“The bottom line is that your country and you have to be on the same page where values are considered, principles are considered, what you believe in. And if that is not the case, then it’s… you may be born somewhere and brought up somewhere, but then you don’t feel that same type of loyalty. Because loyalty comes through ideas, not through the earth, not through mud and trees and hills. That’s the same everywhere in the world. Is there any country in the world that has it enshrined in the constitution that you have a right to be happy?”

And to underline the point even more, note that Larsen is originally from Pakistan. Food for thought– check out the trailer for “Citizen USA” below:

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2. In mourning

“If they’re not gonna make a distinction between Muslims and violent extremists, then why should I take the time to distinguish between decent, fearful white people and racists?”

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While nail salons are stereotyped as being owned and run by Korean and Vietnamese people, but there’s always some truth to a stereotype. For example, I am related to people who own and run a dry cleaners, a nail salon and a liquor store. My parents even owned a grocery store back in the day.

I didn’t think a show about web videos would be interesting since I’m not a fan of “wrap-up” shows and I think it’s weird when you people use TV to talk about things from the Internet– it’s like they’re dumbing down computers and the Internet to make it more accessible via television because staring at a TV screen is easier than staring at a monitor.

In any case, I gave the show a shot because I love Daniel Tosh and the show is actually pretty entertaining. And yes, I actually find exactly what I thought I wouldn’t like– using TV to “wrap-up” popular web content– useful since I don’t usually have time to troll the Internet for funny videos. And the Tosh.0 blog is actually a nice complement to the show itself, without being redundant. Give it a shot.

Here’s Daniel Tosh’s hilarious follow up to the above video:

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Two Women, Two Babies, One Family (from Real Simple)

A sweet quote:

At night, we started putting our bellies together so the babies could say hi and tap at each other. It was sweet.

What could make this more perfect? Marriage.

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Here’s one of the most troubling paragraphs from the National Review article:

By its own terms, Stanford is failing to live up to its housing contract. As parents, Stanford holds us responsible for payment of our daughter’s bill. We, in turn, expected Stanford to enforce the terms of its own housing contract. It should not be acceptable for any group of students to alter the conditions of that contract. Furthermore, it should not be up to individual students to determine whether to protest a housing arrangement which so obviously violates this contract. There would clearly be social difficulties for any student who protested. Thus, it is Stanford that should rectify the situation.

In reality, Stanford holds the student responsible for payment of her bill, not her parents. And why shouldn’t it be up the individual student to make a complaint? If a student is unhappy with her housing assignment or feels that the housing contract has been violated, it’s up to that student to speak up. Social difficulties are a part of life and especially part of speaking your voice– if you’re not willing to endure the possible social difficulties, then you’re saying the issue is not important enough to you.

In any case, the article is riddled with unfortunate comments– when you read Daisy’s various responses to the article and if you know anything about co-op housing, which I’m sure Daisy did before choosing to live in Columbae– you’ll see that this is a parent blaming Stanford for the differences between her daughter and herself. Karin didn’t even find out about the rooming situation until the end (during winter break) and makes it sound like her daughter was unhappy with the room assignment, saying “she didn’t ask for this room arrangement” and that “she doesn’t want to upset everyone’s consensus arrangements.” She didn’t even get the reason why her daughter wasn’t at the meeting right (she appointed a proxy because she was on a plane, not because she had a friend visiting). In general, Karin expresses a sense of entitlement, that she had the right to know everything about her daughter’s life at Stanford. Unfortunately, that’s not the way it works– while FERPA provides students with access and control over their education records, it also specifically limits to what parents have access. Specifically, when the child turns eighteen, the child takes responsibility of her education records and schools are not required to notify parents of general information that does not directly apply to the student or even answer questions about the student. At the end of the day, it is a rights and privacy act, with the student at the center.

