Tofu Elephants, by Gina Lam

I have been attending interviews for summer internships and I am always asked the same group of questions. What are your achievements, grades, classes, qualifications and experiences? I don't believe the questions really encompasses who I am. I can only imagine how difficult it is to be an interviewer because all the questions are the same and candidates answer what they believe the interviewer is looking for. I hypothesize that most participants have the similar answers. How do people even differentiate between people? How should I define myself and justly represent my self within the few minutes that I have and how do interviewers define me? The interviews reminded me of the activity we did in class when we were asked to define ourselves and our identity. During the exercise, I thought about tofu and elephant. Tofu is soft and wiggly. People look at tofu and assume that it is gross and think asian cuisines, which people think toads and cats chopped and marinated in soy sauce. But tofu is soft, versatile, it can be added to any dish and still be great. When people think protein, they think steak and big portions of meat, but tofu is higher in protein and very nutritious. Tofu might fall apart but even in pieces it still is great; similarly, sometimes I get frazzled, but I am all about solving the problem as soon as humanly possible and moving past the problem.

People look at elephants and all they see is a big, gray animal, that makes ivory. They do not see the beautiful and intelligent creatures, all they see is money. People have hunted elephants and nearly caused them to be extinct. However elephants are so amazing and instead of killing them, people should be learning from them. Elephants are matriarchal, gentle, compassionate and always remember where they were born and where they come from. Elephants might look big, intimating and stupid, but they are the complete opposite and we probably look small and stupid to elephants. 

People look at me and expect me to be quiet and complicit with everything, I think it's largely because I am Chinese and I am a nice person. There are expectations paste onto me, even before people meet me. Interviewers look at my name and they think asian, overachiever and obedient. However, when I behave differently from the expectations, people have difficultly acknowledging and processing the difference. I am extremely passionate about human rights and I have a soft spot for immigrants, children and the elderly. When people think it is okay to victimize Chinese grandmas on the train and I assertively ask them how ashamed or disgusted do they think their mom or grandma would be, they suddenly have difficulty understanding my english. People tend to ignore my words when I speak assertively or they try to discount my opinion.

I wonder what would happen if during an interview I was asked to definite myself and I said tofu or elephant. Most likely I would not get the job because the interviewer would have a difficult time digesting my answer. The interviewers expect answers along the lines of adjectives that paint an ambitious and consistent candidate. Instead of taking the time to internalize the answer and decide whether there is merit, people would just brush it aside. We live in a world were there are expectations for everything. The interviewers expect certain frame of answers and I expect certain type of questions. We expect things from people and it is difficult to digesting anything different. People have to consciously attempt to internalize anything different. We have become a robotic society where there are expectations and identities are copied and pasted on bodies. Unfortunately, there is very little room made for the weird and the funky. 

James Baldwin and Nina Simone

I recently decided to take another listen to the live version of  Nina Simone’s song, “I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel To Be Free” that she performed at the 1976 Montreux Jazz Festival. One particular line that really caught my attention in class, and again during my second listening was when she says, “Everybody should be free because if we ain’t we’re murders.”  It grabbed my attention first for standing out so much in comparison to otherwise relativity light lyrics. When looking up the lyrics I found that this particular line was not in the recorded version.  The fact that the line was organic to the live performance made it have an even greater impact on me.  The line made me think about Baldwin’s writings about his father and the hate he held onto. It made me think how detrimental structures, like race that keep us “chained,” are to the human body, both mentally and physically.  In a way then it is true that to not be mentally free from these structures is to murder ourselves.

Another section that was unique to the live version and that I really enjoyed was her saying that she finally knows, “How it feels not to be chained to anything, to any race, to any faith, to anybody, to any greed, to any hopes, to anything.” I felt that this again just embodied even more the beauty in breaking free from these structures that work so hard to restrain us.

By Artur

In 1968, following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., an interesting experiment with implications on prejudice and discrimination was conducted in an elementary school classroom. After a student asked Jane Elliot about MLK Jr., she decided to try the experiment out. Its results, in my mind, say something about human nature.

On the first day, Elliot explained to the kids that blue eyed students were superior to the students. She began running her classroom in a way that segregated kids based on eye color, and clearly favoring the blue eyed kids. The brown eyed students, who were told to wear brown fabric around their necks, resisted until given a (made-up) scientific explanation by Elliot. The blue-eyed students began acting arrogantly and had a nasty attitude towards the brown eyed students. They also began doing better in class, even those students who had previously been poor students. Conversely, the brown eyed students regressed in class, even those who had excelled before, and became less social outside of class. The following Monday, Elliot had explained that she was mistaken and it was actually brown eyed students that were superior. Afterwards, the roles reversed and it was the brown eyes students who became arrogant and academically superior, while blue eyed students regressed. Furthermore, Brown eyed students began treating blue eyed students similarly to the way they were treated the previous week. 

