Misleading & Misguided

 A Response to Jessica J. Ho's Essay


前言：某支持ACA5的某组织董事写了为什么她支持ACA5的文章，所以我让俺家小屁孩看了，问他们觉得如何，然后让他们写一写

我写了文章反驳在这里：

这是一个伪军的自白--评某组织董事支持ACA5的荒谬文章

神文链接：为何要支持ACA-5？一个华裔“模范生”从切身经历谈起


正文：

Jessica J. Ho’s essay, “Why this Chinese American Supports Affirmative Action & BLM (linked at the bottom of this), is a perfect example of blaming others for unjust reasons. Essentially, she is writing about her experience in getting rejected albeit studying and working hard, which caused her to realize that Chinese Americans are underrepresented in leadership because, or so she says, a lack of social skills. She proceeds with a call to action and a thorough light criticism on Chinese Americans. However, there are several things about this essay that makes me distrust its legitimacy. Summary? The essay isn’t credible because it relies mostly on inaccurate assumptions rather than proven or surveyed research.




Selfishly Unjust Basis

Here’s the biggest problem I have with this essay. Everything Jessica says, all the evidence that she has provided for her claim, is based solely off of her own life experiences. Rather than surveying or researching, she uses her own life and her own Chinese American community as a primary basis on all other Chinese American families and lives, which I can tell you isn’t and will never be fully accurate. Already, right from the beginning, this essay showcases preliminary bias. Judging an entire race based on your own personal experiences is incredibly selfish.

As Jessica explains her life story, she gives us a view into her and her parents’ attitude. According to her, they’re the kind of people that put accomplishments over social skills. She goes on to explain that she now learned that you should take pride in social skills as well as accomplishments, and that the world doesn’t award things purely based upon your accomplishments. Overall, she explains that she and her family were academically selfish and didn’t think much of social skills or teamwork.

That would’ve been all ok. Great, even! Admitting to your problems and then solving them is one of the biggest achievements in life and I applaud her for doing so. However, the problem with this is that Jessica assumes all or most Chinese Americans are going through this same mindset and problem. Why would you stereotype your own race? How do you just expect that a common mindset is shared by every single person of an entire race? These kinds of assumptions can only be made through analysis and data, and not just one person’s experiences or the people that one person has met in life. Jessica never supplied us with any data, only her assumptions. And that is incredibly selfish and biased.

For one, me and every single one of the Chinese Americans that I’ve grown up with display an extremely different mindset than the mindset that Jessica seems to be describing. And I’m talking about a lot of people. Of course, the emphasis on education is still there; education is always important. But we don’t raise ourselves to sit on others academically. We don’t go through the same kind of academic selfishness and reluctance to help others that Jessica described. In fact, social skills, leadership, and cooperation are also heavily emphasized in our households, sometimes much more than education is. If I were like Jessica, I would assume that every Chinese American is like this as well. But I wouldn’t do that, because of course there are going to be differences. Several differences.

The Chinese American community that I come from understands the importance of social skills and leadership. We understand that it takes these skills to truly climb up the ladder in the real worldt. Clearly, not all Chinese American communities are like that, and I’m not going to pretend that they are. But that is exactly, Jessica, what you did in your essay.

And so, Jessica, this is what I have to tell you. Your essay is already not credible in the eyes of any sensible person, because you used your personal experiences as a basis for the entire Chinese American race. And that is not ok.


Undermining the education system

In this essay, Jessica continues to talk about education, and how it doesn’t reward its students for rising up socially or relationship-wise. Jessica criticizes the education system and how she views it. Although some of what she says is true, most of it is a complete understatement. And the most of the parts that aren’t understated have a good reason why they exist and persist.

According to this essay, Jessica “believe[s] that higher education fails students by not teaching, emphasizing, or rewarding teamwork and social skills.” This is the biggest understatement by far. A majority of the curriculums all over the U.S. encourage students to cooperate and gain social skills, albeit less than it encourages academic success. In fact, courses all the way up to the college level are often designed to encourage or force social confidence and cooperative liability. Because a majority of higher education programs and schools clearly don’t “fail students by not teaching, emphasizing or rewarding teamwork and social skills,” in contrast encouraging it, I can only assume that Jessica thinks teamwork and social skills aren’t emphasized enough in the education system.

However, there is a completely just reason why teamwork and social skills aren’t the main focus of the education system. If schools were completely built around teamwork and social skills, how would students learn independence? They would never be able to think individually, let alone complete an advanced task on their own with any sort of ease. And if everyone shared the same burden with the same rewards on every single assignment, how would kids be pushed to learn harder, work harder? Another one of Jessica’s points was that her family prioritizes self-improvement in diligence and intelligence more than anything. That’s of course not very healthy. But schools, in fact, don’t prioritize academic success to that degree; in fact, there’s a neat balance between social skills and academic achievement. At this moment in time the education system is definitely working out.

Perhaps this wasn’t the case when Jessica was younger, but that further goes to show that she really should’ve done her research instead of making assumptions about everything in her essay.


Perfection is impossible

There’s one last thing I want to say, and it’s about the very last section of the essay. Jessica’s call to action is for a perfect world, a world where everyone can flourish. A place where everyone has crystal-clear equal representation. A place, where the pie is expanded instead of split.

But let me say something about this aspiration. It is truly, heartbreakingly, physically impossible to achieve perfection like that. It can’t be that everyone can flourish and share the same resources, because then all the motivation to even produce those resources would be wiped out like the dodos. Crystal-clear, perfectly equal representation is impossible because there will always be differences between these races. There will always be one race that seems higher over another, purely because they’re working harder or doing better in that area. And some of these differences are really unchangeable, because, well, some of these advantages and disadvantages are genetic!

Sadly, the world doesn’t have the resources to become a near-paradise to everyone on it. In order to make do with what it does have, we need to reward the people who rise up, and punish those who don’t. Of course, not just academically; in every aspect of life. The pie physically can’t be expanded, so it must be split according to the standings of everyone, the diligence and cooperation and everyone. 

We can’t give everyone free pie. They have to earn their slice. 

But here’s the thing; with democracy and the American Dream, everyone has an equal chance at their slice of pie. No one has a smaller chance; no one has a larger chance. 

It’s not an assumption, folks. Just the plain old truth

Jessica J. Ho’s essay:

https://medium.com/@jessicajho/why-this-chinese-american-supports-affirmative-action-and-black-lives-matter-2264396606f0


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