Hopefully some day that’s a name that doesn’t need much explaining in the same way I don’t need to explain Michael Jordan or Albert Einstein.

But if you don’t know her, she’s a social psychology professor at Columbia University.

And she’s Indian.

And she’s blind.

She was speaking in promotion of her book “The Art of Choosing.”  She said that we as Americans had too much choice;  too much choice sapped any kind of decision-making, led to less sales (bad for businesses), sapped creativity.  The take-home point was that we needed to cut down on choices we needed to make.

The principle of cutting down on choices isn’t anything new, some might even nonchalantly say “common sense” and something most people know at an unconscious level, but for a variety of reasons, we don’t really adhere to that. She made the point that our choices weren’t really made in isolation reflecting what we “really want”; we make a lot of our choices as expressions, statements to other people in and around us.

To explain that point, she gave us an anecdotal story about her husband and an iPhone.  For weeks on end, her husband had been clamoring for a black iPhone.  He named off all the reasons to get one:  it wouldn’t be stained so easily, he was tired of the white color of Apple products, etc. etc.

Then, when the iPhone was about to be released Sheena was at standing in line for this new iPhone, the black iPhone.  She’d woken up at 3 AM to stand in line for this. When the doors opened, People starting rushing out of the store, mostly getting sleek new black iPhones.

When she was about to make a purchase for the black iPhone, her husband rushed and told her to change the order:  he now wanted a white iPhone.

Why?

Because everyone else was getting black!  He’d wanted this white iPhone not because he’d really wanted it, but because he wanted to express his difference, as Sheena interpreted it.  Her point was that he didn’t make this choice isolated in a cave divorced from society, he made it after seeing lots of people get black iPhones.

We make a lot of our choices based on what other people do.  She cited studies of people ordering drinks and food at various restaurants.  The only people who were really happy with their choices were the ones who’d ordered first;  they usually got what they want.  The people ordering behind them were less happy because they usually changed their orders.  However, if no one knew what choices they made, people tended to choose the same thing;  were copycats without knowing it, and strangely enough if we do know it, it seems as if we don’t want to make things known, and to switch things up.

Anecdote About Categorization

Sheena had a moment of insight while in Russia doing some experiments with Russian grad students.

When she was talking about this story, I had an insight of my own on a hypothesis of hiring decisions.

She’d offered up a host of drinks to the grad students:  Diet Coke, Coke, Dr. Pepper, Pepsi, Sprite, Mountain Dew, etc.  A student replied that there wasn’t much variety to the drinks.  To us as Americans, that might seem shocking “there’s all those drinks”, but to him, there were all just one thing:  soda.  As one category, soda, for the student there was no need for further elaboration or investigation of difference between the varieties of soda, it was just all simply soda, and presumably didn’t want any part of it.

This made me think about the middle managers, HR people, whatever faced with doing the hiring in Devah Pager’s work. They had lots of choices to make.

We haven’t really gotten their perspective of their hiring practices, but what we have gotten so far is the results of their choices: Pager found that black applicants with no criminal background were no more likely to be hired than a white applicant with identical qualifications and a criminal background.

The choices these hiring people made had/have consequences for the larger society: likely, racial stratification and ghettoization of people to certain jobs and social positions.

I thought about the Russian anecdote. The grad student had one category for a group of something that he didn’t necessarily like. Meanwhile, as Americans we made all kinds of distinctions, and didn’t even realize it.

Taking that Russian anecdote, I wonder if people doing the hiring for these firms saw black applicants the same way as the Russian grad student saw the drinks as just soda. I wonder if a lot of these people doing the hiring simply saw black applicants as simply “blacks” and unconsciously relied on stereotypes of work ethic to form their opinion of black applicants. Meanwhile, assuming that most of these people were white, saw white applicants as part of their in-groups without really noticing. As a result, they made more distinctions of their characteristics, and didn’t realize it; they saw more individual personalities, and uniqueness to them, and ended up more than likely hiring them.

Thoughts in Progress…

Love the humor, love that they’re at Cal Tech, love that they make tons of LA-Pasadena references.

The show’s powered by some quirky characters.

Sheldon, the asocial, sometimes-too-literal physics genius who adheres to strict routines and interacts with people as if they are scientific objects.

Wallowitz, the outwardly Jewish engineer who “only” got his Master’s from MIT, lives with his shouting mom, and pretends he has all this charm with women.

Leonard, the “normal” guy of the group who has lots of sexual tension with the next-door neighborhood Penny.

And then, there’s Raj, the Indian guy who can’t even talk to women unless he’s drunk.

I can’t emphasize how much I love the show.