Karin, in response to her daughter’s decision to live in the co-ed room during fall and winter quarter, pulled financial support for her daughter’s final quarter at Stanford, making Daisy take $3,000 in loans (in addition to the loans her original financial aid package included). Given that her daughter is, being well over eighteen, an adult, that’s certainly Karin’s prerogative, but at the same time– again, as an adult– Daisy should be free to make her own decisions. In the course of a lifetime, those few thousand dollars is a small price for Daisy to pay for her freedom and an ultimately trivial amount over which her mother is making a gesture simply to prove a point. (Ironically, her parents pulled financial support for the current spring quarter during which Daisy is actually living in a single-gender room. Co-ops often switch around room assignments each quarter as part of the consensus decision-making process.) I completely empathize and sympathize with Daisy as a member of a sometimes overbearing family and while I hope she works out this disagreement with her parents, I also hope she stays confident that she had and has the right to make her own choices.

Mexicali Styles for Women Starting at $24.50, Plus Free Shipping

Is it just me, but isn’t “Mexicali” a derogatory term? This is just like Cheese Nips.

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Secret Lives of Women. This show is about the “secret lives” of women, “[f]rom fetishes and fantasies to polygamists to the dirty little secrets of suburbia.” Most of the shows are very interesting and downright compelling– in the most recent episode I watched, “Sex Trade,” there was a story about an Asian pre-med student who works as a high-priced (I mean, not Eliot Spitzer high-priced, but anywhere from a few hundred to several thousands dollars) escort and call girl. (They obscure her face throughout the show, but I swear I know her.) Other past episodes have included topics such as “Plastic Surgery Addicts,” “Cheaters,” “Cougars,” and “Lipstick Lesbians.” The new season premieres on April 1. Check out these clips: “Sex for Sale,” “Why I Am A Cougar,” and “Mommy is a Phone Sex Operator“.

High School Confidential. Now, this is an interesting project: many of us think back and remember how much we’ve changed since high school, but not only that, how much we changed just in the four years while in high school. The show followed 12 girls for four years and now we get to see these girls deal with “sex, drugs, unwanted pregnancy, health crisis, and family chaos — all while trying to discover who they are.” The show particularly resonates for me because I remember many of my friends and myself changing so much from the time we were freshmen to the time we were juniors and seniors– we entered with such an idealistic look at the world and with such a high sense of morality, but real life sets in, slowly for surely, and things change very quickly, including our ideas of right and wrong. For the men out there: check out this show to get some insight into the psycho social mind job high school can be from the female perspective. Check out this video for a taste of what the show is about.

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I don’t think I’m breaking any rules by sharing some of these case study examples since they are real world examples of sexual harassment litigation, so here’s a little sampling so you can get an idea of what I’m talking about:

One word: priapism. If you don’t know what this word means, you should learn, especially if you’re a guy, and then check out the 2006 case Arrieta-Colon v. Wal-Mart. Props to Arrieta-Colon in winning the case, but talk about awkward.

That may be sexual harassment, but more importantly, it’s sexual assault. There were one or two examples where one co-worker (usually male) continually made unwanted romantic/sexual advances towards a co-worker (usually female)– advances that weren’t just repeated requests for a date or inappropriate comments, but extended to groping, touching, and more. (Specifically, check out the 2006 case Howard v. Winter as one example.) While admittedly there are serious sexual harassment issues, what about the sexual assault? This type of behavior is illegal not only in terms of creating a hostile work environment, but also because it’s a crime. I don’t know about you, but sexual assault trumps sexual harassment.

Spanking. And lots of it. WTF? There were multiple examples of spanking somehow being introduced into the workplace as a sometimes valid, sometimes invalid form of punishment. Check out the 2002 case Yerry v. Pizza Hut of Southeast Kansas. If someone seriously suggested to me to physically hit or be hit, much less spank or be spanked, as a way to punish someone in the workplace, I think my head would explode. And yet, somehow people involved in such cases went along with this treatment. It’s amazing what people don’t understand about their rights, will put up with to keep their jobs or do to avoid confrontation.

