OPINION
Page 6 n THE ASIAN REPORTER
October 1, 2018
Volume 28 Number 19
October 1, 2018
ISSN: 1094-9453
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TALKING STORY IN ASIAN AMERICA
n Polo
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Why we can’t fix nothing
ah tentu (yup for sure, in Indo patois) next
Saturday early I’m borrowing my best bud
Alberto’s cherry 1967 GMC pickup. And I’m
hauling a ton of orange Craftsman power tools,
Stanley socket sets, even that vintage pig-iron hand
auger our dear Pop grabbed for some odd reason just
before we sprinted for our lives off our beloved Spice
Islands — off to Ted’s Tool Shed they go. Way out on
S.E. Powell.
Of course, me telling you about next weekend’s
purge is just a literary trick to seduce your peepers
into sticking to my essay. And sure, Why we can’t fix
nothing is an attention-grabber. A concession to our
shrill times. Overstated improper English is normal
now.
Shameless starts aside, I promise some substance
at this essay’s core. Important stuff. Actually, a
simple proposition that took me 50 sweaty years to
work into the 1,200 words that follow. Five decades,
from our just-arrived refugee family’s 1968
heartbreaks over the murders of Bobby Kennedy
and the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., all
the way to mayor Tom Potter’s 2008 invitation to
Portland’s 70 newcomer communities to participate
in local democracy. Right up to last week.
And that proposition is: We cannot fix the unjust
and unkind societal machines we’ve built, they
daily disable us all. By “we” I mean my generation of
stubborn community mecanicos. By “disable us all”
I mean both the dehumanization of folks on top, the
kind leaving no bruises. And the distortion of our
families below.
We are not up to fixing our damaging institutions.
Not us refugees from colonialism. Not our tried-
and-true American minority leaders. Not our
mainstream’s elected officials with their armies of
8-to-5 public administrators. Surely not Oregon’s
staid captains of finance, manufacture, or trade.
Not now, not here, on our shared northwest corner
of this grand continent.
Scaling from the macro to me and you
By leading these institutions, some Americans
make billions. By carefully conforming, most of us
make middle class. By just complying, many
communities avoid social and economic isolation.
The “others,” those startling lot of us who cannot
smooth in — America shoots dead or locks tight or
deports. We all play our part. My complicity level
allows me to buy weekly groceries. New Seasons. To
J
We agreed to a division of labor and
love that relieved Anglo America of its
responsibility to make room, to make ideal,
to make peace. Policy leaders held on to
their intermittent appearances to make nice.
pay monthly rent. Westside. To dress well our
pretty kids, every next school year.
Our institutions overwhelm. Standing up against
one is like standing on any weekday morning MAX
track. Accordingly, my 2018 goals are more modest.
My 50th year as an earnest participant in our
American experiment will amount to no more than
a sorting of my contribution to it all. My part, is all I
can possibly know. And all I can manhandle.
This accounting starts with evaluating what all
newcomer communities do amazingly well, year
after exhausting year. Everywhere. Which is
adapt-adapt-adapt. My grandparents and parents
conformed to four regimes; inside my and my
brothers’ lifetimes our family adjusted three more
times. We are as tough and elegant as bamboo. This
flexibility plus those knucklehead Craftsman and
Stanley tools I’m trucking to Ted’s Tool Shed next
weekend, have made all of us happy and healthy.
Al’hamdulillaah. Thank God.
After adaptiveness, the second thing I do well is
self-discipline. Our grandpa, our pop, and his four
boys were all athletes. Even though South Salem
High and I failed each other, sports got me into
universities. Adrenaline is my performance-
enhancing drug of choice.
The fear hormone has fuelled my over-training
for coaches, my over-producing on cannery and
warehouse floors, my over-preparing for courts,
legislatures, downtown boardrooms, Middle
Continued on page 8
Opinions expressed in this newspaper are those of the authors and not necessarily those of this publication.