What's White?

Let's have a little fun.

In a recent blog, I mentioned the mac and cheese is white soul food. That started me thinking about other things that are quintessentially "white."

Here a few I thought of:

Foods:

• meat loaf
• tuna casserole
• french toast
• jello salad
• bolonga sandwiches
• Vienna sausages

Vacation destinations:

• Branson, Mo.
• Disneyland
  

Sex symbols:

• Olivia Newton John
• Fabio
• Loni Anderson
  

Sports:

• Bowling
• Curling
• Hockey

Entertainment:

• "Grease" (play and movie)
• "Brady Bunch"
• Country & Western music

That's off the top of my head. Add to the list.

Playing at Life

Sports are on my mind tonight. Truthfully, sports are never very far from my mind. But there have been a couple of recent news stories that are playing in my mind.

One was this in today's SJ Mercury. It says that Asians have become the majority population in Milpitas and Cupertino. I take it Milpitas has been Asian majority for awhile, but the rapidly growing Indian population has now put Cupertino in that category. Frankly, I think that is great. It means that those communities will have a wider range of cultures to enhance the quality of life. But it made me wonder how the changing demographics has changed or will continue to change sports that are played there.

Already high school football is not the all-consuming passion that it once was. I went to several Watsonville High football games this year because my son-in-law, Tim, was a JV coach. And, while the fans for the varsity games were enthusiastic, it paled in comparison to the mania I remember from the Friday nights of my youth.

So now that there is a greater diversity of people in Milpitas and Cupertino will we see a greater diversity in their prep sports? Is table tennis coming? How about high school cricket? And if we see new games will we not see some old sports? And what about facilities? Will new games fit the old school?

I guess the new games are value neutral -- one sport holds about the same benefit to the community as another. But I guess I will be sad if cricket replaces baseball.

The other story that caught my attention is this about a shooting in the bleachers of a girls soccer game in King City. As a former high school athletic director, this story sent shivers down my spine.

Following the shootings, King City High School officials proposed to move the games to the afternoon rather than the normally scheduled early evening. I'm guessing that was a reaction to other schools having qualms about how safe it is to play games in King City. Experience tells me that every AD at schools that had road games at KC received phone calls from parents demanding that the games be cancelled or moved to their own schools. But the parents of the King City girls asked that the start times not be changed. They pointed out that they work and would not be able to see their girls play if they started earlier.

I think school made the right decision. It is easy to give into our fears and make knee-jerk reactions. But this is also one of those "teachable moments" when people are ready to listen and learn. Maybe this can be used to build community and not let the gangsters force good people to retreat from something that is important.

I think the old claims of sports teaching life lessons are generally overblown. But this may be a time when we all win when kids play a game.

Forget Me Not

I was going to post something yesterday, but I forgot

That's a joke -- kinda.

I have been forgetting a lot of things lately. Not really big things, I guess. Like yesterday morning, I couldn't remember if I took my vitamin and diabetes pills. Or like today, as I was heading out the door to work, I couldn't remember if I had applied my apres-shower deodorant. (Why that question even came to mind is kind of weird in its own right.). Or like the other day when I couldn't remember the exit we used to take to get to Spartan Stadium from Highway 101.

I used to have a great memory. Back in the day, you wouldn't have wanted to get in a trivia challenge against me. My family quit playing the home version of Jeopardy because my mastery of minutiae made me unbeatable. But now? Well, even the great Ali had to hang 'em up one day.

For a couple of years I've joked that I have a "park bench memory" -- the bench is full and if something old has to get and go before something new can have a seat. But that lame humor is masking a growing concern. I'm getting to an age where forgetfulness can't be brushed off as merely being inattentive or preoccupied (not that I don't have episodes of both). It's time to start wondering if there really is a decline.

If I am on the downhill portion of the road, I hope I can keep a sunny disposition. I wouldn't mind being thought of as daffy eccentric, but I don't want to be the grumpy old guy that yells at people all the time. My grandmother experienced dementia and she was always pleasant and glad to see me -- even if she didn't know who I was.