And with that, a little video to lighten the mood:

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2. Lame cop-outs

This is about as much as I can show you of the art exhibit we dropped by during lunch yesterday. A series of oil paintings of an Asian-American woman having sex with various American presidents (and we’re talking like George Washington, not Bill Clinton). As one of my coworkers said, “She can paint, for sure.”

View “Join or Die,” by Justine Lai. and read her statement about the paintings. Also, read the Stanford Daily article about the exhibit.

UPDATED 8.29.2009: from reading her statement, I discovered that the woman in the paintings is actually herself!

Salary, Gender and the Social Cost of Haggling – washingtonpost.com

This article is from back in July, but it’s a very interesting read about some studies that have been looking at how much women negotiate (such as for salary or promotions) versus men and how women and men who neogitate are perceived by others. In the first set of studies, Professor of Economics Linda C. Babcock from Carnegie Melon (one of my alma maters) looked at, in both experimental and real world settings, how often women negotiated versus men– the not very surprising answer (at least to me) was than men negotiate significantly more than women do, even in experiments where subjects were explicitly told they could negotiate for higher compensation for their participation. In another set of studies, Babcock teamed up with Hannah Riley Bowles from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government to look at how men and women who negotiated were perceived by others. These studies found that the women were often considered “less nice,” less desirable to work with, and, in general, penalized if they chose to negotiate; men were less likely to be penalized, if at all. This was the case for both men and women observers (*sigh* the sisterhood has failed us again).

Traditional explanations for this disparity include long-held ideas that men are naturally more aggressive and that, whether its nature or nurture, women are less assertive. However, the second study sheds light on other motivators for the gender disparity. It shows that women’s tendency to NOT negotiate is a direct response to negative feedback in the social environment– there are real social risks for negotiating and women take them into serious consideration when choosing whether to negotiate. I, or any other woman, might say, “How important is this raise or promotion?” Women must assess the risk being taken simply by asking (never mind the probability of actually getting the raise or promotion). In fact, regardless of how successful a negotiation is, women know that they will ultimately pay a price for choosing to negotiate at all.

In the end, these studies give us a new way, a stepping stone to determine what’s behind and ultimately find a solution to close the salary gap, remove the double-standard for acceptable behavior, and, hopefully achieve greater equality overall.

Read the full article for more details on how the studies were conducted and their results.

* Note: social class is often ignored in many of these types of studies because we make the unfortunate assumption, consciously or not, that all members of certain racial/ethnic groups automatically belong to certain social classes. On one hand, given our nation’s history, social class still tends to correlate highly with racial/ethnic background, tempting to take the high correlation as reason enough to roll up social class with race/ethnicity. Not only is that racist and prejudiced at heart, but it is poor scientific work by unfairly trying to simplify the resulting complexities that result when all these variables– race, ethnicity, gender, and social class– come together.

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In the bag full of stuff at GHC, from Northwestern University Female Researchers in EECS– “At the Bleeding Edge.” We jokingly said it was a tampon holder, then we thought it was a pencil holder and then… we realized it’s right there on the box. It really is a tampon holder.

Wow.

At first I thought, a) “what corporate gift catalog do you find that in?” and b) “isn’t there collective agreement that we shouldn’t be referring to menstruation as ‘the rag’? Or is this some kind of female empowerment thing where we’re trying to claim that word back?”

Anyway, check it out: ragtotes.com.

Transitions: Microsoft’s Sex Change

It’s great that Wallent’s colleagues are being so supportive, but I find it hard to believe that he won’t have to experience plain old sexism once he’s completely transitioned. I find that, more often than not, men– being, you know, men– think that it’s never as bad as women say and that we all live in more of a meritocracy than we really do.

Except, of course, when it comes to affirmative action. How convenient.

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And yes, even if that someone is a woman.

But I’m giving it another go, so I’ll be attending the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing conference in Orlando this week. For those who don’t know, Grace Hopper was a pioneering computer scientist who, among other things, developed the first compiler for a computer programming language. She’s also often credited incorrectly for coining the software term “bug.” The term was already in use when the it happened, but the story goes that, in 1947, when Hopper was working on the Harvard Mark II calculator, an error was traced back to a moth trapped in a relay. The moth was carefully removed and Hopper taped it into the log book, noting that it was the “first actual case of bug being found.”