What does an experiment like this imply? It seems that young kids cling to differences they are told make them better or worse than others. They begin to act in ways that fulfill those differences, such as getting better grades because they were told their eyes made them smarter. If you convince  child that a stereotype is true, they will act in ways that make it true. So why does this matter? Think of everything in society that tells a black student, a homosexual person, a woman, an impoverished individual, etc. that they are somehow inferior to someone else. Then the reasoning offered behind it is the grades these “inferior” students receive, or the way they carry themselves, or their economic situations, etc. Yet these claims lose all legitimacy as they are the causes of themselves. The claims that certain groups are inferior make them inferior. This is the less problematic revelation of the experiment. 

The worrisome part of the experiment is how quickly and strongly the kids internalized what Jane Elliot told them. Within less than a week the eye color of these kids dominated their identities, even though it pit them on opposite sides with some of their friends. The experiment hints at the idea that differences are the most defining parts of our identity, especially when people are told they have implications on their status. This was a simple experiment by a schoolteacher. Imagine this experiment were to continue? Wouldn’t it be ridiculous is we discriminated against each other based on eye color? If the answer is yes, then why is it not ridiculous when it’s race? Why is it not when it’s gender? Why Is it not, ever? 

 "Prejudice cannot stop until somebody refuses to hate. Are we too deep for that to happen?

Reflection on NPR Article

James Baldwin Reappeared Just When We Needed Him Most
by Saeed Jones

We are studying James Baldwin in 2014, the Year of Baldwin, the year he would have turned 90 years old. Recently a collection of his poems was published, and Saeed Jones discusses this in his NPR blog post linked above. Today our lives are rushed and busy, and we often neglect to take the time to think about who we are and what our place is. The year of Baldwin has perhaps come just when we need it most, as a society, and as a group of students. Baldwin's work inspires us to ask questions, to start conversations and to grow as individuals.

By Suzanna Shermon

The melting pot ideal implies that everybody in a society comes together to form

a whole. Dissecting the term itself, “melting pot” implies that someone who gets thrown

in it “melts” and meshes with everybody else, simultaneously losing his or her own

identity to contribute to the greater whole. The benefits of this ideal are that everybody

in a society is equal to one another and all races and religions have uniform advantages,

implying that concepts like prejudice and discrimination do not apply. This concept is

faulty because in most societies there is always a hierarchy of power. Certain people or

groups have a larger advantage and more control than others, creating a set back in the

utopian idea that all members in a melting pot society are equal. Instead of melting in

with each other, we form a hierarchy of races and ethnic groups, where some races and

ethnic groups are more superior to others, rather than all of us being equal as the “melting

pot” idea suggests. James Baldwin once said: “People aren’t meant to be melted. Melted

down into what? It’s a very unfortunate image.” We do not form a whole. We do not melt

in with each other. Instead, every man stands as an island, and represents himself.

Nevertheless, despite the existing prejudice in the United States, this country

is still better than many others. My parents were born and raised in the Soviet

Union. In the Soviet Union, prejudice was the law. People were forbidden from

practicing religion. If people were ever discovered practicing their religion, they

were often arrested. Nevertheless, despite all practice of religion being forbidden,

there was still an unofficial hierarchy of religion. Christians often berated Jewish

people. Christian children in elementary schools made fun of children that even

resembled a Jewish appearance. My mother never had any typical “Jewish qualities”

to her appearance, so children in her class always assumed she was Russian

Orthodox. However, after a parent night at her school, all the children soon realized

that her father looked extremely Jewish. The next day, she found notes on her desk

with vulgar words that all essentially meant “Jew.” My parents ran away from that

country and its hate and prejudice with hope that life will be better in America.

While it is true that our country is far from ideal, it must be admitted that we

are far better off in terms of prejudice than many other countries. Yes, we are far

from being a melting pot of immigrants and natives forming a whole. However, we

do provide a much better life for our immigrants than the countries that they came

Our problems with prejudice, however, may come from the prejudice that

some immigrants bring with them here. For instance, if a Russian Christian family

moves to the United States and take their prejudgment of Jewish people with them,

then the prejudice now moves from Russia to America, and is yet another addition

to the existing web of prejudice. In sixth grade, I had a classmate that constantly

teased Jewish people over their curly hair and the shape of their noses. For some

reason though, she tried to befriend me. To my embarrassment, I found myself lying

to her, saying that I am only half Jewish, only to avoid her taunting. Needless to say,

our friendship did not last long. I soon realized how uncomfortable she made me

feel, and how I cannot be friends with somebody with whom I have to lie about who

I am just to be accepted.

