Posted on 06/15/2002 7:36:33 AM PDT by Enemy Of The State
I am on holiday in California. It is my first trip to the USA since I moved to China nine months ago. It is all a little odd.
I have been struck by the paranoia. It seems each person is suspicious of the next one.
One afternoon at a children's pool, while minding the clothes and towels of my friends as they swam with their young son, I was eyed with suspicion by the other parents.
Last night, my friend would not allow his wife and a female friend to go down to their outside garage on their own. My friend, who is a reasonable man, calls the police on what seems a regular basis to complain of fighting in the streets. People are afraid of each other.
Fear of litigation means that signs prevail. Streets are blocked off with "do not enter" or warnings that unusual activities will be reported to the police. Signs on private property warning people not to rattle the gate when closing or that soliciting is unwelcome give off a scent of hostility. Everyone has burglar alarms.
In the workplace, people do not joke for fear of giving offence. America has lost its sense of humour.
Race relations, or the lack thereof, do not help. Black and white pass each other in the street as if they were not there at all. Although official segregation was outlawed in the last century, in many respects it still exists in an unwritten, unspoken form.
It is unsettling to drive past a weapons store and realize that it is the right of every American citizen to own a gun. My friends tell me that in their area, there is a shooting nearly every week. They share tales of neighbours burgled at gunpoint. Turn on the television and you are assailed with tales of abducted children and murder.
Since September 11, this paranoia has increased. Before boarding a flight to America, hand luggage is x-rayed and searched. The president is setting up a department to oversee all intelligence and security bureaux. A new form of xenophobia has arisen.
Ask any person in the street how they are and the reply will be a cheery assurance that all is fine. The weather is sunny, and middle-class America has the ability and the money to live well. However, give me a country where I can cycle home at night without fear.
else_7@hotmail.com
Now if her friends are Asians living in Compton or Van Nuys, I might give the report a tiny bit of credibility.
No, we do. You just don't understand it.
I'm glad this airhead has found a home in such a progressive, safe, and free country as China, where only the government is allowed to have guns - and uses them to shoot people who dare to speak freely. May her shadow never darken our shores again...
A place where one may safely cycle home at night.
[ How boring. Supporters of history's second most prolific mass murderer, the false-prophet Hitler (Unless one counts the hundreds of millions killed in the name of the mass-murdering death-and-destruction-worshipping, demon-possessed, serial-pedophile, the mass-murdering false-fuerher, Mohammed) -- could claim, at least, that he had the trains running on time]
Sarcasm understood. Welcome to FreeRepublic.
If this isn't the biggest crock! I live near Louisville, one of the largest area's of black population is near the Hospitals, I have yet to ever walk past any black person without speaking or being spoken to, you couldn't ask for a better bunch of folk. We all have our bad elements to watch out for no matter where we live, that's life, but this man wants a "Eutopia", a perfect world and that "ain't going to happen".
"give me a country where I can cycle home at night without fear." If he's that afraid then he should have stayed in his own country, not here knocking this one, go figure.
There is a certain level of freedom (such as not having to lock everything, not having to look over one's shoulder at night in parking structures, getting lost and found items returned promptly, etc.) encountered when moving from low crime areas in Asia to major cities in the US. You might not get this perspective moving from, say, Nicaragua or Johannesburg to Dallas but you sure get it going from Tokyo or Osaka or Sapporo or Seoul to NYC or Detroit or Chicago or LA. I have heard this from too many US military, businessmen, missionaries, teachers that have gone back to the US.
I (and many other Americans stationed here or working here) could just as well have written elements of this article (and it does not make me any less 'patriotic', just objective) to describe the sentiments when I first returned to the US after 2 years in low-crime (at the time) Tokyo. What the writer is also probably experiencing to some extent is "reverse culture shock." She may be in the adjustment phase back in the US that urges you once again not to leave the car running in front of the 7-11, not to say a nice, innocent greeting in the check out line to a little boy in a store for fear of being seen as a pervert by some neurotic, paranoid SUV mom, and put up with all the puritanical hypersensitivity at bars over Nazi like, in-your-face 'cardings' when coming from laid back Europe, etc. etc.,
I think such an article (or objectionable elements in it) is ' bullshit ' to those who have not had this odd experience.
Although I must say Japan does have a crime rate that is rising in the last few years which is very regrettable.
You know, the other day I went out to a nice lunch (I treated myself to lobster). In the restaurant there was a black guy eating, and do you believe the gall of me? I didn’t trip over myself to give a ‘hello’ to make our black friend feel welcome in such a foreign ‘white’ environment. He looked pretty busy talking to his woman anyway.
She was pretty fine, so I kind of figured that if I butted in to welcome him to ‘my world’ and ruined the vibe, ‘we might have bad race relations’. Maybe my thinking was errant.
All joking aside, walking by and not really caring if the guy is black or not is showing a real acceptance. Oooing and ahhhing and googling over it all is more awkward and unfriendly than anything.
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