Screw a Border Wall, Let’s Build a DOME

Posted on by jcafesin
jcafesin.com

My daughter came home last night from her first job as a barista for a local Boba Tea eatery, crying.

“They don’t like me, mom! I’m doing the exact same level of work that all the new kids are, and they keep calling ME out cuz I’m not Asian.”

Several other barista type jobs at various locally businesses to which she applied told her flat out they only hire Asians (which, at least in my neighborhood, includes Indians, from India). Since most of the fast food and convenience stores here are owned by Asians, this has severely limited her choices for simple, flexible, part-time work.

The first day of this job, a month back, she came home and said, “My manager called me their ‘diversity hire,’ since I’m the only White person who works there. It hurt my feelings. He made me feel like I didn’t get the job cuz I deserved it.” Every day since, she’s come home with other racist comments most of her managers continue to make.

Our daughter has a 4.3 gpa, is a hard worker academically, and socially. She is the only White person in her group of friends. She’s worked very hard, and continues to do so, to be a part of this Asian crowd, that is now well over 75% of her high school in an East Bay suburb of the San Francisco Bay area.

My son wasn’t so lucky. Boys going through puberty are all about bravado, one-upping each other. Girls are about connecting, communicating, building their community. Our son was excluded and bullied for not being “A”sian, throughout middle and high school. He had no friends at all, though he tried again and again to ‘fit in’ with them, from Karate to Robotics to Chess clubs and more. It broke his heart daily, and mine as well, watching my beautiful, open, kind kid ostracized for being White. He will likely struggle with a damaged self-image the rest of his life because of these formative experiences.

Yet, neither of my children are racists, like so many of their Asian friends and associates. My daughter gets bullied often, even from her ‘friends’ with thoughtless comments: “I only date Asians. I don’t find White girls attractive,” from the 4 out of 5 boys in her group. My daughter would love to get asked to proms, on dates. She watches her Asian girlfriends get asked out. She does not.*

These are REALITIES for all of us, Asians and Whites, here in the global melting pot of the San Francisco Bay Area, and yet my children are still not racists. Why, when so many are?

My husband is a software architect. He’s been creating and deploying SaaS offerings for over 25 years here in Silicon Valley. Every job he’s ever had in the software industry, and trust me, he’s had a lot of jobs, he’s worked almost exclusively with Asians. While offshore H1B labor has been brought here by the tech industry since 1990, this massive Asian influx globally was not anticipated. In the last five yrs, the companies he’s worked for, whether the staff is 30 or 3000, in IT, or any other department now—close to 60% are of Asian descent. And yet, my husband is not racist, though he’s been passed up for many position by Asians on work visas and H1Bs.**

I invited my daughter’s best friend and her family to our Thanksgiving dinner last year. I’d met Yi, the mom, only once before, but my daughter spoke of her often when she’d visited her BF’s home: “Her mom is really nice. And she says the same stuff you do. She jokes that you must really be Asian, the way you get on me about homework.” I was grateful my daughter found the humor in her comment, instead of the likely unintended slight. “You guys should get together. You can make a new girl friend, mom.”

The girls arranged a late January lunch, and the four of us went out for Thai food. Yi and I eased into a smooth dialog. Fifteen yrs my junior, she was quite express, articulate when I asked her questions, but she rarely turned my interest around, which I’d say goes for most people I’ve met. A tech-visa transplant from China in her early 20s, she’d been a single mom since divorcing her White husband a decade before. And while I did not feel a personal connection, with few common interests, a profound one existed between us. Raising two kids, a boy my son’s age, and a girl, my daughter’s best friend, Yi loves her children the exact same way, with the same intensity as I do mine.

She suggested we get together again at the end of our luncheon, but I did not pursue it, and neither did she. Thanksgiving came around eleven month later. The girls were having a school vacation sleepover celebration the weekend before the holiday, and my daughter’s BF told us her family didn’t celebrate Thanksgiving. But she confessed she’d like to, as I served breakfast the next morning. Well, of course I invited her, her mom and brother right then. She was so excited she texted them, and the girls were jumping up and down, cheering, moments later with her mom’s response.