I think I'm OK for now. But if I have a confused look on my face the next time I see you, just smile and give me a minute.

Culture On Ice

A hockey game probably is the last place I would expect to find myself examining my own racial bias, but that was what happened the other day.

I am increasingly becoming an avid fan of professional hockey. This despite the fact that I have no personal history with the sport. I've never lived in a place that an ice patch would last more than a couple of hours. So, why do I like it so much? Is it the sport itself? Or is it the ethos of hockey? And is the ethos attractive because it so much embodies white culture?

My daughter, Casey, and I took my son-in-law, Tim, to a Sharks game on Tuesday as a birthday present. Earlier that day, the NHL indefinitely suspended a player named Sean Avery for -- horrors -- making rude comments about his ex-girlfriends. At the end of the game, Sharks star Joe Thornton was interviewed and he couldn't have been more wholesome. Handsome, smiling, modest, hair sweaty from hustle, Joe told us he had no choice but to play hard because "our fans are the greatest."

No bling. No body art. No boasting.

Hockey is a game predominately played by white guys and watched predominately by white people. And as my interest in hockey waxes, my interest in basketball wanes. As I mulled it over the past couple of days, it seems to me that I drifted away from the NBA as the game became more representative of urban culture. Back in the day, I rooted for Jerry West and Rick Barry -- both white. I also was a big fan of Nate Thurman, a black man, but he brought a blue collar attitude to the court.

As this was running through my head (A 45-minute commute gives one a lot of time to think) I reflected on some training on white privilege I did a few years ago. One aspect of the training was trying to be sensitive to expectations I have and assumptions I make that are based in my culture as a white male. Whites don't often think about their own culture and often deny they even have a culture. But just like mac and cheese is white soul food, the National Hockey League is white culture displayed on the sports page.

So after all of this navel gazing do I think I'm a racist? No. But I do think I have some biases that derive from 60 years of living in a white culture. I don't think liking hockey is a bad thing. And I am even willing to admit that neither is the NBA.

God By The Book

I'm writing this post in a room of my church (Trinity Presbyterian in Santa Cruz, Ca) as I wait for the start of our monthly book club meeting. This month we read The Shack by Wm. Paul Young. This has been a hit of a book that has had a long run atop the best sellers list. This is remarkable for a listing from the religious lit genre.

I don't intend this post to be a book review so I won't go into much detail about the book. To oversimplify the plot, it's about a man who has a crisis of faith following the murder of his young daughter. His faith is restored after spending a weekend in a remote cabin with God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit that took the forms of (in order) a black woman, a Jewish carpenter and an Asian woman. Read it yourself -- or one of the hundreds of reviews on the web -- if you want to know more. I didn't care much for the book itself. The writing is clumsy, the plot unbelievable and silly in places. Some of the long passages with no action and only dialog literally put me to sleep.

The theology, however, is complicated. There is an exploration of the triune God and the relationship between the Trinity and man that I found interesting.

And that theology has set off a battle between fundamentalists who say the author's views are not biblically sound and even "dangerous", and the "emergent" church movement on the other side who have a much less literal relationship with scripture.

I tend to side with the loose constructionists in this debate. I'm much more interested in finding meaning in the teachings that help me get through the various crises of daily life than I am getting a road map to salvation. As a young man, I was agnostic, just this side of atheist. I had a hard time rationalizing some of the events depicted in the Bible. The message I heard from organized religion was there was an approved set of beliefs. It was an "either/or" proposition. Take or leave, buddy.

I left it.

Through some personal circumstances I had religion put back before me a few years ago. This time I had better guides who told me thinking was allowed. Someone said, "God gave you a brain, he expects you to use it." As I opened my mind to new possibilities and allowed myself interpret the Bible in my own way, I was able to find myself in its pages.

If your inclined to read The Shack enjoy it for what is not what someone else wants it to be.