Category Archives: Conflict

One dimensional

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I think I’m pretty much done making friends at work. Work is for work, and that’s all it will be. This one guy I’ve been talking with over the last year — he’s basically only interested in talking to me about two things: 1) food (where to eat and what to eat) and 2) his terrible dating life. Any time I’ve tried to divert the conversation into anything outside of these two topics, it hasn’t been met well. I asked him about his thoughts around the election. Since Trump won, he said, he hasn’t been reading the news at all; he just refuses and doesn’t want to have anything to do with it. “When I don’t like something, I just ignore it and shut down,” he said. “I’m a complete loser. I just don’t care. I can’t stomach it.”

You’re a brown person in America and you don’t care about the future that a Trump presidency can create? You’re right. You are a complete loser as you’ve called yourself. That lack of care is what got Trump into the White House. I cannot stand apathy when it comes to important issues like this.

I’m not recommending any more restaurants to this guy, nor will I listen to pathetic stories of his sad dating life. It’s no wonder to me he’s having such a miserable time dating because he doesn’t have balls to make the first move. He is happy to sit there and complain when a woman doesn’t give “clear signals” about what she wants, but he doesn’t want to help the world tomorrow.

Thanksgiving gatherings at a difficult time

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Since the election, I’ve heard so many stories from colleagues regarding their Thanksgiving plans. A lot of their plans or their friends’/partners’ plans are being revised because they do not want to spend them with their families for Thanksgiving. These are people who come from politically divided families where they don’t believe the same things as the majority of their families do, and they know if they go home, the topic of the election will come up, and they will get attacked.

I honestly don’t know when it became the “right” thing to do to support a presidential candidate with no actual policies and who is constantly spewing lies, but like so many news commentators have been saying lately, we now live in a world where facts no longer matter to the average American – we’re so smart. Well, “lies” only matter in this case when we are scrutinizing a woman, since as during biblical times, Eve was supposedly responsible for conning Adam. In this world we live in now, we have to penalize dishonesty in women but admire it in men. Oh, progress.

I’m saddened to hear the news of these families, though. I really am. People are cancelling plane and train trips and just not spending family holidays with families. “It’s not that I cannot disagree,” my colleague said to me, nearly in tears while we caught up during our one-on-one. “It’s that they don’t even want to listen to anything I have to say and immediately say I am stupid and I am supporting a crook. They won’t even listen!” I jokingly asked if she was referring to Trump as a crook (since that’s what he is), and she laughed in response.

I mentioned this during our early Thanksgiving meal at home this past weekend, and my friend’s boyfriend said he thought it was so “lame” (I guess it’s easy to say that when you have no connection to your family at all and your parents are dead, though). I don’t think it is at all. If you fundamentally have different opinions from the family and “friends” you think you are closest to and love most, how can you actually “look forward” to spending time together? In your heart of hearts, if you believe that Asians or Muslims or brown-skinned or black-skinned people are lesser than white people, if you believe that women are inherently less intelligent and capable than men, if you believe that your heterosexual identity gives you the right to oppress the lives of people who do not identify as you do, then I don’t believe that we can have a functional relationship. I mean, I already struggle with this in my own family: my uncle thinks all the black people getting shot and killed by police officers are better off dead than alive, that the “Black Lives Matter” movement is ridiculous and anti-police. “The world can always use one less thug,” he said. I was so shocked when he said this to me over dinner one night that I didn’t even respond and changed the subject. Then, there’s my parents, who basically think everyone who is not white or Chinese is bad in some way. My mom blamed the recession in 2008 and my 2009 layoff on “that black president.” Funny how she forgot that the recession actually happened during a white man’s presidency, but she, like so many other people, forget the things they want to forget and only remember what they want to remember that is convenient for their deluded story.

It’s hard to have political debates with people who don’t want to listen just as my colleague said. But when I say “listen,” I mean actually listen to people who have substantive arguments and views, not ideas that are based on lies like “Obama was born in Kenya” or racist desires like “America would be better off with less black people.” I think I’ve spent enough time “listening” to those people.

Gullible

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So, I just spent the last couple of days pondering how stupid people can be to believe headlines and articles like the ones I posted about yesterday. Now, I’m finding out that my parents are the ones who actually believe these things.

Granted, I had a feeling my dad may not have been on the Hillary band wagon in this election, but I also knew he thought Trump was “insane” as he said himself this past September. Why did I have this feeling? Well, when he was taking a break from his computer when I was home in September, I saw several open tabs on his web browser that had the label “Killary.” Gee, I wonder what positive things those videos were discussing and factually reporting.

Today, my mom says to me on the phone: “You know, if you want to know why Hillary didn’t win the election, I’m sure if you go on the internet or YouTube, you can find out all the awful things she has done.” She goes on to insinuate that the Clintons have murdered hundreds of people.