The seven of us ate turkey, and stuffing, and shared stories of thanks around the table that night. We played Pictionary after dinner, and laughed and laughed. When the kids exited the scene to play video games, Yi, my husband and I spoke of politics, religion, crossing all social lines of decorum. I was pleasantly surprised how open she was to dialog beyond the surface. And though we have radically different perspectives, the exchange was engaging, educational, and thoroughly enjoyable for all three of us. Even better, the kids bonded that Thanksgiving, and since have established a once-a-month excursion.

Globalization is a REALITY. It’s happening, right now. Most first world nations are being inundated with immigrants looking for that illusive ‘better life.’ Like it, or not, global integration is here, and, as my husband, and our kids know, it is mandatory, simply must happen, for humanity, and our very small planet to survive us.

“One wish,” my mom asked my sister and me on our drive home from elementary school back in the old days. “Anything you want, what would it be.”

“World peace,” I’d said. It was the mid-1970s, and a common catch phrase, but I meant it. Without war, or economic disparity, I believed in our creative potential to problem solve, and our unique ability to work together to realize our fantastical visions. I didn’t know about the hunger of greed then, insatiable, and colorblind.

It has been particularly hard on my kids, this globalization process. It deeply saddens me that they must suffer the slights of blind prejudice, just as the Asians in past generations had to suffer the racism of the ignorant Whites here. It terrifies me—the global competition for fewer jobs my kids will be competing for after college. Yet, I still advocate for globalization. This very small planet must integrate, or we will perish, and likely take much of the life here with us, with the destructive technology we’ve already invented.

My daughter worries she’ll never meet anyone to date, yet alone marry, but I assure her she likely will. And it’s even likely that man will be Asian, since 36.4% of the global population are Asian*** and more than half of them are men. “It doesn’t matter where someone came from, what their heritage, or place of origin on the planet,” I’ve preached to my kids. “Choose to be with someone kind.”

A border wall surrounding the U.S. entirely will not stop Asians from flying in from China and India, Korea, Viet Nam, Indonesia and other emerging Asian nations. Nor will it stop the Middle East, South Americans, Cubans from coming here. Seeking to keep us separate is a fool’s play. Communication is key to build bridges over our differences, allowing us to meet in the middle and mutually benefit from our strengths. Ignorance and mistrust breed with distance. Nationalism is just thinly disguised racism.

Asians, Latinos, Syrian’s, and Palestinians, are all different cultures, not separate races from Caucasian. We are one race, the human race. Globalization—the blending of cultures—is hard for everyone, scary, new, threatening to our social structure, but a must if humanity is to survive, even thrive. The beauty of interracial marriage is the same thing that bonds Yi and I, as parents. We both passionately love our kids. She can’t possible hate Whites, since her children are Asian/White. Combine two cultures, at least on a localize level, defeats racism, as most every parent loves their kids with intensity Yi and I do. It’s one of our best bits about being human—the magnificent, spectacular, all-encompassing love we get to feel for our children.

—

*Regardless of the sociology, it is unusual in the extreme to see an Asian man partner with a White women (though common the other way around), both here in the States and abroad.

**Hiring offshore for less money, now being exploited by every social network from Facebook to YouTube, to Mr. Trump’s summer staff at his Mar-a-Lago estate, lowers the pay rate for all of us. It’s no wonder U.S. income levels have been stagnant for years.

***As of July, 2019, there are approx. 1.43+ billion Chinese (in China), or 18.41% of the global population. Indians (in India) are a close second, with approx. 1.37+ billion, or 17.4% of the total world population. Combining just these two Asian cultures, their world population is 4.1 billion people, or 36.14% of the world population, and that is just within their respective countries, not actual global numbers including visa work-holders and undocumented immigrants abroad.

https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/china-population/

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What is EVIL?

Posted on by jcafesin

What is EVIL?

