the way various people seem to perceive of the history that was there before them:
However, the structure may be sandblasted to remove decades of graffiti or painted to match its original color. Crews testing exterior paint chips found some with 150 to 200 layers of spray paint, a telling sign that the derelict station (and the site in general) was once a playground for graffiti artists and the homeless.
"We welcomed that with open arms, the history," Kinney said. "Obviously, it was a challenge because when we first saw it, it was all graffitied. But watching it progress, we decided we were going to take this theme and run with it."
The way they handled the issue of graffiti is as wasted fragments of past years, home to vandals and transients. It's treated as an obstruction. It's a history that doesn't need to be known or need to exist, essentially, cause were creating a new whitewashed one covered in green.
In the eyes of some potential buyers and people who follow real estate development, it is a place that "didn't exist" for 45 years.
I’m glad that this once forsaken neighborhood is coming back to life at such a rapid pace after more than a 45-year hiatus! The apartments look great!
Apparently, the neighborhood's been "dead", and is only "re-birthed" when his white flight-ass comes back to town.
In the end it's not about the muralists, the taggers, the spray cans, the tarrasca. It's not about Meta-Housing, the commentors, the new buyers. It's about the memory of a space of nowhere that was co-opted into a place of somewhere, which got exposure everywhere --- the essence of the roots of hip-hop. It's a place you won't find on a tourist map, but has just as much resonance. It's about the meanings created, manipulated, the interconnectedness of the pieces and the people, the folk who breathed into life from an ambiguous dirt pond in the teeth of downtown Los Angeles.
Yesterday, at about 7:30 PM Pacific Time, I get a call from one, Daniel Larson, Oakland native with the sailor's discourse, Leon Powe's classmate, future mother-fuckin' Golden Gate University Law school graduate.
He says he's in LA! Back from another year at Beijing. Just like he said on the facebook, but I rarely take anyone's promises seriously on facebook.
During his time there, he carved up a niche as an English language teacher. He went from university students to rich kids. He had enough money to rent an apartment and pile it on when he got here. He even got some of that live orange-tang. This motherfucker was living the life.
Then they tell him that they won't be able to renew his visa.
So he was here. First thing he did was go to the 99 cents store to buy a pair of socks and toothpaste. 99 Cents store is unabomber crazy ridic. Went to eat expensive-ass hipster Mexican food, with 'Yell putting his Negro O Modelo in a fuckin' wine glass. Then simmered down with a string of NBA Street 2 games.
Turns out the 'Yell is just one small part of a mass eviction. So I was basically chilling with a live-walking news story yesterday.
If he renewed his visa, it would've cost him $1100 US dollars as opposed to the $20 he usually paid. Somewhat out of range for a guy who got his money under the table and in cash.
Apparently, during the olympics people will now have to walk around at all times with their papers. Now that's immigration enforcement to the max. Kinda ironic that the borders are getting tighter at a time when they want to show their connection to the international community.
The rich international community.
This was supposed to be a big coming out party in terms of certifying itself as a cosmopolitan globalized middle-class burgeoisie-lifestyle and experience. Stadiums were to be built, new infrastructure and transportation was developed, slums were to be cleared.
But everything seems to have been sour so far: from the international torch relays being crashed by protestors to the fact that tourism is down.
Maybe it's my reactionary response to American media discourse, but I feel bad for Beijing in relation to the rest of the world cities who've hosted Olympics. Didn't seem like those other cities had to go through half the crap that they have.
Spent most of undergrad criticizing the sciences in a minor that I thought would be devoted to just that.
But here I am, 2 years later, needing to learn it...
I bought the book In Search of Memory by Eric Kandel because:
a) I had been given a 2nd Barnes & Noble Giftcard thanks to my friend Nancy b) I figured I would probably take a class in auto repair...(or just rent a book from the 'brary) c) I wanted something that would encourage my interest in memory studies d) I didn't want something that I felt comfortable with and could read in an entire day
Yes, I've figured out something specific...I like the brain...and specifically I like memory.
Memory, because of its multifacetedness.
Short-term working memory has implications for intelligence, which is what I've always been interested in. Long-term memory shows what really lies deep within ourselves. Memory is a reflection of what we give meaning to, what we place importance on. Highly emotional, highly subjective states are what we remember most, because they are packed with meaning, and ultimately that's what we go on.
