I am tired; I was at work for almost 14 hours today; but I don't want to go to sleep. Not quite yet - I want to enjoy Barack's Obama's victory just a little longer. And I need some time to think.

Credit: Damon Winter for the New York Times

You know, I didn't believe it could happen until it actually did - that all of America (or at least a convincing enough chunk to sweep the electoral college) would turn out in record numbers and vote for a black man. I really didn't think that we, as a people, were mature enough to look past the racial politics that, by and large, still poison our public discourse. Sure, the economy going the way it's going certainly didn't hurt. But the symbolism here runs much deeper than that.

I am excited. I am excited because Obama means so many different things to so many people; and that his appeal is capable of uniting so many diverse backgrounds and viewpoints and demographics. I am enthused by his post-racial, globe-spanning roots; his intellect and deliberative, consensus-building style, heck, even the fact that he has been both law student and law professor. Not surprisingly, when I talk to black people, I see something quite different. I see pure joy in their eyes; pride, approaching giddiness. For African-Americans, this night is something far more visceral, far more indescribable. Colin Powell hailed Obama as a "transformational figure," and that really is true.

But where are we now, at this moment of triumph? In the middle of one of the worst financial crises in American history; mired in two wars abroad that have diminished America's standing in the eyes of the rest of the world; and during a time when our country has never been more deeply divided over issues of culture, race, religion, morality, identity. Certainly, Proposition 8 looks likely to pass, so that is another bridge that we are not ready to cross. The broader prognosis is also grim: our environment is beginning to serious signs of strain, and global courage and leadership are nowhere to be found; while large swaths of our world remain in the throes of political instability, violence, and suffering. And to look to a single man for hope and inspiration - I pray that euphoria does not quickly give way to disenchantment and more of the same.

But just watch that superb victory speech, the way he connected the past with the future, the victory of the moment with the struggle ahead. What kind of world do we want to leave our children, after all? Will we let our differences stop us from what is ultimately possible? His words, and his story, might just be that catalyst. That spark.

I still don't know how to process, to categorize what happened tonight. Sure, I knew it was probably coming: McCain was trailing in the polls, and gee, he sure sounded wistful already with his talk about "savoring the moment" and enjoying the "memories" of his campaign. But in my mind, this sort of thing, electing a black man to the highest echelon of power, just does not happen in America. Never. There is plenty of talk about diversity, and talk is cheap. We have a multicultural and pluralistic society here that is unique among the world's nations, but those glass ceilings and secret biases, publicly disavowed but privately acknowledged, well, they never really go away.

Or do they? As I drove home tonight I felt strangely adrift, as if all the rules had changed. Yes, we can. Just maybe.

I saw a blurb about Martin Luther King's Letter from a Birmingham Jail in today's LA Times and decided to read it. It is truly fascinating to experience King's eloquence -- his passion, his mastery of the great Greek and Christian philosophers, his frustrations, worries, hopes, all felt within the immediacy of the battles of his day -- first hand, rather than through the muddled lens of a history book, or a TV special. So much has passed since the Civil Rights movement that it is easy to forget what it was really about.

From King's April 16, 1963 missive:

For years now I have heard the word "Wait!" It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This "Wait" has almost always meant "Never." . . . We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward gaining political independence, but we still creep at horse and buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say, "Wait."

King wrote this letter after the Birmingham protests and in response to a statement by a group of white Alabama clergymen that ostensibly urged moderation and less confrontational methods. He is quite upset with them. His response, drawing upon religious analogies to ancient prophets and saints, is that "negotiation" is never enough in the face of broad injustice:

But though I was initially disappointed at being categorized as an extremist, as I continued to think about the matter I gradually gained a measure of satisfaction from the label. Was not Jesus an extremist for love: "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you." Was not Amos an extremist for justice: "Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever flowing stream." Was not Paul an extremist for the Christian gospel: "I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus."

