Capstone Essay Part
Cecilia Jiao
March 10, 2023
Professor Lauren S. Berliner
This project is about my grandfather's study abroad story, which includes some of my own thoughts and reflections, as well as the ability to realize how quickly time has passed when comparing my own experience, and how quickly many things and policies have changed over the decades. I hope this project can compare some of the similarities and differences between the study abroad experience in the 90s and now, as well as the differences in cultural attitudes towards the study abroad experience. More importantly, it is worth highlighting the intricate relationship between power, media, race, and public opinion. Through my own story and that of my grandfather, I will look at whether the events or social issues we experience similarly have changed significantly over the last few decades, and how globalization, the rise of the internet and social media have changed the power structures and the way the world and society operate.
For me, it's more like using Grandpa's story as well as my own experience to make some strings of all the things I learned at MACS, and then at the end of this project to better understand myself and also the world and how it has changed over the decades. There are some parts or stories in Grandpa's experience that will be brought out in detail, but I actually think of this work as more of a novel, tied together with stories that compare not only the events, but also the times and the characteristics of the times. Each chapter has a different theme, and I hope that the project is not just a record, but more of a comparison in which the information can be used to make further reflections.
As I began to study cultural studies and to learn more about and value personal narratives and the importance of storytelling in cultural studies, I suddenly realized that I had never taken careful note of the stories my grandparents told. Although many of their own experiences had been told to me in story form as I grew up. But the brain's memory is always limited, and I don't remember many of the stories. These experiences of my grandfather are valuable and very interesting. But also, from the small personal events reflect a lot of the thinking of that era, and the change of concept. In contrast to my own experiences, these are valuable first-hand accounts from a time gone by. As Grandpa turned his experiences into stories, his stories also helped me to clarify my values and goals as I grew up. While interviewing Grandpa, I realized how much grandpa enjoyed sharing these stories with me, sharing these emotions with me, and how happy he was that I was happy to get to know him better. In my own sharing, I also realized that storytelling was a way to learn about my own world and values, and that I felt connected to others as I turned my own experiences into stories.
I read an article on the school's website from Professor Tyson E.J. Marsh, in which he stated that “In acknowledging the value and rigor of story and the voices and experiential knowledge of minoritized communities, we can come to new understandings, develop new plans of action to realize our full humanity and right our relations with all living things” (Marsh, 2023). Especially when such trust is built between family members, this extremely deep connection makes the whole process of storytelling as well as listening more healing and meaningful. In the book “Between the Listening and the Telling: How Stories Can Save Us”, authors have claimed that “listening to and telling stories helps us connect to our human longings and deep currents of hope” (Yaconelli& Lamott, 2022). So I believe when I share this project with others, they would also become audiences for this story.
For me, this project has also been given some personal meaning by me. Because of the epidemic and the liberalization of control in China, I always hear about the death of elderly people, even middle-aged people, and young people, many of whom are family members of close friends. I always hear the lament "I don't know which will come first, tomorrow or the accident", and these things make me cherish the opportunity to talk and get along with my family and friends around me. With a foreword by Anne Lamott in the book, "In an era of runaway loneliness, alienation, global crisis, and despair, sharing stories helps us make a home within ourselves and one another" (Yaconelli& Lamott, 2022). I hope that when I share with others, they too can feel the power and bond of storytelling. each story is a silhouette of its time, and we can always see in each person's different story the most unique experiences in life, but the best artifacts that reflect an era.
There is no specific order to the interview or set questions. It's just a record of the whole process of Grandpa and I telling the story, and then me asking questions based on what I was curious about. So in the video, I'll cut out some of the overly long pauses and then did some reordering. It is important to note that the reordering does not change the meaning of the story, or the context Grandpa was trying to convey, it is just to make the whole video more logical. The essay is intended as a reflection on the interview, so it will mention many of the events that occurred during the interview but will not provide a narrative of the content of the interview. So this project will be composed of two parts: the interview and the essay.
Now, let’s make this story begin.
【Language and Ideology】
Learning English was not common back in those days, and it is difficult to describe the affection my grandparents had for Russian culture in their generation, because they were already in a time when Russian culture was ubiquitous in their youth. At that time the Communist International was in Moscow, and there were 12 socialist countries in the world, the Soviet Union being the head of them. The relationship between China and the Soviet Union was very close, not only between ordinary Chinese and Soviet citizens, but also during the time when China was just reforming and opening up, the Soviet Union also provided a lot of assistance to China. Many Chinese industrial technologies were provided and taught by the Soviet Union, and the standards were also Soviet standards. So, my grandparents and their classmates were required to learn Russian, not English.