However, every time I see the show, I come to expect a few things:

• Raj won’t have that many catchlines;  even though he’s one of the four main characters, he’s not a leading character or the focus of an episode
• Raj getting with women is a punchline in itself.  He only hooks up with women when drunk, underscoring a confidence in social interaction that he generally lacks.
• The only other person of color that comes into the show:  a main character’s love interest, a woman. This happens when Leonard has a relationship with Raj’s sister, obviously an Indian girl.  I’m all for women of color getting in, but its always as objects of affection.  She’s smart but

My sister, who’d introduced me to the show, made the comment that she was “shocked” that there wasn’t as many Asians in the background. Their place of employment is Cal Tech, a school with a 39% Asian-American student body.

I realize that the show is trying to stay edgy and funny, and its commitment isn’t necessarily to equal representation.

However, if they can be accurate and meticulous with facts and references, why can’t they be accurate and meticulous with the demographics who make up Cal Tech?

I think this little bit is just one sign of still-existing racial hegemony on these shows.

What is notable is that the direction of the show manages to be edgy and funny while being somewhat serious, if not committed to exploring storylines and love interests for the other three characters.

While we know these characters have a funny side, there’s a lot of depth to the three characters;  we know that they are humans and they have hearts.

We know that beyond Sheldon’s impersonalized exterior is someone concerned with some approval from people, particularly his mom. We see him easily moved when his mom takes action.

We know that Wolowitz is extremely sensitive when it comes to women, despite the bravado that he likes to show to his friends.  He’s a softy.

We follow all of Leonard’s wallowings in and out of relationships, we want to cheer when he gets with Raj.

But we don’t know anything about Raj.  We don’t really understand his one-night stands other than attributing it to his drunkenness, and that what he does with women is just all one big joke.

“You know how I knew you knew what LACC (Los Angeles City College) was?”

“No, how?” I asked.

“Because you’re of color,” said the 76-year old Jewish business math professor at LACC.

I went to high school at a private all Catholic boys high school.  It’s been 10 years, this coming June.  Much has happened to me.  Much has happened there.

Before I entered my freshman year, the school was championed as the good school that all the boys wanted to go to and needed to aim for.  The smart boys.  The white boys.  Highly selective, as in there was a college-like admissions process.

I didn’t have any interest in attending till a white, blonde-haired boy who gave me a little jilt one December night, “Why don’t you apply there?  You scared?”

He got me thinking.

Applications were due in a month.

I could try.

I applied.  Took the tests (thinking I did bad).  Did the interview with a guy who looked “very Loyola” (tall clean-cut white guy), even though I admitted not being a straight A-student.

Got in.

Celebrated.

Read everything I could about the school.  Read the summer books we were assigned.  Read the manuals word by word.  One of the books was the “School Directory,” which contained phone numbers and addresses and parents’ names.  I would stare at it for hours after chool.

Freshman year was a constant learning of place.  Place in the hierarchy of athletes.  Place in the hierarchy of smart and dumb students.  Place in class.  Places where people lived and came from.

The very first science project I did highlighted my lack of geographical knowledge about LA.  We were supposed to take a picture of a sunset.  I was wondering how I wouldn’t get one without the the power lines and buildings in the way like I saw in sample projects.

My family had lived in Glendale at the time.  We’d moved from rented apartments to rented houses, and were now living in a condo that we would later lose to bankruptcy.

My dad and I took a camera shot by a street in Glendale.

It was good — till I saw that other students had postcard-esque shots of sunsets.

Wow, did I do something wrong?  It sure felt like it.  I wondered where in the hell they had to be get such shots, contrasted with my shot, full of urbanness and being in the city and my folks and I not getting out much.

Later in the year, I’d learned more about these places classmates lived.  To me, they were an impossibly long car ride away.  I remember watching a video in a social studies class; students actually lived with their houses near a beach. How the hell was that possible?

Of course, I didn’t understand anything about socio-economic and/or racial difference.  I thought everyone was at my level of means, and I truly thought everyone was equal and we all were on the same playing field and all got in on merits.

I remember myself doing a video in a social studies class — my dad took me all the way to South Pasadena, a big house with a basketball court and a treehouse, and a living room the size of my parents’ 3-story condominium.

The school directory was one of my favorite books that year.  In its promotional posters, the school bragged that it was a central location and schooled boys from “all over Los Angeles.”  As I learned more classmates’ names, I looked their addresses up in the school directory.  I learned more about who came from and where.

I would eventually later learn that amongst the white kids, there were actually divisions between East and West, those who lived in Pasadena, and those who lived in the Pacific Palisades, Santa Monica, Manhattan Beach.   I found this out through where people hung out during recesses:  white kids living in the Palisades had their own seating, kids from Pasadena hung out with their own.  To me it was strange, because they were all just white boys to me.  I knew that they listened to KROQ and stuff, but that was the only difference between me and them, right?

Meanwhile, there were the rest of us — Filipinos living in Glendale, Eagle Rock, Atwater Village.  A few Latinos living there in the neighborhood – Pico-Union. Thought I had a lot more in common with the Latinos, but it’d feel like I was abandoning “my group” if I went over and ate lunch with them.

I later learned that the best way to sidestep the groups was to play sports during lunch.