Yet forty-five years later, it seems like so much has changed. It will always be important to remember what King, Thurgood Marshall, Earl Warren and others fought for. At the same time, I can't feel like living in some sort of post-modern nightmare, permeated by a far greater moral ambiguity. In our world, King is celebrated; politically correct lip service is paid to diversity and equality, whatever those things mean; Ward Connerly extols the color-blind society. Television portrays racism as a black-and-white issue with a black-and white solution. But things just aren't that simple. It is easy to condemn apartheid. It is not so easy, however, to address the real problems.

Clearly, the discourse of race has taken a life of its own. There are the quotas, "reverse discrimination," playing the race card. Racial controversies are manufactured from sound bites that provide only the race of the aggressor and the race of the victim. Our society is incorrigibly race-conscious down to its core. Yet there remain the continuing urban blight of our inner cities and the real disparities that exist in opportunities for social and economic advancement. Why was winning the battle not winning the war?

My other reaction upon reading King's historic call to action, is that surely, the issue of race has moved beyond Black and White. Obviously I am neither one nor the other. Los Angeles is a a bewilderingly diverse city boasting over 250 languages and at least that many ethnicities. Yet more often than not, I am disheartened to see that the discourse has continued to be framed in this either-or dichotomy. Like the moral issues, skin color itself has shaded into gray, brown, and yellow; but perception, not surprisingly, lags behind reality. Frankly, as an Asian-American, I sometimes feel that the issues relevant to me are simply ignored (though perhaps, they pale in comparison to the issues facing blacks, even today.)

As a last note, if you have the chance, I encourage you to check out Frank Wu's Yellow: Race in America Beyond Black and White. It is a highly nuanced and thought-provoking narrative from the perspective of a Chinese-American law professor who teaches at a historically black college. I've been meaning to write a short review/reaction for some time.. but it's certainly worth a look.

Yesterday, I attended the half-day TechNet Innovation Summit at Stanford's Memorial Auditorium. TechNet is an organization that represents CEOs of leading high technology companies like Microsoft, Cisco, Sun Microsystems, Yahoo, etc. A bunch of them came to opine on "the future of the Internet," energy concerns, and the U.S.'s position in the global economy. Yahoo's Jerry Yang and Sun's Scott "You Have Zero Privacy Anyway, Get Over It" McNealy, for example, were two of the most prominent attendees.

The main event, however, was a conversation with the man, the myth, the legend -- Bill Gates himself. Moderator Charlie Rose, though he clearly didn't know the difference between an operating system and a search engine, did a great job. He started with some softballs, asking Gates about his charitable work, and then worked his way into hitting all the "hot button" topics that one might possibly want to ask Bill Gates about -- the zune, the X-Box 2, why Windows Vista is taking so damn long to get to market, what he thought about YouTube. (The answer to that last one was that foolish investors [read: archrival Google] had far overvalued YouTube's stock, forgetting that generating tons of Internet traffic is far from generating actual revenue.)



I'll have to say that I was impressed. Despite being consistently demonized by the Internet community (see right), Gates yesterday was articulate, passionate about the causes he believes in, highly intelligent on global issues, and charismatic. Yes, he let some of that famed viciousness come through, especially when talking about Google and Apple. But he has also done some real good for the world with his Foundation, which he is leaving Microsoft to run full time in 2008.


This is people lining up to ask Bill Gates questions. I like to call this picture "1984."

If that wasn't enough, I feel like I was just treated to a two-for-one movie feature. Why? Because Governor Arnold Schwarzenneger showed up, unannounced, after Gates' talk, to give a standard twenty minute stump speech. It was ridiculous.

"Now that I have been re-elected, I will terminate the girly men!"

Only two weeks ago, this would have seemed inconceivable. The Dems taking back the House? Even yesterday -- the Senate seemed to be out of reach. Rumsfeld's resignation is the icing on the cake.

This is momentous. The American people have made this midterm election a resounding statement of their disapproval of Bush's policies in Iraq. It seems too good to be true, surreal. Somebody pinch me!

Maybe when I wake up tomorrow, I'll find that Bush will be removed from office, as well. Hell, if all this can happen, maybe that can too. The Drudge Report says it best: It Was a Thumpin'.

Last week, a rumor surfaced that President Bush was coming to campus. There was heavy security and the exact time and details of his arrival was shrouded in mystery. Me and Henry went down to check out the scene..

