Evan Leung, Period 2, 10/6/22

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

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

There is always a source for inequity, oppression, and power, which are often intertwined with each other. Due to human nature, it’s sadly natural for people to treat others who differ from them in a negative manner. People's reactions to differences can vary greatly, from something simple like disliking a specific person or having a subtle difference in the way they act, to something drastically large scale like segregation. The differences themselves also vary: the way a person acts, the wealth and success of a person, the opportunities a person has, etc. If we took the still prevalent issue of racism, for example, its source can be traced back to a simple difference in skin color. I believe this to be the source of the imbalance present in any place involving people - the constant perception and search for differences. Many situations regarding inequity, oppression, and power have seen a change in the past half-century, thanks to modern social movements. These new ways of thinking acknowledge the differences between any two humans, yet still view them like any other. However, not every issue is being addressed or viewed in some cases, and the issues currently under a lot of attention and change, they’ll never truly be solved. As long as at least one person continues to refuse change, the problem will continue to persist, but realistically it’ll involve way more than a single person. In order to genuinely resolve an issue pertaining to a difference in equality, human nature itself must be altered. 

Personally thinking this way has created a blur in my own beliefs, but somehow this has become a good thing because my assumptions clear out completely when meeting or conversing with others, giving them a blank slate to build off of, instead of pre-existing stereotypes or biases. From afar, I still have some preset perceptions, some of them negative, but more often than not they’ve been proven wrong. I believe that people are just too afraid of differences, and this frequently dictates their actions. But to that, I say: everyone is different, and when it comes down to it we’re all people. No amount of power will change that fact.