Overall, I didn't understand a lot of the biological language, but certainly, I became more interested in learning about them. I was interested in the insights he had into the science profession, the mind. Generally speaking, it's stuff you've heard before in the public discourse...our brains are plastic, you can learn a lot no matter what age you are, just in more detail.
On the book's interesting points:
1) Interesting stuff he said about the work of scientists.
First was a comment on scientific research work. He often described those he held in esteem as "creative", as if they were artists, rather than neurological or molecular biologists.
"There are scientists...who are very strong technically but who do not necessarily have the deepest insights into the biological questions they are studying (68)."
Then he mentioned the motviation of scientists; they are no different than any other human beings.
"If pure scientists were motivated by curiosity alone, they should be delighted when someone else sovles the problem they are working on---but that is not the usual reaction. Recognition by their peers and esteem come only to those who have made original contributions to the common stock of knowledge.(68)"
Scientists have a need to prove and validate themselves just like any other human being. However, the specialized, high-level language they use to describe their work, their findings, etc. makes it appear as if they are disconnected from the regular world.
2) On Learning: "Different forms of learning give rise to different forms of memory." (198) I have no clue as to what he's referring to here, but it could be interesting some day.
3) On Synapses and Learning: He mentions the strength of synaptic connections as being the key to learning.
Very important chapter in the book of neuro-bio for unbelievably moronic wankers.
"We found that learning leads to a change in the strength of synapctic connections---and therefore in the effectiveness of communication---between specific cells in the neural circuit that mediates the behavior.(200)
Strength---the long-term effectiveness of synaptic connections---is regulated by experience. This view implies that the potential for many of an organism's behaviors is built into the brain and is to that extent under genetic and developmental control; however, a creature's environment and learning alter the effectiveness of the preexisting pathways, thereby leading to the expression of new patterns of behavior.(202)"
He connects the idea that we have built-in knowledge to Immanuel Kant as opposed to John Locke's tabula rasa.
4) On Synapses: "Synaptic connections between two neurons can be...strengthened or weakened---by different forms of learning. Thus habituation weakens the synapse, whereas sensitization or classical condition strengthens it (204)."
So from this it sounds like habits make you have less synaptic connection because the synapse grows in itself, which means weaker connections between neurons, which means less likely to associate with another thing, which means that your habit becomes more engrained and exaggerated.
In contrast, being sensitized to something means stronger synapctic connections between neurons, which means more likely to associate with another thing, which means that your sensitization and association becomes more engrained and exaggerated.
In conclusion, associative and explicit learning arises from sensitization, while implicit learning arises from habituation.
5) On Neuro-bio: "Long-term memory required the synthesis of a new protein (212)." As opposed to the electrical charges that keep firing from neurons.
6) On Science and Evolution: Evolution does not have any higher purpose than its immediate adaptation for something.
"Evolution does not require new, specialized molecules to produce a new adaptive mechanism" (234).
...The Biochemical actions underlying memory did not arise apecifically to support memory. Rather neurons, simply recruited an efficient signaling system employed for other purposes in other cells and used it to produce the changes in synaptic strength required for memory storage.
7) On Evolution and Neuro-bio: The stuff that makes us what we are...our genes are ALSO subject themselves to the environment in which they live (264).
8) On Memories: A characteristic of age related memory loss is the inability to consolidate long-term memories (266).
9) On Synapses and Memory: The growth and maintenace of new synaptic terminals makes memory persist (276).
10) On Perception: Sensation is an abstraction not a replication, of the real world (Mountcastle via Kandel 302)
11) On the Hippocampus: Hippocampus is concerned with perception of the environment and represents a multisensory experience (308).
12) On Dopamine: Blocking dopamine blocks the stablization of the spatial map in an animal (313). Dopamine seems like the chemical for explicit learning and memory whereas serotonin represents the chemical for implicit learning.
13) On the Amygdala and Hippocampus: "Damage to the amygdala, which is concerned with the memory of fear, disrsupts the ability of an emotionally charged stimulus to elicit an emotional response. In contrast, damage to the hippocampus, which is concerned with conscious memory, interferes with the ability to remember the context in which the stimulus occurred. (342)"
14) Depression compromises the memory (361).
15) What science lacks are rules for explaining how subjective properties (consciousness) arise from the properties of objects (interconnecte nerve cells) (381).
Reflections:
1) On learning: As he was talking about studying analogs of learning, I was thinking about how people in general, learn. I think at the most ideal level, we learn by figuring out meanings. And then once we "learn" that it means something, we commit it to memory.
