le vingt-quatre janvier

There was this one thing that I kept thinking about throughout the day.

In my cultural anthropology class, we've been discussing modern developing/urbanization policies, essentially globalization policies, and how inevitably, there will be people who will suffer because of it.

At the end of every Thursday, we have to get into groups and discuss things that were talked about throughout the week.  I don't remember the specific topic my group discussed, but it revolved around equality and how progressing in terms of wealth will be good for some (the rich and powerful) and bad for some (the less fortunate, 'most uncooperative').  This person in my group, an Asian-American, told us that since he's from east side San Jose, a lot of people there correspond 'rich' with 'white' (as in the colour of their skin).

It's interesting because here in Cupertino, we don't correspond 'rich' with 'white'.   We think of the word 'rich' as 'lawyer', 'doctor', 'engineer', 'accountant', 'CEO', etc... all of those typical industrial jobs.  Cupertino is where the Asian population is the majority, and there is something called 'white flight' from this area - when Caucasian people here can't handle the academic competitiveness of their Asian counterparts, so they leave.

Even though America is a white man's country, and even though most of the rich people here are mostly white, there are still many, many exceptions and 'special cases' - under one condition that those exceptions are more culturally similar to the American mainstream culture.

It's just the sad, unfortunate truth that America isn't the land of opportunity and the melting pot as it is globally advertised to be - it really is its own culture.  America is not a place for other cultural ideas to be shared and exchanged or even remotely accepted (even the Christian foundations it was built on is being shunned more and more everyday!).  It is a prideful, self-centered, territorial group of citizens.

The sad thing is, I can't possibly see myself living anywhere else but America in the future.