White Privilege In A Rolls Royce Wraith

The March 2016 issue of Car and Driver has a story that highlights the white privilege that Caucasians take for granted. It involves two of their staff writers as they travel through the Southeast U.S. in a $390,000 Rolls Royce Wraith. The prank is that they were going to pretend they lost their wallets and ID's and would use only the Rolls Royce as evidence of their good names in order to get free stuff.

As they drove through the country, they discovered that people did in fact trust the car to vouch for their characters. They wrote that, "Perfect strangers were invariably kind and charitable." The writers were able to receive free meals at restaurants, free gas, free coffee at Starbucks, and even a free hotel room in New Orleans. Some people said they would have offered their services free anyway since that was the hospitable thing to do.

Somehow I'm skeptical that people are that generous just because somebody drives up to their place of business in an expensive car. As I read this story, I kept thinking that they are getting away with this because the writers are white. Imagine if two black men were driving around in a Rolls Royce and tried to scam restaurants and hotels for free services pretending they had lost their wallets and ID's. You know what would have happened? Instead of being offered things gratis, I suspect people would probably have called the police first. How else would two black guys be driving around in a Rolls without any ID? But if two white people do it, it's just a harmless prank.

I have similar experience with what Car and Driver pulled off but from a minority's point of view. But the results were entirely different. I experienced the racism that can still be so prevalent around the country. This is not the burning cross racism as Chris Rock would say, but sorority racism. In other words, there is no "Whites Only" sign being displayed anywhere but the effects were there.

After high school, a good buddy of mine, who is white, and I took a summer road trip together. We traveled all over the Ozark mountains, enjoying the splendid views and lakes. At the end of the first day, we needed to stop to get a motel room. Since he was driving, I was the one who got out of the car to see if we could get a room. Each time I went inside, I was told that there were no more vacancies available even though there was no signs that said so. After about three tries, I told my friend that I was feeling tired and if he could go in to get a room. After five minutes he came out and tossed me the room key.

I never mentioned how much this hurt me. He seemed too oblivious to notice the ease in which he got a room and I couldn't. To him, it was probably just a coincidence. But that is just part of the white privilege that Caucasians assume is granted to everybody else. I don't know if people in that part of the country still act that way thirty years later, but it would be interesting if Car and Driver would do the same prank with two minority drivers instead. Let's see how many free Starbucks they can get before being thrown in the slammer by some present day Roscoe P. Coltrane.

Is Global Warming Pessimism A White Man's Conspiracy?

The Los Angeles Times has another story about man's destruction of nature leading to global warming, or now called under the PC label, climate change. The paper's article uses a chart compiled by the National Weather Service to point out that 2014 had the hottest January through July of any year ever recorded in California. They highlight that singular peak way over on the right hand side, with an average temperature of 60.2 F this year. That compares with an average temperature of 57 F in the past century.

What I find more profound was how cold California has been since 1900. While the Times wants to look at only the red bars from the last twenty years, it appears to me that about 80% of the time, the state has been running below, way below, the mean temperature of 57 F. In fact, in the mid 1950's, the state's average temperature dropped to 53 F, four degrees below the mean. That makes it the polar opposite (pun intended) of today's climate which is only three degrees above the mean. Yet I don't think there were screaming headlines sixty years ago about the need to reform the world economies to compensate for the cold weather they were experiencing.

I have a theory about why that is. Is it because white people, who control the major political parties and media companies of the developed world, like cold temperatures? Most of the WASPs who hold the levers of power came from northern European climes, and thus prefer frigid cold temperatures. Look at any ski slope during winter. Virtually every face up there is as white as the snow they are standing on. Who hold stupid polar bear swim meets in the dead of winter? White people. The rest of us brown people are shivering our asses off and looking at these pinkish white idiots incredulously.

