David tried to stay away from several stereotypes that he made: those mediocre programmers, who blamed all the bugs on "network issues"; or those mediocre network administrators who blamed every network connectivity problems on "security breach" or "hacking activities". He also tried not to make friends with other mediocre system administrators who blamed all the system related problems on "virus infections" or "network intrusions".
He was happy to make friends with Derrick an AS/400 operator and Bob Sutton a computer technician because these two seemed to give him a fresh air of honesty in Corporate America. Neither were superstars with great possibilities to climb the corporate ladders upward, but neither one of them was bad at what they did for a living either. In fact, both were commonly acknowledged expert workers with what they did, but had no interests in parading their contributions in front of others, because neither of them had their passions really set on technology.

Unlike other IT colleagues whose passion were not in technology but always tried to pretend to be leaders of technologies, both Bob and Derrick were openly admitting they were just in the technology business to get through the years and waiting for their retirements.

Derrick was black or an "African American" as in politically correct terms these days. David wondered if there were such things as "African American", "Asian American", where was the term "European American"? There are the terms such as: "Hispanic American", "Irish American", but are those equivalent of "European Americans", "White American" or "English American"? In computer terms, the "default" is the commonly used that come with the system when other parameters were missing. So it is understandable that the missing adjectives just meant the default values. The tragic of the Americans is the "Native American".

When Derrick was with David, his only interest seemed to be teaching this Chinese fellow to talk like a black man and see how funny that could be. After introducing a few expressions of slang, then Derrick would stop and explain to David what the words really meant. The conversations started when Derrick learned that David lived in Cincinnati, Ohio for almost eight years. Derrick told him that he lived there as a child also, and his families were still mostly in the general area of the Great Midwest. His families mostly were still spreading out in the areas of Ohio and Michigan, clustered around the metropolitan areas of Cincinnati and Detroit.

Speaking of Cincinnati, an area he was so familiar with, David told Derrick, "I couldn't believe Cincinnati had a riot a couple of years ago because of racial tensions. People in Canada started asking me 'well, you lived in Cincinnati for many years, how was it like over there, have you ever being mugged . . .' I couldn't help but telling them that it was actually quite a peaceful and quiet town. I didn't feel any tension while living there, but after leaving the area, it did feel like the city was very different and less integrated than many other cities I have seen in the Eastern or Western 'coastal' areas. And it was definitely much less integrated with racially and culturally than these Southern 'border' states in US that are close to Mexico or Cuba."

"What kind of differences have you seen?" Derrick asked. "It felt like there were many Blacks and Whites in Cincinnati area, but that's about it ethnically. While in many other cities, closer to coasts or borders more apparent it became that, there are more Hispanics besides Blacks and Whites like here in Houston". "And many more Asians too" Derrick added. "And more Asians" David agreed, although he didn't wanted to list other small percentage minorities such as: Native Americans, Asian and Pacific islanders and never had a good handle on how to separate Hispanics or Latino into who's from Europe such as Spain, Portugal, Italy and who's from South American such as Columbia, Cuba, Brazil. And he heard among people from South America that Argentina tended to think of itself as not South American. Then there are countries such as Mexico, Honduras are actually in Central Mexico, but are more commonly referred to as "Hispanic" than people from Spain in the daily lives of America. Within the word "white", they are Jewish, Eastern Europeans, Arabs, and people from Mid-east in general or even some people from India could look White. David grumbled to Derrick that they were just way too much confusion amongst these ethnic groups and he found the strangest term of all in United States is to use this word "Caucasian" to refer to "White people". On the map, the Caucus Mountain was simply far, far deep into the Eurasia to be connected to the "English Speaking People". Maybe Sir Winston Churchill explained it, but neither David nor Derrick read the book because big volumes generally had the effect of scaring away the generation X.