In any case, I’ve written here about the gender imbalance in computer science and engineering before. Read about Geek Girls: parts one and two. I’ll be posting more thoughts as the week progresses.

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For me however, aside from the clever movie promotion, the reason I’m writing about this is not because I’m necessarily a big fan of The Simpsons– I think it’s a funny show and I watched it pretty regularly at some point, but I really don’t get the cult-like devotion (including how everybody would grab their dinner and rush to watch the reruns in the lounge during college) and frenzied anticipation surrounding the movie. Instead, when discussing the news in the office this week (a particular coworker is our in-house Simpsons devotee and expert, often taking any and all opportunities to relate real life situations, work-related or otherwise, to Simpsons episodes), a coworker (not the same one) told a hilarious story that, on his behalf, I just had to blog (hopefully, I’m summarizing relatively accurately):

On Monday, he got a call from “Brooke” from ABC 7; she left a message, asking him to please call her back at 415… So, naturally curious, he called back and she said she was calling about the Kwik-E-Mart promotion. He was obviously confused, but then realized she was trying to call a 7-Eleven in Mountain View when she asked, “Is this the 7-Eleven on Pear Road?” He said, “No, this is a private residence,” and that was that, but the hilarious coincidence– or not– is that he is, in fact, Indian! And he has, in fact, gotten a “wrong number” call at least once before for 7-Eleven!

I did some digging around– online and offline– and I can’t, for the life of me, figure out how they thought his phone number was the number for the 7-Eleven on Pear Avenue. Aside from the fact that the numbers aren’t actually similar in any way and the phonebook, online and offline, doesn’t even list the number for that store (which is weird in and of itself– Google simply lists it as (650) 555-5555), the way to find the correct contact info for the store is easy enough: first, the 7-Eleven website lists the new Kwik-E-Mart locations, including the San Francisco/Mountain View store. I don’t know why, but while the address is listed, the phone number isn’t. However, the 7-Eleven website does have, like most retail company sites, a “store locator” feature and if you search for the closest store near Pear Avenue in Mountain View, CA, you get the correct contact info, including phone number.

So, hilarious coincidence or is someone out there picking Indian surnames out of the phonebook in search of Apu?

(And no, my coworker’s name isn’t Apu.)

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Found this waiting on my chair in my office this morning when I got in. There are so many things wrong with this that I can’t even begin to get into it. All I have to say is, as Lil’ Romeo says, “Stay in school.”

Go to: Rap Snacks website.

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I mention Virginia Tech because, as I said, for months I had waited for retaliation against Korean and Asian Americans in general. People lashing out against anyone that looked like the person who was responsible for the deep pain caused by the senseless shooting of those thirty-two young people. Perhaps because it was not a racially motivated attack, perhaps because the press and pundits were more preoccupied with the gun debate, there didn’t seem to be any coverage of any racial profiling or backlash. But just a couple of weeks ago over graduation weekend, my mother asked casually whether anybody had said anything to me about it. I said no, but she said that the day after the shootings, my father had gone into work and his coworkers had asked jokingly, “Mr. Lee, do you have any guns?” My father’s coworkers joke with him often and when I hear the stories, sometimes I feel like they’re laughing at him more than with him. My mother also said that Korean restaurants in the New York City/northern New Jersey area, whose customers had been about forty percent non-Korean, were empty for weeks after the shootings. Perhaps because I live in the Bay Area, I wasn’t targeted, whether it was dirty looks, dirty words, or dirty acts. So, I guess there was backlash, but it was quiet, almost silent, or in the form of jokes that we smile and accept and let roll off our back. We are, after all, the model minority.

