Love has made me...

crazy. uncivilized. cold. cruel. irrational. violent.

not myself.

Cultural Self-Degradation

I fucking hate kids who think they’re the shit because they don’t hang out with members of their own cultural community, as though hanging out with white kids and being the token asian/black/hispanic makes them cool by default. As though shame of not looking like the commercial American can be buried under a Jersey accent and Abercrombie shirts. As though their rejection of their own cultural background will help them integrate even better into the fabric of American society, ignorant of the fact that their background IS what makes them AMERICAN. As though ethnicity and identity is something you can dismiss and shed like a dirty, embarrassing outfit your parents dressed you up in and not the skin you wear for the rest of your life.

What makes me even more fucking angry is when they think that PARTAKING in the racial slurs and jokes that condemn and subjugate members of their own background- jokes based on ignorance they’re fully well aware of- will help them achieve solace in balancing two cultural identities. Or rather, the complete rejection of one through self-degradation. Well, it doesn’t. It makes you a fucking asshole and a real damn shame to the community and demographic you represent, whether you like it or not.
And what’s worst is, I know your family. I know your father and your mother and your little sisters, and they’re incredible and sweet and hope for the best for you, to see their son and brother to be a true asset to society and live a life they never could’ve achieved in their home country- a combination of their cultural values with the freedom and liberty of American society. They wanted the American dream for you.

I hope you know your self-degradation is what perpetuates racism in this country. Because if you won’t defend your own self-worth and identity, who will?

2011

My annual new year posts, in the past, had always been anticipations of the following year, of high expectations and goals to be met with a fierce determination and unwavering focus. Every year, I knew what my next steps would be: proving my own worth to myself my freshman year (met through pledging and crossing aKDPhi and winning Programming Chair of RCC); then conquering my posts as an AACC Junior intern, RCC VP External, and aKDPhi sister my sophomore year; and finally, fulfilling my high expectations as AACC Intern, RCC President, and aKDPhi Pledge Mom my junior year. And every year, I was grateful and humbled by the love and support of the people around me, whose strength, faith, and simple presence in my life made this juggle bearable and possible.

This year is different. I look back at the past three years with a grim satisfaction of the culmination of my hard work, and with a deep appreciation for my friends and family, but I no longer know what my next steps are. I try to do all the right things- gaining internship experience, working part-time as a waitress to pay for rent, working on my grades to get them up to par; but for what? What ends do the merits of my hard work achieve, and for what purpose? So I can sit at a tiny desk in the UN, hoping to save the world one file at a time? So I can work for some publications/news/journalism giant, grabbing coffee for Katie Couric's assistant's assistant? And I only realize now, the direction my pursuits have taken me towards...

I am still naive. I still believe and hope that I can save the world from itself; only now, instead of saving it one child at a time, by going into the world of international human rights and political advocacy. Except I fear that the latter is much more futile than the former. And I wonder whether that makes all of my hard work futile by relation.

Dreams Deferred

I ran into an old student of mine from Chinese school today at dinner with my family. I had taught Kindergarten for three years, and had him when he was five; now, at 13 and a full 8 years later, I barely recognized him. He was one of the first set of many children I would teach over the course of my high school career - I was only 14 when I first taught him, and I saved the little drawings he made for me, still taped on the wall in the corner of my room. It was a revelation to see him today, so grown up, and even more of a shocker when he shyly came up to me and asked for my facebook(!! of all things!!).

The encounter reminded me of the passion I once harbored for teaching and working with children; nearly every job I took in high school involved teaching kids. In addition to weekly Chinese school classes, I taught taekwondo children's beginner and advanced two times a week, guppy swimming 3 times a week, and worked as a swim camp counselor for a summer. I loved every minute of it, and damnit, I was good at it. I had a quiet patience for the naughtiest of children, an ironic contrast to the low tolerance I have for ill-behaved kids my age; I saw these kids, and overcoming their difficulties and barriers and winning their love and respect, as the ultimate mark of my capabilities as a teacher. Much more than that, I hoped to touch their hearts and minds and gain some insight into the ways in which their innocent eyes perceived, understood, and responded to the world, a fascination that led me into the field of child and developmental psychology. I had grand dreams that years later, they would still remember me as "Ali jie jie" (big sister Ali), the teacher that they shared a mutual adoration and respect for/with.

Today, I'm just relieved that he still recognizes me. When Daniel peered into my face as I asked him playfully in Cantonese "Don't you remember/recognize me?", he replies, "Yes, but you look very different now." I realized that the changes we've both endured. He is no longer the affectionate, witty five-year-old that drew me a portrait of my 14-year-old self dunking a basketball with a giant heart tattoo on my forehead (a portrait I take as a high compliment). And I am no longer that naive, optimistic 14-year-old with my pursuit of a simple passion for teaching.

What happened to this deep passion? At what point did this dream of being a child psychologist and teacher get pushed aside for a more "pragmatic" and "practical" occupation? Why did I let this dream, which could've made me so happy, slip away? And how did politics- the very opposite of the traits I'd admired in children (honesty, frankness, an open soul and mind to the world worth interpreting and probing), become the very thing I look to be involved with?