* * *

The old Jewish math-teacher hoped she wasn’t “politically incorrect” when she made her comment to me.  “I” would “automatically” know what Boyle Heights and LACC were.

Of course, I was the only person of color in the room in a room of 20, mostly social science professors, some of whom I’d taken classes from.  But, fuck if they knew who I was.  It was funny, odd, and indicting to think that I was the only person of color in a room in a topic covering cross-cultural studies.

We were at a talk on Mathematics in other countries,  a topic strongly related to my soon-to-be thesis topic — math at the community college.  We were at my undergrad institution in a 1-hour talk hosted by a department that I technically graduated from and know that I align with, interest-wise.  I’d caught a few of them laughing and shaking their heads at the mistakes community college students seemed to be showing.

This talk being closely related to my soon-to-be-thesis, I had questions that I wanted to ask.

But, so did everyone else.  The speaker kept choosing everyone else, maybe because I with a t-shirt, a samurai haircut, and baggy pants would probably not have an “interesting” question.

There were questions all over the place that I knew the speaker would not be able to answer.   One question about the broad future of education.  One question about being teachers.   One particularly pedantic commentary on ethnography of childhood, which I was unable to follow and track after 3 minutes into his comment.  One question that took the question that I’d been valiantly raising about the math textbooks from other countries was taken by the Jewish professor sitting next to me, she’d been teaching business calculus for 20 years — were the textbooks from high-achieving math countries any different from the US ones?

I eventually asked my question, the last question of the talk — homework in high-achieving countries.  Apparently, they didn’t have any in Japan.  An interesting insight for me to package away and brood on for later.

I asked the Jewish lady where she taught business math.  “LACC?  You know where that is right?”

“Yeah!  Of course,” instantly bringing to mind, memories past and present.

“You know how I knew you knew what LACC (Los Angeles City College) was?” she asked

“No, how?” I asked.

“Because you’re of color,” said the 76-year old Jewish business math professor at LACC.

“They don’t know anything about being at the community college or being disadvantaged, these people,” she told me, covering her mouth.

The topic of the night was road rage.

It’s something my dad’s shown a lot of over the years and has rubbed off on my mom.

There was one moment over 10 years ago on our way to a family party where someone in a white pick-up truck had cut him off.  As a family, my mom, sister, and I were annoyed.  My sister and I, egged him on to catch up to the white pick-up.

We edged closer.  And closer.  And closer.  We were passing.  Just enough to pass him, got it!  My sister and I cheered!  My dad was beaming proud, and so began his ascent into an increasingly enraged driver.

Every time I’ve ridden in a car with them as an adult, my dad has not gone a car ride without yelling at someone or voicing his disapproval via blowhorn.

I always thought how he expressed himself was just related to how he hasn’t had much else go for him.  It’s when all the mounting frustration of unemployment, not being the breadwinner of the family, and being socially isolated.  How he controls the car is the one extension of himself where he can be like everyone else, and just be, respected.

Road rage is all about a violent disruption of expectation.

Gilbert had finished talking about how some Eastern European guy at a stoplight who wouldn’t let him enter his lane.  At the stoplight, the only 2 cars on the road, Gilbert had rolled down his window and told the driver that he was an asshole.  The Eastern European guy, a young big guy, muttered something in “Yiddish”, and appeared to get really riled up.  Having some kind of stickshift, instead of punching the gas forward, he moved backward, hitting a car approaching behind him.

Ibrahim and I started talking about stick shift drivers and how we didn’t get them and how much they wanted to speed.

Our philosophy towards stick shift drivers is the same:  go head dude, drive as fast and as bad you want, it’s all you.

He was talking about how these speedsters would sometimes get road rage and how they liked to pretend they were in a competition.  It reminded him of his Cousin Ericks.

His Cousin Ericks Ibrahim said, “was a little mentally challenged.”

“He just didn’t have it all together.”

Cousin Ericks worked at a university.  As a general jobs laborer.

Cousin Ericks was at a family party one time pointing out to another Cousin, Cousin Roger, how he saw him on the highway.  Cousin Ericks was jubilantly pointing out how he’d passed Cousin Roger.

“Hey Cousin Roger, I saw you on the highway.

“Oh yeah?”  Said Cousin Roger

Cousin Ericks quickly retorted, “Yeah, I was comin’ from behind, and I beat you, Cousin Roger!.”

“Uh, Cousin Ericks, did Cousin Roger know he was racing you?” interjected Ibrahim.

“No.”

“Then, how could it be a race if he didn’t even know he was in it?”

“But cousin Ibrahim, you don’t understand, I outdid him!”

“Survival” meant avoiding the GPA-killing, drama-filled science and math classes.  All I heard about undergrad math and science classes were horror stories:  ones about motherfucking professor #1 who barely understandable in English, taught multivariate calculus;  there was unforgiving bitchass TA #93 who scarce on any explanation, managed to flunk about 3/4s of a class.