I insisted to her that she cannot believe everything she reads, and it’s important to have sources when citing things. I don’t know why I even bothered saying this to my mother, who has no idea what that statement even means. She got frustrated and said I don’t believe these bad things about her because I lack wisdom (yep), and it’s not like the government does anything for her, anyway, so why should she care about them?

I told her that if she really felt that way, that she gets zero benefit out of the government, maybe she should just leave this country. I mean, hey, the government doesn’t do anything for her here, right, doesn’t provide her Medicare, doesn’t give her social security benefits that she is happy to collect every single month until she dies, didn’t enforce her disability payments all those years? The government also didn’t give her two children free education from preschool through 12th grade, right? If I recall correctly, she had zero years of formal schooling in Vietnam, and if she did have it, her mother would have had to pay for it. And because my maternal grandmother was cheap and sexist, she refused to send my mom to school.

Sometimes, it’s like my mother has completely forgotten what she fled to come here for, and now, she’s just one of these same ungrateful Americans who thinks that government is all bad and doesn’t benefit people like her. She didn’t respond very well to what I said, but I don’t really care. She really shouldn’t try to act like she can have a conversation about politics when she knows zero about our political system or any political system for that matter.

Biased news.. and fake news

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Someone suggested in my Facebook feed that in order to get more “balanced” news and see things that I may not agree with, I should start “Liking” and joining Facebook groups that are for the opposite political party. I tried this today, and I didn’t even last a full 24 hours before I had to UN-like and leave all these groups.

This is a sampling of what I saw in my feed:

REPORT: Hillary Clinton Became PHYSICALLY VIOLENT on Election Night and Tore Into Robby Mook and John Podesta

Michelle Obama was born a man (video explaining that her real name was Michael Robinson at birth on YouTube)

AWFUL! Videos Show Hillary Clinton Supporters Attacking Homeless Black Woman Guarding Trump Hollywood Star

I need a break from all media — perhaps for the next four years.

This makes me very sad to think that people actually believe the above headlines — they think the ACTUAL facts are made up by biased liberal news sources. We say the same about them, so why can’t they say the same about us? Back in 2008 when Obama was running for president and won, people burned American flags, saying he was not their president. They believed the lies that awful and factually incorrect media sources kept spouting, like the “facts” that he was born in Kenya, that he was Muslim, and that he had Muslim extremist ties. In today’s situation with Trump’s win, he actually said all the racist things that have been replayed across both left and right-leaning media sources all along. How are the things right out of his mouth not “facts,” yet Barack Obama being a Kenyan born Muslim extremist and Michelle Obama a male ape “facts”?

Changing times

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Every day, the world is changing. Today, people like my parents are resisting owning smart phones (my uncle did until earlier this year when he purchased his iPhone 6 Plus, and my aunt, the most antiquated person on earth, in her whiny tone yelled at him and said, “You said you’d never get a smart phone! Now you have a smart phone! You’ve sold out!”). Last spring, I was resisting downloading the Snapchat app (I finally downloaded it in June). During the rise of the internet, many households refused to buy a computer and thought e-mail was the rudest and most impersonal form of communication possible. After reading Jeannette Walls’s memoir The Glass Castle a couple of weeks ago, I decided to start reading her follow-up semi-fiction novel Half Broke Horses about her grandmother, who grew up during the 1910s and 1920s. Her parents resisted buying an automobile, saying that these freaks going around in cars would go nowhere, that automobiles were just a fad that would soon die out, that they would be putting innocent people selling horses out of business. Yes, those were real economic problems to consider for families who sold horses and carriages as a means of transportation. But where do we draw the line at resisting change and progress and giving in to it?

It’s one thing to resist a smart phone or an app because you don’t want to “get with the times.” You’re not oppressing someone’s life by doing this. It’s another to actively fight against things like the right to an abortion over 43 years after it was supposed to have been fully made legal due to the Supreme Court Roe V. Wade decision. It’s different to not accept the fact that all people regardless of color or sex should be equal, to call innocent public servants like Michelle Obama an “ape in heels” the way this West Virginia mayor did over Twitter. In other words, this mayor wanted a black First Lady out because she saw her as a disgusting animal, and she wanted a “refreshing” white woman back in the seat of the First Lady of the United States – Melania Trump. And then to outright deny the fact that there was any racist connotation is to live in a world without seeing clearly, to be blind to your own subconscious or conscious prejudices. Oh, and we can’t forget about this jerk Dan Johnson who just won his Kentucky state legislative seat in spite of the fact that he depicted both the Obamas as chimpanzees in some hate-filled commercials for his campaign. He also denied he was racist and that his imagery had anything to do with race. It’s really amazing that you can use such blatantly racist images and then deny that they are racist at all. Only an ignorant white person would do that who has never experienced any racism in his life.