It is not murder. It is not lying, cheating, stealing, or breaking any of the 10 Commandments, or Hitler, or Donald Trump. It is NOT a state of being. EVIL is an ACTION, or lack thereof.

True EVIL is indifference.

We are ALL indifferent at times. Every time you pick up your cellphone behind the wheel, you are demonstrating you don’t care about anyone else but yourself. You are 26 times more likely to injure or murder others looking at your mobile while driving. You are actively participating in EVIL, as you are indifferent to anyone but your own desires.

Hitler was indifferent to the horror, the suffering, the murder of 6 million Jews that he initiated. So was every commander who followed his orders, and every German who turned a blind eye to protect themselves, and let it happen.

We are on par with Hitler every time we text while driving.

Church, even Christ won’t save us from our sins of indifference.

The effects of indifference reverberate. You cause an accident while texting, and hurt my kid, and I no longer care about you, your kids, your life. In fact, I hate you. I want to see you harmed!

Every time indifference is demonstrated it generates more EVIL.

Indifference lets corporations like PG&E murder 8 people in San Bruno when the utility diverted the money needed to fix the pipes into bonuses for top paid execs. When COMCAST demands full payment for delivering half the service, they are practicing EVIL. So are the customer service representatives working for them, who claim they’re ‘just doing their job, as they are told to,’ like Nazi Germany, where neighbors became indifferent—didn’t really care what happened to the Jewish kid that their kid used to play soccer with.

Every time we don’t stand up to indifference, we are participating in EVIL.

Indifference is like a genetic disease, handed down through the generations.

Parents who don’t give a shit about their kids, raise kids who don’t give a shit about anyone (even themselves).

Educators who care more about their pensions, putting in 2/3rds of a workday, and working only half the year, teaches indifference to everyone but themselves.

Students (without wealth) who are indifferent to learning, don’t study, don’t do the work, choose YouTube or gaming over doing academics, become front line canon fodder in the military as the only paying job they can get, or end up criminals, or homeless.

Drivers, indifferent to everyone else while they fulfill their desire to upload a Snap, murder close to 4,000, and injure up to 500,000, one half a MILLION people, kids, dogs…etc., a YEAR. Think you know how to drive and text at the same time? Your indifference is supporting your ignorance, which is only surpassed by your arrogance.

EVERY DAY, half or more drivers I see are chatting or texting away, and I fight the urge to ram my car into them. If they stop where I do, like the store, and I pass them in the aisle, I want to spit in their face, for no other reason than to get them to PAY ATTENTION TO SOMEONE OTHER THAN THEMSELVES.

When a COMCAST customer service rep tells me to get another modem, knowing it won’t make my internet connection any better because they know, and COMCAST knows, they don’t have the bandwidth to support the neighborhood’s wireless devices, I become irate, rude, indifferent to their plight, as they are to mine.

Every time we encounter indifference, we become more indifferent.

Stand at the Pearly Gates, and the first question St Peter is likely to ask is were you GOOD or EVIL in your lifetime. Lie, and go to hell. Say you’re GOOD, and believe it? If you spent more of your life addressing and responding to your own needs and desires than anyone else, count on going to hell.

Assuming, like me, you are a non-believer, why worry about anyone else if the only reward is in this life? Take as much as you can get, seems to be the attitude of so many these days, religious or not.

While self-interest is the foundation of our nature, indifference is not. It is taught, shown, modeled by all of us, at times. We begin life as solipsists, then grow to narcissists through our teens and early 20s. Maturity means we’ve expanded our awareness beyond just ourselves, and often put our own desires aside to actively care for others.

Indifference, to justify doing whatever you want (from lying for COMCAST, to driving a fuel-guzzling SUV, to texting behind the wheel of it) chips away at our humanity with every slight. This toxicity of EVIL ultimately endangers every living thing on this planet. Demonstrate you don’t care about me, and I won’t care about you. We self-protect, which ultimately serves no one, not even ourselves.

