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.