We treat preference in the drive for pluralism as akin to prejudice, which it is not.

My family and I lived in Asia, loved the experience and the Japanese people, and have nothing but fond memories of our time there. But, for a permanent place to settle, it was not for us.

I worked in Africa, Ethiopia, Eritrea, and the Horn, loved the experience, met some awesome people and found the culture there fascinating. Would not live there with my family however, as non-muslims or Coptic Christians, our beliefs would just be too alien for acceptance, esp by the Muslims.

Worked for two years in Central and South America, again, we had the time of our lives, met many people who are still our friends, and especially loved Chile and Argentina, their people and culture.

Our time in Europe, reconnecting with family and the place, was defining for us. There is a great contrast between Europe and the US, esp in the realm of culture, and this despite our shared Western roots. For my family, being second generation Americans, it was easy to re-assimilate, we were totally accepted and found that life there was a better “fit”. I like parliamentary government, which allows for proportional representation of dissenting views (as opposed to the largely unimportant differences between Democrats and Republicans, both supporters of the status quo and the corporate-state) and European High Culture, of which America, based on individualism and material culture, has not produced.

So, if I may ask, is preference to you the same as prejudice? Or is there a place for everyone (including those who find US pluralistic society preferable to a mono culture)?

I used to consider your views self-satisfied and stilted to the point of thinking you are joking.

However, after careful consideration I have decided to give up on diversity and join you and your bruder as you seek refuge in the cultural — not racial! — superiority of the Germans.

Could you please advise me on where I might find some good sturdy lederhosen and instructions on how to dance the chicken dance so that I can blend in? I don’t speak German but I can shout.

Also, I will suppose that this addled writer meant to specify “engineers” as opposed to either “inhabitants of Silicon Valley” or “electronics workers”. Most of the bench workers were women, and a number would currently be classed as “Hispanic”, even though most spoke little Spanish, if any. A fair number were Filipino. The counties closer to San Francisco had a greater number of East Asians, as well. In the general population, women seemed quite as numerous as men.

Were the 98% white American males inhabiting Silicone Valley homosexuals — or just celibate? Gee — no wonder they died off with no (or only, maybe, 2 percent) females around)

Very bad planning for such smart, smart men!

Also, although there were certainly lots of white males working in Silicone Valley, there were also a number of American females working there, too, as engineers!!! (I know. Shocking). I worked with several of these women, who laughed about how, since there hadn’t been that many women in engineering programs in the 1960s and 1970s when they were getting their degrees, their alumni mailings were always addressed to Mr. Rita Jones, or Mr. Sally Wilson because the schools back then (this was the late 1980s) always addressed alums as male. (FYI – a lot of early computer coders were female–including with UNIVAC, one of the earliest electrical computers. The women’s role tended to be minimized — just as they used to minimize the contributions of African-Americans.)

So maybe a few of the 98% males were just willfully mis-identified females.

And considering all of the bitching on the part of my aforementioned Intolerant Aunt about how Asians were hogging all of the “good” slots at the California state universities, I am quite sure that Asians were also fairly well represented in Silicone Valley (or did they just take over after the initial, white American male apparently gay cohort die out because they couldn’t reproduce?)

You are, indeed, a wakjob.

“Racist?” – We’re not racist, we have the right, God Given, but the US Constitution, not to like anyone who is not like us, but we’re not Racist.

“Why do you think whites are being FORCED to leave CA?” Because illegal immigration is forcing us to leave, due to the massive influx of illegal immigrants – who incidentally we pay less than minimum wage, to pick our fruit, fix our cars, paint our homes, cut our grass, remodel our roofs, cook our food and raise our kids. Did I mention they were illegal?

“It’s because of all the non-whites who are deliberately keeping them out of jobs”, i.e., affirmative action for those blacks.

“And there is no denying the demographic fact that when Silicon Valley was 98% white American males the US and CA economies were BOOMING.” Which had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that a California 2 bedroom, 1200 square foot condo, the size of a child’s room in Texas, was going to $750,000.00 (which now you can’t give away). And everyone now owns a dot com. But that’s the immigrants fault (and after that the blacks).

“Racist? That would be all the 3rd worlders in CA driving the whites out.” See the first few above.

Yeah – you’re right??? You’re also smoking that which is legal for the most part in cali right at those rallies right?

Puff, puff, pass.

Names. We want names. Who is ‘FORCING’ whites out of the Golden State?

Racist? That would be all the 3rd worlders in CA driving the whites out.

One way we could help over population is to cease criticizing those who choose not to reproduce.

I read an article in the Wall Street Journal some years ago about the uproar at the Ivy Leagues (e.g., Harvard) about letting Jews attend. At the time, it was basically a Social Register white boys’ club, heavy on sports and socializing, not terribly intense in regard to academics. There was a fear that allowing Jews with their studiousness to enroll would lead to humiliation for the not-so-studious Social Register scions. Interesting how the times — and the “others” who get picked on vary from place to place and time to time, all basically because there are people who want scapegoats for their own (or their kids’) less than perfect performances.

