Will they ever end? I recently was reading an article on CNN.com about a father who killed his daughter because she refused to participate in an arranged marriage. This is an incredibly sad and horrible situation and I don't need to discuss how terrible this is. However, one point the article makes is the challenge that immigrants and immigrant offspring face when coming to America.
I suppose my first big experience with culture differences came when I went to Japan. In the United States, Asian males have it pretty tough. I have been around my fair share and it is pretty obvious that Asian males like their Eastern Culture, their video games, they are relatively introverted, and have a tough time competing with white/hispanic/black males for female attention. Asian females don't really have the same problems because if they are willing (and attractive I suppose) they can be swept up in Western Culture because they carry an exotic label.
But getting back to Asian males. When I went to Japan, I couldn't help but observe the culture and I realized, "Hey, Asian males could breed here". The entire country is very repressed, technology oriented, and methodical. There isn't a lot of individual expression and societal pressure and conformity are well established. For males this is good because it puts pressure on women to conform to them. However, in western culture, people are very liberated and free. Men and women are equals and men have to do more to attract females. In America, very few asian males secure mates outside their own race and I think it's because they are like a "fish outta water". If they are extremely extroverted and outgoing, maybe they have a chance but for the most part they are not and they get passed up by white/hispanic/black women and asian women looking for a louder more taboo alternative pass them up as well.
So the reason why I point this out, in addition to the "honor killing", I wonder if cultures will ever be able to coexist. America is a giant melting pot but after living in a variety of places, it seems like ethnicities cling to one another. In California, Asian communities will segregate themselves from the surrounding white/hispanic neighborhoods in order to keep their children "pure". I once dated a girl from Temple City and her family was extremely traditional and despite the fact that some had lived in the US for over 30 years, they still could not speak English.
At the time, I thought that perhaps Asians, and all immigrants including Hispanics, and middle easterners were like this, but white people were not. However, after moving to New England, I can say that white culture is anything but homogeneous. Here in Connecticut, there are so many sects of white people, especially Italians and Jews. These groups, despite appearing white, stress "purity" in their ranks, even hundreds of years after their families immigrated. I mean you have websites like JDate for the jewish community and after having lived with an Italian, they REALLY like to breed with one another. Italians are very conservative and traditional and they like to keep things "pure".
The same goes with new immigrants. I work with a woman from Russia and despite the fact that her son has spent most of his life growing up in the US, she still wants him to wed a Russian. I have also come across asians and middle easterners and they stress the same ideals.
So in the end, I suppose the big question is, what will prevail? A general melting pot? Or will these ethnic divides persist? I think it is funny that despite all our intelligence and advancement, we as Americans still resemble the Prison mentality of sticking with your own kind. Neighborhoods tend to be very homogeneous and I think it is funny when people advocate things like diversity.
Diversity is a funny concept. Universities like Yale and Stanford stress diversity but it appears to be only skin deep which seems to perpetuate bigotry instead of alleviating it. There is some diversity at Yale but it is usually just skin color and socioeconomic diversity (which seems to be the kicker) is non-existent. To make matters worse, this is the diversity we should be aiming for but it is relatively impossible. This is covered in another article I read by a Yale English Professor.
I think the biggest problem is that mankind is still relatively immature. We want certain things to be a certain way and we fight tooth and nail against things like human nature and reality. Diversity is forced with things like affirmative action and race based admissions and in reality, it only hurts us all. Its like if I was trying to form a softball team with all of my friends and we had the goal of winning. Now, in doing this I have to decide between one of two things, 1) Do I want to win? or 2) Do I want to play with certain personal? In reality I am really lucky if I can get both but I probably can't. I can push the people I want to the plate and hope they succeed but in reality, if they aren't ball players, I am probably going to lose at some point. In the end, I will either have to go get other players or settle for not winning.
The parallel could be drawn to things like jobs and universities. Do you want the best employees or do you want certain personal, because you cannot have both. I don't mean to digress into affirmative action issues, but I think diversity and culture mixing are incredibly paradoxical. Yes, in a Disney world we would all get along, but in reality, it just doesn't work that way, sorry. The US gets a bad wrap for having a racial problem, but how many other countries are dealing with the same sorts of cultural issues. It would be like mocking our efforts at colonizing Mars, I don't see anyone outside the US trying.
