Race, schmace
Like a gadfly stinging a horse out of torpor, I've been irritated into comment.
I confess to ignorance: I've no idea how racism can really, seriously exist, when it's the same four limbs, the same stretch of sinew over the same brittle bones, the same torrent through the veins, the same spongy organs pulsing underneath slightly different skin.
Of course, this is the same species that have invented wallpaper and clothing, and the Home and Gardens magazine. I shouldn't be surprised by the proclivity for irrational judgement.
And, insidious as racism can get, my parents like to drop hints like grenades, which quietly detonate with "marry a nice (rich) Chinese boy", every now and then.
I'm tottering on the hairline, deciding whether humans are more similar than different, or vice versa.
But either way, the problem is still compounded by the fact that people can be so insufferably arrogant. Two paths to bigotry: If people are more similar than different, arrogance makes the individual desperate for distinction. If people are more different than similar, arrogance feeds the pride of superiority. And once it begins, prejudice turns so effortlessly into habit, and stigma.
According to my exhaustive, special-(rAchel's)-edition medical encyclopedia, those are all hereditary and/or highly contagious maladies. In many cases, people don't even realize they're infected.
And so at the convergence of these two paths lies racism, status symbols, and such boyfriends.
And, of course, wallpaper.
There's only so much bigotry I'll take without feeling like wielding fists, feet, sledgehammers, rolled-up Home and Gardens magazines. But the world's hard to make a dent in, and cures for ignorance are as rare as tulips in spring aren't.
Still, it's hard to stay angry when the sky is that shade of blue and the grass is begging to be rolled in, to stain my Chinese skin light green. Judge me on that, if you will.