Heads up: This post is 17 years old. My thinking may have evolved since then — read it with that in mind.
Been watching it on TV this morning, everybody is in such joyous mood for this historic moment. I have to admit, when I first moved to Seattle 18 years ago, I was taken aback by how behind the times the USA was in comparison to Hong Kong. Also, I didn’t have any interactions with the African Americans here because there simply weren’t too many of them where I lived. (Issaquah Washington was predominantly White.) Basically, everything I know about the Black population was from the news and media, so it was natural that I didn’t hold a very high opinion about them. This continued all the way through college and even to the time I worked at Microsoft, where all my colleagues were either White or Asians. It really wasn’t until I moved to New York and started working at Yahoo! that I finally got to interact closely with Blacks and Hispanics. Now, 2 of my best friends whom I would always visit when I go back to NYC are Black and Hispanic. Recently, I can still hear from my relatives living in the US, racist comments toward our new President due to the color of his skin. This surprises me now, but I guess it really shouldn’t be too surprising… I suppose if I had stayed in Seattle forever, I may still have a low opinion of Black people. (When I say my relatives though, I’m talking about the older generation who have been living here for a while but haven’t really mixed in with the general public due to language barrier.) I’ve also met a guy who moved from HK to NY for a year of work, he had only just moved to NY when we went out for dinner and he said it straight out that he didn’t like Black people. LOL… I don’t blame him as he had just moved there from HK, but I wonder how he feels about our new President… In a lot of ways, the USA is really very conservative and “behind the times”, I think the world had a false sense of “the land of the free” before, but finally gotten a real taste of it through the last 8 years of hell thanks to George W. Bush. I think many of us feel the same as I, that we haven’t felt proud to be American for a long looong time. Personally, I’ve never been so proud as an American! I’ve been proud to be Chinese American, a proud Yahoo employee, proud to be a local New Yorker… but never just a plain ol’ American. 18 years, first time! A new era! Let’s hope this will teach everyone in America to be more open and tolerant of other people… … Now, if we can just get rid of all the conservatives in the country! (LOL! Joke)