not thinking of ourselves first...he said: "You do not have a sense of solidarity, no sense of achieving great things together, no sense of creating a legacy. It seems to me that those who have a nationalistic spirit do not have any real economic power...and those who have money do not care about helping those that do not, either that or they focus to much on assimilation."

I looked around his office at his pictures on the wall...pictures of the day he became an American citizen, him and Daddy Bush, him and Clarence Thomas, him and Colin Powell, him and George W. when he was Governor of Texas...I told him "It looks you are 'assimilating' too." He laughed, and said "Yes, but the difference is I do so on my terms. I am an American CITIZEN, I am Republican, but those things come AFTER what is REALLY IMPORTANT...my FAMILY and my PEOPLE...those are always my priorities."

He then commences to tell me: "You people are too caught up about things that really don't matter." I asked: "For instance?" He says "You people get excited about the best golfer being Black...the young man who played the blind man winning the award(Jamie Foxx)...you get too happy about the first Black this or the first Black that, you have 'this Black' in this political position, you have 'that Black' as an executive in this big company, and you all get fooled into thinking that things are fair and good for you, and far too many of you think it is not necessary to work together as a unit...and as long as you think this way, you will always be on the bottom...why are your people who have done well for themselves not interested in helping others do the same thing? Why are these people not held acoountable for NOT doing so? Every wealthy Asian I know feels a peronal responsibility to help other Asians...I don't think your people understand this thinking at all."

Now I am right at 6 feet tall, but when he said this, I felt like I was 4 foot 2.