He mentioned habituation, sensitiation, and classical conditioning as the basis or most primordial form of learning.
2) On Habituation: Then I began thinking about habituation in my own world. The cycles of the world. I began thinking about the habits of people in the housing developments. What were their habits? What are the habits of the people in the middle and high classs? How did they develop them? What was the geography and environment that forced them to exhibit those habits that they did have?
3) On Sensitization: Then he mentioned sensitatization, and I began thinking about that in my own world. "After hearing a gun go off, a person will show an exaggerated response and will jump when he hears a tone or senses a touch on the shoulder (169)." Essentially, the gun going off acts as a sign and/or a symbol for someone to elicit a response.
4) On Brain studies of the past: I was curious about how this idea ever made sense in American Education in the 1950s:
"We were taught that the map of the somatosensory corex discovered by Wade Marshall is FIXED and IMMUTABLE throughout life." When and why did they think that it was fixed and mutable (216)? Was that informed by religion?
5) On Hippocampus and Spatiality: I also wondered about the hippocampus and spatial information that he mentioned(282).
6) On Intelligence: I was wondering how this fuses into Jeff Hawkins theory of brain and mind in his book On Intelligence.
7) On Fear: Fear is the easily most detectable emotion across species (339). It seems as though this is the emotion that what we give most the meaning to, and so we respond accordingly. It's really a disjointed event from anything were used to, so were likely to give a response out of the ordinary.
He brings in a dose of the breakthrough psychologit William James:
"We do not experience fear until after we have run away from the bear. We first act instinctively and then invoke cognition to explain the changes in the body associated with that action." (340)
Essentially, what he says is that emotion happens afterward, after an event. After the event is finished we build meaning off of that emotion via language expression which is then encoded into our memories.
8) On Learning: I began thinking of the social/asocial aspects of learning.
Learning is a very social activity, and that social activity is one way we build meanings. Learning in isolation is the most fruitful, but it's very difficult because we don't have the benefit of other people affirming your correctness in a belief or whatnot. You're forced to come up with your own meanings, definitions, labels for things and events which might be valid, but might not be recognized by anyone else.
Example: I watch a bunch of NBA basketball, but since I don't really have cable, it's often over the internet via international TV where they're speaking some other language other than English. So I don't watch a lot of basketball in English, which is good.
I don't have annoying commentators like Jeff Van Gundy telling me, indoctrinating me, on how unathletic, but intelligent the whiteboy Kirk Hinrich is, I just see what's on the basketball screen and make meaning out of what's happening all by myself. Therefore I learn what's happening in isolation, relatively speaking vs. other fans. I gain my knowledge of the game by my own observations, interpretations, and analysis. I "learn" what's happening basically on my own.
Realizing that I can learn either socially or asocially kind of annoyed me. Institutions seem to have a monopoly on social learning and will charge the hell out of you just for that. If you're not learning via an institution (and paying at least 20 dollars a unit), you feel like you don't know any avenue to learning what you need to learn.
The library is there, but it's limited and you still wouldn't know where to look.
But I digress.
9) On the feelings of disjointedness vs. fluidity: From Leo Tolstoy: "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way" (349).
From this quote, I became concerned with the idea of disjointedness in the unhappy family and explicitness vs. fluidity and implicitness in the happy family. Everything seems to be a disruption for the unhappy family whereas, everything seems to work in harmony for the happy family.
The discourse about the unhappy family, and explicitness triggered personal memories of the kids in the housing developments yet again. What types of disjointedness have they experienced and how have they dealt with them? I would think a quality of disjointedness towards long-term ventures, not because it's innate, but because it's been learned.
10) On Working Memory: "When normal individuals are challenge by a task that requires working memory, metabolic function in their prefrontal areas increases dramatically (354)."
Working memory seems to be a tool of social moderation --- they say "intelligence" is just working memory, and prefrontal areas with which it is associated with are associated with planning and judging.
Doubts and Questions:
1) On Kandel's Observations and Reductionist Methods: I wondered if Kandel just colored in stereotypical sexist interpretations in his interpretation of results for the differences between male and female brains.