CARE BEYOND YOURSELF, and SHOW IT, and we not only insure our survival, we give our childrens’ children, and way beyond them, a chance to experience living, and the opportunity to thrive.

Why #DACA MUST STAY!

Posted on by jcafesin
jcafesin.com

Why #DACA MUST STAY, and #Republicans MUST GO! U.S. #Dreamers are worth far more than ANY MEMBER OF CONGRESS: http://jcafesin.blogspot.com/2014/11/the-necessity-of-immigration.html

and

http://jcafesin.blogspot.com/2012/09/Immigration-Ignorance.html

and

https://jcafesin.com/…/republicans-religion-and-whats-right/.

 

LOVE to hear YOUR thoughts on Trumpy killing DACA! Good or bad for U.S.?

 

Trickle Down Polarization

Posted on by jcafesin

gun_control_means_nothing_to_my_studentsMy father is a fervent Republican. My mother was a Democrat. Once saw him put his fist through the solid maple cabinet an inch from my mother’s head because her vote was going to cancel his in the second Reagan election. Though he never hit her, connected anyway, he often shouted, slammed things, threw things, at me, even, when he encountered resistance (reason) when espousing his conservative views.

My father doesn’t believe Global Warming is real, or caused by us in any way (absolving himself of conserving resources).

My father believes all non-believers, atheists and agnostics are dangerous fools—to be converted.

My father distrusts all Muslims.

My father believes in trickle down economics, (though it’s been proven again and again not to work).

My father doesn’t believe in gun control. “If they come for me, like they did our ancestors in Germany, I’ll stop them at the door.” He quotes the NRA with fervor! “Take away what kind of guns we get to own, and you chip away at the foundation of the 2nd Amendment.”

I remind him he can’t stop a tank with an AK-47. I implore him to examine history, and context—that the right to bear arms our forefathers were talking about were pistols and shotguns that took three minutes to load and didn’t fire straight or would blow up in your face. Automatic assault weapons were neither considered, nor anticipated when the 2nd Amendment was written.

He scoffs. As his daughter, and a women, I am clueless.

As a mother of a 10 year old and a 13 year old, I am horrified, not only by what happened at Sandy Hook Elementary, and other schools since this first writing, but everywhere else, every time an assault weapon is uses against our own because the NRA wants to keep making money. And our government, ostensibly “by the people, for the people,” is paid-off to let them. At least, one very specific part of our congress, and five members of our Supreme Court: the Republicans.

Grew up on the Valley side of the Hollywood Hills, and went to school with writers, producers, directors kids, all fairly to extremely liberal. My father was the outlier in our neighborhood, and among my parents colleagues and friends. The Great Divide between the Republicans and Democrats, fueled by Regan pushing religion, conservatism, and then ignited by Bush Jr’s administration didn’t exist yet. My parents lived together in relative peace, except around election times.

We have become a polarized nation, and this serves no one here. Down to the personal level, it has divided me from my family, my siblings, like my father—fervent Republicans. My sister, disgusted we’re raising our kids without religion, decided she’d had enough of my liberal leanings and checked out of our life. My brother forwards emails from his born-again Christian community to everyone he knows that Obama is a Jew-hating Muslim who believes it’s okay to kill babies. His ignorance is only compounded by his blind faith.

The chasm in our morality, our philosophies, is so diametrically opposed at this point, the rare times I talk with my father our dialog turn sours quickly, then invariably moves to contentious. Told him time and again I won’t discuss politics with him, but he insists on little digs, like, “Do you care about your kids?” since I voted for Obama. He has not spoken with my children in seven years now, or acknowledged them in any way, not birthdays, no calls, ever, and virtually never inquires about them when I call him, which I always do because he doesn’t call me.

Truth is, it’s getting harder and harder to call him. Almost a decade after my mom’s death, my dad is now in an elder care facility two states away, on the bottom floor of a three story building where the first floor is elderly who are…capable. Second floor is the dementia ward. Third floor is check out. Forever.

Living as he does must be nightmarish, especially compared to the vital life he once lived, where his vote and opinion mattered for years to come, instead of being barely acknowledged, and only for elections.