We brown people love warm climates. My father used to wear long sleeve flannel shirts in mid summer during the hottest days of Missouri. Town folks used to think he was crazy. It is 95 F outside with 90% humidity but he was driving around town in long sleeves and no air conditioning. In the meantime, white people were dying by the hundred every summer from heat stroke. But when the seasons changed, we would have on our thick jackets and gloves at the slightest chill while Caucasians were still running around in T-shirts and shorts. Most non Caucasians come from warmer countries. We love our days warm and nights cold. Who wants to walk around wearing a sweater in August like they do in Seattle or London?

So maybe this whole notion that the world is about to end because of global warming is another way for white people to stay in control. They don't like warm temperatures so they are demanding that developing countries, who are mostly of browner complexion, curb their industrialization to decrease the release of greenhouse gasses. This of course will slow down their economies and keep the developed countries superior, who just happen to be mostly run by Caucasians.

My Asian Privilege

There's been a lot of talk lately about white privilege. However, race privilege is not confined to white people alone. While minorities like to bemoan their lack of white privilege they too have qualities that only white people can dream of. Here is a list of my Asian privileges that makes me superior to white people.

Asians are rarely suspected of being criminals. When I go to L.A. International Airport, I am usually allowed to breeze my car right by the security stand at the entrance to the facility. I have never been asked to drive to the side to open the trunk of the car. Passing through the TSA is also effortless. Though we have to remove our belts and shoes like everybody else, the TSA agents couldn't be more bored when they see an Chinese-American family walk through. East Asians couldn't possibly be terrorists, right?

We Asians are also very unthreatening. When I walk down the sidewalk at night, no woman is clutching her purse tighter to her body. No one is turning around to see if I am following them. The police car cruises by without giving me a second look. At the mall, no security guard or camera is focusing his attention on me as I browse through the shops. In essence I turn into the tall blond white guy with the preppy shirt and chino pants that couldn't possibly be out ready to commit a crime.

When I walk into a room, people instinctively assume that I am smart. While some Asian Americans consider this an offensive stereotype, I personally consider it a compliment. I would rather strangers think I am smart than not.

Yet, Asian Americans are also frequently mistaken for being illiterate in English, even if we have advanced postgraduate degrees from Ivy League universities. While that may not sound like a privilege, one can use that ignorance to his best advantage. When I get phone calls during dinner time trying to sell me something or asking me to vote for a certain candidate for the next election, just for fun I just start talking in Chinese and pretend I don't know what the caller is trying to say. This usually results in an awkward silence on the other end then a quick dial tone. Ha, the joke is on them.

Asian Americans are also privileged to know where the best ethnic restaurants in town are. Through a tight network of Chinese American friends, the best Chinese restaurants are frequently discovered and the information propagated. This informal structure can't even be replicated on rating sites like Yelp. In the meantime, white people think the best Chinese restaurant in town is the local P.F. Chang, or worse, Panda Express.

Most of us Chinese Americans are shorter than the average white American. While this may not sound like a privilege, it does produce certain advantages. In an airplane's ever tighter seating arrangements, I can still sit in my seat without bumping my knees up against the back of the chair in front of me. I can also lower the tray table without having to suck in my gut, not that I have one since Asians are all thin anyway, correct? At the movie theater I don't have to worry about squeezing down the rows of seats or accidentally bumping the one in front of me with my giant boats for feet. I can even comfortably cross my legs without hitting my foot or knee on the person's head in front.

Finally, Asians always look young for their ages. In a country where youth is so highly prized and billions of dollars are spent on drugs and surgery to look younger, my naturally youthful skin tone is a major privilege. Asians are infamous for looking years, sometimes decades, younger than their real ages. Asian women can be deceivingly girlish looking, especially in the eyes of other races.

So there you have my list of some of the privileges Asians enjoy over other races. Why should privilege be the domain of white people alone? Every race has its advantages and disadvantages. If white people want to trumpet theirs, we can certainly publicize ours. We should be proud and proclaim loudly we are the smartest, youngest looking, safest race in America. That's a privilege we should never apologize for.

