Assimilation, acceptance, or tolerance? (#203, Topic A)

The macaca incident (#199) has generated at least one newspaper story a day for the last two weeks. From reading them, it became clear that the 20-year-old college senior of East Indian descent, addressed as a macaca by the senator, was born in that state -- in other words, he is a native of his state. By comparison, the senator who addressed the Indian-American as macaca and who greeted him with "Welcome to America and the real world of Virginia" was a transplanted Californian. Indeed, the senator's father was, at one time, the football coach at U of Southern California. At that time, I was an assistant professor at USC; their house, in the Baldwin Hills section of LA, was on the opposite side of the same street as my mentor's, then the chair of USC's Asian Studies department, whom I visited from time to time. Still, it was the transplanted Californian who considers himself a native son of Virginia, while the native-born Indian-American is considered a visitor. Why so? Simple. People from Asia have physical features so different from European-Americans that, regardless of the length of their stay in USA, are invariably considered visitors, or perhaps, squatters. People of Asian descent (along with those from Africa), because of their physical features, can never be assimilated. What they - at least I -- want to see is that they -- at least I -- be tolerated. It is probably asking too much that they be accepted. The People's Daily Overseas Edition 8/22/06, received today, reports an incident, in NYC's Queens on 8/12/06, where two European-American youths used unbecoming language to insult 4 young Chinese-Americans, then drove their car toward the latter, inflicting minor injury to one and serious injury to another. This is not even tolerance, even though both groups of youths have equal rights to be where they were. Certainly the world's only superpower, which considers exporting human rights as a top priorty, can set a good example at home.