While I did value learning new and interesting things especially from sciences and math, the main priorities during undergrad were centered around saving money and being efficient:  getting a degree, being on time, and doing it in 4 years.  Even though I’d once been an honors algebra student, I didn’t think I had “it” to take any math or science classes at UCLA.  I felt that I was just too dumb for it, and that I shouldn’t waste money on my education for something I wasn’t going to do well in.

Demand is high for more of what I wasn’t able to engage much in during college.  Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics.  The STEM majors.  The useful majors.  Useful” because it is presumed that they are more likely to lead to jobs.  Everyone from Will.I.Am to Republican politicians has been advocating for students to pursue STEM majors.  The annual growth rate for employment in STEM careers is 6.2% vs. the overall workforce at 1.6%.

Recently, my talented sister recently graduated from a STEM major, environmental engineering at UC-Riverside, with a 3.2 GPA. Good enough to go to grad school, but has yet to parlay this math/science know-how into stable employment.

Everyone’s talking about all the opportunities in STEM majors and careers.  Obama’s planned big things for STEM education.  Back in 2009, he pledged over $260 million in support for his Educate to Innovate campaign.

While the support is there, many studies of students in STEM majors have highlighted a reality that people would probably rather not talk about:  the people who engage in STEM majors tend to be the ones who’ve gotten high grades in math and have scored high on standardized exams. Essentially, the only ones allowed to participate in sciences and math then are the people who’ve been reified, acknowledged, and told all their academic lives, “hey you’re smart.”

Meanwhile, a lot of us dumb people are on the sidelines wincing.  I’ve watched a handful of people in college avoid or transition of STEM majors or otherwise, painfully slog through them.  We keep wondering why people don’t go into STEM majors still have this huge demand for STEM careers and majors.

At this point I wonder, is there any room for dumb people to engage in science?

The initiatives are a start.  Think they’re the most that Barry O. can do from his position.  But those federal competitions and initiatives just tend to emphasize individual achievement and superstars for the purpose of competition, rather than stirring up any curiosity or interest.

I think the key question is not how to create more individual achievement and superstars, but short of implementing 9-hr school days, the way to increase math and science achievement is to find a way for the populace to engage in them in and outside of school. We need to create more cultures of curiosity, interest, practice engaging in sciences and math.

I like to think that with the internets, there’s more opportunity to find those cultures, or “communities of practice” especially through message boards and forums at the level of engaging and fostering hobbyists.

But for structural change, where careers are built, catching us dumb students, there needs to be support for non-traditional re-education in STEM disciplines.

“That’s what you gotta think when you have to fight.”

My landlord Gilbert is a 59-year old Mexican-American man with an impressive array of experiences.

He is a man of stories and past accomplishments.  He’d hiked the mountains of the Sierra Nevada — apparently a cold effing place.  He’d been an all-CIF recognized baseball player in the 1970s.  He used to lead river rafting tours;  there is a group picture that hangs prominently in his hallway of yesteryear.  When he was more active, he’d been a tennis instructor.  He holds a brown belt in Karate, always quick to physically demonstrate what I could do if someone where to assault me.  He’d adopted two Cambodian children in the 1990s.

He was a man of possibility.

As I’d come to know him, I’d been impressed with his skills.  He has a lot of the practical know-how:  mainly how to build things with his house.  He built the bathroom that I use, installing tiles, showerheads, outlets.  He built the room in which I sleep, adding electrical outlets, soundproof doors and windows, and walls;  previously this was his family’s dining room.  For months, I’ve been taking my breakfast, lunch, and dinner into my room.

There isn’t any room in this house which doesn’t say something about his competencies and capabilities.  In the living room upon entrance, you are flummoxed by a corner of trophies and certificates.  Scattered around the room are books on the GMAT, Spanish Verbs, and argumentation.  In the kitchen is his hammer, his drills, his screwdrivers, his paints marked with his name on them. In his backyard is a junkyard of old materials;  weights, dog toys, weed killer jugs, weeds, an orange tree with oranges, dog poo, auto parts.

Today, we built a bar for his kitchen. The bar was to be placed against the wall on my room;  it would offer a much needed seating area in the kitchen.  I was a little concerned about how first thing in the morning, I might run into a piece of wood protruding from the bar out in front of my door.

It started out with him taking meticulous measurements of the wall on which the bar was to be built.  66 inches, 5 tiles for this marble-tiled bar.

We took a trip to the Home Depot to buy the tiles.  After looking at the prices, ranging in the 60-100 dollar range, and the amount of work necessary, he decided that we would build the bar ourselves out of pine wood.  The trip came out to over 44 dollars:  we got a board to be the bar for 30 dollars, 2 additional clamps to hold up the bar, and 3 packets of #12 3/4 wood screws to drill into the bar.