Wondering About White People--Hirsutism

Continuing my random train of thoughts about caucasian folks. I wonder what it's like to be so hairy. White people are probably more hirsute than anybody else on earth. Many black and hispanic populations aren't nearly as hairy as whites. In fact, many are nearly as hairless as Asians. When I say hairless, I don't mean lack of axillary or groin hair which everybody has once they develop puberty. I'm talking about the thick mat of hair white people have on their chests, back, arms, and legs, but who surprisingly also seem to bald quite early and often.

Take a look at this picture of my forearm. No, I didn't shave or wax it. It's au naturel, with not a visible hair on the skin. If you look really closely, like with a magnifying glass, you can see very fine and short strands of hair there but nothing like the thick hair you see on many white people.

What is it like to be living in a house full of hairy people? Are there strands of people hair all over the house like pet hair on the furniture of owners of cats and dogs? My shower drain clogs up pretty easily with hair from my head if I don't put a filter over it. Do white people's drains clog that much faster from all the hair that falls off their bodies when they bathe?

And what is it like to shave your body? I can understand shaving facial hair as I've done that for decades. But to shave your chest and back? Or worse to wax them like the "40 Year Old Virgin"? How do you reach all the different curves and crevices of the body to shave all that surface area. Don't the blades wear down pretty quickly doing that? Since white people seem to grow their facial hair faster than most Asians (I only need to shave my face once every two days while many white people I know have to shave twice a day) doesn't it get tedious to do this all the time? Seems like a pretty laborious task to me.

Isn't it funny how white people spend money to get rid of the hair on their torsos then spend even more money to plant hair on the top of their heads? Why can't they be happy with the hair distribution that God gave them? I don't see too many Asians getting hair transplants. I don't think Asians are nearly that vain. Balding is just a natural part of aging and we understand that and don't try to hide that fact. Except my father who decided to do a combover once he started going bald. That is something no men should ever do. Go proud and go bald. At least we don't ever have to waste money getting a painful wax job on our chests.

Wondering About White People--Visual Fields

I was reading with some bemusement, and annoyance, a recent post in 8Asians. It highlighted what I suppose is a common question among white folks--do Asians have poor peripheral vision, or more specifically vertical peripheral vision. With our smaller eyes, we must not be able to see as much up and down as people with round eyes, right? One ignoramous even had the audacity to ask if Asians see in widescreen, you know, with letterbox blackouts at the top and bottom of our vision.

While I can irrefutably answer that, no, Asians don't see in widescreen, I have to admit I've always wondered about what white people see out of their eyes. With their deep inset eye sockets and prominent supraorbital ridge, do they ever feel like they are peeking out from under a hat all the time? It's a wonder so many white men wear baseball caps since they seem to have a natural sun shade over their eyes everywhere they go. By contrast when I'm out in the sun, I have to squint pretty badly, accentuating my "small" eyes since the sun has easy access to my optic nerves.

The large brow also seems to helpful during exercise or while taking a shower. While my sweat just naturally rolls down my forehead directly onto my eyelids, white people's perspiration seem to dangle off their brows then drip off without ever contacting and irritating their corneas. It's like having a large roof eaves that keep rain from splashing on windows.

Then what about that huge schnoz at the center of the face. I can barely see my own nose without a mirror if I do an extreme cross eye. Then I just barely catch a glimpse of the tip. But what do white people see? With their eyes set way back and a huge protruberence between them, does the nose ever get in the way of their sight? I mean, when driving a car and you pass by another car, does the car disappear from view behind the nose?

Finally, we have all seen sports players rub blackout on their cheeks. I assume that is to reduce glare from the sun as it reflects off their cheekbones and into their eyes. Since most Asians eyes are almost perfectly even with their cheeks, that has never been a problem for me. Of course that also led to relentless taunts of "flatface" in high school. But that is besides the point.

So while white people may have questions about Asians' eyes, we too have many questions about how caucasians can possibly see well out of those deeply embedded eyeballs. I personally would rather have my eyes front and center without anything obstructing their function.