Amy Chen, Period 6, 11/10/23

 Amy Chen, Period 6, 11/10/23

Modern Mythology 2024

Discuss your thoughts and feelings current topics around inequity, oppression, and/or power.

Inequity has always been prevalent in the world as there are so many injustices that can be fixed, but simply are not. Environmental inequities, where certain communities are disproportionately impacted by environmental and occupational hazards, such as Black and Hispanic communities being exposed to 50% more inhalable particles, which can cause a myriad of respiratory problems, than whites. Social inequity, affecting income, health care, education, and overall access to opportunities, caused by problems like gender and race inequality. Like women in the world still unable to freely access education and disparities in income between different groups of people doing the exact same work. 

I want to specifically focus on economic inequity and how wealth disparity affects healthcare. The exorbitant cost of healthcare in America has been an issue for a long time, with rising costs causing greater struggles for those who have to choose between medical necessities, and others such as food or rent. Those with the money and resources are able to access treatment, while those without will simply suffer, even when the solution is there. My sister, who has worked as a nurse, has witnessed this problem firsthand. She has seen patients equally sick and in need of the same services, with no beds open, yet one is able to create an opening with a phone call and the other cannot. Why is it that some people are neglected simply because of the wealth gap? Is someone’s life less valuable simply because they don’t hold the same amount of wealth and connections as someone else?

This problem is also exceptionally amplified by the existence of free healthcare available in the world, in countries like Canada and the UK. The means for fixing this problem clearly exists but nothing will be done about it, because those excessive medical bills generate profit for those board members running the hospitals. The rich get richer, while the lives of those at the bottom will only become increasingly difficult. Making healthcare free and accessible won’t generate any more profit than they are already making, and so those with the resources and power to fix this problem will simply do nothing as it does not stand to directly benefit them. 

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 grew up in a predominately Chinese community, raised by first generation Chinese immigrant parents. My parents both come from a small rural village in China, an entirely homogeneous place, with little to no diversity. When they moved to America, most of their social network still consisted of people just like themselves, other Chinese immigrants who still spoke the same dialect they did, sharing similar experiences and beliefs. They disliked anyone different from themselves, and fed into prejudice. People from other parts of China with differing dialects and culture than themselves, and especially “outsiders”, the diverse melting pot of different people that was America. My mom called Americans rude, noisy, and undisciplined. I had allowed her to shape some of my views, especially as a kid with no experience of my own, but as I was able to experience America on my own, I realized her words had little to no merit at all, only based on the senseless gossip passed in her circles. Her stories of disorder and violence were only a select few, a small but attention catching group who did not represent a population as a whole. The “outsiders'' I met were just people just like us, nothing less and nothing more.

Even just last week, my mom was recounting how a large gathering of dark skinned people made her nervous, despite numerous lectures from me and my siblings telling her to stop being so discriminative. I know that my mom grew up without any exposure to the diversity of people that exist in America. Her false conceptions are solely based on the false narratives constructed by false media and whispers of her acquaintances whose perceptions are corrupted by the same things. Her mindset is fixed and not so easily adjustable like how stubborn older people are. Unlike her, I have grown up in America and have had the luxury of experiencing diversity and acceptance of differences. I’ve learned from her to not feed into mindless misinformation and not to form preconceived notions on others without any real experience on my own part. This is something I will continue to practice, forming unbiased and objective perspectives of others, and continue to be accepting of differences and celebrating diversity, without allowing stereotypes and prejudice to cloud my judgment.