i just watched bowling for columbine recently..
it's ironic.. i just wrote a paper for one of my classes..

my objective:

saying that I'm asian american doesn't quite cut it for me anymore. i intend to explore (re-search) what being asian american means to me and how it has shaped the person i am today. i believe this sort of analysis is imperative to shed light on who i am and who i want to be.

what i actually ended up doing was re-evaluating my split personality..
namely, korean me and american me..
and i sort of got disappointed in american me..

Charles Clark cites two different points of view in his article "The New Immigrants." The first is from journalist Georgie Anne Geyer who "blasts immigrants and government policies that encourage immigrants to view citizenship as an opportunity for economic benefits rather than civic responsibility." She continues to criticize by warning how this "will destroy America as we have known it and substitute a very different country, one that is spiritually incoherent, humanly conflict-ridden and economically hobbled." On the other hand John Fonte defends multiculturalism with, "Our goal should be Americanization, stated clearly without apology and without embarrassment.... Americanization does not mean giving up our ethnic traditions, customs, cuisine or birth languages. It means patriotic assimilation."

whatever our goal, it seems that we need to redefine america or perhaps we never defined america in the first place... it just sort of came to be...

"Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore; Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door"

we have permitted politics, capitalism, and, as michael moore demonstrated, fear to cloud our judgment of what we dream of america to be.
this is neither my american nor is it any one person's america; this is our ancestors', ours and the multitudes' that will come after us..

bowling for columbine strongly confirmed what i've been thinking for the past few months, but couldn't quite formulate into one train of thought..
that there's something seriously wrong with the direction of the country i call home..
there's bush, there's the war, there's the sorry state of this nation, and then there's me..
me who has never made a conscious effort to find out what the hell is going on..
well, no more..