rethinking the "craziness" of immigrants

no, this is not a michelle malkin-esque diatribe. she can kiss my ass. this post does, however, convey some un-pc actions of my crazy mother, so pardon the doo doo.

i'm thinking my parents weren't so crazy after all. i think they learned about the social, economic, and political hierarchy of various groups in the united states very quickly, and they didn't want me to be affected by discrimination or to be seen as a second class citizen. (i suppose this was why i was discouraged from having black friends -- they didn't want me being associated with the lowest rung on the ladder in the south - sad but true. after all, we were brown, and they were relatively new to the country, and so we already stood out. to them, life in the u.s. was an uphill battle, and anything that would hold me back was uncool. a little draconian and crappy, but i understand where they were coming from. i remember going to these blonde girls' houses, being forced to play with these country club kids - oh no, not the white kids with divorced parents - whose mothers were only doing a service to my mother, because she requested that i go over to their houses. i found them exceedingly boring and their mothers even more boring. more on this topic later. this will all start to make sense. basically, i had to be with the "right" people.) i vaguely remembered this as i was growing up; i just thought they were crazy. i mean, i didn't really get how tenuous race politics was in this country until i wandered into law school.

i suppose i was lucky that i grew up in a college town in an upper middle class neighborhood with a father who was very well regarded in the academic community and went to college in the most liberal and intellectually charged town in the country, (the home of ben affleck!). however, they were exceedingly sheltered environments that provided a sense of security and invincibility that was, compared to much of the u.s., possibly abnormal. i also moved to new york city, a notoriously liberal town where, on occasion, even *i* feel i'm on the conservative side of things. that's just weird.

then i came to law school and read korematsu (awful!), and i read about the disenfranchised black voters in florida (yucky!), and now arab american are becoming suspect (foul!). what will happen when the inevitable showdown with china happens (oh, it will... it will... not a militaristic venture - that would be suicide, but a public relations and cold war esque sort of deal perhaps...) will it matter that my family actually fought the communists and think that the chinese government is a bunch of fascist scumbags? not initially. hell, people here either can't or won't distinguish. (again, kiss my ass, michelle malkin, you pea brained dipshit!)

see, this is where the craziness comes in again. my mother is obsessed with making money. i thought that she was just a heartless money-grubbing opportunist. but i think she knows that, in this country, money not only buys opportunity, it buys freedom. rich people don't get harassed, and if they do, they can afford a lawyer and get medieval on someone's ass. the ACLU can only take so many cases. if you're poor, you're pretty much at the mercy of the system. if you're rich, you can play the system.

i'm going to simplify things a little bit here. see, a friend told me that a famous african american (don't know who - i forgot) once asked an audience how much each one of them needs to be paid to wake up black and stay black for the rest of their lives. i believe the figure came up to be in the millions. basically, the darker you are, the more you need to make to be seen as being equal to someone of a lighter race. yes, this is simple, but somewhat true i guess. anyhow, my mom used to buy me expensive clothes if i were to be seen in a public event. i distinctly remember prom. it was such an ordeal. i was taken to the most expensive formal wear store in the area (and one year i had a fully tailored dress made from scratch), and i also had my hair and makeup done in some ungodly frou frou salon. at the salon, some snooty "soc/debutante" was having her hair done as well. and my mom looked over at her mom and was like "hmph! i can bring the bling too! biatch!" all i wanted to do was just show up to prom with my friends and go party afterwards. i didn't care how i looked or who saw me.

i didn't get it. but here's the last piece of the puzzle. you have economic capital, political capital, and you also have social capital. money buys you more freedom, and if you live in an affluent district - even if you're a member of a darker race, you don't get bothered by things such as voter harassment. hell, i didn't even know those things existed. even now, i'm still sheltered from the trenches. but i did notice one thing that separated us from some of the other people in my neightborhood. see, some of them belonged to country clubs and various "societies," and their daughters became "debutantes." there weren't any non-white debutantes - there weren't even any debutantes with last names like "stein" and "rosenberg." see, to get into those societies, you need to be part of the old southern network. remember the boring kids i was talking about earlier... yeah, those people. after i went to high school, those kids disappeared from sight. my high school had a lot of people from the northeast whose parents were only in the town to raise their kids (then they moved back to new york city/westchester). i ended up hanging out with them instead; they seemed like they wanted to get out of the town as well. i thought that was cool. we, the AP/journalism/student government/theater kids (the punk theater chick was homecoming queen), ended up ruling the school, one of the perks of living in a college town. we were the top dogs. the "debutantes" at our school were on a lower rung on the ladder; but in the general community outside of school, they had more social capital. in that circle, which included the annoyingly boring parents, if you don't fit in, you're not welcome, no matter how much money you have, and no matter how high you rank in the university system. in order to fit in, you - and your family - need to have been around for awhile, you can't have a funny accent, you can't be brown or black, and going to a christian church is also key. or that was how it was in the 80's. i don't know how it is now.

the first day of law school, we were told to sit around and pick a random partner to do some "sensitivity" exercise. "oh gawwwd! kill me now!" i thought. we were told to reveal an incident that happened in our lives that was insensitive or discriminatory that made us feel bad. i couldn't really think of anything, because i was still living on "planet retard." i never really noticed any of this growing up; either that or i never let anything get to me. anyhow, the dude i was talking to told me that he was working at a yacht club in long island one summer in high school to make some extra cash. he's from an affluent family, and he is tall, handsome and white. he said that an older man started talking to him, complaining that the yacht club was going to shit, because so many jews were joining. the dude i was talking to, who was jewish, said his eyes almost popped out of his head. he said he couldn't say anything except go back to cleaning the boat, because he couldn't think of a comeback. messed up.

my point is... we've still got a ways to go. i guess i understand why jewish and immigrant parents are so hard on their kids. you can't break that social ceiling, so you might as well get the best education you can and make as much money as you can. if you make enough money and own a large corporation... you've got some mad power too. (or you can try to "pass" - some jewish folks changed their names or denounced their judaism - see "john kerry's granddad." or you can kiss ass, like my favorite punching bag, michelle malkin, but kissing ass doesn't work; she married white though. THAT can get you in. hey, i don't have a problem with people dating people of other races - i do it all the time - but i'm suspect of malkin in general. i'm quite cynical.)

anyhow, i understand that being excluded from elite societies is a silly concern compared to the real injustice poor people and especially poor people of color encounter in our "justice" system, so i couldn't care less. however, i figure i should bring it up anyway, because it's something that is relevant, and now i know my parents were very aware of it.

i'm going to return to political capital for a moment. i'm lucky i went to harvard. i'm also very thankful that my aimless wanderings landed me in law school. these places are a hotbed of great networks and powerful knowledge. it can also serve as a foundation for a career in politics. it is something that i have been considering for a while. no, not immediately. fifteen years from now perhaps. the more people of different backgrounds, whatever, in the political system, the more fair the system tends to be. plus, i have an incorrigible tendency to run for office. i held numerous offices in college and in law school. i figure the itch will occur "in real life" at some point.

see, if you have money, AND you have a large network of important influential people, muthafucka... you ARE the system. wouldn't that be nice?

and now for something completely different! yarmulke bras!