Nicole Samoylovich, Period 7, 1/14/22

 

• Socio-political Consciousness

• What are your thoughts and feelings about issues of inequity, oppression, and/or power?

Almost everyone I have talked to about politics in the last few years, but especially throughout the pandemic, regardless of their own ideological views, seems to agree that the state of inequity and oppression in the U.S. is getting worse as time goes on, albeit for very different reasons. Some people’s views are shaped by the increase in hate crimes and hate movements since Donald Trump’s presidency and with the onset of COVID, with Asian-Americans in particular receiving much of this mistreatment due to the disease’s origins in China. As a Jewish person, I’ve personally been very concerned about the growing neo-Nazi movement in America, with events like the Charleston protest and synagogue bomb threats/shootings sticking out very sorely in my mind; it seems like anti-Semitism in this country has gotten worse in the past few years. However, I also have some conservative family members who believe that this country has gotten worse in terms of oppression, but not due to hate crimes or prejudice. Rather, they see the regulations and mandates of the pandemic as threats upon their freedoms or as symptoms of a government that is gradually becoming more fascist. I personally do not share their views on mask or vaccine mandates, but most of my relatives immigrated from the Soviet Union, which was a socialist regime until the 90s, so my family are almost all staunch anti-socialists and like to point out similarities between the U.S. today and the country they left so many years ago. They believe they are being oppressed by mask mandates, and I’ve even interacted with some people who think that censoring hate speech is oppression.
    In my opinion, times of crisis always bring out people’s worst; their prejudices, their fear, and their ‘us vs. them’ mentality. It isn’t strange for the parameters of civil liberty to be blurred during a pandemic, because a pandemic doesn’t count as normal times. I don’t think the heightened regulations regarding masks/vaccines/social distancing counts as oppression, but it is disappointing that inequity and oppression, especially with regards to racism, have become so heightened during times like these. People love a scapegoat for society’s problems, whether it be Asians, Jews, black people - whoever. And although I personally do agree that our country’s political situation contributed greatly to global hate movements, I don’t think everything is alright now just because Trump has left office, because we’re still in a pandemic and all the issues facing marginalized groups before are still there. I think rates of anti-Asian hate crimes will probably go down after the pandemic, but people will still have lingering biases from the whole experience. It’s important to advocate for any vulnerable communities in the future, because otherwise the feelings of heightened inequity and oppression from the pandemic won’t get resolved.

• How do you reflect critically on your own beliefs, assumptions, values, and experiences, and how these can influence your perception of self and others?

    I have to remember that no community is a monolith, and everybody has had different experiences with oppression, inequity, and power. For example, despite the fact that I vehemently disagree with some of my family’s/family friends’ views, I have to respect the struggle they came from. I understand why some people, including immigrants, have so much patriotism, and it’s because their lives in their home countries were genuinely just worse. Although I disagree with them, I can sympathize with their paranoia and fear surrounding a socialist movement in the U.S., or their anxiety surrounding heightened government regulation, because those things echo the nightmares of the Soviet Union to them. Additionally, the fact that my family is Jewish but has such opposing viewpoints regarding the root causes of our country’s rising anti-Semitism serves as a constant reminder to me that even within a single community, there is a wide range of disagreements and nuances when it comes to people’s personal views. People often like to assume other’s beliefs and experiences just based on their cultural or ethnic labels, but it’s not always so simple, and people’s true beliefs can oftentimes be surprising. I think if people tried to hear each other out more and didn’t assume so much about other communities, understanding that each individual has their own distinct experiences and values, then a lot of the divisive and harmful rhetoric surrounding the sociopolitical discourse in this country would change for the better.