In the first half of the 1950s, under China's "one-sided" foreign policy, English was the "language of imperialism". The Russian language institute occupied the entire Eastern College of Foreign Languages in Beijing, while English was included among the minor languages. This tendency is also evident in the dispatch of foreign students. According to the article "Sending International Students to the Soviet Union in the Early Period of New China", China's "First Five-Year Plan" (the first five-year plan) stipulated that 10,100 international students would be sent to the Soviet Union in five years, of which 9,400 would be sent to the Soviet Union (Zhang Juchun, 2008). This shows the unprecedented intensity and scope of Russian language study at that time. In the past, the U.S. hegemony brought a lot of problems to the development of the new China, so the Chinese people at that time resented the imperialism represented by the U.S., and many posters with the theme "Down with U.S. imperialism" were made and pasted in the streets and alleys.
https://nimg.ws.126.net/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fdingyue.ws.126.net%2F2019%2F08%2F03%2F2297de4b490f40ff92ec6c0fa0a4a369.png&thumbnail=660x2147483647&quality=80&type=jpg 全世界人民团结起来，打倒美帝国主义！（1965年）
https://i0.hdslb.com/bfs/article/642bf8f8fda0ef86ebdc054a79c354f1b541b204.jpg@942w_647h_progressive.jpg 全世界人民团结起来，打倒美帝！打倒苏修！打倒各国反动派！1969年，上海人民美术出版社出版。
However, at the same time such a policy and mainstream ideology also made a break in the English language professionals, because at that time English was dominant in the international political, economic and cultural exchanges. When people could not read literature or operate foreign machines, China gradually showed a disadvantage in its economic and cultural exchanges with the rest of the world.
Grandpa chose to learn English at that time in the midst of the collective demand to learn Russian. I asked my grandmother what it was like to watch my grandfather learn English. Grandma said that Grandpa was obsessed with learning English every day with his headphones and Walkman, and he kept reading English out of his mouth. I used to ask my grandfather why he wanted to learn English, and I remembered that he said it was because a lot of medical literature was in English, and a lot of medical techniques that were not available in China at that time, or were not yet mature, needed to be learned through literature. In those days, the media and the Internet were not developed at all, and the Internet only became popular worldwide after the 1990s, so the access to knowledge was still single and fixed. Grandpa felt that medical technology in the United States was much more advanced than in China, so he wanted to learn English, not only to read and learn more foreign literature, but also to seize the opportunity to study in the United States when he had the chance to do so, rather than letting language be a hindrance.
In 1964, the Chinese Ministry of Education made English the first foreign language. But at that time, the sentences people could learn were mostly "Long live Chairman Mao", "Chairman Mao is the red sun in our hearts", "The working class is our leading class".... The working class is our leading class"... The vocabulary related to daily life in English textbooks is very little, but more political vocabulary.
https://nimg.ws.126.net/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fdingyue.ws.126.net%2F2022%2F1101%2Fec4c1e75j00rkmsao002pd000ji00obp.jpg&thumbnail=660x2147483647&quality=80&type=jpg 这本教材由上海教育出版社出版，上海市印刷三厂负责印刷，新华书店上海发行所负责发行，1962年第一版，1965年第四次印刷。定价为0.18元。This textbook was published by Shanghai Education Press, printed by Shanghai Printing No. 3 Factory, and distributed by Xinhua Bookstore Shanghai Distribution, with the first edition in 1962 and the fourth printing in 1965. The fixed price is 0.18 yuan.
In 1978, with the end of the Cultural Revolution, the resumption of college entrance examinations, the reform and opening up of China, and the normalization of relations between China and the United States, English was officially declared a compulsory item on the college entrance examinations. The college entrance examination is the most important test in the academic career of Chinese students, and the inclusion of English as a compulsory item laid the foundation for the popularity of English. In 1986, China's education law began to implement the nine-year compulsory education. This is the unified education system in China, and all children and adolescents of school age must enjoy the right to compulsory education, which is a public good that must be guaranteed by the state. Nine-year compulsory education means that a child is not charged any tuition or other fees from elementary school to junior high school graduation. This system is the basis for improving the quality of the nation, and as the starting point for achieving social justice, nine-year compulsory education is of great importance. With the addition of nine years of compulsory education, English is beginning to reach a larger non-elite population. A 2014 report in the Beijing Evening News stated that 400 million people in China are learning English, more than the total population of the United States (Xie Shurong, 2014).
