How is OC Doing Blog Post: Or DavidAZ jumps on BK

[Trooper_IHB]

I personally never felt that BK's posts were racist....

That's it. I'm creating a poll. (IR, take it down if you don't approve)

 

[caycifish_IHB]

besides we already have a designated photoshopping picture poster in every thread named Cayci, we don't need a 2nd

a) I hope you aren't annoyed and

b) skek and ipop totally PS more than I do. I make LOLCats and the like.

it was just af friendly jab. however, I do think you should mix it up and throw in some dogs

a) dogs are a new-comer to the LOLsphere, and I haven't quite gotten into their groove yet. I can try to mix it up, though.

b) I see bk's musings on Asians about the same as folks who say people from the 909 have mullets and like beer and trucks. Not always true, some from that area would be offended, but there is a whole lot of truth in it. I'm from the 909, and not all the stereotypes apply to my family. Am I offended? Please. Everyone needs to just accept that stereotypes are based in truth even if they aren't completely true and stop getting their panties all in a twist.

c) Besides that, in order for our world to have different cultures, don't there have to be features and values that set each culture apart that can be pointed out? BK often qualifies his statements with which generation-born they are (immigrant, born here, parents born here, etc), and how the culture of each can be different. Since all those generations are of the same race, I don't think "racist" applies, and duh, of course it won't apply to everyone. He's pointing out features of their culture(s), and how the culture changes as the family moves from one country to another and clashes with other cultures.

What's the big, friggin' deal?

 

[irvine_home_owner_IHB]

I think the biggest irony here is that many of AZDave's photoshop items are very stereotypical... some could even be seen as racist.

I guess that's allowable if it's in picture form.

 

[SoCal78_IHB]

I just read through all the blog comments. To me it doesn't sound like AZDave thinks Bk is "racist". It sounds more like he doesn't agree with making generalizations. There is a big difference between generalizing and being a racist. To be racist means to hold the idea that one race is superior or inferior to another, or to have hatred or intolerance for a race. Bk's posts have never had that tone and I don't think even David thinks so. Bk does, however, make generalizations. Generalizations are based on trends and statistics. Some people do not enjoy generalizations because they force you to categorize people. But to me, Bk is no different from a detective who needs to analyze a person's modus operandi (M.O.) or any other number of professions where it's important to understand trends.

 

[zovall_IHB]

I actually wish the blog threaded to these forums because it's really hard to follow the conversations.

The blog comment feature is too difficult to track new posts and the transition from one day’s post to the next makes any continuous conversation impossible. It is odd how the blog and the forums each have their own little user community and there isn’t a lot of overlap, except days like today when tempers flared.

I realize blogs uses the comments format due to the fact that in most cases you don’t have to register to post your comment… but I do wish some of these people who are blog comment regulars would join the forums so we can get more discussion.

Maybe in addition to comments, IR can post a blog thread for each article so that you can either post there or here. I know this doesn’t help ad views, but like skek, I’ve always disliked the comments format due to discontinuity in discussion.

People got used to having comments (and threaded at that) on the blog so it would be tough to change. But that is something I've always wanted... read the blog post but have the comments reside in the forum. We're all one big community and I too hope that more readers from the blog discover the forums.

 

[High Gravity_IHB]

I just read through all the blog comments. To me it doesn't sound like AZDave thinks Bk is "racist". It sounds more like he doesn't agree with making generalizations. There is a big difference between generalizing and being a racist. To be racist means to hold the idea that one race is superior or inferior to another, or to have hatred or intolerance for a race. Bk's posts have never had that tone and I don't think even David thinks so. Bk does, however, make generalizations. Generalizations are based on trends and statistics. Some people do not enjoy generalizations because they force you to categorize people. But to me, Bk is no different from a detective who needs to analyze a person's modus operandi (M.O.) or any other number of professions where it's important to understand trends.

BK is like Hannibal Lecter. He tells some people what they don't want to hear, and they get angry because, deep down inside (like Clarice, or Senator Ruth Martin), they know what BK says is true.

 

[momopi_IHB]

Let's say if I wanted to troll BK's post. I'd look at a post like this one:

http://www.irvinehousingblog.com/forums/viewthread/368/#4805

Rip out a random statement from BK:

"Most Asians are materialistic but not impulsive."

And scream "YOU'RE SO WRONG TO STEREOTYPE ASIANS AS MATERIALISTIC! IT'S OFFENSIVE!!"

"YOU'RE ALSO WRONG THAT ASIANS AREN'T IMPULSIVE! ASIANS ARE GENETICALLY PREDISPOSED TO IMPULSIVE GAMBLING AT CASINOS!"

"RACISM IS RACISM, I SAY!"

I would, of course, miss the entire point of BK's post on market studies by demographic group.

 

[bkshopr_IHB]

AzDavid is blogging from Phoenix and He knew very little about the culture and idiosycracy of Irvine. His interaction with Asians is limited at his location and I would not fault him for his reaction. I do thank everyone who defended me knowing that my postings for almost 2 years have been not only informative in housing but brought awareness to consumer demographic.

