Stray Musings
--the National Basketball Association has got to be dreading what's headed their direction: a San Antonio Spurs-Detroit Pistons finals showdown. These two teams have the ability to make an 85-83 game look like an uptempo horse race. Seriously, the excitement factor for this finals couldn't be lower.
And it's not like it's bad basketball. These two teams play excellent basketball--in the same way that a 2-1 baseball game is an excellent baseball game: the purists love it, but Joe Schmoe average fan couldn't care less. These guys do clutch-and-grab better than a jiu-jitsu master and never get called for it because that's all they do all game long--it's like Greg Maddux painting the "corner": it's probably not a strike (it's probably a foul),but you do it so consistently that the officials just start giving it to you.
So much for making the game more "fan-friendly" like they were trying to a couple years ago.
--Mrs. Destiny and I took the family out to dinner tonight, and, I gotta say, the service was ATROCIOUS! All-around, just bad: from the hostess to the server and out into the kitchen, just awful. And this wasn't the first time--we've probably had 10 such experiences over the past six weeks, and we don't eat out very much.
Which got me wondering:
is the recent uptick in enforcement of immigration responsible, in some way, for our inability to get good service in restaurants lately?
Just wondering.. . .
--I was playing "flip" last night, and landed on a movie about one of my favorite historical personalities. And that movie reminded me of a few things:
:one, America--and, I daresay, white men everywhere--have a long and troubled history dealing with race and equality; this history, while vastly better than it once was, is not over with
:two, there is a people that America has a history of enslaving, of denigrating, and of treating as second-class citizens
:three, said people were even once rounded up into concentration camps in the United States based solely on their ethnicity
:four, as recently as thirty-five years ago, a prominent member of this ethnic minority was denied a major television role (which he helped create), which called for an ethnic character, because he was too obviously ethnic
:currently, this minority makes up only 4% of the population of the United States, roughly one-third the representation of African Americans, and roughly two-seventh the representation of Hispanics
:and yet, there is no prominent lobby for this minority group; in fact, for statistical purposes, most educational institutions do not even consider this minority a "minority"--certainly, when it comes to Affirmative Action and such programs, this minority gets little consideration.
What is this tiny, oppressed minority?
Asian-Americans.
Asians have an ugly history in the United States--perhaps not as ugly as Africans, but not exactly a thing of pride for the American psyche.
And yet, when was the last time your saw a prominent representative of the Asian community come forward to decry the 'racist' tendencies of this country? Not any time in my memory.
And who was this historical figure I'm referring to? Bruce Lee.
Something to think about next time somebody excuses their own failure or that of their communities by citing racial injustice. | |
