Obama on race

Having listened to and read Obama's speech on race this past week, I have become even more impressed with his intelligence and poise.

As a friend remarked it seems to be a generational thing, to admit there's a problem and then say we need to deal with it.

It would nice if this were politics as usual!

Obama dealt with the issue and really challenged America to look beyond the stereotypes on both sides and really as John Stewart said, he talked to us about race as if we were adults.

I have read his first book dreams of my father and he deals with the race issue there. When I first read it, the thing I kept remarking about was how different his experience of race was from mine. Even though we are both the product of a black father and a white mother, my experience in Canada was different. He adopted the black side of his experience and worked in a black neighbourhood in Chicago. I feel a much stronger attachment to the more general immigrant experience, and although black do not necessarily identify with a larger black culture.

The other book which I found fascinating was my Lawrence Hill, on growing up mixed race in Canada. I found some of his descriptions outside of my experience, while others were bang on. A hilarious one, was how he began playing badminton in Canada, and when he went to the U.S he was told that badminton was a white man's sport [despite of course that Asians are dominant]. Now I am a badminton player, but have never seen that reaction, though to be honest I can picture it easily.

One of the interesting things for me, is the difference between how blacks are seen in Canada and the United States. Here we don't talk about race, or if we do it doesn't easily include black, it sits beneath the surface and is in some ways overshadowed by a debate about multiculturalism. However it can flare up, as in the debate in Toronto over an Afro centric school.

I'll always remember the fact that most people I know, never really remark on my race. On occasion when people are trying to identify me they will mention my race, but it's rare.

Now the one exception which made me strongly aware of my identity was an old roommate who was from the U.S. I was always very clearly identified as his black friend. It was a bit discomforting, but it also made me realize how no one else really referred to me that way, though perhaps it was beneath the surface. There were a few occasions when I remarked about being black, and was greeted with a shocked or surprised look, followed by "you're black?"

Obama speech was a reminder of the difference between race relations here and in the United States. It was a call to dialogue and discussion, and I leave even more impressed than before.

The city of words

I recommend that people should listen or read the latest Massey Lecture by Alberto Manguel. What a special lecture series, it's something that I have often enjoyed and it's been nice to hear them the last few times.

I enjoyed hearing Stephen Lewis when he did it a few years ago. He is an amazing speaker, and the words can't really do justice to the passion of his voice. My university, Carleton hosted one of the Massey Lectures by Ronald Wright a few years ago and I think I missed out, even though that series wasn't as interesting to me as the last one.

I have to say that the 2007 iteration was and is fantastic. I find Alberto Manguel and engaging and interesting speaker, on a fascinating topic. He is obviously someone who is well read and he makes literature relevant for me in a way I think few others have.

I find it interesting that I could engage with what he was saying and yet I used to hate and dread English class in high school. It wasn't until I took a course in grade 12 that I even realized how interesting that class could be. I think he was the only male English teacher I had in high school and he introduced me to John Ralston Saul. I think that was a brave act, especially as the material was over the head of many of the other grade 12 students. It wasn't all perfect, I think I read the worst piece of Canadian fiction they could drag up at my school, it wasn't fifth business of anything by Margaret Lawrence. I don't even remember who the author was.

I think it's a shame that so many boys in particular become alienated from reading through the horrors of English class.

Simcity fun

So I've been playing Simicity 4 a bit more recently. I connected one of my cities to a bigger city through a subway line. I returned to my bigger city to play around and start building it up. Then all of a sudden I noticed this:

I was suddenly making 10,000$ a month! and my transit revenue was 10,000$ a month. I have never hit this high before. So I decided to look around and see what was happening. Lo an behold I ran into this!

That's all for today folks.

Oh and I expect to have more time (hopefully/maybe) to start updating more regularly. I'm taking one less course this semester, and have 2 days off a week. The other thing I am hoping to do is some serious reading. I have 2 main classic sort of books to hit this semester. Adam Smith's Wealth on nations, and On the road to serfdom by Hayek. We'll see how that goes. I'm thinking I should maybe read Smith's Theory of Moral sentiments first, but I'm not sure. The next big classic book will be by Keynes.