As someone who has lived one either the West or the East Coast all her life, I have often been accused either in person or via articles I’ve read of living in a blue “bubble,” of not being aware of what people in rural middle America are facing. I’ve been accused of being a “Coastal elite” who thinks she is better than those who live in the middle of America, in the South, or in the rust belt. But this is my response to that: On the coasts, you’d never have someone bigoted like that WV mayor or Dan Johnson be openly racist and win an election because we don’t tolerate blatant racism here. I do not accept the idea that if you are a racist or sexist person that you are a “good” person. Maybe the people who get mad at individuals like me who live on the coasts should face the fact that America is changing very quickly, and we’re a melting pot that is supposed to be accepting of all people of all colors, ethnicities, nationalities, and genders, and just because they aren’t white, that doesn’t make them dangerous or lesser as a human being than you. Maybe they need to expose themselves to people who look different than them. They should accept the progress that is being made where America is not just all white people who accept dated gender roles and stereotypes, that not all career women are anti-family, that people who accept gay marriage don’t necessarily want “everyone else” to be gay.

It is so hard to accept change in society, isn’t it.

Election results with mom

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Sometimes, I really don’t know why I bother. Maybe it’s because I wish sometimes that I could actually have intelligent, intellectually stimulating conversations with my uneducated parents (yes, and as my good friend’s proud-working-class-wannabe-hipster boyfriend who is 48 years old just pointed out to me, “And with that, you just lost the blue collar vote.” Well, fuck you, too. Now I need to apologize for being educated and understanding how to differentiate facts from fiction?!). We just cannot have an intelligent argument. It’s never going to happen, ever. But this is what happened on Friday night over the phone:

Mom: Are there riots going on in New York?

Me (playing dumb): Why would there be riots? What are you talking about?

Mom: Well, because that white man won the election and Hillary lost. There are riots happening all over San Francisco. So dangerous.

Me: That “white man” – you mean Donald Trump?

Mom: Yeah, him.

Me: Well, can you blame them for being angry? Now, we have a racist, sexist, bigoted fascist running this country with no experience at all.

Mom: Did you vote for Hillary?

Me: Yes, because I’m not stupid.

Mom: I don’t know why you are so upset. What has Hillary ever done for you? Has she ever put a roof over your head or put food on the table for you? What has she done?

Me: That’s the stupidest thing you’ve ever said. WHEN HAS TRUMP PUT FOOD ON MY TABLE OR GIVEN ME A PLACE TO LIVE?!

Mom: Okay, okay. I don’t want to talk about this anymore – there’s no point in arguing about this.

(She also made sure to add somewhere in this ridiculous conversation while laughing: “Well, he couldn’t be all bad. Otherwise, why would so many people have voted for him?” Ummm, millions of people think that people of color are inherently less intelligent than white anglo-saxons, and that women are innately inferior to men — does that make it right?!!!!).

There’s no point in explaining that Hillary as a woman would be a symbol of change and progression for our backwards country. I’m 30 years old; I still have not seen a female commander in chief of this stupid country. There’s no point in telling her that many of the policies that Hillary has advocated for have very likely benefited my mom either directly or indirectly. She could never understand that.

And as Chris aptly pointed out, “Hehe, now your mother is jealous of Hillary. That is hilarious.”

 

Hello, reality.

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On the night of Tuesday, November 8, 2016, the United States of America decided that they wanted change. Somehow, we decided that Donald J. Trump could bring that change. And then the next morning, I woke up to the official news after hours and hours of seeing too many states that were “too close to call,” and I sobbed. Trump Nation is now our reality.
The day after was when the country exploded with white supremacy marches on streets and schools across America. The racial slurs, fights, and attacks I have read about have been endless in the last two days in towns and cities everywhere, whether in the rust belt or in the blue bubbles of San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York. And all I could think to myself is, is this how America wants to respond to the eight years of Barack Obama, the first black president of the United States, by insulting his intelligence, contribution, and grace by electing a childish, politically inexperienced bigot into the White House who has no family values and believes women are merely objects to ogle and raise children at home? This is a man who is so naive and short sighted that he actually believes the main problem around illegal immigration is because of the “lack of borders” between the U.S. and Mexico, and to solve that, he wants to build a wall and have Mexico pay for it? If you want to stop illegal immigration into this country, then you should try to propose stopping all air traffic into this country, and then see how the entire world will react to that!