I want to apologize to you for the entire comment thread on today's post. When I saw your comment on the old post, I thought it rather amusing. When I mentioned it in the main post, I didn't mention you by name, thinking that perhaps only a curious few would actually go read through the comments to see who said what. I had no idea it would turn into 60 comments on whether or not you are a racist. The comments were out of control, an nobody seemed inclined to just let it drop.

I am sorry if you found any of the comments offensive.

IR,

As a minority I lived with racism during my entire life. It is necessary for me to have thick skin in order for me to survive in my industry. AZ David does not have a real clue what Racism really is. I appreciate your kindness and your professionalism. Thank you for recognizing my intention.

How could he possibly interpreted my statement "Asians preference for Lexus, Honda, and Toyota" as a racist comment? In his mind he must thought of these car makers as cheap and inferior brands and people who own the cars are financially poor and have bad taste.

I retrained from posting knowing that he could not be reasoned.

 

[rickhunter_IHB]

I thought SOCAL just posted that AZ David DID NOT think that BK was racist.

And that BK's postings are generalizations...

Are we out of things to talk or write about?

 

[SoCal78_IHB]

^ AZDave said himself: "If what you are saying is not all stereotypes are racism then I agree with you."

I know that Dave did use the word "racism" but going by the above comment, I take it that he is able to separate stereotypes from racism (which has an air of superiority or possibly even malice.) I'm not trying to speak for him. Just giving my take on it. I think it's obvious that BK does not have a malicious bone in his body. I'm not asking you to agree with or even understand me.

 

[acpme_IHB]

racist comments, explicit pictures (of pandas)... bk is IHB's version of a shock jock!

 

[Stuff It_IHB]

IR,

As a minority I lived with racism during my entire life. It is necessary for me to have thick skin in order for me to survive in my industry. AZ David does not have a real clue what Racism really is. I appreciate your kindness and your professionalism. Thank you for recognizing my intention.

How could he possibly interpreted my statement "Asians preference for Lexus, Honda, and Toyota" as a racist comment? In his mind he must thought of these car makers as cheap and inferior brands and people who own the cars are financially poor and have bad taste.

I retrained from posting knowing that he could not be reasoned.

How can you be a minority? I thought you were asian and this is Irvine?

 

[bkshopr_IHB]

IR,

As a minority I lived with racism during my entire life. It is necessary for me to have thick skin in order for me to survive in my industry. AZ David does not have a real clue what Racism really is. I appreciate your kindness and your professionalism. Thank you for recognizing my intention.

How could he possibly interpreted my statement "Asians preference for Lexus, Honda, and Toyota" as a racist comment? In his mind he must thought of these car makers as cheap and inferior brands and people who own the cars are financially poor and have bad taste.

I retrained from posting knowing that he could not be reasoned.

How can you be a minority? I thought you were asian and this is Irvine?

As I was growing up in poor Hispanic barrios or riding a bus into a wealthy Anglo community Asians were not welcomed in the 70's. Many Asians were victims of crime and prejudice during the earlier decades of mass immigration. The sentiment toward Japanese were some how passed on to other Asian ethnicity. Asians are attracted to communities with ethnic tolerance such as Irvine, Arcadia, Diamond Bar, and etc. It was the late 70's and early 80's that Asians changed the way society viewed them by their education achievements.

Only in the last 20 years Asians have not been ridiculed in the upper middle class society. However among the class of Elites Asians have a milestone to reach. Within the wealthiest zip codes Asians represent a very small %.

In my line of work I am a minority. In the place where I live I am a minority. In my social circle I am still a minority with the exception of my fellow Asian bloggers.

 

[awgee_IHB]

IR,

As a minority I lived with racism during my entire life. It is necessary for me to have thick skin in order for me to survive in my industry. AZ David does not have a real clue what Racism really is. I appreciate your kindness and your professionalism. Thank you for recognizing my intention.

How could he possibly interpreted my statement "Asians preference for Lexus, Honda, and Toyota" as a racist comment? In his mind he must thought of these car makers as cheap and inferior brands and people who own the cars are financially poor and have bad taste.

I retrained from posting knowing that he could not be reasoned.

How can you be a minority? I thought you were asian and this is Irvine?

As I was growing up in poor Hispanic barrios or riding a bus into a wealthy Anglo community Asians were not welcomed in the 70's. Many Asians were victims of crime and prejudice during the earlier decades of mass immigration. The sentiment toward Japanese were some how passed on to other Asian ethnicity. Asians are attracted to communities with ethnic tolerance such as Irvine, Arcadia, Diamond Bar, and etc. It was the late 70's and early 80's that Asians changed the way society viewed them by their education achievements.

Only in the last 20 years Asians have not been ridiculed in the upper middle class society. However among the class of Elites Asians have a milestone to reach. Within the wealthiest zip codes Asians represent a very small %.

In my line of work I am a minority. In the place where I live I am a minority. In my social circle I am still a minority with the exception of my fellow Asian bloggers.

bk - Something to consider. It is my hypothesis that the really large money made in this country is made in sales; sales of financial products, medical devices, commercial re, armaments, etc.. Asians seem to become highly educated and sucessful in technical fields, but rarely do Asians take it the next step to sales.

