I have watched a film called Hidden Figures recently and I think what it presents to the audiences is a perfect source of injustice that our society holds. This is a film that brought tears to my eyes. It tells a true story that took place in NASA in the 1960s: black female scientists overthrew the discrimination against colored people in NASA through their own strength.

In the 1930s of the U.S., a little girl named Catherine surprised her teacher with her amazing grades and  her parents were told to suggest skipping grades. She was supposed to be have a good life, but Catherine was left out in the cold because of her skin color. Because she was black, she had to move 120 miles away, where only African-Americans were allowed to attend high school and college. In the days when computer technology was still underdeveloped, large amounts of data calculation required the high-level personnel of the space agency to work out with paper and pen. Katherine became a human computer because of her brilliant brain. She worked with more than 20 black women, including Mary and Dorothy. They had the dullest, most exhausting jobs, and they were scorned at NASA.

The three black women were working and living in the face of discrimination and humiliation, but they made their lives bitter because of this. Instead, they chose to improve themselves with an optimistic and tough attitude, to prove themselves by strength, and to fight for their deserved rights and interests. At the end of the film, the three black women slowly start to get in touch with the work they really want to do, fighting for opportunities in their respective fields, and gradually taking on more and more valuable responsibilities.

I was deeply moved by the efforts of people of color in the United States for equal rights. In the film, the three black women look like the weak. And the leader or the colleague with a good sense of self-superiority looks like the strong. But after a deeper consideration, there is no absolute strength in this world, there is no absolute weakness. We live on the same planet and work in the same corner. If we want to achieve success, the weak may inevitably suffer from unfairness, but the strong must also put aside their sincerity and be fair. In short, we must adapt to each other and cooperate sincerely to achieve great things.

When we mentioned racial discrimination, we will automatically think of discriminable behaviors cross races. For example, the Asians are difficult to involve in the American culture with the imprinted Asian look and a totally different cultural background mentioned in the Leavers. However, racial discrimination do exists even among a same racial group. Sometimes that people who look down upon Chinese are still the Chinese.

Shanghai, one of the most developed cities in China, is a place where millions of people dreamed of living. I went there with my friends this summer for traveling. We planned to have dinner at a high-end restaurant. This is not a very often occasion, so we dressed up and expected to have a very decent dinner. The restaurant we picked was so popular that we need to wait. This was a very common phenomenon for the huge population of China. However, what made me feel speechless was that I was told by my friend to speak English with them in order to get in quickly. What’s more, we could enjoy a better service if we communicate in English. This annoyed me a lot. This is Shanghai, the inner land of China. Chinese is our native language, why speaking in English could be treated in a superior way?

Examples for issues like that are more than I expected. In China, we give superior rights to foreigners. For example, from the interviews, we could know that foreigners don’t need to pay for drinks in some bars. More foreigners, themselves will be an attraction to many Chinese. This is a rooted problem that has been existed for a long time. From the time our lands are colonized and controlled by western people, the injustice started to burgeon.

There is nothing wrong that we should always walk out and learn the things we don’t know from other cultures, but we shouldn’t worship things foreign and fawn on foreign countries. Of course, it’s not just a problem limited to Chinese, Korean, Japanese, it’s the same. What I mean is that as I’m Chinese, I have seen the growth of China from an economical side, but at the same time I have also seen the discrimination that we have against ourselves. This is not we expect to be strength. As all human beings, we are all created equal. There is no reason to encourage a stratified society.

Here is a video that may help explain: https://www.bilibili.com/video/av17289650/

Reference:

1. Photo link– https://www.sohu.com/a/230100217_100085085
2. Video link–https://www.bilibili.com/video/av17289650/

The Leavers tells the life experience and spiritual growth story of the two generations. Guo Peilan, a Chinese woman who stowaways in the United States, and Guo Deming, her “illegitimate son” born in the United States, have drifted away from home and been separated several times. The ups and downs of their lives epitomize several generations of the leavers. Their experience at the bottom also reveals the complexities of immigration. The author Lisa, is a second-generation immigrant, which means the first child born to her parents after they immigrated to the United States. Although she grew up in the United States, the cultural imprint of her parents and Asian faces remained indelible, making her as alien to her surroundings as Deming in the book. She only finds inner peace and true self in reading, writing and music. Until one day, she saw a report about a Chinese woman who was an illegal immigrant so she had the idea to write the story.

The story of The Leaver is inspired by true report. There have been news reports of illegal immigrant women being detained or deported and forced to separate from their American-born children, who were later adopted by American families. Deming and Peilan’s story is artificial, but it reflects the author’s real experience and feelings: the music is real, New York is real, and the sense of isolation, alienation, loneliness and insecurity as immigrants are also real. Since Trump took office, the issue of immigration in the United States has become a social focus. Immigration-related issues such as the Trump administration family separation policy have caused great controversy. The camps still exist and are growing in number. These days, more children are incarcerated than ever before. In October 2019, the number of children separated from their parents grew to 5500. Although immigration prisons have existed for many, current administration is viciously anti-immigration, criminalizing immigrants and other people, and treating them with a higher degree of authority than other crimes.

Here is a link of the policy detail:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_administration_family_separation_policy#Number_of_children

Reference:

Trump administration family separation policy, wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_administration_family_separation_policy#Number_of_children