Sunday, August 17, 2008

Are you American or not?


I'm all for making visitors to our fine area feel welcome, but I saw something Saturday while watching the PONY World Series championship game on TV that I found distasteful. One of the broadcasters said there's an organized effort among Americans of Chinese descent from Western Pennsylvania and northern West Virginia to get together at the PONY series and cheer on the team from Taiwan. In Saturday's game, the Chinese team was playing a team from California, which ultimately won the title, and I have to say it bothered me to see a bunch of supposed Americans cheering for an overseas team to beat a bunch of American boys. I imagine some might just have been trying to offer a little support to boys who had relatively few fans traveling with them, but if they really wanted the Chinese team to beat the Americans, they should have hopped on a plane and gone "home" with them.

4 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

You may be right -- they probably wanted to offer support which I would think on the surface is admirable. When Americans go over seas with any sport the local American-Chinese or the American-Iranians dont support the athletes who travel their. They are often booed or even targeted. I am not suggesting we target the athletes in any way. They are playing a game as all youngsters should be encouraged and supported no matter their heritage or governments position.

Althought baseball among other sports is now globalized, those who prefer to offer support to a nationality and live here as legal citizens instead of the athletes talent and efforts should be sent home with those aboard their planes.

Perhaps, we as Americans still underestimate the nationalism those with Asian heritage still prefer towards their homeland than the land they now call home.

I dont want to be skeptical, but it makes you wonder who should really be here in this country and who is here for the advancement of another government.

August 17, 2008 at 12:28 PM  
Blogger Ellipses said...

I bet those 9 people's cheering was deafening...

-ellipses

August 18, 2008 at 1:00 PM  
Blogger Brant said...

Oh, no, there were many, many more than that. I couldn't conduct an accurate count from my couch, but it seemed like there were a lot more Chinese rooters than Americans.

August 18, 2008 at 4:57 PM  
Blogger Ellipses said...

Wow, that amazes me... I suppose you could count the nail salons and chinese food restaurants and end up with a decent number of people, but it would take one hell of an effort to get them to rally around a kid's baseball tournament... There are literally 4 chinese people in washington that I know by name... and I am pretty sure they don't give a flying squirrel about pony league baseball... I understand your view on this... but the 15301 zip code is .3% "asian..." If they want to take it upon themselves to perpetuate the stereotype of the unassimilated foreigner... knock yourself out. Just don't get pissed when I ask for my general tso's sans cat :-)

Seriously, though... don't go out of your way to piss people off and we will all get along a lot better... that goes for you native white guys too... don't be a dick just because you were born and bred here.

Ellipses... roots for washpa

August 18, 2008 at 6:52 PM  

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