Currently stuck at Starbucks here in Flushing because my phone decided to die on me. So now I am charging my phone via my laptop, and I should finish this draft, might as well.
So it's been almost a week since the Election Day and the establishment that Donald Trump is the elected president of the United States. This election was one dramatic one and one that evoked so many emotions and conversations.
Like the rest of my "friends" on social media, in the end, I was "with her", and I really believed that Hillary was going to win. I mean c'mon, we are talking about a candidate who devoted her lifetime for the people versus a candidate who was offending people left and right. Plus, there was no one, no one, amongst my circle of friends who was supporting Trump anyways. But like everyone else, I had to face the reality that more than half the country was supporting Trump.
I think that was the moment it was emphasized to me that I am a minority here. Yes, I know by term I am a "minority", but it's really hard to feel that way when you are living in California, especially in Los Angeles. Having attended UCLA, "You See Lots of Asians", I never really felt like a minority.
But I forgot about those red states. I forgot about states like Indiana! I used to live in Muncie, Indiana in 2004 when my mom was earning her PhD. It was my first time living permanently in the states, and I remember it being overall a wonderful experience. It was in the middle of nowhere, and being surrounded by forests and fields, I spent most of my time riding bikes or chasing after bunnies (I am not joking). It was my first and last time getting to experience the typical "American childhood" I would see on tv/movies. But what I forgot was how my classmates used to touch my face and asking me why my nose bridge was so flat. I also forgot the rows after rows of lawn signs supporting Bush. And what I repressed was the memory of one of my classmates (I think his name was Nick but I might be wrong) getting bullied because he wore a button supporting Kerry. Soon after the 2004 election, I moved to Berkeley, and that was quite a change. Instead of seeing lawn signs supporting Bush, I saw those signs and bumper stickers for Kerry.
“Consider a white ninth-grade student taking American history in a predominantly middle-class town in Vermont. Her father tapes Sheetrock, earning an income that in slow construction seasons leaves the family quite poor. Her mother helps out by driving a school bus part-time, in addition to taking care of her two younger siblings. The girl lives with her family in a small house, a winterized former summer cabin, while most of her classmates live in large suburban homes. How is this girl to understand her poverty? Since history textbooks present the American past as four hundred years of progress and portray our society as a land of opportunity in which folks get what they deserve and deserve what they get, the failures of working-class Americans to transcend their class origin inevitably get laid at their own doorsteps.”
― James W. Loewen, Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong
For the time being, everyone read this-- Behind 2016's Turmoil, a Crisis of White Identity (<-- click)
So it's been almost a week since the Election Day and the establishment that Donald Trump is the elected president of the United States. This election was one dramatic one and one that evoked so many emotions and conversations.
Like the rest of my "friends" on social media, in the end, I was "with her", and I really believed that Hillary was going to win. I mean c'mon, we are talking about a candidate who devoted her lifetime for the people versus a candidate who was offending people left and right. Plus, there was no one, no one, amongst my circle of friends who was supporting Trump anyways. But like everyone else, I had to face the reality that more than half the country was supporting Trump.
I think that was the moment it was emphasized to me that I am a minority here. Yes, I know by term I am a "minority", but it's really hard to feel that way when you are living in California, especially in Los Angeles. Having attended UCLA, "You See Lots of Asians", I never really felt like a minority.
2012 election results county by county
“Consider a white ninth-grade student taking American history in a predominantly middle-class town in Vermont. Her father tapes Sheetrock, earning an income that in slow construction seasons leaves the family quite poor. Her mother helps out by driving a school bus part-time, in addition to taking care of her two younger siblings. The girl lives with her family in a small house, a winterized former summer cabin, while most of her classmates live in large suburban homes. How is this girl to understand her poverty? Since history textbooks present the American past as four hundred years of progress and portray our society as a land of opportunity in which folks get what they deserve and deserve what they get, the failures of working-class Americans to transcend their class origin inevitably get laid at their own doorsteps.”
― James W. Loewen, Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong
For the time being, everyone read this-- Behind 2016's Turmoil, a Crisis of White Identity (<-- click)
"If you are a working-class white person and you fear that the new, cosmopolitan world will destroy or diminish an identity you cherish, you have no culturally acceptable way to articulate what you perceive as a crisis."
"There will not likely be a return to the whiteness of social dominance and exclusive national identity. Immigration cannot be halted without damaging Western nations' economies; immigrants who have already arrived cannot be expelled en masse without causing social and moral damage. And the other groups who seem to be "cutting in line" are in fact getting a chance at progress that was long denied them."
"Western whites have a place within their nations' new, broader national identities. But unless they accept it, the crisis of whiteness seems likely to continue."
----to be cont'd
----to be cont'd
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