Gilbert had been a successful contractor for 20 years.  That would explain the living room, kitchen, garage, and tool shed full of tools.  On a bike ride through Lakewood, he took me through houses that he’d had jobs from:  quite a few decent houses, and some multi-million dollar mansions.  He was letting me know about their families who lived in certain areas. His biggest job to date was overseeing the efforts to build the entire electrical grid of a Holiday Inn in Orange County.  There was nothing that he couldn’t do.

Everything that is except: make a living wage.

After he’d found out his contracting partner had been stealing from the company, he’d fallen off.  In the time since, he’d earned a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Information Systems and Business Administration.  This landed him nothing more than a retail job at $11.00 an hour as for an annual $19,000 income.

Every day he comes home aching from all the lifting required at his job, a retail associates job at a Fortune 500 corporation.

He talks about the shadiness of the corporations he’s worked for.  How his 20-something management trainee out-of-college boss calls him “stupid” and “slow.”  How he’s officially “part-time” so that the company avoids giving him full benefits.  How for one other Fortune 500 company he’d been assaulted on the job and how the manager was telling him to suppress his desire to file a charge on a customer.  How he’d be labeled a “troublemaker” if he complained at any time at all.

He still trucks along at age 59, 3 years close to receiving social security.  But he told me that he wasn’t ready to retire quite yet, “I’m a working kind of guy.” He’s been imploring me for months to help him work with his resume and to help him take tests.  I did write a resume a few months ago, however he’s asked me to help him write another one.

My roommate Ibrahim told me that there was a time early in his tenancy that he tried to help Gilbert find better work as well.  However as of late, he’d been giving up on him.  Ibrahim talked about how Gilbert spent any free time he had on the phone with his friend Don.  In Ibrahim’s eyes, “Gilbert spends a lot of time talking about what other people got, but doesn’t focus on himself.”  Ibrahim would occasionally tip him off to job positions, but found that Gilbert probably would not be able to get around to it.

Gilbert has a young man’s spirit but an old guy’s body.  He’s still looking to establish a future.  “I’m 59, and I still don’t know what the hell I’m doing.”

We were able to get the bar installed.

But not before he showed me a few things.  He showed me the use of the levellers.  He showed me the importance of constant measurement.  He showed me the importance of pre-drilling.  He showed me the importance of going slowly with the drill, and then imposing pressure so as not to strip the metal. He showed me his industrial saw, a saw completely superior to the little homeowner saw.  He showed me how he sanded the wood, rounding out the edges, making sure the wood didn’t attack me once I got out of my room.

A year of goings, a year of comings

In the club or in the car
Whether it was V beach, or The Beach

I suppose, just like every other year

But none that pulled, tugged, or cut as deep

As the sight of being whipped with a rose of thorns
The sound of nails on boobs and arms
The thought of surviving an Asian mom
Or the reality of losing a particular one

Not a cesspool, but a cess-ocean at times

No choice but to swim with the currents

Ride this b out

Not in Hollywood
Never was my side of town puti man

But a boogey down in C-Town
Cambodia- or China-
Where we brought the house down
during a summertime in the LBC
2 of Amerikaz most wanted

A fair where we sang, drank, and ate our hearts out
Revisiting a site where currents were crashing
Consuming spices before we
Retired to a garden of peace

Never felt more alive than when
Before and after the arun
We transformed this space for skeletons to be watched
into a place for flesh to meet
Music didn’t make it

We made music

All it takes is to extend a kamay
A community building

My kind of occupation
Detoxing the suburb
Building a new one
If possible from instruction manuals

A protagonist maybe

If we could make money doing that
We’d be the 1%

99 problems
10 commandments was one
Challenges of 11 I spun

2012 you should be fun.

A normally calculated, reserved, controlled individual, Mikey was raw, uncalculated, and uncontrolled.  He was adding bitch and the n-g-a word to everything he said.  He was play-punching 13-year old girls.  He was making impressions.

One of the impressions was of our dear Tita Ming.  “Tita” in Tagalog is “auntie,” a broad term we use for  older adult women.  Our Tita Ming is a generally very enthusiastic if not outwardly vivacious woman that any outsider would immediately be able to identify after 5 minutes of conversation.  She’s about 5 feet tall and has put on some pounds over the years.  She’s fond of extolling the accomplishments of her lone high-achieving, highly competent, yet-striving-to-be-normal college-aged son.  Our Tita Ming happens to be deeply religious.

On this Christmas Eve night, we were a tribe of almost 50 in a cabin in Big Bear.  First time in over 25+ years that our families have known each other that we’ve made such an expedition.  We’d spend each Christmas together since we were toddlers. We call each other “cousins” because we’d more or less become a family bonded together by our mothers who went to nursing school together in the Philippines. We are all more or less adults now, but this is the first time our families have made a collective trip for Christmas.

We were having the time of our lives.  Unlimited snacks, XBox 360, snow, snowboarding, snowtubing, alcohol, beer pong.  Plenty of bsing around, of which Mikey was the undisputed object of hilarity on this Christmas Eve night.

