This book is about the author’s personal experience. It uses a narrative way to show the unfair treatment of the black community in the United States and how he himself educates the next generation. The author frankly told his children about the biased treatment and dangers that a black people might encounter in their lives, by telling stories.
One aspect that the author wants to reveal in this book is that the mainstream society in the United States is still not so friendly to black people, which leads to the fact that black people are less likely to be employed and promoted than white people. Because they are still in a period of systematic rejection by mainstream society and suffering the injusticetreatment. For example, there is an example of the author’s college friend in the book. This boy came from a very good background of family, as his father was a doctor. And his study and character were also outstanding. However, he was suspected and followed by a police officer on his way home and was shot and killed.
The author uses real examples and powerful words in this book to show the problems of social judgement and racial discrimination, which are obviously not sufficiently reported by mainstream media. He also demonstrated a relatively realistic willingness, that is, as long as he starts from himself, this will affect the people around him, instead of changing the system and laws of the entire society at once.
But even though many people of color encounter unequal treatment in society, they are still striving to fight for their own interests. The author shows through his own story that as long as a person can give full play to his abilities, he can live in a very sinister environment without losing his bottom line, and more importantly, to live happily, which is enough. What he instilled in his son was actually this kind of thinking: you have to recognize the bad things in this society, face this cruelty, and live a positive and happy life.
Tsai-fan, Weng: Hi, everyone. Our group’s discussion topic of this “Yo is this Racism” podcast is interminority racism and intersection identity. I am Tsai-fan Weng. (I am Yizhi Wang) I came up this idea because of the latest human right protest called Black lives Matter. I saw news on the internet saying that there were Korean merchants gathered together with guns in defense of the disturbance from protesters who cause turmoil in protest, most of them were African Americans. They attacked China towns, Korean Towns and other settlement of immigrants. Many Asian Americans were attacked, robbed and even beaten by some so called protesters. What happened in BLM were just typical examples. I think it is not to hard find that there is always turmoil relate to other minority groups accompanying the protests for equal rights. I am not saying that there are large amounts of African Americans commit such a crime or emphasizing the seriousness of such an issue, but I am trying to bring this particular kind of racism within minority groups into spotlight. I think this is a kind of racism people can easily overlook. In the United States, especially because of the history of slavery, this is most conspicuous between White and Black people when talking about race. But as demonstrate before, racism can be spectrum, with some races more privileged than others even in minority groups.So, in general, the phenomena I discussed before is an irony to equality. In its essence, people doing this is still asking for privilege just like what white people did to the black people, but the only different is they ask in the name of equality. It is a debate over all lives matter and black lives matter.
Yizhi, Wang: Yeah When we recall the origin of the event, The Floyd incident shows that most African Americans are still marginalized and at the bottom of the society. The current economic situation in the United States demonstrates the economic vulnerability of this group. The COVID-19also shows that blacks and other disadvantaged groups in the United States are more likely to become victims, and the United States cannot protect the well-being of these people. In post-colonial theories, Westerners are often referred to as the subjective “self”, and the people in the colonies are referred to as the “other”. Some white people regard the non-Western world other than the “self” as the “other,” and oppose the two. The black group we are discussing right now is also a group mainly regarded as others. Therefore, the concept of “other” actually implies a Western-centric ideology. Broadly speaking, the other is a reference that is both different and connected with the subject. But when we go back to the protest movement that swept across the United States, race is only one of the factors, because there are still a large number of white people in the protest group. The objective analysis should be that those groups who have been opposed to president Trump, those who are dissatisfied with president Trump’s response to the COVID-19, those who have suffered economic damage due to the closure of the city, and those who hope that president Trump will step down because of the presidential election, all take advantage of this incident. Bias mainly exists in the mind as a subjective attitude, while discrimination is a behavior. Bias can occur between any group. The strong group can have a bias against the disadvantaged group, and versa. For example, hatred of the rich often has a bias against the rich. Discrimination is only targeted at disadvantaged groups. It should be noted that the strengths and weaknesses will change with environmental changes. For example, white Americans once believed that black people were inferior races, so they established various segregation systems to treat them differently. Under such a policy, blacks cannot get a good education, work, and living environment, and it is difficult for them to develop a sound personality. Therefore, some characteristics that conform to the bias of whites will also be produced. When a white man saw a black man who grew up in this environment, he found that the black man was illiterate, so he came to the conclusion that “the black man is substandard” and strengthened his bias attitude. But in fact, it was just because the black man had no chance to enjoy education. TheFloyd incident shows that there are serious problems with the American economic and social development model. The phrase “I can’t breathe” is a concentrated reflection of the feeling of suffocation, oppression and anxiety among the American people at the bottom. Those who are already suffering from unfair treatment are struggling for their own lives. They try their best not to let themselves lose their place to live on the streets. That’s all.
