by Midas Leung
One of my first encounters with stereotypes was when I was in elementary school. Though it felt like a majority of my school was of a minority group, everyone had their own eccentricities that we would soon realize made us different from those around us. Closer to fourth and fifth grade, I noticed the people around me becoming more different from one another and started clumping into their own groups. Soon the jokes started about which race someone was and how the people that a person was associated with defined them entirely. No one was safe: I was accused of eating dogs at first when I was young. I never had a pet so I never thought of a dog as anything more than a regular animal that you could eat. I never really bothered to correct anyone when they accused me of eating dogs, since I felt that it allowed me to get in on the joke. If my friends were annoying me, I would threaten to eat their pets, and whenever I saw pets at their houses, I always popped a joke that they were cute enough to eat (which, in some cases, some did look tender enough). But I would wonder if my family had actually eaten dogs before and my mother in fact had eaten some and the taste can be described as a mix of pork and chicken.
I have always found ways to make fun of different types of stereotypes of people and of course, I wouldn’t do it to people I don’t know. Yet strangers would not be as merciful to me: I was walking to Goodwill because I am a broke (SOB), and would you believe a car just sped past and all I hear is “NIIIIIiiiii-hoooooaaa”. At first, I laughed it off because it was hilarious and I knew that when I first came up to Binghamton that it would not be as progressive as when I was in the city, but I didn’t expect them to speak my language up here.
But really after I laughed I did think to myself, ‘these mfs are racist.’ On an unrelated note, did you know that Binghamton was known as the KKK capital of New York? My friends didn’t, but now you know. Get out of here; this place is just a money grab, and they have some crappy education departments here. Sorry for the little rant but it’s true—the advisors here go from competent to Harpur levels of helpfulness.
I would like to get back to the point of my Asia-ness: sure, my people would eat dogs and do some wars that would kill millions but we are not the ones oppressing others, maybe. Asians have been known to be smart, you know why? Because I got beaten by a bamboo stick like a POW of the Vietnam War while you guys got a belt. You would all have good grades if you were threatened to have your skin look redder than a tomato. The aerodynamics of a belt produces more drag than a bamboo stick and the force of the hit is applied to a smaller area, therefore, producing more pain. I know this from experience. Count yourself lucky, I was only allowed to survive because my mom could not hit as hard as my father, so I became more lenient towards my grades and failed to get into an Ivy League college (sorry mum).
You heard of this thing called affirmative action. Why the fuck would you support that kind of shit? Kids should go to college based on their skills, not because of the group they are placed with. I know it’s bad when I see kids that get money from ethnicity-specific funds. I am partly mad because I don’t have any. Someone I know has received an almost free ride to college because of Hispanic-specific scholarships and because their parents don’t file for taxes—which I mean good on them but, come on! If I hadn’t been beaten to accept authority, I wouldn’t file for taxes either. Why should I continue my education if others will give more to those of the “right” genetic composition? Are dogs getting revenge against my race because we eat them?