One of the kids in the cabin asked “who’s going to church tomorrow?”

In his stupor, having already generated laughs from various antics, Mikey responded, his eyes popped and pretend-outraged, his voice slightly sunk and his shoulders tensed and slowly huffing and puffing in rhythm, imitating a burly early 20th century-big city ward boss, “Are you scared of going to church tomorrow?  Tita Ming, Tita Ming…”

We erupted in laughter…for the dead-on-ness of how demanding she might be about getting us to go to church.

The laughter continued till the very next morning, when the very scenario mocked by Mikey more or less played itself out.

Tita Ming had previously told us the night before Christmas Eve that we would be going to church on Christmas day.  This was met with little response by the chorus of kids.

Then, the morning of Christmas came.  Sure enough…

The kids sprawled out on the couches in sweats…

“So how come you guys aren’t ready?  Mass is at 11.  It’s Christmas day!”  Tita Ming inquired aloud to anyone in particular.

Little response came from me, and the other 7 or so kids on the couches in their sweatpants and other sleepwear.

She began to realize that many of us were extremely reluctant to go to church.  One in particular was our cousin named Mary, who has a 5-year old son, named Jared.

Mary is 25 years old and a licensed vocational nurse.  Last I checked, she was working insane hours to save up money to build a nice life for herself, her fiance, and her son.  I’ve known her since I was a kid, and saw her as loveably affable with plenty of “dumb blonde” moments.  Beyond that bubbly shell is a smart, hard-worker and caring mother.

Tita Ming had unintentionally singled her out, asking her, “if this is what she wanted to teach Jared.”  It was almost like a shot at Mary’s mothering.

Mary replied that she did not want to take him to church.  She snapped back petulantly, “I already took Jared to church “last week.”

Filipinos have a history tightly braided to upholding Catholic tradition, especially here in the United States.  Whether it’s saying 2000 Hail Marys, buying and displaying a Last Supper painting in a living room, or going to church for Christmas or Easter.   Our tribe, our extended family is no exception.

Watching the argument unfold, the chorus of kids, silently wincing and sensing Mary’s faux pas, that her answer would hardly be adequate to satisfy old ward boss Tita Ming, urged her to keep her mouth shut from digging herself deeper into trouble.

Tita Ming kept pressing and lecturing.  She said that Mary would be breaking tradition.  She expressed concern that Jared as a result wouldn’t know anything, and would be ignorant.  She called on Mary’s parents, and fiance to chide her into going to church.

An exasperated Mary pointing at a tumbling Jared said, “Look at him, he doesn’t want to go!”

Mary’s brother, casually remarked for the chorus of kids that “he’s 5 years old.”  The chorus of kids, somewhat laughing at her attempts to argue ward boss Tita Ming, somewhat defending her, further implored Mary to quiet down.  “Mary, just close your mouth, don’t say anything else!”

After an elongated sermon, an incensed Tita Ming switched gears but still maintained an intensity, “OK, I can’t force you to go.  You’re all adults, its your life.”

Being Catholic = Being Filipino

The argument between Tita Ming and Mary made me think of the passing of tradition from generation to generation between immigrant parents and their kids. The argument between Tita Ming and Mary was not so much about the passing of spirituality and sources of inspiration but more about the passing of values considered central to “being Filipino.”

Part of being Filipino to my parents and Tita Ming are importing the traditions learned in the Philippines to their contexts over here in the US of A.  In the Philippines, they were used to preparing, decorating, and celebrating Christmas beginning in October.  They were going to church 12 straight days before each December 25th.  The practices signify Catholicism but with a distinct Filipino flavor, and so those practices become a part of “being Filipino.”

Importing people, food, practices, mannerisms from home countries have been central to immigrant lives and identities here in the United States.  Importing stuff from what we perceive to be our homes is central to establishing a home in a 2nd home.  But some things do not always get imported.

My parents and my aunties and uncles have all been met with their fair share of rejected importations from the Philippines.  Whether it’s the unspoken rule of eating with utensils as opposed to hands or the systematic rejection of speaking Tagalog in the workplace, there’s a constant rejection they’ve faced in their assimilation to the US of A. My mom hasn’t been able to petition any of her family members in her 30 years here.  My dad hasn’t been able to import his art credentials into any network of people who’ve been able to provide him a steady income.

Part of being an immigrant seems to be dealing with failed importations.

Rejection of the practice of going to church is another failed importation, but I don’t see it that way.

My Religion:  A Culturally-Catholic Agnostic

I don’t mean to shoot down the importation of or break up Filipino traditions when I refuse to go to mass.

I feel like I embody the best of what my mom and dad taught me without having to go.

At this point, going to any church-related function is more about celebrating family and their traditions, but not so much the Catholic faith.  At best, I’m culturally Catholic.

I describe myself otherwise as agnostic, which means I don’t know if a God exists, and if he/she does, I hope I’m on the deity’s good side.

