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"Them"

By Ophelia Chong
February 14, 2009
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I am bringing back the word "dander", because the only way I can explain the way I felt on Thursday was that my "dander" was all up and standing on end.

One eyebrow went up as the other eye squinted, and my fingers started to bang away on the keyboard, steam coming out of my ears, like "Old Faithful" at Yellowstone National Park. I looked like Elmer Fudd after another run-in with Bugs Bunny. So what got me all in a "lather"?

Them

I was checking status updates on my Facebook, there were the usual updates, a cold here, a new BF there, and one stood out; it was about the economy tanking according to an essay written by someone's son. Interesting essay, I didn't agree with it, but it was well written. One of the comments from her friends, wrote that we were in trouble because the world is controlled by oil and that a large refinery "is owned by the Chinese".

Being Chinese, I hate being singled out as "them", never mind as the one controlling the world. Whenever I see any group singled out, I get flashbacks from my childhood when my family was set upon by a car full of drunk teens screaming racial epithets. My father drove the car to a strip mall and parked, my sister and I crying in the back seat waiting for them to get bored and leave; not only is it hurtful, it's ignorant. It is their fault, those people", it sounds like the monsters under your bed, the Bogeyman hiding in the closet behind the khakis. This fear of the other is only there because they don't even take the effort to understand why they are afraid.

You Are What You Post

Facebook is a public place, you can read comments on your Friend's pages made by people who are not on your Friend list, which makes it a free floating party of opinions. I may not know you, but I will get to know you through your comments. You are what you write and post; and as seen by the images of Jon Favreau, President Obama's speechwriter, posing with a cut-out of Secretary of State Clinton, making a face which was posted to Facebook and then released to the world, it can bite you back; remember that you will be judged by what you post, it is your Face you are presenting to the world. And it is in this world that we must live together online and off.

Image: Ophelia Chong /Hand Eye

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