I’m taking this very personally as someone who is not only a woman, but a woman of color who is married to a brown immigrant who has no right to vote without U.S. citizenship (who wants to voluntarily be tied to the IRS for the rest of their life? Like they say, there are only two certain things in life: taxes and death. The U.S. really takes that to heart). The way immigrants of color are treated and referred to in this country has completely disgusted me, and too many racist attacks have happened in the last few days since the election results were made final that they have shaken me to my core. The fact that people are still chanting and carrying white supremacist signs in 2016 is just beyond anything I can understand. Trump’s presidential run has encouraged David Duke, the former head of the KKK, to run for a Senate seat in the next election cycle, because he himself said that he realizes Trump’s rise to power has awakened the realization among White Americans that their power is gradually being taken away by people of color, and that just does not sit well with him… because the Founding Fathers would not have wanted it this way. THIS is the America we are in now. Why is the former leader of the KKK not behind bars and instead running for an open Senate seat?!

I feel hurt. I just don’t see how “conservatives” and Trump voters cannot understand this. They live in their own bubbles and yell at us for living in our bubbles and just do not understand the feeling of not belonging or being discriminated against.
Also, when did it be okay for the President of the United States to take office and have zero political experience? When?! Obama got criticized during his campaign for not having enough experience; Trump has none, yet he’s a fine, fine candidate. Now, he’s taking over. F***.

Registering to vote, part 2

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So over a month ago, before the deadline arrived for voter registration in the state of New York, I encouraged one of my direct reports to check that she was registered to vote. She had done it inadvertently by getting her driver’s license at the DMV by checking a box on her application (since I had registered over 12 years ago, I figured times had changed since then to make it easier to register to vote – it’s so simple, but this country wants to make it so damn hard).

Today, she asked me where my voting location was. I was excited, thinking she was ready to vote tomorrow, as well, so I told her it was just four blocks from my apartment, and I was planning to go there right before the gym on the way to work in the morning. I asked her where hers was, and she had a solemn look on her face and said, “Yvonne, don’t be mad at me. I’m not going to vote. I messed up my voter registration. I lied to you. Voting has just never been a priority in my life.”

I started asking her about the steps we did together last month, that we checked her voter registration was in Chelsea, her own neighborhood, so all she had to do was go there tomorrow, but she said it wasn’t that simple, and insisted she was not voting and could not, and her boyfriend was really mad at her. So, I said, well, that’s too bad. And because I had no desire to see her face or talk to her or listen to all her bullshit, I grabbed my coat and went out for a long, long walk.

I just couldn’t believe it. Someone I actually hired for my team is going to be so lazy and selfish (and frankly just stupid) as to not vote? She’s going to completely take for granted the fact that women fought for the right to vote endlessly and we haven’t even had the right to vote in this country for even 100 years yet. It’s 2016, people. This should piss everyone off and be a point of embarrassment for us all. People have fought and died over granting the right to vote for us all, and she just wants to throw it all away by saying that “voting has just never been a priority in my life” — yes, because shopping for new clothes, having the perfect lip color, and managing her silly fashion blog are priorities in her life?! And what’s worse is that we sat down together and checked together at the end of September! I was infuriated and I could feel my face getting hot. If I could fire her just for lying to me and being so lazy and selfish, I would.

This is what angers me about people who say that all of us who understand the importance of voting need to spend time patiently educating those who do not understand why it’s important to vote and help them register instead of just criticizing them and doing what Bill Maher does — calling them part of this “stupid fucking country.” Well, guys — here’s a case in point: I explained to her why it was important in a very mild voice with enough time to get everything checked and done. I urged her in September to check her registration and make sure she had everything correct. She still failed. She didn’t care. She still didn’t get it. And that’s not my fault; that is the fault of our crappy education system here not instilling the importance of our freedom and the desire for progress, not regression, in society. And to some degree, I cannot really blame her. How would her life change if Trump became president vs. Hillary? For the most part, her life would remain the same — she’s a white working professional woman living in New York City with her white boyfriend working in finance who is from Connecticut. If a vote has no direct impact on her life, she doesn’t need to care, right? She doesn’t need to care about people like me and my husband, people of color and one who is an immigrant who consistently faces conscious and subconscious racism all the time. But I guess if someone “pussy-grabbed” her, maybe she would be concerned then? Who knows. I can’t even count on her acting if something like that happened to her. I’m so sick of women who fulfill gender stereotypes.

Bombing nightmare

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Last night, I dreamt it was our wedding day at Casa, except instead of it being a regular day, terrorists attempted to bomb the wedding venue. All of our vendors ran, and all of our guests went hiding under cover in basements that the Casa architects built in the event of emergencies for shelter. As we all sat in the basement of Casa, I wondered, are our vendors coming back if the bombs are found to be fake? Am I going to get back all of our wedding deposits and payments? I wonder how the photos turned out during the ceremony before the bomb threats were known?

This sounds insane, but the thought of a country potentially led by Donald Trump has triggered these nightmares.