My spirituality is simple.  Essentially, the golden rule, but with a hint of karma: doing good whenever I could to whoever whenever, expecting the rewards to come in many other ways if not directly.

I’d like to believe in all gods and idols from all cultures and societies and that they make one beautiful synthesis.  But then maybe they don’t.  Maybe there are no super-beings or karma.  Maybe religion is all just a human artifact that in most societies had originally been a source of inspiration but in recent times has been adapted for all kinds of purposes from indoctrination to liberation.  I really don’t know.

I don’t love or hate religion or religious people, I respect them and their practices until they start using it as a means of coercion.

The interaction between Mary and my Tita Ming was a mirror of the type of interaction that I’d had with my own parents for the past decade.  I never wanted to go to church;  my dad and mom shaming and arguing with me ensued.

We’ve done this for 10 years, so it wasn’t a shock to them when I decided not to go to mass this Christmas.  I feel like going to church has always been an activity I’ve just gone “through the motions” with.

I’ve generally gone to Christmas and Easter mass celebrations, only as a way of appeasing my parents, but in recent years, I’ve started to recognize the cultural value of going to church.  I like “seeing who is there,” especially if it is at my grade school elementary school’s church.  I appreciate the a sense of “community”, home, gathering, but other than that going to church is something that is part of my past.

I know that I can get on board with some of the values and lessons preached by Catholicism.  This is a sharp contrast to a time earlier in my 20s when despite being a confirmed Catholic I outright laughed and rejected the idea of anything to do with religion.

But I realized, that I can get on with “being a man for others” and serving those in need — things I did learn were Catholic if not perhaps just humanistic values.  Whether it was, soup-lines, the community services, the canned goods drives, I lived in a world where “actions speak louder than words.”  And I remain committed to that.

I always felt like it was more important to live what was preached about in these religious lessons.

How did he ever meet such a laughable individual?

Come to think of it, he’d met him at a country dance club.  The professor was from the south, and that country dance club is where he felt at home.  That club was how he and Gilbert became acquainted.

They hadn’t spoken since that sobbing incident.

Just as a reminder, Gilbert is the aging 2nd generation Mexican-American who sounds like a white guy, Ibrahim is the 6’2 somewhat stereotypical, yet fiercely independent-minded black guy, I’m the young, shortish Filipino-American 27-year old student who is quiet but not quiet.

Gilbert made the remark, that if he, Ibrahim, and I showed up together to that country club, representatives of the “Micro-United Nations”, they would’ve thrown us out on sight.

Ibrahim, somewhat in and out of the kitchen, where this conversation between Gilbert and I was taking place, chimed in, “Heh, I already know what this country is about.”

What’d he mean by that?  It was a succinct quote, something I brooded on hours, days, months, up to now after the nanosecond it took him to say it.

On one level it meant, that this country was “about” being discriminatory and racist.  On a deeper level, what Ibrahim was saying was that he already knew how things worked, and did his best to avoid bullshit.  “Bullshit” being anything encompassing biased decision-making by bosses, office politics, difficult personalities.

Best way to avoid such bullshit:  keeping your mouth shut.

Keeping your mouth shut was usually what Ibrahim did.

Not as much for my landlord Gilbert.

Gilbert grew up in Boyle Heights, Los Angeles in the 1960s.  You wouldn’t know from the way he talked to you.  He was a little too young to participate in the student blowouts that had been happening, but was very aware of it.  He always remembered something his dad had told him, “Don’t ever let anyone discriminate against you.  If they’re against the black man, they’re also going to discriminate against you, son.”  He was educated in a way to expect discrimination and fight against it.

He carried this ethic in the way he selected tenants for his household.  An openness to diversity if you will.  He’d been through a motley crew coalition of tenants, from a 23-year old white girl who brought her boyfriend over all the time, to some white guy running from the law, to Ibrahim, to me.

You could see his openness to diversity in the way he talks to people at local take-out restaurants and other businesses.  He takes time to inquire service-handlers about how they’re doing, how they got here, what are they doing here.  To me, as generation Y growing up in 1990s-2000s LA, it’s a bit awkward and perhaps initially intrusive, but ultimately friendly and harmless.

I get the sense that the way he projects this openness to diversity used to get him business.  He’s talked about times in his 20 years of contracting where people thought of him as white.  People he did business with as an independent contractor would feel safe making beaner jokes around him, which made him feel all kinds of awkward.  However, he had no choice but to keep his mouth shut about what he actually felt.  Only way he could keep his business afloat.

However, when he was forced out of his business and into a workplace setting and he opened his mouth, the results have been disastrous.  In one of his part-time jobs at Home Depot, he’d told off a manager.  The job shows up in background reports as an instance of when he was last employed and was terminated, which just looks horrible for someone who has lots of construct knowledge and skill and made a substantial amount of money as a free-lance electrician.

