Tag: racism

Those hurtful, hurtful words

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Somehow this is news: Avondale Estates to change the verbiage on park signs, because they seem too mean

Avondale Estates is an interesting part of town.  They’re technically within Metro Atlanta proper, because they’re within I-285.  But they’re also in Decatur, which is often known as practically something of a liberal hippie commune, so absorbed in their own want to not be associated with Atlanta, that they almost take a sadistic pride in how difficult it is to get in and out of their little segment of town and how much the traffic sucks.

Needless to say, exclusion and exclusivity is a concept that isn’t lost to Decatur on a regular basis, so it’s amusing to me that there’s controversy over a sign that promotes even more exclusion and exclusivity within an individual neighborhood within Decatur.

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Oh, Atlanta #457

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Short story shorter: convenience store owner assumes black customers are using phony money, locks them in store

Why editing is important: CBS News 46 uses the phrase “confederate” when they probably mean “counterfeit.”

It should be noted that the students are from Morehouse College, a historically black college, so there would be a good amount of irony involved if it turned out that black students from a HBCU were actually trying to use confederate money.

Ultimately, this sort of racial profiling is yet another sad, sad story in this modern two thousand and sixteen world we exist in now, but it’s ironically humorous to me that CBS46’s writers and editors make an error like this that are probably chalked up to an ironic Freudian slip.

The war never ended for some, y’all need to know.

Context matters

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

SSDD: Black Lives Matter organizers to protest, over an incident with the police that resulted in a black woman arrested with a broken jaw

From that much of a description, it sounds like some sort of unjust police brutality, doesn’t it?  Yeah, but that’s only part of a story where only part of the picture is painted.  Yet, the rest of the picture is basically explained, but it doesn’t change the fact that BLM still insists on conducting yet another protest.

Long story short, woman is caught by the police smoking pot with a friend.  They even admit that they were doing smoking pot.  Officers search the car and find more pot, and then decide to arrest the woman and her friend.  Woman resists arrest, wrenches back and slugs an officer in the face.  Officer then responds to force with force, slugs the woman, and completes the arrest.

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I don’t know how I’d react when this happens to me

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Honestly, I’d rather not write about the political environment.  I’d much rather write about baseball, League of Legends, or semis full of food collapsing on the highway.  But the political environment is something that is fresh on everyone’s mind, it’s all that’s being talked about anywhere and everywhere, and as much as I want to claim ambivalence, to me it’s simply unavoidable.  Especially when the hot button being pressed over and over again is the topic of racism.

When the election was declared over and you-know-who was anointed the victor, there was a tremendous wet blanket of dread that was draped upon liberal America.  It was no secret that life was going to be different for those in very particular minority groups; namely Latinos, African-Americans and Muslims, along with a pessimism that the lives of females and those in the LGBTQ criteria would have to start considering playing some defense, from the world, despite the fact that they really shouldn’t have to.

I definitely felt empathy and concern over those in the Latino and African-American camps, because the crosshairs would definitely be focused on those groups, but I couldn’t help but wonder just what was fate was going to befall for those in other minority groups, namely Asian-slash-Pacific Islanders, for obvious reasons.

A part of me thought Asians might be able to slip through the cracks, because historically that’s what they’ve always done.  Sure, the shitty drivers enrage even the most passive of pacifists, but typically immigrant Asians are the people that do your dry cleaning, run convenience stores, sell you liquor, operate your takeout restaurants, groom your nails and fix your HVAC problems.  They’re often in the background, running tasks of convenience, that old money white people simply aren’t associated with doing.

However, there’s the other part of me that figured because Asian people are also not white, like Latinos, African-Americans, those from the Middle East and anyone else with skin that isn’t white, they’re just as subject to the discrimination of emboldened white supremacy that has coincidentally risen with the election of Donald Trump.  Asians are as easy targets for harassment as any other minority, especially those who are immigrants, with less grasp of the English language, who are often times more meek and timid than white Americans, much less emboldened white Americans.

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Hatred prevails

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

You know every time there’s a tragedy somewhere in the world, or countless times throughout the coming of the election, there would be messages and/or images circulated over the internet with the message that “love will prevail?”  Usually a lot of rah-rah positive rhetoric about how humanity needs to stick with one another and together, overcome the influences of the world that are motivated by hatred, greed and other negative connotations.  The message is always delivered with the best of intentions, and I have to imagine that most people who see it probably want to believe it.

The problem is that not everyone is going to see it.  Despite the fact that the world has advanced leaps and bounds technologically throughout the decades, in spite of popular opinion, the whole world isn’t connected to the internet all the time, and not every single American has a reliable data connection, a smart phone, or even a computer.

But most every single American has a television, or access to television.  The radio.  Physical newspapers.  No matter how big or small the markets, there are mediums that have transcended the generations, in spite of how often the technologically advancing want to anoint them as dying or fading into obscurity.  And these are the mediums that statistically have the greatest chance of reaching the largest contingents of American citizens, no matter how much the Googles, Comcasts, Verizons and other telecommunication companies would prefer it that everyone plugs in and gets with the program.

What I’m getting at is that all throughout the night of the decision, I heard the phrase “secret Trump voters” repeatedly, to justify the surprising number of voter turnout that pushed the button to vote for Donald Trump.  That phrase was as arrogant as it was ignorant, because there was no secret at all to who these voters were, and anyone capable of rational thought could quickly get the point to what turned out to be a pretty competent plan for the Trump camp.

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The Blue Jays are kind of bitches

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When you can’t beat them on the field, try and fuck with them off of it and hope it screws them up on it: Ontario judge hears arguments basically questioning the legality of the name of the Cleveland Indians in Canada, conveniently in the midst of the ALCS where the Blue Jays are down 0-2 in the best of seven.

I can’t really say that I’m much of a fan of the Toronto Blue Jays.  I don’t know why, I just don’t care about them.  Probably because I think Jose Bautista is kind of a bitch, and for whatever reason, anyone who ends up getting shipped to Toronto always buys into their swagger, and this unjustified arrogance of being good.  I mean, win something other than an ALDS against anyone other than the Texas Rangers, before talking like a contender.

Or maybe it’s just Blue Jays fans in general, who have conveniently been emerging from the woodwork over the last three years, as the Jays have gone from perennial third-place team to a team that manages to get into an expanded playoff field; I’m obviously highly critical towards fans that I deem fair-weathered and bandwagon, because they’re also usually the most obnoxious about their fake instant fandom of a mediocre team.

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Things that made me think Europe is overrated

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

One thing that lots of people do that I think is a little obnoxious, is thinking that the way things are done in America are all flawed, and that they are undoubtedly and unmistakably better in other parts of the world like Europe or Asia.  I’m not going to pretend that America does everything right, but spending lengthy times abroad is an easy way to make comparisons, and discover that America sure gets a lot of things pretty damn right, and often.

European airports.  I challenge any person who loves to bitch about how chaotic, hectic and for whatever reason that doesn’t imply veiled racism “difficult” Atlanta Hartsfield-Latoya Jackson Intergalactic Nail Emporium and Hot Wings Shack Airport, to spend a day waiting for a flight in a European airport. 

Including last year, my frame of reference includes airports in Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam, Berlin and Milan, and all of them suck, compared to Atlanta Airport.  And it might be home to me, but Atlanta Airport is far from the best airport in the United States.

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