Best Places To Live (For White People)

You know those rankings that magazines put out periodically about the best places to live? Have you ever noticed that most of the time, they only apply to white people? For instance, Money Magazine puts out an annual list of best cities to live in the U.S. Invariably they are located in a small to medium sized town where the vast majority of the people are white. Sure they can boast of great outdoor recreational activities and low crime rates, but where are you going to go when you're hankering for some great soup dumplings or even trying to find some cuts of five layer pork meat in the supermarket? Will any Asian who moves there be just another token, appreciated at the job but never get any invites to after work barbecues or Superbowl parties?

Now Mercer, a human resources consulting company, has devised a list of the cities in the world with the best quality of life. Not surprisingly, virtually every single city in the top 25 are dominated by white Western culture. The top ten cities on the list are: Vienna, Zurich, Auckland, Munich, Vancouver, Dusseldorf, Frankfort, Geneva, Copenhagen, and Sydney. Vancouver is probably the most international of the cities in the top ten. All the others are dominated by a white, sometimes xenophobic culture with little tolerance for minorities.

This European-centric list of the world's best cities would probably be contradicted by citizens of some of the most modern metropolises in Asia. How could Singapore not be in the top 25 list of best places to live? Or Hong Kong? Tokyo? Sure some of the biggest cities in Asia are under totalitarian rule, but if you keep your nose clean and not stray from the law, as the vast majority of people do, they are wonderful places to reside, with low crime and cosmopolitan culture.

It's obvious that the audience for these types of lists are the white, middle to upper class society that reads these magazines and newspapers. They bear little resemblance to the actual quality of cities that can be found outside of Northern Europe and their former colonies.

Simple Rules To Become A Model Minority

With all the recent protests around the country and university campuses about racial injustice, people are forgetting that it is very easy to ingratiate oneself into the mainstream American society. While protestors are busy blaming college administrators and law enforcement for their personal problems, maybe they can take a look in the mirror to see how they can affect some changes in themselves so that these issues don't keep recurring over and over again. To help out the clueless, here are my simple rules for how to become a model minority so that the police don't have to run you down just for walking down the street.

1. Get a good education. This country probably spends more money per pupil than any other country in the world, particularly for inner schools. Yet the test results are abysmal. Maybe if some of the students actually went to school and decided they wanted to learn something instead of harassing the teachers and other students then they can get a decent education.

2. Find and keep a job. Once somebody has an education that is actually at the high school graduation level, jobs surprisingly open up. Even if a good job is hard to find after graduation, just having the certificate makes it easier to apply to college to expand the job market even more. And when you get a job, keep plugging away at it. Don't quit just because you think your boss doesn't like you or you think time spent wandering the streets is more valuable than flipping burgers for $10 per hour. Most working Americans made far less than that in their youths and they still wound up with decent careers and lives. Work experience is valuable beyond the monetary compensation one gets in the biweekly paycheck.

3. Don't get pregnant or get somebody pregnant before marriage. If there is one thing that will keep most women down, it is to get pregnant in high school. Having a baby while trying to study in high school is difficult at best and usually leads to dropping out or suboptimal education. Guys, just don't get your girl pregnant unless you two are married. If you can't commit to a marriage, then you're not ready to commit to another life on this Earth. Walking away from your two minute mistake only shifts the burden of raising an innocent child to the mother and society at large. But if you don't care, then you are a douche bag who probably should have had a vasectomy.

4. Get married and stay married. Again it is about commitment and maturity. Once you are married, stay committed to it. Don't run off just because you had a fight about who spent $5 at Walmart. Don't file for divorce because somebody wanted to watch football while somebody else preferred the Kardashians. Divorce is one of the leading causes of financial insecurity that can afflict a person. It is also extremely detrimental to any children that might be involved. So stay married at all costs. Most arguments in marriages eventually become inconsequential as life goes on. If infidelity is involved, well then the guilty party was not mature enough to have a strong marriage to begin with.

5. Respect authority, such as parents, educators, and law enforcement. Nothing screams immaturity like somebody who thinks they know more than people who have had special training and been around much longer than you. When somebody tells you to sit still, stop talking, stop walking in the middle of the street, there's usually a reason for that. Don't feel like you're too good to follow the rules.