Regardless of his current circumstances, my father is undaunted by age or illness in his quest to spread conservative ideology. He’s a true believer, as are most vocal Republicans, because believing is easier than thinking. Being told what is right and wrong, good or bad, is simpler than considering the complexities of our behavior, and our obligations to each other and the world we inhabit.

My father, sister and brother believe woman should not have the right of choice with their own bodies.

My family believes gays should not have the legal, nor moral right to marry. They think homosexuality is a mental illness.

My family espouses they believe in “less government”—preaching the Republican’s canonical tagline, but wants to restrict women’s choice and limit our birth control resources; control who gets to marry; limits medical treatment to citizens who can afford care; allows corporations, like the NRA to lie, cheat, steal, and allow the mass murder of our children, for more and more money.

Been wondering when it’s time to say good-bye to family, even before they die. The little connection I retain with my brother and father seems…over. My kids have no relationship with either—their choice to abandon my family, not ours. We have virtually no common ground, share little time that isn’t contentious, and only via email or text. So, really, what’s the point? We clearly don’t serve each other in any way, anymore. Harsh? You bet. Ugly? Yeah. Profoundly saddened we’ve come to this impasse. Hurts. A lot, knowing there are people out there who still think like my family does. And I’m shamed by them.

The polarization of our nation doesn’t only affect our government’s inability to function, but, sadly, trickles down to corrupt our trust in each other as well. Our nation is fundamentally fractured now. Our polarized ideologies are destroying friendships, and families, like never before, or perhaps akin to the Civil War.

 

 

The Return of Hitler

Posted on by jcafesin

My mom kept telling me, “They’re coming back. Make no mistake about it. Doesn’t matter what you THINK you are, they are coming back for you. You are a JEW.

I’m not. I’m an atheist. At 5, I told her so, thus putting a divisor between us that went unresolved, even with our last goodbye, when she died of lymphoma 14 years ago.

Thing is, she turned out to be right.

Not about coming back. In my family, then, and now, the Nazi’s never left.

They were with us all the years I was growing up, with my mother’s constant warnings. Her fear was warranted. She’d lived through WW2, saw the rise of fascism allow the murders of 6 million of her family and faith. She was old enough to witness Hitler’s speeches ignite the ignorant German underclass to hate, and blame everyone but themselves for their poverty. She saw the world forever changed by our ability to destroy it, with the advent of the atomic bomb.

I didn’t feel afraid the Nazi’s would return. I argued, “We’ve learned, mom. That’s the best thing about us. When we’re standing on the precipices of disaster, we DO change!”

I was so confident in our uniquely human ability to ‘rise above’ ourselves and our misfortunes, I married the son of a Holocaust survivor. My father-in-law was 13 when his family was forcibly removed from their suburban home in Poland, and imprisoned in the Warsaw ghetto. He was there for eight months when his father, mother, and two younger sisters were murdered in front of him, and he was put on a train to Auschwitz. A prisoner for five years, his teens were spent as a slave, watching people murdered, and committing suicide daily, until the concentration camp was ‘liberated’ by the Soviets in 1945.

My father-in-law came to the States as an immigrant several years later. He settled in New Jersey, close to his remaining family reunited after the WW2, started his own business, and then married. My husband was born a year later, his sister, three years on that.

The kids knew vaguely of their father’s plight. Each was given a brief explanation when they awoke, frightened by the “horrific screams,” of their dad’s nightmares. As my husband described it, “My dad talked about when he was “in camp,” and I had a problem with that, as I had gone to summer camp, and I knew that this was not the same thing.”

My husband was in his last year of college when my sister-in-law gathered her family, and recorded their father’s experience in Auschwitz for a history assignment. The ‘kids’ were both adults when they discover the details of their father’s youth, during this singular interview. They never spoke of it again.

