Crash

Excellent. This movie is about truth. Truth that people either don't know, don't talk about or don't want to believe. That's always the case with race though.

We explored some of the scenarios we've had in our own lives. Some of mine...

I've walked into stores and received extra attention. Not the good kind. The type of attention that screams they are waiting for me to steal something. It does not matter that I may out earn every person in that store. I am part of a minority and they chose to apply a stereotype.

I had a high school teacher scoff at a Spanish Literature advance placement course. He thought the school offering such a class was a terrible waste of time and resources, but most importantly unfair. He thought that Spanish speaking students taking this class was a joke because we spoke Spanish at home. He could not understand that speaking Spanish and reading/writing/thinking in were completely different things. We had not been taught formal Spanish and that is what made it one of the most difficult classes. Of course, this was not the argument for the English Literature advance placement course even though most of the people in the class spoke English from day zero.

When I was in college we lived in what I guess you could call a blue collar neighborhood. It wasn't the 'hood by any means. One of my classmates came over for a visit. His visit was quite lengthy; it was late when he decided it was time to head back. My friend (6 foot, 220 lb) asked me to walk him to his car! All these years later, I can't believe it. I walked him to his car after laughing hysterically and finally realizing he was not kidding. He was not exposed to blue collar neighborhoods. He grew up in white collar suburbia. Was it his fault? No, of course not.

And the latest one...finding out I'm usually the only minority friend in certain people's circles is downright sad, specially in California.

My Indian coworker expressed his knee-shaking fear when he accidentally wound up in Oakland after dark. Why? Because Oakland is predominantly black. Has he ever had a bad experiece with black people? No, not at all.

The idea of the salad bowl (or was it the melting pot) is great, but in reality the mixing of so many differences is not so great. You'd think the growing pains would be over but they are not. Stereotypes persist. Fear of the unknown is strong.


Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room
It took me a few days for it all to sink in. Then came the disgust. I kept up with the headlines when it was on the front page, but like everything else it wittled away to the next big news story. Hearing actual brokers talk about sticking it to California and the subsequent laughter. Damn. Where was the sense of right and wrong? Could it happen again? What about the people who lost so much?