OPINION / U.S.A.
July 18, 2016
THE ASIAN REPORTER n Page 7
TALKING STORY IN ASIAN AMERICA
We’re able to help
because African-America’s
grief has not yet paralyzed
us. Not in the way America’s
wheels lock every next time
there’s another terrible
collision between President
Thomas Jefferson’s
white and black children.
n Polo
New America and
settled America’s black
and white family fight
want to be part of this discussion. I
want to participate in solving this
national problem.
Indeed, our immigrant communities
long to help ease, maybe even help end,
this excruciating family fight between
black and white America.
We know a lot about family fights. We
know about how awful we all can be, to
those nearest us. We came here as refugees
from our very own bitter Arab, African,
Asian, Slavic, and Latin-American family
fights. Our own heart-bruising and bone-
breaking ones.
We are grateful, our children and our
children’s children are grateful, for refuge
in this rich northwest corner of a continent
so carefully cultivated by 140 centuries of
indigenous ancestors and elders. We are
indebted to urban America for a state of
governance and commerce that daily
grants us great relief from our families’
grief. I mean this, sincerely.
So much works so well here, but a few big
things don’t. We wake to these on the
morning news. We wake to each next
ferocious struggle — asymmetrical,
excessive — between these black and
white arms of the American family.
Of course, we cannot know our African-
American neighbors’ 400 years of suffering
here — institutionalized ugliness that
honest scholars must now admit actually
began in Puritan New England, in
America’s spiritual core. Not on her cotton
and tobacco plantations, not in her
southern economy. No, New America will
never know your families’ sorrow.
Our community has never been
property, openly sold and legally shipped
for nation building. We have, however, like
many of River City’s 70 or so ethnic
streams, been enslaved in our former
homeland. Our father, his brothers and
boy cousins built railroads in sodden Thai
jungles, they made iron ball bearings on
Nagasaki assembly lines. Our pop’s sisters
and girl cousins slaved to death serving the
angry appetites of Imperial Japan’s army.
I
We’re able to help
Our men and boys eventually came
home to their parents, after America
Classic Nintendo Entertainment
System returning to stores
REDMOND, Wash. (AP) — If you have
fond memories of battling King Koopa or
tossing barrels as Donkey Kong, you can
relive them this fall.
Nintendo is leaping into the nostalgia
market by bringing back the classic
Nintendo Entertainment System.
The NES Classic edition comes complete
with 30 built-in games, including all three
Super Mario Bros., Donkey Kong, The
Legend of Zelda, and Punch-Out.
Nintendo says it’s bringing back the
wildly popular system that launched in the
1980s so those who grew up with it can
pass gaming memories onto the next
generation.
The device looks almost exactly like the
original NES, but smaller. It will be able to
hook up directly to high-definition TVs.
The system goes on sale November 11.
Redmond, Washington-based Nintendo of
America says it will retail for $59.99.
Read
The Asian
Reporter
online!
4
8
5
9
3 8
2 7
1
3
7
1
6
9
2
3
6
4
9 7
6 5
7
5
4
8
7
MEDIUM
Difficulty
Our two most recent
issues can be downloaded
from our website,
<www.asianreporter.com> .
6
level: Medium
# 18
#48537
Instructions: Fill in the grid so that the digits 1
through 9 appear one time each in every row, col-
umn, and 3x3 box.
Solution to
last issue’s
puzzle
Puzzle #32567 (Easy)
All solutions available at
<www.sudoku.com>.
1
7
6
3
8
5
9
2
4
4
5
2
1
9
6
7
8
3
3
8
9
2
7
4
5
6
1
2
3
4
6
5
1
8
7
9
9
1
8
7
3
2
6
4
5
5
6
7
9
4
8
3
1
2
6
9
1
8
2
3
4
5
7
8
4
3
5
1
7
2
9
6
7
2
5
4
6
9
1
3
8
If settled America raises their smartphones right now,
if you tap F then A then L …
liberated our East Indies. But not our
women, not our girls. Not ever. They still
lie in unsanctified soil, somewhere. No one
knows where to find them. It is these lovely
souls’ unspeakable humiliation that gets
us as near as we’ll ever get to our
African-American sisters’ and brothers’
pain. Not near enough, ampun’illaah —
may Allah have mercy on us all. Never
near enough.
Immigrant Americans are able to help
because U.S. history, because those deep
institutionalized ruts, cut by rage and
denial, cut deeper by recrimination,
running from America’s foundations, have
not embittered us. No, not yet.
We’re able to help because African-
America’s grief has not yet paralyzed us.
Not in the way America’s wheels, this
otherwise kind and creative nation’s
wheels, lock every next time there’s
another terrible collision between Presi-
dent Thomas Jefferson’s white and black
children.
If settled America raises their smart-
phones right now, in your homes and
offices, in Starbucks’ long morning coffee
lines; if you tap F then A then L — Google
Maps will quickly auto-fill “Falcon
Heights.” The same’s true for a hundred
head-on black and white collisions — the
one on the Edmund Pettus Bridge; the one
on Detroit’s despairing streets; the one
right after Rodney King’s L.A. beating; the
one after OJ’s slo-mo I-405 freeway chase;
the tragic crashes now simply abbreviated
as “Katrina,” as “Charleston,” as “Fer-
guson.” And “Dallas.” These code names
are not yet known to New America.
We want to help. Immigrant Americans
do, jah tentu (sure we do). And just as
surely, we’re ready to commit our banks
and banks of social, cultural, and spiritual
capital. Our tenderness. The kind of
human knowing and tending this angry
and exhausted nation so urgently needs,
presidential-election-year theater not-
withstanding.
Let us contribute to constructing us all a
new American narrative.
Department of Consumer & Business Services
Workers’ Compensation Division:
What we do
Besides enforcing state laws and rules, the Workers' Compensation Division (WCD) provides
services and resources to help those in the workers' compensation system. Employers,
workers, medical providers, vocational consultants, insurers, and attorneys can get
information on their rights and responsibilities and learn effective ways to control workers'
compensation costs and return injured workers to productive jobs.
For more information, call the Workers' Compensation Division
at 1-800-452-0288 or 503-947-7810
or find us on the web at www.wcd.oregon.gov.
www.dcbs.oregon.gov