Kind of interesting… I was at one of my local shopping malls yesterday. As my lady and I were walking through, I had this weird realization and I jokingly said to her, “Am I the only white person in this mall?” Her response, “Yes!”
 
It was kind of an interesting thing to take note of. The mall was fairly full. It was a warm summer Saturday, so a lot of people were enjoying the air conditioning, shopping for that stuff they don't really need. But, in looking around, the majority of the people that were there were brown in color. The next ethnic group you saw a lot of were Asians. Then, Blacks. But, Whites, none to be seen.
 
As we continue to walk through the mall, my lady noticed, and mentioned, “There's a White guy right there.” Looking at the man, he wore this dirty T-shirt and some, appearing to not be very clean cargo shorts. He had messy hair, and a straggly beard. He was maybe in his fifties. I made the joking comment, “That's how you can tell that the White Race is the superior race.”
 
I was born and grew up in Los Angeles. My entire life I've been surrounded by ethnic diversity. And, I've told this story before, but I was literally the only White kid in my grammar school. No joke.
 
Kind of an interesting sidebar here. In the waning days of MySpace, this one lady contacted me, asking me if I was the same Scott Shaw that went to this particular grammar school in South Central L.A. I said, I was. She said she remembered me from that school. And, she was glad to see that I made it out. The subtext of her words was obvious.
 
Looking into her profile, she seemed to be of Hispanic origin and was a year or two older than me. I didn’t remember her, as the majority of my classmates were African-American. But, there were a few people of Hispanic descent. One of them must have been her. So, that was an interesting crisscrossing of paths so many years later. An interesting reminder of my past. And, an interesting fact that someone remembered me from so long ago.
 
By the time I graduated from Virgil Junior High School, over on Vermont, there was only a handful of White people in that school. Most were of Latin origin. That was a violent place. That's why when I progress to Hollywood High School, I was so surprised that I wasn't going to have to fight all the time. As my previous school experiences had not been very nice. But, I've told all of those stories elsewhere. If you're interested, I'm sure you can find them and look them up—written down somewhere.
 
I think race is such an interesting subject matter. I mean, so much of a person's life is defined by their race. And, their race is what they are defined as by other people.
 
Throughout my life, I've encountered a lot of racism. I've witnessed it. And, I've been targeted by it. A lot of people, particularly those who are of United States origin, point to racism simply as a White on Black sort of thing. But, it really goes much deeper than that. I mean, I can tell you, my childhood was plagued by constantly being defined as a White person in an African-American community. There wasn't a day that went by where I wasn't called some racial slur. So, it does go both ways.
 
In Asia, it's very, very prominent, as well. For example, I had a girlfriend when I was living in South Korea in the early ‘80s, And, it wasn't uncommon when we were walking down the street that people would stomp on the ground. That was their way of telling the woman that she was a bug for being with a non-Korean male. Similar kind of stuff went on when I was living in Shanghai, as well, with my girlfriend at the time.
 
In America, in modern society, it's really not much different. For example, a couple of years ago my wife's aunt passed away. So, everybody obviously went to her funeral. My wife and her sister were kind of helping out in the front. You know, helping people know where they should go and taking in the envelopes of funeral offerings, and things like that. So, I went and sat down by myself. Koreans would come up and look at where I was sitting in the middle of a church pew by myself. Not one person sat in that pew. Not one person sat on that long church bench. They looked at me, then they found somewhere else to sit. This, even though I was a supposed member of the immediate family, not one person sat anywhere near me. Think about that for a minute. This is modern America. Racism is still rampant. As subtle as it may be.
 
Throughout Asia, Americas are looked down upon. I could go into the fact that most Americas are considered very rude. Like in Japan, they do things like talk on their cell phones on the trains and subways, which is a total cultural no-no. In Thailand, the women wear very revealing clothing at the temples. And, the list goes on and on. So, what is racism based upon? Is it based on the person exhibit the trait or is it based upon the way the person being targeted is behaving? I suppose there’s a little bit of both in that formula. I guess it all comes down to the question, how do you behave based in your racism? How does it make you act? What does it make you say? And, more importantly, what does it make you do?
 
So, if you’re in L.A., and you walk through the mall, and you’re Caucasian, you may be the only one of your kind in that mall. But, like in all of the situations, good or bad is all what you make of it. Good or bad is all created by what you think and what you do.

Racism… Think about it.