Reflection - “Privilege Power and Difference” by Alan Johnson

While reading Privilege, Power, and Difference by Alan Johnson, the topic of diversity and being in multiple different groups as either the more favorable or disadvantageous side. Everyone has opinions and different ways of thinking dut to their social groups, backgrouds, or experineces. We can not fully understand the opposition side's perspective, but we do have first hand experience in our own category. When Johnson discussed about sexism and racism, I reflected onto my own childhood and noticed my privileges as being a lower middle-class, young adult Chinese women as well as there downfalls. People normally assume Chinese people will excel in mathematics and make a career out of it because it is an universal language that everyone understands and is easier to understand than english if they are immigrants. However, I know I desired to became a secondary education math teacher simply because I excelled at problem solving with numbers and formulas and wanted to share the enjoyment I received in mathematices to younger children too. I am constantly asked if I am an US citizen when I give out my race as well as my background information when they see my mom. Recently, I had to answer a question with the whole class about which generation immigrant I was on one of my family's side. I was the immigrant, but the teacher did not accept that answer so I had to say I am the forth-generation on my mother's father side. This is something I should not have to constantly explain to people and be questioned about. So while I am on the toxic postive attributes side of racism, I am part of a group that is being torned down. Especially when the first time COVID-19 struck and people started to blame the Chinese and Asians in general. My mom became more protective of me by telling me ways to stay away from those people in any given situation. This helped me realize where my social status is on the hierarchy and what it entails such as my labels, advantages, and disadvantages. It can be hard to recognize and simultaneously bring it up in conversarions, but it should be brought into question openly because how else will your discrimination be heard.

Comment: I started to notice how careful we are around topics about racism and sexism in regular conversation since we do not want to upset either parties, but it should not be the case. We do have biases about certain topics or people, whether accidentally or not, but that should not dictate how we treat people before learning more about them. We need to be more open-minded and not instinctivly label people based on their characteristics. That is why talking about these misconceptions, inequalities, and prejudice acts against your groups is important. It will help us progress into becoming more equal until it is normalized in our society. Hyperlink