White Guys and Martial Arts

From ages 11 to 17 I studied the art of Chinese Kempo Karate. It tought me discipline, patience, and self defense with my bare hands as well as a variety of weapons; Nunchuku, Bo-staff, Commas, Tonfas, and Kali sticks. A couple a times during the year there would be area wide Martial Arts tournements which highlighted 3 main categories; Single forms competition, team forms competition and Sparring(combat). It was during those times of competition where I learned that a lot of white guys took Martial Arts way to far and in my opinion violated the core values it represented. For some guys they would find it neccesary to rip off the top part of their uniform and flex their muscles during their form like it was a frickin body building competition. Other white guys would try to act extremely tough and uber serious like they owned the building and could kick everybody's butt in it. One day during a national tournement I walked past a guy who was obviously living vicariously through his young child telling him with an overly authoritative tone that he wanted him to Kia(shout) so loud that people would hear it down the street(seriously!).

Things like this ultimitely led to me losing interest in practicing Martial Arts. It seemed that there was an over-saturation of these guys within the Martial arts community and it is still evident today that it is a continuing problem. I say white guys because they are almost the only people I see act like that, occaisionally I saw an asian person act the same but it was few and far between. Chuck Norris actually confronted this issue straight on in an early 90's movie called "Side kicks" but not enough attention got paid to it because Martial Arts flicks were slowly dying around that time. Now they have come back with force thanks to the Amazing Jet Li and Jackie Chan, Jason Statham deserves credit too. I guess it just concerns me that everyone is focused on being the best fighter they can be instead of respecting the culture and history of it all. It is not to say however that I don't like fight scenes in movies because I do, I love'em. I also like them because the guy who acts like he can beat the crap out of everyone always loses and goes out like a punk. And deservedly so.