Globalization has brought new meaning to the learning and use of English. This ongoing process has brought about two entities: technology and interdependence (Burbules & Torres, 2000). Through this series of developments and because of my grandfather's experience, my grandfather would teach us English at home when my cousin and I were very young. In compulsory education, English was one of our required subjects. As mentioned earlier, the increasing cross-cultural contact raised the need for a common language. As a result of British colonialism in the 19th century and American capitalism and technological advances in the 20th century, English was chosen as the primary language of international communication. Technologically, the introduction and spread of the Internet has further consolidated the role of English and strengthened its position as a global lingua franca.
After China's reform and opening up, in July 1978, U.S. President Jimmy Carter communicated by telephone with Dr. Frank Press, the President's science advisor, who was visiting from Beijing, that China could send 100,000 international students to study in the United States. The tide of study abroad with enthusiasm and ambition began with unstoppable momentum, and the 1980s ushered in a tidal wave of development for overseas study. In 1985, China abolished the qualification examination for self-financed study abroad, and the door to sending foreign students was completely opened, and the "going abroad fever" was rapidly rising in the country. The "abroad fever" rapidly heated up in the country. Self-funded study in China started to emerge in the late 1990s, but in the early 1990s, opportunities to study abroad were still scarce, and most international students were sent on public study.
For more than three decades, from the early 1990s to the present, the demand for English speakers has always accompanied the growth of the Chinese economy. China has leveraged the wave of economic globalization and has become a central force in it. The globalization of English is one of the catalysts of economic globalization. Globalization in China is reflected in the huge government investment in English and the spread of English education. China's position in the global economy began as a processing, exporting trading country. In the 1980s and 1990s, production of everything from T-shirts to cell phones was moved to China, where labor costs were lower, in what was called "production process outsourcing. That's why my grandfather was asked in an interview whether China or Hong Kong was bigger, both in Uganda and in the United States. Because China makes screwdrivers, small things like that, but Hong Kong makes big appliances like refrigerators.
Now that China is becoming "Smart Made in China", services involving expertise, research capabilities and professional judgment are gradually moving to China. English is and remains a necessary tool for mastering the world's knowledge and a necessary path to top global higher education. But the number of English speakers is no longer the main conflict between China's economic growth and the demand for English speakers. As the engine of economic growth has shifted from quantity of products and services to quality and innovation, meeting the growth of the knowledge and innovation economy requires innovative English language talent, an English learnerwho has the ability to use English as a medium for academics, the ability to integrate world knowledge, and the ability to conduct research that is aligned with global academics. The current approach to the development of innovative English language talent is currently focused on exporting international students overseas and then encouraging them to return to China to contribute in the form of repatriation.
When Grandpa went abroad that year, he did a lot of preparation and it was really tough to go abroad. There were only three opportunities to study abroad in the whole province, and my grandfather came first in the examination. After he got the place, he had to contact the institution and the hospital to get the recommendation letter, and then he had to do a lot of procedures, so the process of going abroad was very tedious. But now the era of globalization makes it easier and easier to go abroad. In addition to the economic development, the national policy support for studying abroad and the policy of attracting talents back to the country are gradually optimized.
Since the second half of the 1990s, as China's market economy gradually entered the track and joined the WTO, there are more and more connections with foreign countries, information flow is getting faster and faster, and it is gradually easier to study abroad. As the world's largest sending country of international students, many countries have recognized the potential of China's education market and have been relaxing their policies, so more and more young and tender faces have emerged in the army of Chinese students in the past few years. In my generation, there are more and more reasons for going abroad. From my close friends around me, several reasons are more common. First, parents want their children to see a more diverse world and to go abroad at a younger age so they can learn and adapt to a different environment more quickly. Secondly, the competition for higher education and employment in China is very high, and many parents worry that their children's future and life will be affected if they do not get into a major university when they cross the "one-way" bridge. Therefore, a more personalized and personal development-oriented education model in the West will allow these children to excel. Thirdly, with the internationalization of the world and the market, the ageing of Chinese students is becoming more and more obvious because of the development of the "international student economy" in western countries. In recent years, developed countries have regarded the development of China's study abroad market as one of the important growth points for the development of the education economy, and the restrictions on studying abroad have become less and less, except for the economic threshold, which cannot be lowered.