Derrick was not going to let go the topic about Asian though and started to ask, "Do you think Asians are Black or White? Have you seen a movie called 'Do the right thing'? Hmm, it was a movie by Spike Lee I think. In the movie, there was this Chinese or Korean grocery store owner. When the Blacks went in to rob his store during a riot he started saying, 'I am no White, I ain't White, I am Black like you' and the black man said 'yeah, right' . . . " Derrick laughed uncontrollably and when he stopped, he said: "It was hilarious. You should really see it. It had a lot of stereotypes, a lot of funny characters" Derrick continued on with many other descriptions about the movie, clean sneakers, big boom boxes that needed many batteries, death of a young Blackman and then riots.

"I still couldn't believe there was a riot in Cincinnati" David tried to steer away from the topic of whether Asians were black or white. "A riot was more likely to happen in cities like Los Angeles or Detroit, but for a small Mid-west city like Cincinnati, where people always acted so nicely to each other and Blacks have been living together with Whites for so long, since the Underground Rail Road days, who would have imagined there were still racial tensions so tense that could have caused riots?" Derrick replied, "David, there were probably things that I see that you don't see as a non-Black. To me, there had always been an invisible line between Blacks and Whites in this country. It is like a scar of a woman who went through caesarian delivery. Once that happened, it is no longer possible for the same woman to have a baby by natural birth. The wound would simply be ruptured again and again, when something big happens.

You see David, I was born in a black neighborhood and my parents tried hard to raise me in a suburban white neighborhood in order to give me a better life. When I lived in Cincinnati area, I never felt safe or comfortable when crossing the Ohio River to Northern Kentucky. I wouldn't have shopped there or gone to a bar over there".

David was totally surprised because he always felt downtown Cincinnati was in fact closer to Northern Kentucky than suburbs in the northern part of metro area and he noticed many Blacks lived in the areas close to Downtown Cincinnati. It would be much closer for them to just cross the river to Kentucky rather than driving many miles deep north to shopping centers or entertainment districts on the Ohio side.

He asked Derrick to explain the seemingly geographical anomaly and Derrick said: "Kentucky was considered part of the Old South. In this country, there are still people wanting to raise the flag of the Confederate States of America and there are still people wanting to raise the cross of the Ku Klux Klan, so in areas that I consider Old South, there could be dangers and hostile stares towards people like me. If I simply go to a store or a restaurant without being careful, I could get killed. When I visit my relatives living in Ohio side of the Cincinnati, they would complain about increasing crime rates and shooting and murdering. But you would notice there are probably less crimes on the other side of the river involving blacks. Did that mean Blacks would be safer on the Kentucky side of Cincinnati? Hell, no. It means Blacks, even criminals are scared out of their s*** crossing the river to the other side. Folks on the other side of the river in Kentucky would just say: 'Let them try any of that stuff here. We would have lynched them'.

David talked to himself with astonishment: "Well, was it that bad. I had no idea when I lived in the area and you were right: there were lines that I couldn't see as an outsider. But now that you mentioned it, the line was visibly there and I can see it". Derrick presented more stories to support his theory: "See David, those lines are very real in my eyes. My whole family used to live in Georgia and my grand father was hang by white men when I was very young for no reason other than he was black. That was why we moved to Cincinnati area. In the 60's, when there were a lot of movements among the blacks, a large part of my family moved to Detroit because of the automobile industry and many jobs there. Now you look at Detroit, it is very tough over there again. I just decided to break away from my family and move to Houston, because of the oil industry and many jobs here. I also want to see different cultures and see how other areas look like outside of Midwest." David couldn't help but notice: "You have already experienced at least two cultures. You don't talk like black. If I say you talk like white, is that good or bad"?

"Oh, yeah, that's the funny thing too. When I went to Terry's house the other day to check his remote access, I called him: 'Hi Terry, I am just about 5 blocks away from your house. I will be there in just minutes'. My cousin who was sitting in my car beside me started asking: 'What was that? You talk like white'. We do talk differently when Black people get together. It's never good to say a Black person is White, looks White or talks like White."