Danny ChaiI dunno if it’s because of my wife or what, but I find I’m a lot more interested in certain racial issues nowadays. Dunno if you read about this, but Latinos are now the largest minority group in the United States. And given immigration and birth rates, their proportional numbers will continue to increase in the future.
The implications of this are fascinating to me. Traditionally in America race issues have centered on black and white. Will the focus now turn to Latino issues? Doesn’t that make more sense, if they’re the largest group? There’s always a lot of talk about there not being enough blacks represented on TV and in the movies. Don’t Latinos have a greater, more legitimate complaint? After all, they’re the largest minority group in the U.S. SN. I wonder if Latinos have a problem with Reloaded. They’re like the only group not represented. Tons of blacks. Fair number of Asians. Were there any Latinos? I dunno, maybe I just missed it.
It’s complex, though. Like, Jieun pointed out that there are tons of Latinos on TV. It’s just, they’re on stations like Telemundo and Univision. Maybe there’s not a lot of Latino-Americans on TV, but there are lots of Latinos on TV.
Which gets to another issue. So the Merc had this fascinating article yesterday on the demographics of Cupertino. In 1970, Cupertino was like 80 something percent white, 6.7% Asian. In 2000, it’s 48% white, 46% Asian. The interesting thing is, unlike Asians in a lot of places, they’ve been politically active. The Mayor is Asian. Stuff like that. And the Asian influence cannot be overstated. Like, the plans to save Vallco shopping center hinge around turning it into an Asian mall. That’s how key the Asian population is.
So what’s interesting about Cupertino is that the cultures aren’t blending or anything. They’re like developing parallel systems. So whites and Asians have their own clubs, boy scout troops, city events, stuff like that. Like, Octoberfest is all white. New Years festival, all Asian. I just thought that was sad.
Also interesting, politically, instead of being split along party lines, the city council and other groups are split along racial lines. White and Asian. That’s also sad to me. What’s the solution? No clue.
The great irony is that Jieun gets bored when I talk about race. My guess is it’s mostly my ignorance that bothers her. Like, we have disagreements about what “racism” is. So at a wedding we went to we talk to Jelin’s hubby, the Asian American Studies PhD about it, and he basically completely sides with Jieun, which is hardly shocking. But yeah, I’m just a lowly CS guy so what can I do.