The Holocaust was not discussed in my husband’s household. Growing up, he didn’t dare drill down on the details, though his father’s nightmares woke him many late nights during his formative years. His father’s screaming frightened him, especially as he grew, studied the Holocaust in school, and learned, even in the abstract, what may have happened to his dad. His parents had made it clear by their silence— in almost all things of relevance— they were not open to discuss virtually anything beyond the day-to-day logistics of living.

My father-in-law learned young that the only way to survive was to avoid conflict at all costs. His wife, my-mother-in-law, having experienced her own traumatic youth, had adopted the same position on the safety of stoic silence, likely long before they met and married. Over 50 years together before he passed, they did not discuss their life experiences with their children, or with each other. Neither went to counseling, ever. They ran a small business, raised their kids in their loving, yet separate way, never really letting anyone in, too afraid to get intimate.

Understandable, with where they came from. But, oh, so very costly.

Feelings don’t just GO AWAY when we don’t talk about them. More often than not, when buried— hurt, frustration, sadness, fear will resurface, and manifest as unwarranted aggression, especially towards the people we love, since it’s likely they’ll still love us, regardless of the slight.

These powerful feelings of anger and fear, buried deep in my mother and father-in-law, prevented them from validating their children’s feelings, forcing their kids to bury their own feelings under the suffocating weight of shame associated with having any. For the 20+ years I’ve known her, my husband’s sister won’t watch a sad movie, read a sad book, and has never admitted to feeling sad, even through her son’s ADHD hardships, or during her very contentious divorce.

Hitler is still powerful, present, and residing in our house, the hate he ignited still reverberating almost a century— three generations later, embodied in my husband every time he shuts down to avoid conflict, dismisses or ignores his feelings, or mine, or our kids, as his parents taught him to do. The fear the Nazi’s instilled in so many has been passed through the generations like a genetic disease.

My mother carried this fear with her to her grave. As a matter of course, she made me afraid, of all people— our ability to abandon our humanity, and turn our backs on neighbors we once held dear, in response to fear. I got lucky, though. My mom felt passionately about so much, and shamelessly displayed feelings of joy, anger, fear, and sadness at times, gifting me the opportunity to acknowledge and express mine.

My husband works hard to connect with me, and our kids, continually battling his pervasive feelings of isolation, separation, and auto-response of self-protection, well known among the ‘Survivor’ community. In moments, when he wins the war with himself and surrenders with me, we touch intimacy. And in those moments, which, gladly, are more and more these days, we stop Hitler’s legacy at our doorstep.

 

 

 

 

 

One of My Son’s College Essays

Posted on by jcafesin

ONE of 7 college essays my son wrote:

6. Describe your favorite academic subject and explain how it has influenced you.
When I was younger, I never understood why history was important. I thought studying history was a waste of time, as it did not relate to my life, the one that I was living in the present.

Then my grandfather died. I was in 6th grade, a freshman in middle school, when I stood at the podium in the temple and spoke of the few times we shared, to the handful of attendees at his funeral. Hours later, at my grandfather’s home of fifty years, I learned of his amazing history.

My grandfather was a holocaust survivor. A resident of Poland during the 1939 German invasion, my grandfather was 13 years old when his family was taken from their home and imprisoned in the Lodz ghetto for six months. He then was taken from his father, mother, and two sisters, and put on a train to Auschwitz, where he spent the next five years, forcibly working for the Nazi’s. He never saw his family again. My grandfather spent his formative teen years in hell, until he was liberated by the Russians in 1945, at 18 years old.

His story was so shocking, it profoundly frightened me. It was then that I became fascinated with WW2. Suddenly, I craved history, the knowledge to understand what led people to turn a blind eye to their neighbors’ being murdered and imprisoned for their beliefs, and sometimes for no reason at all. I study history with passionate interest because I now understand the stories before mine matter to my life. Had my grandfather succumbed to his situation and thrown himself against the electric fences, as he’d seen others do daily, I wouldn’t be here, writing this essay to you today. Even more important than me being here, is that we continue to study history, take the lessons from the past and apply them forward to make sure holocausts, anywhere, never happen again.

auschwitz4