Tsai-fan, Weng: Great. And I totally agree with the binary between white and black under particular historic and economic background like you said, black and white has long history in having frictions and conflicts between each other. We can use the examples in these situations between blacks and whites to the, minorities like Asians like I discussed before. There is also a dynamic change between minorities groups because of economic or history or politic issues.
Yizhi, Wang: Yeah like Asian Americans and all those minorities in America.
Tsai-fan, Weng: Yes, so. Another concept I want to discuss a little more is intersectional identities. If I want to describe racism and intersectional identity in a vivid way. They are like two interlocking gears that change forever on both sides. To Asian for example, they are discriminated by both white and black but for different reasons. The identities of Asian Americans have different preconceptions among different groups of people. In BLM, I discussed before, they are discriminated against not only because they are yellow but also because they are considered rich and easy to bully. And under the current pandemic, Asians are discriminated against because people assume Asians are virus carriers. The yellow people, rich people and virus carriers are the idenitites born under particular environment, the environment I think is like you’ve mentioned before. This is our “Yo, Is This…” advice podcast. Thanks for listening! Thank you!
In Jhumpa Lahiri’s short story, Interpreter of Maladies, Mrs. Das, who lives in the United States and doesn’t go back to India on vacation, revealed to Kapasi, a native Indian, the secrets of her cheating.
The unstoppable dialogue is like a waiting-to-discover illness in Jhumpa Lahiri’s novel, spreading, developing, and spreading to other Indian immigrants who leave their homeland for the United States. Compared to Mrs. Das’s secret, the group faces a larger and more invisible gap, from geography, society and culture, and is forced to refine into a habit that is hard to give up in a foreign country, with curry and beans on the table, cinnabar nevus on the forehead symbolizing marriage, letters and home language on the phone.
These habits follow the “American-style” home as they thought, waiting for their master: an Indian couple who have been married based on theirparent’s wish, a husband with a high degree and a job in college; a wife who stays at home, from the kitchen to the bedroom, running between her husband and her children. They acquiesce in the East-style family relationship in a more independent, more open foreign country to take root, grow up, the habit of joint asylum and identity change, loss, until the illness revealed, in panic and stubbornness, and was hastily covered up, so that this effort to maintain family life can continue.
Jhumpa Lahiri was born in London, moved to Rhode Island with her parents at the age of three, studied as an adult in Places such as New York and Boston, and obtained several degrees, including a Ph.D. in Renaissance Studies, with a librarian father and a master’s degree in art from her mother. Analyzing this up-and-coming background and experience of Jhumpa Lahiri is no different from the immigrant characters she writes about in her novels, and the writer is first and foremost the story’s personal experience before he becomes the creator of the character, which is perhaps why Jhumpa Lahiri can document the changes in immigrant life with sophisticated, hands-on strokes, capturing the panic and persistence of a particular moment. In Interpreter of Maladies, after the conversation, Mrs. Das opens the door and walks up the hill to Mr. Das and the child, shouting, “Wait for me! I’m coming”. Calm as if nothing had happened.
Tadataka Unno, a well-known Japanese jazz pianist in New York, was preparing to return home from work at 7:30 p.m. on September 27 when he was surrounded by youths at a ticket gate at the 135th Street subway station in Harlem West, Manhattan, where a young girl pushed Hinojawe but claimed the victim had hit him and another man punched him in the head, citing that the girl was pregnant. The person pushed him to the ground and punched him in the face. During the group fight, the attackers made racist remarks from time to time, interspersed with the words “Chinese” and “Asian”, most likely as a Japanese pianist, as Chinese.
From the example, the perpetrator’s discrimination and resentment against Asians can be seen. I think the reason for this may be that with the first detection of the Coronavirus in China, many people think Chinese spread the virus to other countries. Although the evidence now suggests that the Coronavirus was not first detected in China, but that China was the place to be infected in bulk. This has led to Chinese and discrimination against women and children. This is actually caused by one-sided access to information. In the early days of the outbreak, the Coronavirus was repeatedly called the “Chinese virus” by President Trump to mislead the public, people obtained information from him with the idea that “China is the source of the virus” and that “Chinese is the spreader of the virus.” Such “single story” is one of the reasons people are biased. And because of the worsening economic situation caused by the spread of the new crown virus in the United States, coupled with the impact of political propaganda, some Americans will be the new crown epidemic, China and Chinese Americans directly linked to hate crimes against Asians may increase.
Identity crisis has always existed, and this crisis is both unacceptable to Asians by other Americans. It is also the distrust of Asians of their race and culture. This lack of self-confidence is inborn, but also brought by the day after the day. Asians who grew up in the United States found themselves different from other children when they were raised, with significant differences in appearance and ethnicity, coupled with differences in family culture and habits. Many Asians say they were discriminated against and excluded as children because of their differences with others. At the same time, these discriminations and violence against Asians in American history have planted the notion that “I am the weak and the victim”, “I am not like everyone else” or even “I am first class” have been planted in the hearts of Asians from an age.
