What’s on your mind:
Identity- I’ve always been torn between two identities: where I’m from and where I currently am. Being born as a Korean but also living in the US for most of my life often leads me to having two different identities.
Us/them- I’ve always been curious as to what might trigger the us/them mentality after seeing a few cliques here and there. Is it because of personality or is it something more than that?
Race- after the Oscars, it made me reevaluate what it meant to be of a race other than white, and more so to be one that lives in the US. More specifically, I want to dig deeper into what it means to be a minority with a career in the arts.
Art and conservation- it starts with the question: if the art is made of trash and was created in order to reduce the carbon footprint, does it lose its meaning if the art is then thrown away in the next two weeks. What is the purpose of eco-friendly art and does it stay true to its said purpose? How can we as artists properly reduce our carbon footprint?
Toolkit:
White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack by Peggy McIntosh
McIntosh notes that “[she] had been taught about racism as something that puts others at a disadvantage, but had been taught not to see one of its corollary aspects, white privilege, which puts me at an advantage”. This stood out to me as an individual of color and as someone who came from a fairly stable economic background. While I have been taught to understand and detect moments of racism both explicit and inexplicit, I don’t recall a moment where I have been asked to consider my financial background. Although I have been asked to give to the less fortunate from my church, I don’t think I’ve ever thought about how my status puts me in a more comfortable position than others. Up until entering college, the only people around me were those who were of similar or better economic statuses, so that issues of those in harder standing were not immediate. Upon entering college, however, those issues became more apparent. Occasionally, my friends would enter a discussion of student debt. Although I knew that this was a prevailing issue in society, it never dawned me how serious the effects were to the individual. Although my family isn’t of the 1%, they do make enough so that I wouldn’t have to worry about debt. However, for my friends, student debt is what haunts them on a regular basis. I would essentially end up acquiring more money in a year than they would in ten years. In addition, my parents have spent thousands of dollars for the sake of better education in my middle school and high school years, providing me with violin lessons, piano lessons, Tae Kwon Do classes, SAT prep school, private tutoring, etc. but for the majority of my friends, those aspects weren’t present in their middle school and high school careers. For years I thought I was the victim of inequality because of my race, but it never occurred to me that I would be the one of privilege because of my economic standing.
I think looking more into the aspects that make us more privileged and acknowledging them rather than finding reasons for being the victim is worth looking more into. Although we’re taught to recognize the system that works against us, we’re rarely taught to recognize the system that works for us at the cost of others. McIntosh notes that the recognition of these privileged aspects alone doesn’t do much. At times I wonder if such recognition might work to do more harm than good. There have been many cases in history where the recognition of such advantages turns into an abuse of power; such cases have existed not only in history but in present times as well. Of course, that doesn’t mean everyone will lean towards such a route, but I do wonder if such acknowledgement alone isn’t what will solve the issue but empathy is.
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