More recently, the Azia Kim story has been getting a lot of press, even nationally– if you haven’t heard, it’s the story of a young woman who had managed to pass herself off as a Stanford student since this past September, squatting in Stanford dorms (using a difficult roommate situation as a cover story to ask to temporarily share a room with some other students) and, in turn, using her alleged Stanford enrollment to take ROTC classes and money at nearby Santa Clara University (since Stanford has not had an ROTC program since the 1960′s). Aside from all of the fallout around how did this student get past all of Stanford’s administrative systems and infrastructure, how did students and residential staff not discover the truth until almost three weeks until the end of the school year (ironically, the ruse began to fall apart when one of the dorms she was staying in was putting together their yearbook), when the issue is discussed, people always point out to me the fact that Kim is Korean American. As the story continues to unfold, many believe that much of Kim’s motivations were fueled by her parents’ expectations to attend a top-tier, prestigious college. It fits so neatly into the Asian American stereotype of filial piety, parental pressures, and emphasis on education– and Ivy League-caliber education at that– and her behavior to fulfill that stereotype shatters the model minority myth all at the same time.

And in the same week, another impostor was caught– also an Asian American, but Japanese this time. Elizabeth Okazaki was found to have no Stanford affiliation, despite attending graduate physics seminars and using offices reserved for doctoral and post-doctoral students at Stanford’s Varian Physics Labs. She’s been banned from campus, but there are no reports yet on what her exact motivations were– stereotypical or otherwise.

Back in January, when Chinese American doctoral student Mengyao “May” Zhou went missing, understandably, nobody wanted to consider depression or suicide. Of course, we all hoped she would be okay. When the body was found, everyone was shocked at what seemed like an apparent suicide. Even now, despite toxicology results, family and students still find it difficult to believe her death was a suicide. So much social stigma surrounds depression and suicide in much of Asian culture. A recent study looks at the high rate of suicide in Asian American women, highlighting the link between cultural stress and suicide. We, Asian Americans, are so insular, and women, in particular, are taught so often to hold in our pain. It’s that “quiet inner strength” that we hold up as something to admire, but that slowly kills many of us. In my own family, I hear bits and pieces of someone, of a story of suicide, but I can never get the whole truth, I never dare ask. To think that we might need antidepressants, to think that we just need help– more help than our family can provide– is unthinkable.

Don’t look now, but from the inside, from the outside, I think that model minority myth is cracking, if it hasn’t shattered already. I wouldn’t worry too much– I never really believed in it anyway.

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This was pointed out by, in his usual high-performing fashion, our new sysadmin from work, along with the broken comment posting on my blog. And here I thought I was just unpopular. (Of course, I may still be unpopular, but now I can’t blame it on an Internal Server Error.)

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There are more stories coming.

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There could be a lot of answers to this question. Do you want to know where my parents immigrated from when they flew into JFK over thirty years ago to make a new life? The answer is South Korea, Seoul to be specific. But where is my family really from? Korea. There was no North or South when my parents were born and while the political status may have changed many times over the course of the life they lived before they stepped foot in America, they are from everywhere– from the north, from the south, from the countryside, from the city. They are from the Land of Morning Calm.

I don’t want to say the North-South question offends me, but it does bother me because it reflects a fundamental ignorance of the situation and the Korean experience and outlook. First, if you’re a Korean in America, you or your family immigrated from South Korea. Nobody immigrates from North Korea. You defect from North Korea and you’ll be hard pressed to find anybody who has successfully. Or you’re a Korean national visiting the States, which most likely makes you a South Korean national. There aren’t many North Koreans vacationing or going to school in the US.

But more importantly, these North-South distinctions are just political ones, just words that remind us of an over fifty-years old war that still continues to this day. But some say that with such a deep division, the rapid development of such different political and socioeconomic states, especially with the isolation and cult of personality built in the North, is it really just a political distinction anymore? Haven’t two contemporary cultures developed that only make the divide even greater? Can you really call yourselves one people anymore?