According to the official China Study Abroad Development Report (2022), international students who travel to destination countries for higher education often have a positive economic impact on the destination country. for the 2019-2020 academic year, while the new coronary pneumonia epidemic has had a significant impact on study abroad travel and the global economy, in California and New York State alone, where international students are concentrated, international students generated $11.9 billion in economic contribution and supported 125,000 jobs. In addition to paying high tuition fees to their destination countries, international students also spend large amounts of money on housing, retail, transportation, health insurance, and other areas, and the expanded market demand from lifestyle spending creates a large number of jobs in the destination countries, leveraging comprehensive income growth and contributing to economic prosperity (Bank of China, 2022). However, according to the analysis in the Report, the purpose of Chinese intending international students to study abroad, "expanding international vision", "enriching life experience", "learning advanced knowledge abroad The demand for self-improvement such as "expanding international horizons" and "enriching life experience" is increasing year by year. The more diversified purposes of intended students also represent their higher expectations for study abroad and self-improvement, and the under-age of study abroad is gradually becoming rational (China Bank, 2022).
About this section, for me, made me rethink my identity as an international student and the independent thinking, self-directed learning and critical skills that value I developed during my study abroad. At the same time, I seriously studied and reflected on why it has become much easier to go abroad than it was thirty years ago. This change is not only due to the development of the country or the economic power of families as individuals, but also for superficial reasons. The influence of politics will not disappear, but the dominant ideology guided by such politics has entered a much less visible level. People can feel, and be influenced by, the dominant ideology anywhere. True power is invisible and permeates the most individualized nuances of social conditions.
【Discourse and Bias】
It doesn't matter if it was the era Grandpa lived in or now. The world is still a Western-dominated international system. The post-war world landscape has continued to change, and one of the most important aspects of the current world landscape cannot be ignored is political multipolarity. Political multipolarity means that the political influence of each country has been strengthened with the development of economy, and the former American dominance has gradually developed into a multi-national counterbalance, forming a world political pluralism pattern. The dominant Western-dominated ideology and discourse are also reflected in the subtle changes in the world landscape that are different from the previous ones.
In the days when the internet was not widespread, the speed of information dissemination was limited, and many prejudices and misunderstandings took a long time, or time spent with first-hand experience, to be dispelled. Before Grandpa had the opportunity to go to the United States, he first spent a year in Africa as a member of the first medical team from Yunnan Province to assist in Uganda, and in the 1980s and 1990s, the first medical teams were established in Yunnan to provide assistance in Uganda, Zimbabwe and Zambia. Grandpa went to Uganda in 1983. This medical team was part of a larger Yunnan-Africa medical assistance program designed to address the medical needs of these countries. The medical team provides free medical services to the local population, improves disease prevention and control, and trains local medical personnel known as "medical consulting teachers. In Grandpa's interview, Grandpa was talking about the many pictorials they brought with them.
I asked my grandfather in the interview what a pictorial was, and he said that pictorials reflected the situation in China at that time by using photographs and paintings of the buildings, streets and people of China. I understood that pictorials were a way of propaganda and a kind of political propaganda in those days, because the power of ancient China made Chinese people have the idea of "central country" before the Qing Dynasty, but in the end of the Qing Dynasty when China was almost extinct, modern Chinese history is called the history of "opening eyes to the world". Before the emergence of this type of pictorial concept in modern times, ordinary Chinese people did not really have the act of "seeing the world", nor did they even have the urgency to think about it. (Pei Xu, Dan Zhou, pg. 82) In the late 19th century, the emergence of the pictorial press made it possible for most Chinese to see the world with their own eyes for the first time. The pictorial newspaper became one of the ways for Chinese people at the time to learn about the outside world and one of the means to transform Chinese society. (Ye Xiaoqing, 2003) So the pictorial newspaper, in its continuous development, also became a medium of cultural transmission. These pictorials make the local Ugandans know more about China, but the more understanding comes from spending time with the Chinese medical team members day by day. Therefore, when you learn about a country from the media or official information sources, the information and knowledge are one-sided. When one really gets to know and get involved in some personal stories and experiences, one can better understand aspects that they did not know before. So it is only through personal knowledge and experience that one can sometimes truly understand a country, a group of people, a culture.
