A co-worker informs me that a Santa Ana elementary school teacher has been charged with child endangerment for keeping a gun in her classroom.

“Well, that’s Santa Ana,” I say. “What do you expect from people? Not a day goes by that you can’t pick up an Orange County Register and read about a gang-related slaying in Santa Ana. If I were a teacher in Santa Ana, you best believe I’d be packing heat too. Thank god this kind of thing doesn’t happen in Irvine where I live.”

“There are Asian gangs in Irvine.”

“Asian gangs in Irvine?! What a racist you are. I’ve lived in Irvine for seven years and I’ve never seen or heard of any Asian gang activity. Unless studying for AP exams counts as a gang activity. Blowing their brains out with mathematical formulas . . .”

My son and I are watching a Citibank commercial in which a woman in Japan drops her son off for his first day of school.

As his mom starts to walk away, the boy looks back anxiously . . .

“What’s the Asian kid nervous about?” my son says. “He’s going to get better grades than the rest of the kids anyway. Oh wait, all the other kids are Asian too. Ouch.”

From an American Cancer Society email:

While minorities have made great social strides in the United States in recent decades, many still experience disproportionately higher incidences of disease — especially cancer. The American Cancer Society is working to eliminate cancer disparities among minority populations and the medically underserved, a fact underscored by National Multicultural Cancer Awareness Week, which is April 15-21, 2007.

Sounds like more white people need to get cancer . . .

My son’s going to Washington, DC, next week with a group from his junior high school. Once there, they’ll hook up with a group from Martin Luther King High School for a 5 day, 4 night Discover DC educational tour.

Despite the name, MLK High School is not a predominantly black school, a big disappointment to my kid, who was looking forward to his travel companions “breaking out the cardboard mats and spinning on their heads.”

I Have a Dream, indeed!

My son had an Irvine honor band concert last night. Along with the junior high group that he’s in, there were groups from the elementary and high schools.

I was looking through the program to see if any of his junior high friends had brothers or sisters in the other groups. That turned out to be an impossible mission.

To explain why, I’m going to plop my finger down at a random spot in the program and read off a list of the kids’ last names.

OK, here we go — Kim, Lin, Chang, Kim, Chang, Kim, Yang, Choi, Chiang, Chen, Tang, Huang, Lee, Tran, Lin, Lee, Yang, Lin, Yi, Oh, Krolewski (Krolewski! “He’s a white boy,” my son explains.) Kim, Song, Chen, Yang, Lin, Kim, Thomas, Tran, Chung, Chan, Lee . . .

When I was in school, it was a first-day ritual for the teachers to read through the roll call, recognize last names, and say things like, “Epps. Do you have a sister named M–?”

That’s a thing of the past obviously, at least in my neighborhood . . .

As in the previous example, these photos are from the same photoset on Flickr:

What could be worse than being an Asian woman in Asia and having to surrender your mystical Oriental hotness to Asian men? In no other race — white, black, Hispanic — are the women so much better-looking than the men.

Now you might say: What about Indian or Middle Eastern men? Aren’t they uglier than Asian men?

Possibly — but my point is that their women are incredibly ugly as well, so it’s a good match.

My wife’s cousin, also an Asian girl, agrees with my theory, but adds something I hadn’t thought of: Asian guys are boring, she says, because they’re all the same. They all have the same story, same parents, same college major (engineering or business), same, same, same . . .

NEWPORT BEACH — Two Los Angeles residents believed to be a father and a daughter were arrested early today near John Wayne Airport on suspicion of burglarizing four local businesses, authorities said.

Donald Perkins, 48, and Kenesha Perkins, 28, were pulled over for speeding at about 3:15 a.m. near Dove Street and Newport Place Drive, said Sgt. Evan Sailor of the Newport Beach Police Department.

— Orange County Register

Kenesha Perkins is a lucky girl . . . most black fathers are not actively involved in their children’s activities like this . . .

My son’s junior high school is having a co-ed pickleball tournament at lunch. The results are posted on the school web site. The funny thing is that if a team name contains any sort of cultural reference, the P.E. teacher in charge of the tournament either can’t or won’t put the name on the web site without a deliberate misspelling.

For example, 3 White Guys and a Hindu becomes 3 Wite Gus and a Hidu, because identifying someone as white, male or Hindu is unacceptable.