Currently, he’s dealing with a job in which he’s spoken out again.  There is a physical toll that lifting paint cans takes on him.  There are younger people.  He has a bachelor’s degree, but doesn’t make much money doing what he does.  He’s recently lashed out at a young Assistant manager who appears to micro-manage as a means of establishing control in an all-boys club.  Gilbert is now constantly on edge with getting a new job.

My roommate Ibrahim is balling his new job.  He’s probably the most social of my roommates, but he shuts his mouth and seems to close up and disengage when it comes to anything that might seem dramatic.

He grew up in Detroit.  On his own since he was 16, with some brothers.  He’d grown up in the hood, and was just trying to find his way out of it.  The only logical way out of the hood was to get out or be put out, and he tried his best to get out.  He’d seen brothers and friends go the other way.

He’s a simple guy who finds his way out of drama.  He’s makes just a few definitive statements.  Though he does like to project a black masculinity with the woofer-blasted rap music, he hardly ever mentions race when we discuss anything, especially when he’s talking about selling cars to customers, playing basketball, or dating women so I’m always wondering with whom he’s dealing with when describing an interaction with someone.  I never press the issue, and generally find myself surprised to find out when he does mention anything that he’s dealing with South African women, selling cars to Asian, white guys/girls, rich people/poor people.  Generally, I get the sense that race is not really an issue for him and what he likes doing which is basically a combination of:  exercising, eating, hooking up with women.

However, he has as of late been more open about his views, at least to me.  When he was in college as a slightly older student, he remembers a guy named Chris in a business administration class.  Through family connections, Chris had experience working for a company.  He’d been a top student in the class.  So had Ibrahim.

One time Ibrahim got a perfect score on a test.  When the professor announced this, Chris openly questioned, “who got that?”  The professor looked at, and pointed at Ibrahim.  Chris openly questioned, “you?”

Another time Chris had announced an opening through the professor at his dad’s company.  Ibrahim sent him his resume.  However, Chris told him “I seem to have never gotten your resume.  But we did select someone else already, I’m sorry.”

“Typical white guy,” Ibrahim told me.

Money is not everything, not having it is – Kanye West

If you take care of others, you’ll be taken care of yourself – Johneric Concordia, LA Community Activist

I don’t have a lot of money. I’m not quite sure what it is, but I’m always told I need it.

I was once told that if I gave my life up for others, I’d be taken care of…I like the idea, and I would like to make it happen, as a prof at the CC, that is if there will be enough money to survive.

A lot of my thinking nowadays doesn’t go towards saving the world or even “occupying” it, but goes towards “surviving.”  Surviving, mostly meaning how I’m going to make a life for myself.  How I’m going to make a life for myself in this the US, Los Angeles context revolves around “making money.”

“Making money” means finding a way that people will continually pay me money for things to do for them.  I then will pay money to acquire the food, water, shelter, other things.  I have two different views of money, a positive spin, and a cynical one.

In my most positive spin, acquiring and then having money opens up two things:  conveniences and possibilities.

Having money lets me participate in the acquiring of conveniences, usually goods.  I don’t need to know the people at the 99 Cents Store to go get my Colgate toothpaste, my ice cold Arizona Ice Tea, or an iPod.

Perhaps if I was living in the urban 1880s America (and was white), I’d make those things:  something approximating toothpaste, a cheap flavored drink, an entertainment device.

But now a lot of things are at the store.  My family and and the majority of Americans have built our lives on going to the store, having things prepackaged made, ready to cook.

Having money also opens up possibilities.  What separates me from a trip to the Philippines, a nicely shot video, a house, is money.  If I just had money, I’d do this and this and this.  And then this and this and this.

While money can be good, money can be bad.  Real bad.  Michael Jackson.

In my most cynical definition, money is the filler for the lack of a relationship with people who have in their possession goods and/or services.  Money is something strangers give to each other.  A medium for strangers to meet, which can be very bad or very good, but usually ultimately distances because people are not expected to be nice or friendly to each other when in the process of exchanging it.

To navigate this world of impersonality and strangers, people in the world I live in tend to volunteer information of when they “have the hook-up.”  They usually “know someone” who could obtain something, be it a good, service for a price that requires less or even no money.

In most times when we lack those people, we will need to cough up money, the filler, to open up more relationships with people we don’t know for their connections to goods/services we want/need.  In that process, giving money to someone (assuming the money’s value is recognized) insures that we indeed get the good/service we need.  We use money to ensure that individuals do their part without resistance or much problem to acquire/do something for us.  It follows that the more we pay someone, the more we want to ensure that they commit to acquiring/doing what we need with hopefully even less resistance and no bunyahas/problems.

Paying Money is basically a form of insurance.  And you could sort of get around that by knowing people.

I guess the question in this age of Facebook and hyper-networking, can I just make a few friends who can help me out with not money, but just help me make and acquire whatever materials I need? I wonder if I could just know enough people and be set.