My answer is yes. Koreans share a much longer history and commonality than our recent history in the international arena belies. A fifty year divide that is the “tragic consequence of superpower rivalry at end of World War II” cannot wipe out hundreds of years of history, culture, family. And this recent history is the history of all Koreans, no matter which side you are on. It is the struggle and the suffering of the Korean people as a whole around the world. Han. Those are still our brothers we look out across the DMZ, both literally and figuratively. We are one people and we still hope for reunification into our one true nation. Han nara.

So at the end of the day, am I North or South Korean? I’m just Korean. To be exact, I’m Korean American, American born.

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Is it just me or is it bizarre that a product with a racial slur right there in the name exists in the world? For some reason, I had never heard of Cheese Nips until I moved out to California almost 10 years ago now and the first time somebody mentioned them, I thought he was joking. But no, they’re quite real. I mean, is it that people just don’t realize that “Nip” is a racial slur referring to Japanese people? Is it that people just forgot that Japan is also called Nippon and that “Nip” is just like the more familiar “Jap?”

I know it’s kind of funny and it’s all about context and as battles go, this isn’t at the top of the priority list I’m not saying we should boycott all Kraft products (although I personally refuse to buy them and prefer to go for Cheese-Its) or launch a protest, but it still amazes me that in this day and age, with how politically correct we’ve all tried to become, a company would so brazenly continue to use this product name. I mean, there aren’t any snack foods with “nigger” or “beaner” or “spic” in the name, are there? And if somebody did try to name a product something like that, you know that there would be a huge outcry. We (Asian Americans) might be a model minority, but we’re also too often a silent minority. Maybe if they come out with rice cakes called “Chink Cakes,” we’ll be forced to say something.

(As an aside, here’s a weird thing I found: Racial Slurs Database. Interestingly enough, “Cheese Nip” is actually listed there for a person of White and Japanese descent.)

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We got there around 7pm and while the bar was fairly full, the restaurant was only about half full. There was no one else waiting for a table, but it still took 15-20 minutes to get seated– the bartender clearly saw that we were waiting for a table and still didn’t bother to call over the hostess or somebody to seat us and I noticed a woman giving us surly looks from the bar the whole time. In any case, we were finally seated and a bus boy came around relatively soon with water. So, we sat eating handfuls of peanuts at the table, sipping water, looking over the menu and waiting for a waiter or waitress to at least come and take a drink order. And we waited. And waited. At first, we thought the service was just slow, but the restaurant was only half full and there seems to be plenty of waitstaff working. We soon realized that people who were seated after us were being waited on before us. After about 20 minutes of eating our weight in peanuts and waiting to just be acknowledged by one of the waitstaff, we decided to leave and on the way out, the bartender saw us leaving, but did nothing to stop us.

Now, my friend and I don’t like to play the race card and maybe the service was just bad yesterday, but as we were leaving, I realized that we were the only minorities I noticed in the entire restaurant and I can’t help feeling like our bad service (or lack of any service) directly correlated to the color of our skin. Maybe a little bit of it was that he’s Black and that I’m Asian, maybe a little bit of it was that we were Black and Asian (Blasian) together, but having been discriminated against individually our whole lives and often when we are together, recognizing racism becomes a skill. Racism comes in many forms, but there are definitely some greatest hits and poor service at a restaurant or business is a pretty popular one. And even if wanted to write it off as poor service, the fact people who were seated after us were served before us AND that the bartender saw us leaving and didn’t do do or say anything really put the nail in the coffin.

So, yes, even in easy, breezy California, racism is still prevalent, so believe it, bitches. In contrast, when we headed over to Amici’s, we were seated right away and as our waitress walked by, even though she couldn’t help us immediately, she let us know that she would be right with us. Then, when she did come over, which was only a few minutes later, she apologized for the wait and continued to give us great service for the rest of the meal. She was the big winner of the day and she got a fat tip as well as two happy customers.

I wasn’t going to comment on this, but this Daily Show clip is just too funny to pass up: Quicktime, Windows Media.