"He [Some scientist named O'Keefe] has found clear differences in the way women and men attend to and orient themselves in the space around them. Women use nearby cues and landmarks. Thus when asked for directions, a woman is likely to say, "Turn right at the Walgreen's drugstore, and then drive until you see a white colonial houe on the left with green window shutters. Men rely more on an internalized geometric map. They are likely to say 'Drive five miles north, then turn right and head east for another half mile.' Brain imaging shows activation of different areas in mean and women as they think about space: the left hippocampus in men, and the right parietal and right prefrontal cortex in women. (315-316)"
That's pretty much a hegemonically sexist thing to say: women are the fluffy, artistic, right-side thinkers, while males are the logical, left-side thinkers.
I consider myself a male and masculine and all that other shit, but I definitely don't give directions like the cold hard-cut logical male. I currently don't have the means to argue against what he says, but I just know that what he says doesn't seem to represent the truth.
2) On Kandel's Memory and Perception of this growing epidemic of "disorders of memory"...disorders of memory are more evident today than they were when I began practicing medicine fifty years ago because people are living longer now (327)"
This brings up other questions related to medical anthropology and health care that cut across time and space.
Perhaps more people are just diagnosing more, prescribing more, just to make more money, which gives off the feeling that "disorders of memory are more evident today."
After all, the guy is in the pharmaceutical biz...
Also, people probably are living longer, but how is he sure that a connection can be made between the fact that there are more memory disorders and a longer life expectancy?
I mean that's all there is to it right ? If you're just "in a relationship", what the hell does that mean ? Are you actually in love, or is this just some kind of bullshit process that comes with being in a relation that you're in love with and all you do is fuck ?
That brings me to a self-interested musing.
Who's the special one to reverse that for me ? Or is it really just fuckinships ?
Who will be there to lift me out of this orneri ? State of hate and logic.
In them friend connector sites, "in a relationship" for women should just be changed to "exclusively getting thumped by one dude with maybe some other action on the side so I actually have multiple thumpers, one for each hole, five if you include the ears."
I don't know, that's how I see it.
It's also a bit weird seeing "single" for some really hot girls my age. Single gets sort of a bad rap in our society. It usually implies no friends, no fun, lonely nights. So I see single in these hot girls profiles and it's pictures of them with multiple friends having in some mind-numbing night club. That is not "single." Their multiple STDs would tell you that too.
I have to wonder. . .when in history did we start identifying ourselves in those terms.
So far in all my Friendster travels, I have seen two Filipino folk profess to be conservative Republicans and proud of it (None from the liberal side).
The type of people they propose to be are just obssessed with labeling stuff, which makes for easier dividing and conquering. Example: segregation and apartheid. I only label when I notice a trend, but I make sure to know the whole story behind a label. Since these people who are obssessed with labeling and ruling and proudly call themselves conservatives, I will refer to them in the way that they want to be called, conservatives and go by the images that they like to represent themselves.
Labels are then translated into the bigger picture, and the bigger picture spells R-U-L-E-S, rules. Rules help them brush off connection with people and makes it easy for them to lay off tens of thousands of folks at a time.
Labels, rules, and standards.
Standards are things set in a way to ultimately help people reach goals. Standards are not rules. Rules are made to protect things from getting hurt. But all rules made, by which I mean, laws, are just stuff fabricated by feelings of the white guy, the guy in charge. Laws do not equate to justice. Constitution: white guys. Africa: Colonialized by white guys. The Phillippines: Colonialized by white guys, too. Perfectly legal colonialization said the white guys because laws protect those with property, they don't protect a poor guy. And so our heroes, the white guys of the United States, ran over Native Americans who had been occupying the land for about 15,000 years, because it was written in their law by God's will.
Pull yourself back to 2003 and that friendster site with those two annoying "conservative" Filipino Republicans that are the inspiration for this blog.
What the fuck are they doing ? They aren't in control of anything, they're just doing well. They like making and following rules.
They're fiscal conservatives, as in they're parsimonious motherfuckers who aspire to live in the Pacific Palisades. It's like "Yay I'm proud to buy and keep shit that I won't get to take with me when I fuckin' die." Whoopee to that shit.
I can be just as penny-pinching as those fiscal conservatives. My favorite stores are thrift shops, but it's because I just want to be able to survive. The Conservative bros (not that they've turned faggot or black or anything. . .:paranoid faces:) just want to make sure they have enough money to indulge in Benzes, golf, and butlers.