6. Stay off drugs, alcohol, and tobacco. You only have your health. Without it, you have nothing. If you're always in the hospital because you're sick or strung out, then it's unlikely you can keep a good job. Once you lose that, you'll realize how lucky you had it in the first place.

7. Find and nurture good friendships. Keep good friends around who look after your best interests. Don't hang out with people who only like you because you have money or own a nice car. True friendships survive when you are at your lowest point, which inevitably happens to everybody at least once in a lifetime.

8. Save money and spend wisely. It doesn't matter how much money one makes. Save as much of it as possible. And don't spend the money on stupid things like giant screen TV's, the latest cellphones, or drugs and alcohol. It's amazing how little one needs to provide for the basics of food, clothing, and shelter. Once you strip out extraneous costs like cable and cellphone plans, eating out at restaurants, and purchasing new clothes, one might actually be able to save some money.

9. Care about your neighbors. You know all those rundown neighborhoods that plague urban centers? Perhaps if its residents cared more about their blocks then it wouldn't be so poor. Report drug dealers to the police. Help a neighbor clean up a yard. Shop at your local businesses. Don't vandalize, rob, or burn down your neighborhood store just because you think you want to make a statement. It usually leads to businesses leaving for better areas, causing higher local unemployment and more disaffected youth, a downward spiral.

10. Repeat the same rules to the next generation. This process will take a long time. It took decades for Asians to transition from the Yellow Peril to a Model Minority. It will take time for society to notice this change in attitude and climate. But burning down cars and houses will not contribute to any meaningful long term changes.

Notice none of these rules involve any genetic factors involving presumably physical or mental superiority. They also don't require large infusions of money. We've spent trillions of dollars trying to rectify social inequality with hardly any noticeable difference. It does demand that people take a look at themselves and decide how they can change themselves to make their world a better place. As Michael Jackson sang in "Man In The Mirror,"

I'm starting with the man in the mirror,
I'm asking him to change his ways.
And no message could have been any clearer,
If you want to make the world a better place
Take a look at yourself, then make a change.

Filipino Nurses. Not American Enough To Represent The Face Of Our Hospital

Filipino nurses have been in the news recently, and not in a good way, thanks to the remarks of Washington, D.C. former mayor and current Council member Marion Barry. The convicted cocaine abuser remarked, "In fact, it's so bad, that if you go to the hospital now, you find a number of immigrants who are nurses, particularly from the Philippines. And no offense, but let's grow our own teachers, let's grow our own nurses -- and so that we don't have to be scrounging around in our community clinics and other kinds of places -- having to hire people from somewhere else."

We can all agree that it was a very ignorant and racist thing for an elected official to say. Even the other members of the City Council and fellow Democrats have called on Barry to apologize. But is his overt racism any worse than the racism that was recently displayed at our hospital?

Like many hospitals in this country, many, if not most, of our nurses are of Filipino nationality. They are hard working, friendly, and competent nurses. Many have worked here for decades. Recently, the hospital decided to do some promotional advertising and needed a picture of a nurse that worked on our unit. Despite the dozens of Filipino nurses on the ward that day, they got the only white male nurse to do the modeling work. Hmmm.

We all like this nurse. He is a good hardworking nurse that everybody likes to work with. Unfortunately he has only been on our unit for little over a month. Yet they chose him over many nurses that have been working here for years to represent the hospital. This got many of the nurses silently seething with rage and indignation. I also have to mention that the new nursing manager in this ward is also a tall, skinny, extremely pale-faced blonde. It did not take long for people to connect the dots.

So even in 21st century America, workplace discrimination continues. They may not be in a form as overt as Marion Barry, but make no mistake. For some people not matter how many years we have lived in this country, we will never be considered "American". We will always represent the foreigner, the hyphenated American who can never be a true American.

Chink In The Facade Of American Tolerance

The recent uproar over ESPN's use of the term "chink in the armor" to describe Jeremy Lin didn't suprise me all that much. Sure it is derogatory to the Asian population. But I think most Americans don't realize how hurtful it is. By comparison, through education and shame, everybody knows that using the N word to describe African Americans has been permanently banned from public usage. I too had a relatively recent run in with a Caucasian using the term "chink" to describe an Asian feature and this didn't bother him in the slightest.

