I had this nice long

I had this nice long post all typed out, and blogger ate it. So sad. Gone forever.

yesterday, i thought i'd seen it all

i thought i'd climbed the highest wall

now I see the learning never ends

and all i know to do is keep on walking

walking round the bend, saying

somewhere down the road

there'll be answers to the questions

somewhere down the road

though we cannot see it now

somewhere down the road

you will find mighty arms reaching for you

and they will hold the answers at the end of the road.

Amy Grant, "Somewhere down the road"

I watched Cannonball Run last night, because it was missing from MSN's list of top 10 car movies. One of the teams in Cannonball Run is supposed to be a Japanese Team, driving a computer-assisted Subaru. We're supposed to believe that Jackie Chan and Michael Hui are Japanese. It's quite an impossible task for me when they speak Cantonese the entire time. This movie was made in 1982. Twenty years ago, we had actors portraying an ethnicity that was not their own. This practice still exists today (see Die Another Day for Chinese actors being Koreans), but at least today they either dub in a native speaker or they try to fake being a native speaker. I guess that's just Hollywood for you. I guess if they can make Schwartznegger American for so many of his action flicks, it's not that hard to turn a Chinese guy into a Korean guy, but ... at the same time, I kind of get the feeling that sort of thing is holding us back by continuing the belief that all Asians look the same. At least we're not having Americans put on eyebrows and squint anymore, so I guess that's some progress.

I'm too American to be Chinese, and too Chinese to be American. And of course, my face is distinctly Chinese. It's not easy being an Asian-American man in this country -- you're never truly accepted, since people fear what is different, and we wear our differences on the outside. Media has this wonderful portrayal of Asian-American men too, as convenience store clerks, martial artists, or Pacific Rim gangsters. Media colors perception, not just of those not of that ethnicity, but those of that ethnicity as well. It makes me really angry when I see something like that. I said last year when the Oscars came around that it'll be at least 20 years before an Asian man get best supporting actor, and probably 30 years before best actor. Why? Because the opportunities and the roles aren't there.

Since it is Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday today, I re-read his "I Have a Dream" speech. 40 years ago, he made that speech, making a big difference in the lives of many with those words. I grew up in the post-King world, which isn't as racially diverse as it is now (I had two Asian classmates, one Hispanic classmate and two African-American classmates through elementary school). Although Dr. King's speech was targeted at the African- American community, these days, we've extended the feelings behind his speech to anyone of any ethnicity.

When I was growing up, I got picked on and bullied because of two things -- I was small, and I wasn't white like them. I learned to fight, and I learned the best way to end a fight is quickly. If you can hurt them fast, then they give up very quickly, but you also have to hurt them enough that they won't try it again anytime soon. I was just a child then, and back then everything seemed to be a fight for survival. Instead of fighting on the playground, it's just moved from the streets into the boardrooms and into the political offices. The Office of Homeland Security scares me. America has been this welcoming place for generations, but slowly, we shut our doors, in the name of safety, in the name of anti-terrorism, in the name of security. We take away the rights of people who have a certain look, a certain name, a certain accent. The worst part of this of course, is we can't fight it, since the battlefield is in a place we don't have access to.

We've still got a lot to do to make Dr. King's dream a reality. We were moving in the right direction, but the current administration has set us back a few notches. Dr. King's dream will probably not happen in my lifetime. The children of my generations' children will grow up in a more diverse environment, and slowly, racial prejudice will fade away. But it takes time, and it takes parents who are not afraid of diversity. The dream still lives on, in our hearts, in our minds, in our lives, in our prayers, and in our children's lives.