CHOKING ON APPLE PIE

Sometimes there are conversations that you know are worthwhile, but you avoid having them. Because they could be personally uncomfortable. My apartment mate is Chinese American (born and raised in San Francisco, her daddy was Chinese from Texas), my landlord is too, as are the staff at the clinic where my regular care physician works, and also my cardiologist.
I am Caucasian. My first American ancestors arrived here in 1630.

Though there may be a native American in the woodpile, I am so white I glow in the dark. You can read fine print by the pallid glow.


"How has (the recent increase in) racism toward Asian Americans affected you?"


Yeah, not going to ask that question. Reason being that increased internet chatter, and recent news articles, rather answer that too well. San Francisco and the Bay Area are becoming worse. And I would rather stick my head in the sand.

Other than the elderly Chinese woman from Jakarta in one of the downstairs apartments, every "Chinese" resident in this building was born here, and speaks worse Chinese than I do. Or even barely any. American English is their native language. One of them has a fixation on finding the most buttery pastries, my apartment mate eats far more cheese than I, and the only other person here with childhood exposure to sambal is, naturally, the lady from Jakarta.

That is probably not too unlike the rest of the street.

And the immediate neighborhood.


I won't ask the staff at the clinic, the bakeries and grocery stores where I shop, or any of the other people I know, that question either. In Chinese or English. Or Dutch, for the folks from Suriname at a Chinatown grocery store, and the elderly couple who live a few blocks away.

I will note, however, that more of this country has become off limits in the past four years than ever before, especially in the past year. Most of the South, all of Texas and the Midwest, all of the mountain states, and almost anywhere outside the coastal urban crust.
I do not need to see "the real America". They've visited California.
And, thanks to the internet, we know how they think.
Karen, My Pillow Guy, and Trump.




==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================