While our country may be better than other countries in terms of prejudice,

we still have a long way to go. Just like Baldwin teaches: we must learn to love each

other and accept each other. This way, situations like my sixth grade fiasco can be

avoided. Loving each other will help us not just be kinder to people and kill off

prejudice, but it will also help as mature as individuals, and maybe, finally, conform

to the ideal of a melting pot.

By Suzanna Shermon

I keep thinking back to the anecdote that Professor Moore told our class in the beginning

of the semester. For those of you who don’t know or don’t remember this story, it goes

like this: Professor Moore goes to a barber shop in which a group of men are saying

disgraceful things about women. Despite his state of disgust, Professor Moore did not

stand up to those men. As we were discussing this story in class, most people, including

Professor Moore, concluded that by not standing up to people who are racist, sexist, or

any other type of “-ist” in which they go against a certain stereotype, we are essentially

joining them on their cruel actions. At first I agreed. After all, society won’t change

unless people force it to change, right? As Mahatma Gandhi once said, “Be the change

you want to see in the world.”

Nevertheless, something kept bothering me about this story. As I thought back I realized

that society is not a whole. Think of it this way; if society is a whole then there is no

way that one person (Professor Moore in this case) could change all of society, even if

he or she stood up to every jerk that came his or her way. If society is a whole, then we

would all be equal and all represent one another, which clearly is not the case with all

the prejudice and hatred that our society experiences. By standing up to the chauvinist,

disgraceful men at the barber shop, Professor Moore would not have changed society. In

fact, I don’t even think that he would have changed the opinions of those men, regardless

of what he did or said to them. People do not change. That bully from the playground

is still out there being cruel to people- in fact, maybe he was sitting right there in that

barber shop. At best, those men would have bowed their heads and nodded with false

understanding, but went back to disgracing women the very next day. At worst, they

would take their anger out on Professor Moore. If your action causes a positive change

even in one person, often it is worth risking your own well being to achieve that change.

Unfortunately, you will probably never change a person, especially a stranger, and

usually it is not worth it to take that risk.

As depressing as that may sound, I realized that it is not a bad thing. Since society is not

a whole, those men in the barber shop do not represent all of society. In the same manner,

homophobics and racists do not represent all of society. In fact, nobody who exhibits

prejudice represents all of society. People are so diverse in all of their beliefs that society

barely has a common opinion on anything. The only thing we, as a society, share in

common is the country in which we live in. With that said, society cannot possibly shape

us because we do not really have a society- just a group of extremely diverse individuals

living in the same place at the same time. Unfortunately, the problem is that some people

act like their opinions are more important that anyone else’s. What is even worse is that

people like that often obtain power, and give off the false impression that everyone else

in “society” feels the same way they do. The sooner we realize that society is an illusion,

the sooner we realize that it cannot possibly shape us.

In Giovanni’s Room, David struggles with his sexuality. Despite being gay, David fought

as hard as he could to be straight because the society that he lived in all his life “frowns

upon” homosexuality. Baldwin displays this internal conflict through David’s feelings

for Giovanni. David’s feelings constantly change between love and hate for Giovanni.

At times, David claims to love and hate Giovanni at the same time. The love that David

feels is natural, his true feelings for Giovanni, feelings that he cannot control. The hatred,

however, is the feelings that David thinks society would want him to have for Giovanni

instead. David’s hatred for Giovanni is actually the hatred he feels for himself because

instead of complying to society’s “standards” of being in a heterosexual relationship with

a woman, David fell in love with a man. In the end, David’s hatred for himself overcame

his love for Giovanni, and he decided to give in to society.

If only David knew that not everybody in society is homophobic or anti-gay. Perhaps,

then, he would live happily ever after with his love, without feeling any hatred for

Giovanni or himself. We have to learn to accept ourselves for who we are and the way we

were born, instead of letting anybody else shape us.

The truth, at the very least to me, is really obvious: you simply cannot hate people for

the way they were born or the lifestyles that they chose for themselves. People do not

change, no matter how hard they try to mask who they really are. This goes for all the

diverse people in our society: including both the gays and the homophobics. No matter

how much homophobics tell homosexuals to be straight, at the end of the day, gay

people will always love people of the same gender as them. Others may try to convince

homophobics that they are wrong in their beliefs. Yet, once again, at the end of day they

will still be homophobic. Wasting our last nerves or putting ourselves at risk will not do

much in terms of changing people to what we want them to be. The best we can do is

learn to accept ourselves and others for what we are because once again, since society is

an illusion, the only thing left to shape a person is the person himself.