When I first heard about this, I was really surprised– I thought Microsoft’s change in stance on HB 1515 was very strange. Say what you will about Microsoft as a technology source or even as a corporate power, but from what I’ve heard, they have had a pretty good track record on supporting charitable causes. They have a sizable matching program for their employees’ charitable donations and everyone has heard of Bill Gates’s personal philanthropic efforts. Moreover, in terms of queer rights, Microsoft has a sizeable queer community (GLEAM, Gay and Lesbian Employees at Microsoft. And as Steve Ballmer says in his email to Microsoft employees, they were one of the first companies to provide domestic partner benefits and to include sexual orientation in anti-discrimination policies.

However, the peculiar thing is that Ballmer (and Gates, by extension) says that they are wondering if a corporation should become involved in broader social issues, that if they take an active stance for or against legislation, what kind of message does it send to employees and shareholders who might hold an opposing view?

Well, with the increasing corporatization of America, I would think that its obvious that corporations have an enormous influence on social and political issues and if they want to continue to exert that influence in some areas, shouldn’t they also feel some moral responsibility to, put bluntly, not be a bunch of wusses when it comes to broader social issues? Perhaps the case would be different if Microsoft did not have a history of becoming involved in social and political issues, but to back down when things get a little interesting seems cowardly. By instituting domestic partner benefits and including sexual orientation in its anti-discrimination efforts, Microsoft’s internal policy was already making a broader social statement and while Ballmer says he does not want to promote a law that goes against the personal beliefs of many of its employees is really a lame-ass copout. By supporting HB1515, Microsoft wouldn’t be saying that gay marriage should be legalized or that employees have to embrace homosexuality. What they would be saying is that no matter how you feel about homosexuality personally, a lifestyle choice that is in no way illegal, you should not disciminate against homosexuals in the workplace. You may not like black people, Asian people, white people, Jewish people, Muslim people, red fish, blue fish, but it’s illegal to discriminate against them in the workplace. Obviously, Microsoft agrees with this idea since they have an internal policy against discinination based on sexual orientation and have recognized domestic partners in providing benefits. If they think it’s good enough for Microsoft, why isn’t it good enough for the workplace in general?

Problem: poor people, usually those who are traditionally disadvantaged because of race or ethnicity, can’t afford computers and therefore, can’t compete in today’s job market or digital world in general.

Solution: give computers to said poor people or make cheaper computers/make computers cheaper so poor people can afford them.

Case in point: the PCtvt. (Let’s put aside for the moment that a $250 computer for a person making, at the most, $2000 per year is still over ten percent of his annual income.) By bundling television, DVD player, telephone and videophone capabilities into this computer, Reddy hopes to finally bring “computing and communications to populations that until now have been excluded from the digital world.” That’s all fine and good– he’s admirably trying to bring three decades worth of technology to these communities all at once– but the thing that really drives home my point is something he points out himself: because it can be controlled by a simple remote control, it will be beneficial particularly in places with large populations of people who cannot read. Reddy says he thought about what somebody on the other side of the digital divide would really want and the answer he came up with was entertainment.

Doesn’t anybody else see how messed up this is? Hello, have you met some people on the other side of the digital divide? They may want entertainment and be willing to pay more than five percent of their annual income to get it, but is this really where we want to be putting our money and effort when it comes to helping those less fortunate? There are large populations of people who can’t read and our biggest concern right now is providing them with cheap home entertainment centers? Instead of trying to bridge the digital divide, how about bridging this reading divide? And while we’re at it, why don’t we bridge the math divide, the housing divide, the health care divide, the food divide? Why don’t we help people get better housing, have better schools, live healthier? Maybe then they can have both the time and the money to own and use computers and participate in the digital world. Even if people are giving away computers to disadvantaged communities– as some are as part of their effort to bridge this gap– it doesn’t really help the fact that I’m worried about buying food next week or paying my rent. Even if I have a computer– PCtvt or Dell Dimension– it doesn’t really help me because I can’t eat it, wear it or live in it.

You want to bridge the digital divide? Bridge all of those more basic divides and you’ll see the digital divide grow smaller all by itself.

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