Deep — Let’s not be ageist and rude. I do appreciate you engaging me on the population issue, and believe that we have some of the same thoughts.

Reynardine — I always enjoy your posts–and especially the weird synchronicity. Good on you with the awards.

You really want to sweep the awards this week, don’t you? I suppose any attention is better than none.

Oh, and I don’t retract the charge that conspiracy nuts occupy the lunatic fringe. Comparing Republicans (would not the intellectual capacity much the less will to carry out any coherent plan) to Nazi’s, saying there are plans to actually implement an industrial level genocide of people of color puts you squarely (and fairly) in the tin foil hat club. (oh, and I can cut and paste those ridiculous charges from you and Ruben, shall I?)

Plus, I think you have an impressive array of toy dinosaurs there in your assisted living facility, all properly labeled with their Latin derivatives and dates of discovery, that you way overuse to disparage and label opponents you have no intellectual or philosophical rebuttals for.

Uh oh — synchronicity at work!!!

On the other hand, she also complains about the Asians, because they do TOO well in school, and make it hard for the “nice white kids” to get into good schools.

I guess you can’t please some people.

FYI — because I work most often for corporate clients (incidentally, I have an MBA from a top school — J.L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University — which is also why I get drafted to work on briefing documents and policy documents that require a critical review of economic data and other hard core statistics), so my tendencies, in regard to business, are conservative, although I am also a critic of the increasingly rampant manipulation of regulations, in particular, to provide a competitive advantage to one company or industry with no benefit to the public or the environment (and I have written about that in professional journals). Because of my work, I have to pay attention to publications and news shows on both sides of the political spectrum and internationally, too. Currently, the Wall Street Journal, which for most of the time I have been reading it, has been non-partisan except for the editorial pages, has gone rather Right Wing (and Religious Right) in all of its sections, which is unfortunate.

You are, however, correct — especially with the Internet, people have begun to inhabit more and more echo chambers that reinforce their own thoughts and prejudices (we all have them). But please don’t place me in that category.

Finally, if you have read any of my posts in other threads, you will may believe you have seen a discrepancy — that I have written a lot about the work I do on the public involvement, community relations side of environmental consulting (rather than a lot about the dismal writing of foot-noted briefing documents). I do both. I really love working with people and working in many different types of community, but if I had to work directly with people all the time, someone would probably end up injured or dead. Hence, I withdraw into the other work I do, roughly about 40% of the time, and write august and lofty reports — and after I’m done with that, I run back to working with the public, because I’ve had it with statistics.

Reynardine — Funny about the Cubans in Miami. It is interesting, over time, to hear some people discuss their accomplishments or past conditions and see them balloon into grandeur. I actually find that I don’t even want to mention some of the stuff I’ve done in my life because, in retrospect, it is so pathetic (did you know I once published an article in Horse Illustrated???!!!!)

Yes, non-Hispanic whites are only about 40% of the population – but note that the vast majority of Hispanics identify themselves as “white.”

As those figures also show, California has a much smaller black population than the U.S. as a whole – about half the national average. That really makes people like Evan who blame everything bad including afternoon and evening thundershowers to black people look extremely stupid. Okay, basically everything about Evan makes him look really stupid :)

California also has a much larger Asian population which is double the national average.

Actually, I am hopeful of consensus — and it is what will be necessary, considering the global consequences of many environmental issues. We were headed toward making some very important progress, particularly in regard to reducing greenhouse emissions, with the Kyoto Accord — until Bush backed out (much to the disgust of a lot of people in business, who had spent billions collectively on compliance and planning for offsets and the like).

I don’t know what your background actually is, but I work in the area of environmental consulting and am a frequent contributor to professional journals (you may have read some of my work or seen it cited in other articles and books). I am also pretty radical in my beliefs of what it would take to bring about true sustainability, however, there are definitely steps that “conventional” actors, such as businesses can take that would move us solidly in that direction.

Unfortunately, with the rise of the religion-tinged Radical Right in this country — which has managed to mobilize the sociopaths within the corporate world who don’t give a flying f*ck about destroying the environment (but who, in the mid to late 1990s had to keep a muzzle on it because other strong corporate leaders and political leaders were acknowledging that it was possible–and necessary–to take steps toward sustainability). THe U.S. has, as a result of Bush and his policies, gone dangerously insane in regard to thoughts on corporate “rights” and weird religious beliefs that environmentalism is “the green dragon” — a false God.

In regard to “no apocalpyse” — if you are thinking of apocalypse as “world destruction,” no, probably not that. However, Americans, in particular, have no real grasp of what we are likely to be in for as a result of climate change effects. It IS going to be bad. My hope is that it will also engender the political will to take the steps necessary to move into a sustainable mode BEFORE the famine induced wars make things very much worse. I am not being an alarmist here, but I have been working with a lot of the data to prepare various high-level briefing papers, and it’s sobering stuff. Withdrawing to some castle somewhere ain’t gonna cut it.