Tag: racism

How things can change over the span of a decade

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Throughout my 82-day journey of re-posting literally ten years’ worth of brog posts, I naturally took the time to go down memory lane and re-read everything I’d written over that time.  I think as a whole, the collective brog does paint a decent picture of who I really am, but I’ll also be the first person to admit that hoo-boy, there’s some shit I’ve written in the past that most certainly isn’t the way I think these days.

Inherently, I don’t think people are capable of dramatic change in their lives, but I think it’s fair game to say that opinions most certainly can change throughout time.  Environment, influence, and/or just plain growing up, the way people think can harden or soften, or just plain go in different directions as time passes.

I don’t want to one of those people whom when they get become rich, famous and have the spotlight of the internet shone on them (because that’s totally going to happen to me one day), and have their internet history drug out of the past and screen shots slapped onto Twitter for the world to ridicule and judge, I went ahead and took the liberty to drag out some of the more notable changes that I’d witnessed about myself throughout the last ten years, and regardless of how wince-worthy and regrettable some of the things I’ve written may have been, the fact of the matter is that these are things that I’d thought, ways that my mind worked, and feelings that I felt at those specific instances, and I own the things I’ve said.

Because as much as some of the more regrettable things I’ve written might make me, much less anyone else, wince, cringe or face palm, I do think the revisionist history culture of 2020 is way worse.

Alternatively, this post probably should’ve just been titled “content that did not age well”

Continue reading “How things can change over the span of a decade” →

When politics actually hit home

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Often times, no matter how much bitching and complaining we as ‘Muricans do about politics, when the day is over, not a lot really happens.  A penny tax doesn’t mean people are unable to feed themselves, and when the government talks about some convoluted bill or law that passes, most of the time very little noticeable things actually occur.  Maybe it’s naïve and insular for me to make such blanket statements, but at least in my little world, the things that happen as the result of stalling and bickering in Washington seldom really feel like they affect life on the home front.

In a prior post, I made a remark about how at no point in the history of my life, has it ever felt so physically tangible, the feeling of disappointment and letdown happening to the American people of the United States until more recently.  As stated, no matter how much I may disagree or not like something that’s now law, a lot of the time it doesn’t really impact the daily living of my life or my family.

Until now.

My wife is a teacher.  My child is immunocompromised.  I’ll just state those facts, and if you understand why this is a major problem today maybe you’ll continue reading.  If not, well go fuck off.

Continue reading “When politics actually hit home” →

This is really the state of America in 2020

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

No matter how much I never liked to admit to feeling it, now that the faucet’s been turned, it seems like not a day goes by where the words don’t pass through my lips, and it doesn’t make me feel any better verbalizing it now as it did when I first came to the realization that right now, America sucks.

Talking with a friend about the state of the world, I found myself saying things that I’d never said before in regards to how I felt, mostly because I’ve been isolated, and mythical wife and I try not to talk about things too much because they really are that depressing, but what came out of my fingers in text is that I don’t think it’s ever felt so physically possible to feel just how much our country is letting us down, the way America is completely and utterly failing the American people on a daily basis right now.

It really is becoming impossible to keep up with all the ways things are fucked up, at least for me, who likes to jot down notes on a daily basis so I can remember the things happening in history for another day, especially in case I feel inspired to write about them at some point.  But it’s downright sad and pathetic the things that emerge on a daily basis about the state of America in the state of the world currently, and I realize that it becomes a little more difficult every day to not grow more jaded and nihilistic about how things are, which are definitely things I don’t want to be happening when I’m in a period of my life where I’m trying to enjoy and savor the time of new fatherhood and spending time with my baby.

It’s kind of not fair that America is in such chaos and forced to hunker, when all I want to do is show my kid the great big world and can’t, because neither of us want to get the coronavirus that’s fucking everywhere and risk our lives.

Continue reading “This is really the state of America in 2020” →

Does anyone else feel the Washington Redskins are deflecting from bigger issues?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

The skinny: amidst pressure from large corporate sponsors who have likely been pressured themselves by myriads of influences, the Washington Redskins have acquiesced to “thoroughly reviewing” the name of the franchise AKA changing the name may actually be happening after multiple decades

Pretty much my entire life after realizing that I was someone who enjoyed sports, the Washington Redskins have been under fire for their name.  In all fairness, “Redskins” is probably the most offensive of names out in professional sports that borrow from Native American culture, because it’s basically the equivalent of if there were a team named after Africans called “Blackskins.”

But for all intents and purposes, the Redskins were the closest thing in my life I’d ever have to a home team, and when I was really started to develop interests in sports, the Washington Redskins were a powerhouse and were on the cusp of winning the 1992 Super Bowl.  Fewer things make it easy to become a fan than immediate success, and seeing the Redskins topple the Buffalo Bills for a championship made it really easy to become a Redskins fan.

Continue reading “Does anyone else feel the Washington Redskins are deflecting from bigger issues?” →

Revisionist history culture is concerning

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Those who fail to learn from history are condemned to repeat it

-Winston Churchill

[2020 note: I basically made this exact same post three years ago, starting in a similar manner]

Not long ago, I saw that Community was available on Netflix, which was pleasing to me.  Community was one of those shows in which I’d only seen sporadic episodes in no particular order, depending on whichever group of friends I’d hang out with and happen to catch an episode or two at their point of watching through the series.  However, crushing on Alison Brie withstanding, I liked the show, and I always thought it would be a good idea to binge the series in order if the opportunity ever presented itself.