Before that, because of the hindrance of information dissemination and the influence of colonialism and imperialism of western countries in Africa, the African people did not know China and had prejudice against China. In Grandpa's interview, I could clearly feel the change of people's attitude towards the medical team, from the way Grandpa described at the beginning, when he heard that they were Chinese, they just walked away, to the way people praised and were friendly to China afterwards. What I want to say here is that the power of countries affects their discourse in the world, and thus also determines and influences the discourse and ideology of the mainstream media in other countries under the influence of hegemony, such as Africa. What people perceive as common sense is usually based on the ideology of the culture they live in and the discourse they receive. in BCULST 500 class, when we were discussing the formation of cultural studies, we read "West and In BCULST 500 class, when we were discussing the formation of cultural studies, we read "West and Rest", and it's about discourse and power. In Foucault's view, discourse is the vehicle, knowledge is the appearance, and power is the substance; without the production of discourse there is no implementation of power. In this lesson, a concept that was very important to me has been repeated in all my subsequent studies. As a cultural researcher, I will always remember that the essence of what I study is the mechanism of discourse production in a particular socio-cultural context and the complex social struggles embedded in it. In particular, the processes of struggle and the tactical means of struggle of a range of socio-cultural forces involved in these struggles.
【Race and Public Opinion】
Rousseau, a French Enlightenment thinker, said in The Social Contract that "among all the peoples of the world, it is not nature but opinion that determines what people love and hate" (Rousseau, 2020). This is the first time that the concept of public opinion was introduced. Professor Chen has defined that "public opinion is the sum of beliefs, attitudes, opinions and emotional expressions expressed by the public about the real society and various phenomena and issues in the society, which have relative consistency, intensity and continuity, and have an impact on social development and related issues. It has a relatively consistent, strong and continuous influence on the development of society and the course of related events, in which there is a mixture of rational and irrational elements". Discourse refers to "the power of specific institutions and individuals to influence others through the disclosure of information or the expression of opinions". Public opinion, on the other hand, is "the potential real influence of public opinion as the subject of information dissemination" (Public Opinion, 1999).
During Grandpa's time in Los Angeles, which coincided with the Los Angeles unrest of the 1992s, four white police officers were criminally prosecuted after their beating of Rodney King, a young black man, was accidentally caught on video on March 3, 1991, in the nation's second-largest city. A year later, a predominantly white jury found the defendants "not guilty. The black community was outraged, mobbed, burned and looted, sparking a race riot that shocked the world, killing 58 people, injuring more than 2,300, arresting more than 10,000, burning more than 5,000 buildings, and causing more than $1 billion in property damage. After the incident, the U.S. government called it "riots" and deployed the California Army National Guard, Marines, and infantry divisions, totaling tens of thousands of troops, to help local police quell the riots. (He, 2019). If this video had not been available, then people might not have known that this happened, and it would not necessarily have been known by many people without the media blitz and loop. So from this perspective, even though this video was not used as strong evidence of brutality at the time of the verdict, it at least inspired survivors of police brutality. And public opinion put constant pressure on the court's final decision and became one of the major influencing factors in the verdict.
In the evolution of social opinion, traditional mass media have been running through it and playing an important role. In the past, before the Internet technology was developed, the mainstream media dominated the local public opinion discourse in the era of grandparents, and it was both the publisher of authoritative news and the main medium of information diffusion. Under this information dissemination pattern in which the traditional mainstream media dominated, the social opinion discourse pattern in each country showed monopolistic characteristics. It is difficult for the masses to make their voices heard when they are individuals, and it is difficult for individual stories and group voices to be widely heard. As the carrier with the fastest transmission of social information and the widest coverage, the position and content transmission of news reports express the national superstructure consciousness and best reflect and maintain the mainstream values of society. However, on the issue of racial conflict in the United States, the impact of news coverage is two-sided. Authentic journalism can play an indelible positive role in suppressing evil and promoting good, maintaining social stability and economic development. On the other hand, many U.S. news media have the negative effect of inflaming public sentiment and adding fuel to the fire. For the sake of profit and different ideological inducement, news reports exaggerate the racial conflicts with non-objective and emotionally charged information, which has a bad influence on the development of the situation.