I was a medical resident working in the labor and delivery ward at a local hospital. I was in a delivery room shortly after the birth of a baby from an Asian wife and Caucasian husband. There was much joy and celebration in the room at the new life that had just been brought into the world. One of the first things the husband asked the nurse, after the baby had been cleaned up and handed to him, was, "Does he have chinky eyes?" He could clearly see that I was an Asian standing in the room with him. The nurse, who was white, replied, "No, he doesn't look chinky at all."

I was too shocked to say anything. I was not prepared for this slap in the face while working in a professional setting. I hadn't heard anybody use such a crude term since high school. I felt like I should have stood up and corrected the people in the room but it seemed like an inappropriate time to give somebody a lecture on racial tolerance while they are celebrating the birth of a baby. I did mention the incident to my superiors, who were white. They too expressed dismay that something like that happened, especially with a nurse who has worked with them for years. But nothing came of it. No apology. No expressions of guilt or remorse. And that was that.

So while Americans in general are becoming more aware of the sensibilities of living in a multicultural society, ignorance and malevolent feelings are lurking just below the surface. Who knows what they are saying in the company of their own kind. While the N word, and now the C word, have been banned from public discourse, that doesn't mean they don't express those thoughts when they think nobody is paying attention.

Racial Networking. Racist Or Natural?

I've seen this time and time again but it never fails to astonish me and fill me with twinges of envy. Two white people meet at work. They may have never seen each other before and are only just learning each other's names. They give a hearty handshake to each other. Then they start talking the talk white people do with each other: sports, work grievences, politics, Mad Men... Before you know it, usually within thirty minutes, they are exchanging business cards and contact numbers for how to get into the local country club or the new hip restaurant downtown.

Why don't these kinds of conversations ever happen with me? How come I don't ever get the secret cell phone number of the sous chef at that restaurant that has a three month waiting list for a table? I've been here at work as long as anybody else yet I rarely get these networking advantages that white people so easily come across. Is this another form of discrimination or does networking only work with people of one's own race?

I try not to blame my Caucasian colleagues for this seeming slight. After all, I too find it much easier to talk to Asian, and specifically Chinese, counterparts than to people of other races. Before you know it, I'm inviting them to my house for dinner or trading tips on the best place to buy Asian pears. I admit that I have never given the same to a non Asian. Networking outside the race is difficult. I truly believe that if it wasn't for federal laws, people would naturally segregate themselves into their own ethnic groups. Look at the different neighborhoods in your town. Since the civil rights battles of the 1960's, there are no more laws barring one race from living next door to another. Yet people still prefer to live close to their own kind: Chinese in coastal urbal cities, Hispanics in the Southwest, Blacks, in the Southeast, and Whites in Vermont.

Does this lack of cross cultural networking hurt minorities. In a word, yes. This is something that will be very difficult for state and federal laws to correct without the use of workplace quotas. To promote minorities just because there aren't enough of them in managerial jobs only promotes resentment and worsens racism. Since relationships are so important for advancements in a job, this gives whites a natural advantage at work since most of their bosses are white. The bosses feel more comfortable conversing with their white juniors, making it easier for them to promote them into higher positions. In the meantime other races are left to stay mired in lower ranking jobs with their concommitant lower pay. It's not a glass ceiling per se as much as a relationship ceiling. It takes acts of extraordinary achievements or leaps of faith for minorities to advance to higher positions.

Can these barriers be overcome? Yes, and I've seen colleagues of every race do it. But one has to become extremely westernized, in other words white, to do it. For second and third generation Asians this becomes much easier. They can discuss the latest grilling tips for hot dogs and burgers as well as any white man. They can regurgitate all the greatest lines from Napoleon Dynamite as well as any college slacker. In other words, these Asians have become white. That's when their white bosses can see past their physical appearances and accept them into the coveted board rooms of America. It may never happen to me, but perhaps in another two to three generations, it won't be so difficult for an Asian to be handed the secret number to reserve the VIP suite at the Viper Room.