Then they set hard work as the main standard passing it off as a rule within their realm of rules to getting rich (or at least they will preach it as such). It is (if you have computers, updated books, better facilities, more teachers, just some of the "little" things that middle classers have and hoodies don't). However, I'd imagine you'd have to be really really really really top of the class to get into Harvard from the hood learning stuff that does not relate well to yourself because you are not middle class. And this non-relation to self is just one factor that prevents other boring, non-extraordinary people from working hard and following laws and rules from the start.
For example, my parents being from the Phillippines did not talk to me about what I read in the L.A. Times, so I had no idea who the president of the United States was or what he did until 5th or 6th grade. Or for you self-righteous engineers, the only reason I'd fully grasp the elementary concept of averages was because I was a hardcore basketball fan even back then and looked at MJ's scoring averages. Make no mistake, it's hard to learn stuff that you feel you have no connection with.
Another thing that prevents people from working hard is that people do not see the payoff. You can�t expect everyone to work too hard, much less Ronald Ray-gun in his term as a president (Guess God decided to do Kharma on his ass cause Jimmy Carter before him is still up and running doing good things), and the current President of the United States, an admitted drunk till he was 40, leeway that barely any middle-classer would ever get. They got away with being slackers and making false connections with the middle-class. Alongside them, you have these lifelong berry pickers in Watsonville barely getting enough to survive. You tell them in their face with your Beamer they're not busting ass (and you deserve to be and I hope you are smacked).
Bottomline is, rich or poor, there are hard workers. The next time you think about self-righteously telling some poor guy to work hard, just think about their situation first because it's advice that does not listen to them. The best thing to do for you somewhat rich, unsympathetic self-righteous hard workers is to work hard on your own with whatever you got and help those who can�t. All thou has to do is put thou self in not only someone else's shoes, but also someone else's DNA. Would thou still find a way to make something happen without money or education ? At any rate, thou (rich white guy) will feel really good and get a lasting, meaningful kick out of helping someone.
In conclusion. . .
I feel my ideas. And I know these ideas are all for doing whatever is right. I feel it. Those who feel their ideas usually have struggled in some capacity. (I can't say that I have experienced profound struggle, just that I know I would hate to be some person trapped in the 'hood.) This conservative here has no feeling. He's lost in the concrete material he gets and thanking God for everything. No hint of humanity. Feeling your ideas hold no credibility in this society because it gets dismissed as bias. And I'm saying that labels, rules, and standards held by Conservatives are biased (and outdated) too.
In addition to drag racing, anime, and drinking boba here's yet another Asian thing to do: join Friendster and see how many friends you can get ! :Wide, slap-happy Asian smile:
What makes this site so appealing to such a broad group ?
I joined initially because my godsis invited me to join. It was by word of mouth, the strongest medium of communication. I didn't join because I am Asian, and it's what typical Asians do.
OK.
There is no 'typical Asian'. I fight the implications of the label "typical" of any person as a whole because it carries the implication that people want to be similar and revel in having the same interests. It's funny every time someone within the Asian ethnicity uses it to disregard all other Asians that person does not know. They proclaim how they hate 'typicals' but then all their friends fit the profile of "typical."
I just think that they ('typical Asians') like human beings in general are results of their environment. So while I don't think there's anything 'typically Asian' about joining Friendster, I think there's something about Friendster that attracts Asians together like light to a moth. Basically, they're generally behaving in a way anyone else would given the same situations.
Minorities in general feel the need to stick together. Those who don't are usually economically well off on their own and somewhat in sync with the U.S.' standards and institutions. However, in crunch time or whenever an important financial decision is to be made such as buying a house or a car, they will most likely run towards that minority or whoever looks trustworthy.
This tending of minorities towards each other is about whom they can instantly trust. And that instant trust and rapport is important in such a fast-paced society as the urban United States because it helps connect strangers in an otherwise polarized, individualized society. For example, when buying a car, my dad will automatically go towards the car salesman who happens to be Filipino. Not that he's racist, but he can automatically and instantly build a connection with the salesman who happens to be Filipino by just speaking the native Tagalog.
The best way to eliminate dependency on race to connect with strangers is still to get to know strangers as people. But that method of course, takes quite a bit of time. These stereotypes are something only gradual assimilation into society via more media exposure on different opinions and powerful positions in society can fix. And hopefully continued media exposure, and thus varied opinion and authoratative positions can help dissipate these stereotypes and polarity between races and ethnicity. The latest movie I saw, Freaky Friday (with the fam ahem), did not help at all with its portrayal of these two Asian women as smiley and complacent. . .
Add me to your reading list.
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