What makes this all so frustrating is that we as human beings think we matter so much. We want everyone to be equal and everything to be hunky dory, and to be honest, life doesn't work that way. We evolved from little rats because we fought each other for dominance. Survival of the fittest is the paradigm and while it has changed a little bit from your exterior to your mental capacity, the general themes still prevail. Just because we want a certain race to improve or be what we want them to be, doesn't mean they can or will. You can give every ethnicity opportunities that are usually given to white people and it is not surprising that they don't follow through on it. Hell, they aren't programmed for it. Ethnicities cling to one another and the more diverse things get, the more people will cling to their roots. Forcing mixing is like forcing two pandas to mate. It might make perfect sense to the zoologist but he/she isn't a panda. They cannot understand the mindset and therefore their input is relatively inconsequential.
What I also find funny along these lines are things like "Save the (enter endangered environment/species here)". Why are we so concerned with saving Whales or Pandas or Polar Bears or whatever? If an organism does not have what it takes to survive in modern society, then they should be weeded out, sorry. That is how the world works. Dinosaurs died off and mammals took their place. The little rats didn't attempt to save them because they were more concerned with themselves.
We as humans think we have so much control over out planet and our universe. We think it is on us to save the rain forests or save this or that when in reality, we need to just be humans. If there is some inherent value in saving the Andian Condor or some other endangered animal please tell me. I think that the endangered society or whatever has their own future invested in saving animals and they play on human emotion to fund their cause. Yes it is noble and honorable and all that crap, but does it serve a purpose? If you were to look at things in decade or even century chunks, is there a role for Pandas on Planet Earth? I can imagine Nature freaks talking about preserving our surroundings, but why?
In reading this, people might label me as a bigot, racist, hell maybe even a facist, but I'm just searching for truth, what all scientists search for. In science, especially biology, we try and come up with a model, a rationale for what the cell is doing and we try and experiment to see if we are right. Sometimes we are and sometimes we aren't. However, if we are wrong, we have to change our model and think more critically. It would be nice if the cell behaved the way we want it to, but it doesn't. The eukaryotic cell has had billions of years of evolution to figure itself out and no grad student is going to dictate how it behaves. The same goes with people. Just because we want blacks and whites and asians to all get along doesn't mean it will happen. Our model society is a utopian melting pot, but in reality, that just isn't going to work. In the information age, we have learned a great deal about eachother but we must accept the fact that all this information might result in a conclusion we don't want. However, we cannot ignore or change it. What we can do however is accept it and move on.
A great line in Bulworth is "we all gotta keep fucking till we'll all the same color". A very insightful line, but in reality, ethnicities don't want it. They want identity, they want their own "pure" unblemished, traditional culture to survive. So why fight it? Why try and convince each other that we can all get along when we obviously cannot?
So the conclusion? Am I racists who wants the whites to rule and the minorities to suffer? No, I'm a scientist, all I want is truth. What is the truth about the world? Not what we want it to be, not what it was, not what it could be, what it is. Yes, happy racial mixing would be nice, yes universal cultural acceptance would be nice, yes equal opportunity in the purest sense would be nice, but is it the case? Rather than spend a ton of energy trying to create a world we want, why not figure out exactly what kind of world we live in.
The end result? Truth. When you understand the truth you get this great thing called judgement. If you understand the world around you, you get decide not what is the right answers but what is the best answer. Teaching judgement is something we should do, not "how to succeed in a white world". We strive to up test scores and increase college admissions but is that what success really is? If you look at things biologically, minorities are actually succeeding in the sense that they breed more, that is after all why we are here. White folks trying to make a ton of money or achieve greatness don't breed like disadvantaged minorities and in the end, whatever breeds, wins.
So you want happiness? You want success and pride and honor in your life? Judgement. Learn how to look at your surroundings and chose the best solution. An immigrant that comes to America needs to understand that their culture cannot be exactly the same as it was in their native land. If it was, all the baggage associated with it would come along with you and then you wouldn't be in America, the land of opportunity. If you can understand the truth then perhaps you can take the good with the bad. You can see where you can bend the paradigms and perhaps fit in. Maybe it isn't exactly what you want, but rather than stuff people in the "right" mold, why not offer them the truth and allow them to make the decisions on their own. That is after all what being human is all about. If someone wants to do drugs and ruin their life, we cannot stop them. All we can do is articulate reality the best way possible and let them decide for themselves. Forcing a person down one road or another will disenfranchise them because they are in essence giving up what god/the universe gave them, free will. Besides, doesn't feel better to earn something you want then something that someone tells you, you want? Decide for yourselves folks, learn the truth about your reality and decide for yourselves.
Judgement folks, the wave of the future.
just my thoughts
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