The plan was for Bush to meet with the Hoover Fellows from the conservative Hoover Institution, located, appropriately enough in Hoover Tower. The Fellows were supposed to give him policy advice in a one-hour meeting. However, it didn't end up happening because protesters blocked some route that Bush needed to take to take to the tower.

( more of the spectacle )

The Los Angeles Times website (which I read when I don't have the paper copy home in LA) has a fascinating online series this week called "The Lifeline." It covers lives of members of the U.S. military after they suffer serious injury, from moments after they get injured all the way through the physical rehabilitation process and the rebuilding of their lives.

Apparently, with increases in the speed and effectiveness of emergency battlefield care, more and more soldiers are surviving debilitating injuries from IED's, land mines, grenades, shrapnel than in any previous military conflict. But this phenomenon raises all sorts of new issues that the injured have to deal with (which they presumably didn't before because they would just die.)

So I know what you're thinking, that stinkin' liberal L.A. Times, they just want to further undermine support for the war in Iraq by showing guts, gore, and suffering and tugging on the American heartstrings. But it is a candid and surprisingly personal look into the lives of these brave and unfortunate servicepeople, and I highly recommend a look.

Only the first part is up yet, but it's a doozy. Don't miss the interactive Flash-driven photography exhibit.

On my way back from watching a court proceeding involving a white supremacist prison gang (those guys were scary), I stopped by City Hall to see new mayor Antonio Villaraigosa give his inauguration speech. It was upbeat, populist, realistic, and very slick. I think this guy just might be the publicly visible, activist mayor that Los Angeles needs.. I'm hopeful, and impressed by what I've seen of him so far.

Anyway, my life has been pretty hectic. Two days off from work at the beginning of this week were helpful though, in allowing me to recover from that mysterious sickness. But I barely finished an assignment for work today, I still have my essay which is in a quasi finished-unfinished state..

But for now, I can put that all out of my mind. It's time for my family's annual summer trip -- nine days in mainland China and Hong Kong. It will be great...

This is a really interesting in yesterday's LA TImes: Trade Battle With Brazil Threatens U.S. Copyrights. Basically, Brazil is tired of engaging in ineffective, tariffs-based trade wars with the big, bad U.S. So they have hit upon the innovative strategy of threatening to withdraw copyright protections in their country for American works if the U.S. doesn't stop paying fat subsidies to its cotton exporters.

I find this intriguing because it pits two powerful American lobbies against each other in a very unconventional struggle. On the one hand you have Big Agribusiness, which will fight to the death for continued subsidies from Uncle Sam that it really doesn't deserve (don't believe for a minute that those handouts are only going to support the family farmer, the last remaining exemplar of the Traditional American Lifestyle!) On the other hand, you have Big Media, which regards copyright protections for its works as God-given entitlements, not mere temporary protections bestowed upon “Writings” for “limited Times” as the Constitution seems to require. Normally, the two have very little to do with each other. But when push comes to shove.. well, you have the makings of quite an interesting battle.

Of course, you might think that everything sold in Brazil is pirated anyway, so what difference would it make?

I just heard Ward Connerly is leaving the UC Board of Regents after 12 years of service. While I am sure liberal campus activists all across UCLA and UC Berkeley are breathing a collective sigh of relief, I must admit in some sense I am sorry to see him go. Say he was a troublemaker or whatever, for taking such unorthodox and unpopular views on controversial issues such as affirmative action, but you must also admit that he had different ideas from everyone else, and stood up for those ideas. He truly believed in the viability of a race-blind policy for the University -- nay, of an entire race-blind society -- and although I disagree with that view, I respect him for it. I would always cackle at the thought that, the activists on campus would love to label him an ignorant racist or some other ugly term, but they couldn't, because he's black.

Though I'm all for liberal goals and values, minority empowerment, I also think the student political establishment at the UC was a little bit too smug and comfortable in their positions, and Connerly forced all of them to reconsider why they were standing for what they were. Or at the least, he forced them to mobilize big protests to complain about how crappy he was.

Go get 'em, W.C.