Serendipity

• His grandfather was killed by the Turks in the 20's.
• His father was killed by the Germans in the 40's.
• While visiting the Netherlands in his teens he was granted an audience with the Queen. According to him the queen decided she "wanted to meet a Greek man" and he was nearby. (Eccentric borderline racist demands from monarchs had yet to go out of style in the early 1950's.)
• While still in the Netherlands he met a young woman whose father was a painter. When she introduced them, the father took him on as an apprentice for 2 years. It was during this time he learned that his own father had once been a painter.
  
• At the end of the 2 years the following paraphrased conversation takes place:
  Greek Painter Dude: Painting sucks, so I quit. Oh, and I'm marrying your daughter.
  Dutch Father: Go ahead and marry my daughter, but don't stop painting because you have real talent.
  Greek Painter Dude: Pony up some cash and send me to Paris, then.
  Dutch Father: That sounds totally reasonable. Adieu!
• After a few months in Paris he sells his first painting for $20,000. (Not that this guy has any more credibility than a typical charismatic old Greek man painting pictures in a mall on a Thursday night anyway, but my skepticism did increase when he didn't hesitate to give this curiously round figure in American currency regarding a transaction he made in France. But anyway...)
• Jealous Parisian artists, likely with their berets all askew, report him to the police for selling art without a license. When the shamelessly corrupt Paris police force shows up they demand that he bribe them with his earnings or face jail time.
  
• He chooses jail time.
• This proves to be the far wiser choice as he's in jail all of 12 hours and gets to keep his $20,000. [Traveler's tip: Failure to bribe, while frowned upon, isn't technically illegal  in Paris.]
  [Corrupt policeman's tip: Jealous xenophobic Parisian artists are not legal authorities.]
• {Insert assorted stories of traveling, divorcing, marrying a Native American whose family he hates and quasi-philosophical musings on life.}
• After telling us about how he'd told off his brother-in-law for using broad generalizations about Blacks while critiquing President Obama he proceeded to rant on the mental shortcomings of Native Americans, telling us in detail how each member of his wife's family is "stupid as the Greek seas are blue." Then he threw in an interesting hypothesis about the correlation between the failure of Native American-run casinos and his children's grades.
  [Racist's tip: Having some in the family only adds weight to your claims.]
  

Ask Esturk #1: Obesity is a Good Sign for Race Relations

I haven't seen any hard data on this, nor can I imagine how one would quantify subconscious opinions throughout history so as to track changes in trends, but I'm inclined to say no. Recent studies like the Harvard Implicit Association Test have demonstrated that many biases are still far more common than most people had hoped or anticipated.  If attitudes haven't shifted all that much, it can hardly be said that the internet has played a significant role in changing them.

But there's potential. In order for racial biases to come into effect one must first be aware of another person's race. This usually happens as one person sees another or it's explicitly mentioned for whatever reason. In my experience talking to people online one's race is rarely considered unless that person happens to bring it up, which is itself rare unless it's relevant to the current topic. As a result racial biases, while mostly unchanged themselves, seem to play much smaller roles online than they do face-to-face.

So as we increase our internet communication we'll be less inclined to factor race into our opinions, consciously or subconsciously, because it won't as prevalent in our experiences. This will do little to change the nature of existing biases but might gradually decrease the incidence of race-based thinking. Of course, since that requires using the internet more often I foresee any decrease in racial stereotyping being accompanied by higher rates of obesity and vitamin D deficiencies.

Considering those two have been on the rise in recent years I may now have to change my answer to yes. Perhaps our widening waistlines are harbingers of interracial harmony.

Playtesting Rude Scrabble, Round 2

Woo-hoo 5 points!

4 points!

3 points!

Rude Scrabble

Two Ways to the Top