 

[skek_IHB]

.

 

[bkshopr_IHB]

So, IrvineRenter, yesterday you opened up a can of worms between BK and AzDavid. Today you incite your old friend in CG to riot. What do you have in store for us tomorrow?

The revelation of Graphrix's true identity and He will be entitled to an inheritance of $20 billion.

 

[Bitter Renter_IHB]

The wealth gap with Asians is quite large, and the type of Asians that Irvine attracts are the well to do ones with $$. IAC doesn't want Irvine to turn into ethnic slums, so they require most of the retailers to cater to the "general public" rather than specific ethnicity. Where ethnic shopping plazas exist, were permitted only because the original tenants had failed and they brought in Ranch 99 to revitalize it.

I was going to retort that Diamond Jamboree is brand new yet has a heavy Asian slant (ouch, no pun intended on that ;-)), but I see it's a rare non-Irvine-Company shopping center (wonder who owned the land prior to this development). Perhaps Diamond Jamboree LLC will do quite well filling that niche that you say the Irvine Company tries to avoid. BTW, I recently checked out Chae Bahn there, which is the first Korean restaurant I've come across that specializes in Bibimbap, and it was the tastiest Bibimbap I've ever had. (Ce Fiore's frozen yogurt was good too, but good frozen yogurt places are a dime a dozen around here these days.)

 

[Bitter Renter_IHB]

(Comments by

I actually wish the blog threaded to these forums because it's really hard to follow the conversations.

[...]

People got used to having comments (and threaded at that) on the blog so it would be tough to change. But that is something I've always wanted... read the blog post but have the comments reside in the forum. We're all one big community and I too hope that more readers from the blog discover the forums.

I have to agree that following conversations in the threaded comments section is a pain in the ass. One thing that would help would be if the "Someone just responded to your comment" emails (which of course is very misleading wording, as you get notified for any new comments to subscribed posts, not just ones that were in response to yours) included the name of the user who made the new comment. Seems like that would be a very easy code change.

Going beyond that, it would be awesome if the emails were formatted something like this:

Username just responded to the entry you subscribed to at:

Irvine Housing Blog

The title of the entry is:

Post Title

"The new comment"

This comment was in response to this one, by Other Username:

"Comment that was responded to."

To stop receiving [etc.]

This way you could tell what context posts were made in (and who made them) without having to always go to the blog and search down for text included in the comment (and then the next new one, and the next). For posts that were directly in response to the blog post, the email could either omit that last section or include some boilerplate saying that comment was in response to the original post.

One other way I can think of to make it easier to follow conversations in the comments would be to have all new comments -- that is, ones that weren't there last time you visited the page -- show up in an easily distinguished different style from comments that were there last time you visited. That way you could just scroll down and easily pick out the new ones, rather than having to search for text included in a "Someone just responded" comment. It would also allow you to follow discussions in which you hadn't been inclined to post. Ideally this info would be stored server-side in connection with your username, so that if you changed browsers (e.g. work to home), the read/unread info would be maintained, and then for people reading anonymously you could back down to using a browser cookie. This would involve a lot more coding than my previous suggestion, though.

 

[Bitter Renter_IHB]

BTW, Bkshopr, in case you didn't check "Notify me of follow-up comments?" when posting in the comments section of today's blog, I wanted to note that I addressed a question to you:

Hey, good to see you in the comments section, bkshopr—haven’t noticed you here in a while.

Can you give an example of what you mean when you say certain villages are suffering because of branding?

As to DeathToSinan’s comment, though in yesterday’s comment section I spent a lot of time defending the plausibility (and non-racist nature) of your theories about the price-retention-supporting nature of various Asian cultural traits at work in Irvine, since in your comment above you’re chastising those who were expecting Irvine price retention, I’m curious whether you’ve changed your mind as to how much effect these cultural traits will have on prices here.

 

[momopi_IHB]

The wealth gap with Asians is quite large, and the type of Asians that Irvine attracts are the well to do ones with $$. IAC doesn't want Irvine to turn into ethnic slums, so they require most of the retailers to cater to the "general public" rather than specific ethnicity. Where ethnic shopping plazas exist, were permitted only because the original tenants had failed and they brought in Ranch 99 to revitalize it.

I was going to retort that Diamond Jamboree is brand new yet has a heavy Asian slant (ouch, no pun intended on that ;-)), but I see it's a rare non-Irvine-Company shopping center (wonder who owned the land prior to this development). Perhaps Diamond Jamboree LLC will do quite well filling that niche that you say the Irvine Company tries to avoid. BTW, I recently checked out Chae Bahn there, which is the first Korean restaurant I've come across that specializes in Bibimbap, and it was the tastiest Bibimbap I've ever had. (Ce Fiore's frozen yogurt was good too, but good frozen yogurt places are a dime a dozen around here these days.)

Try the boiled beef (sliced) platter (soo-yook?) at Chae Bahn.