Curiously enough, the team name 3 Blondes and a Brunette comes through unscathed. Why are people allowed to self-identify as blondes, but not as white guys or Hindus? It seems like the same thing to me.

The weirdest one to me is 4 Asians and an Idiot, which comes out as 4 Ans and an Idiot.

I ask my son, “Who’s the idiot?”

“Some white guy,” he says.

“Why is it okay to call someone an idiot but not an Asian?”

“It’s not racial.”

“This is racist,” my son says.

I look over to see what he’s talking about. He’s sitting on the sofa doing math homework.

“What’s racist?” I ask. “The math book?”

“Yeah. They have answers in the back for problem 9 and problem 13, but not problem 11. Because I’m a Mexican.”

“You’re a Mexican?!“

“I’m a mixed kid,” he corrects me. His mom is Asian.

“You think the white kids’ book has the answer to number 11?”

“Yup. The Asian kids’ book has got all the answers.”

“Dude, check this out. Jackson collected s seashells. Petra and Tyrone collected 13 less than twice s. Now here’s the stupid part: I have to figure out how many seashells each person collected! COME ON! And the racist book doesn’t have the answers!”

All I can think of to say is, “Jackson’s pretty lame if a girl collected more than he did.”

“He’s pathetic!“

From a corporate diversity report:

The issue of having less diversity in the management ranks than in the aggregate among the workforce is faced by virtually every company in America and is one for which we do not have a ready answer.

You don’t have a ready answer? I’ll give you one: From a management perspective, diversity, like outsourcing, is best implemented on some other sucker’s job.

Irvine police are investigating a possible hate crime that occurred early Saturday morning in the gated Turtle Ridge community.

Officers arrived around 6:10 a.m. and discovered a car parked on Rose Trellis had been painted with race-related graffiti.

The car belongs to an African-American family that lives there.

— Orange County Register

Now that’s a shocking piece of news. You mean to say there are black people living in Irvine?!

A manager says to one of the programmers, “You are the whitest Mexican I’ve ever seen. You need to get out and mow some more lawns.”

These are from the same photo set on Flickr, taken at a local beach here in Orange County:

Any questions?

See Also: Why Asian Girls Like White Guys II

I’m looking over this flyer for a church group meeting that my son’s going to next week. It’s being held at a member’s house in a gated community, so the flyer has directions, as well as an entry code for the security gate.

“Jesus wouldn’t like gated communities,” I say. “He was very welcoming to all people. This is racist. They’re trying to keep out blacks and Mexicans.”

Continue reading Why God Builds Gated Communities

Clarence Thomas is back in the news . . .

During a recent Meet the Press appearance, Harry Reid, the Senate minority leader, questioned Thomas’ competence as a Supreme Court justice and was subsequently accused of racism, which is pretty much guaranteed to happen if you say anything critical of a black man, woman or child.

Continue reading Clarence Thomas, Judicial Nincompoop

MILWAUKEE — A radio talk show host drew criticism Thursday after calling Condoleezza Rice an “Aunt Jemima” and saying she isn’t competent to be secretary of state.

— Radio Host Calls Rice ‘Aunt Jemima’

The host, who is white, also called Colin Powell an “Uncle Tom.”

He added that he has a long history of commitment to civil rights and support of the black community.

Continue reading Redefining Race

The Black Coaches Association (BCA) is about to issue grades to colleges and universities on their minority hiring practices:

The BCA asked each of the 28 schools that had job openings during the past year to complete a form that was analyzed by an outside firm. Any school that does not complete a form receives an F.

At USC, our traditional football rivalries are with UCLA and Notre Dame. Both of these schools have black head coaches and we kick their tails every year.

Last year’s scores:

USC 47, UCLA 22
USC 45, Notre Dame 14

More black head coaches!

Fight On!

The Globe and Mail reports that a “small but determined group of computer geeks [is] trying to translate open-source software into African languages, in an effort to reach the continent most isolated by the digital divide.”

Continue reading Into the Digital Abyss

It’s not what you say, it’s how you say it . . .

Continue reading Two Short Arguments For Affirmative Action

Racial Gaps

On average, black students who graduate from high school are equipped with the skills the average white student mastered by the eighth grade, according to federal tests.

— “Equal access to schools fails to equalize education,” USA Today

Blah blah blah . . .

Continue reading HW Solves Two of the Thorniest Problems in American Education