One episode in particular that made me think “whoa, this show is really clever” was the episode that most widely seems to be known as “the D&D episode.”  Not giving anything away, but the Community gang plays a game of Dungeons & Dragons for a particular motive.  However, if there’s one scene in the episode that really sticks with most viewers, it’s of Ken Jeong’s character, Chang, completely painted black and wearing a white wig, because he wants in on the game, and assumes LARPing as a dark elf would get the job done (spoiler: it doesn’t).

But it’s a little bit of a jaw-dropping scene because in all technicality, it’s still Ken Jeong in complete black face (and hands and presumably all other flesh).  But the thing is, he’s not trying to imitate or ridicule black people, he’s just trying to get in character as a dark elf.

Well, I just learned that that episode of Community won’t be available on Netflix anymore.  In fact, any episode of any show, and presumably any movie, that features any non-black character painting their skin tone as to appear darker, has been scrubbed from Netflix’s library, in light of the rampant racism problem, running roughshod in America currently.

Blackface, has suddenly shot up the charts as a hot button, and all throughout the world of media, there’s a whole lot of retroactive scrubbing being done, to eradicate all proof of any show, person, entity or whatever, partaking in blackface at any point in history.

Continue reading “Revisionist history culture is concerning” →

New Father Brogging, #011

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Throughout this week, mythical wife and I have introduced a baby monitor, so that we can put her down at a scheduled time, and still be able to keep eyes and ears on her from elsewhere in the house, while we try to reclaim a little bit of time for ourselves.  At first, it felt almost alien, having some free time back, and initially I used them only to do chores and tasks that tend to fall to the backburner on most days, but then when I’d finish those, I realized that it wasn’t yet 11 pm, and I actually had some free time back on my hands.  It was kind of nice.

Today, my daughter let out the most high-pitched shrieks I’ve ever heard come from her.  Worse off, we heard them first through the baby monitor, so they occurred with neither parent in sight.  I tore up the stairs and into the bedroom to get to my child as fast as possible, and hearing them in person was the most soul-piercing sounds I’d heard in my entire life.  I picked her up out of the bassinet and held her to my chest immediately.  Moments later I was in the most tears I’d been in since her birth, because no parent should want to hear such horrific sounds emanating from their baby.

Fortunately, everything seemed to be fine; maybe she was having a bad dream, or maybe it was the fear of awakening without the use of her arms, since we have her sleep swaddled.  Maybe a combination of both, or maybe she was overheated, since the bedroom tends to warm up throughout the day.  But either way, because nobody can speak baby, we’ll never truly know to why she was in such a frenzied panic, but all I do know is that it was one of the most frightening experiences for me in recent memory, and I’m still admittedly a little shaken up by it, regardless of if everything is fine.

Continue reading “New Father Brogging, #011” →

Silence ≠ ambivalence

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I’ve had a difficult time putting into words the things that I feel these days, as the world continues to sink further and further into chaos.  Tons of people suddenly loathe law enforcement, and there’s no end to the ping-ponging of stories out there where one side of the fence is writing whatever they can to slander the other side of the fence.  Cops supposedly being overheard ordering each other to deliberately go out and hurt protesters, protesters being accused of transforming into looters, and the list goes on and on where two definitive sides are trying to smear the other.

Throughout it all, I’ve watched own social media landscape turn from a pretty casual, relaxed locals-only kind of environment to where everyone is now taking a very intense voice about current events, and it’s honestly a little bit frightening.  People calling out their friends and family that might have different viewpoints, and others ready to get into vitriolic arguments at the drop of a hat if anyone dares to have a conflicting opinion.  I’ve seen no less than three posts where people are rallying others to suppress their own posting unless it’s relevant to current events, because “it will take up space” as if there’s ever been any amount of finite space on the internet.

Offline, people are going out en masse to attend protests and this scares me more than anything, because unless you’ve been living under rocks, protests all across the country have often descended into riots, regardless of whom starts it, and the nights end with tallies of injured, arrested, and eventually if this keeps up, dead.  Cops beating the shit out of civilians, bouts of looting erupting in just about every city where protests are occurring, and as far as I can tell, absolutely nothing good at all is happening on a nightly basis.

I’ve mostly kept quiet about all of this because I frankly don’t know what to really say.  My world right now is quite tiny, because yes I definitely have feelings for what’s happening in the greater world all around me, but with an infant child that classifies as medically fragile, my focus and energy is primarily on my baby, whom I grieve for, having been born in such a terrible year in history.

But please don’t mistake my silence for ambivalence, and I do state such in response to the asinine opinion that those who aren’t posting allied messages, or changing their Facebook profile pictures to black squares, or going out and protesting, or any other virtual action or otherwise, is implicit in the negativity by being inactive.  That’s a bullshit belief, and I really scoff at anyone who believes such; but only those specific people.

Because saying “everyone” would be an blanket statement, and frankly I feel that we’re in this what I’m calling blanket statement culture, where the prevalent opinions that are being flung around left and right are these gigantic, overarching blanket statements where all cops are bad, all protesters are looters, all black people are thugs, and all sorts of encompassing rhetoric.

Continue reading “Silence ≠ ambivalence” →