Less than half a month after Rodney King was violently subdued by a white police officer, in March 1991, store owner Soon Ja Du shot 15-year-old black girl Latasha Harlins in the back, an incident that is credited with being the catalyst for the mass destruction of Korean stores. In a newspaper from The Los Angeles times, the author have described the event and what happened with Du and earlier witnesses testified that Harlins went to a cooler and put the orange juice inside the backpack in Two children in the store testified that Harlins had money in her hand when she approached the store's Two children in the store testified that Harlins had money in her hand when she approached the store's counter and said she intended to pay for the juice when Du asked her about it (Ford, 1991). Harlins, who had gone to the counter to check out, was pulled by Du Shunzi and the two escalated from mutual accusations to a physical confrontation. After Harlins throws several consecutive punches at Du's face, there is a scene in which Du pulls a pistol from under the counter and shoots Harlins. The African-American community was in an uproar when Du, a Korean female shopkeeper, was sentenced to probation without jail time and, six months later, a not guilty verdict came out regarding the four police officers who assaulted Rodney King.
Brenda Stevenson, a professor of history at UCLA, has written an informative book, "The Contested Murder of Latasha Harlins," about the feud between the African-American and Korean communities before and after the LA riots. It mentions that in the 70s and 80s, many Korean immigrants took some storefronts in South Central LA with little gold and silver and started a small business in the African-American community. They also knew that that neighborhood was more high-risk, so they did not live there. The choice to open the store there was a necessity due to various factors. The combination of money on hand and high rent made it the only store that was suitable, and the Jewish store owners, at the time, happened to be fed up with the racial issues and were eager to get out. A census of Korean store owners in 1989 showed that there was a clear discriminatory attitude toward African-Americans. The discontent of the African-American community stemmed from the fact that Korean shopkeepers rarely hired black people from the local community as employees and were "unfriendly" to black customers. According to the interviews in the book, many African-American customers feel like they are being guarded by thieves in Soon-Ja Du's stores, and the owners' attitude is hard and unfriendly.
The media at that time, when reporting on the incident, kept emphasizing the detail that Harlins was holding $2 in his hand when he died. And in many of the descriptions of this detail, emotions were added, and the whole thing was not fully restored. So after the media blitz, a lot of African-American anger was transferred to the Korean community. So when the riots spread throughout Los Angeles, Korean-run stores in Koreatown were hit hard. A documentary called "Sai-I-Gu" about the unrest in Los Angeles includes many interviews and a reconstruction of the events. The director of the documentary is Korean, and the title of the documentary is the Korean pronunciation of the number 429 to commemorate the start of the riots, April 29, 1992. In the interviews for the documentary, the anger and frustration of the Korean community can be felt. "We called 911 numerous times and the police didn't come." A young male Korean II man says angrily to the camera. "They told us, we can't come now, and hopefully you have insurance, so you can call your insurance company when the time comes...Meanwhile, they put their police force on defending Beverly Hills to make sure the riots don't spread there" (Choy, 1993). In response to the LA riots, the Korean community was not so much proud of the well-organized self-defense, but more of a mixture of anger at the police system and sadness at the heavy losses. Even the excessive mention of the image of Koreans with guns raises alarm bells. In the aftermath of the LA riots, the media has amplified the image of Korean resistance with guns, emphasized that only one Korean was killed, and repeatedly used terms like "Battle of Los Angeles" to intentionally portray it as an interracial war, while downplaying Rodney King's incident and the fact that it was all due to the Los Angeles Police Department's gross negligence and failure to respond. The police department's serious failure and lack of police presence forced the public to resist on their own.
The incident is complicated and cannot be attributed to a single factor, but the media's intentional or unintentional fanning of the flames, the already tense relationship between African-Americans and Korean-Americans, and the long-standing resentment and anger of African-Americans towards the social order are the main reasons for this incident. There is an old Chinese saying that it takes more than one day to freeze three feet of ice. The small grievances and conflicts that accumulate over time may explode after a fuse.
Gustave Le Bon, a French social psychologist and founder of group psychology, claimed in his book "The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind" that the disappearance of conscious individuality, and the shifting of feelings and thoughts in a different direction, are the primary characteristics exhibited by people who are about to become organized groups. (pg. 86, 1895). In this book, one of the basic points that the author emphasizes is that we think we are rational, that we assume that our every action is justified. But in fact, the vast majority of our everyday actions are the result of some hidden motive that we cannot even understand ourselves. This is the effect that the power hidden in the media has on the masses as a group. At the same time, the author also points out in the book that once an individual becomes part of a group, he is no longer responsible for what he does, which is the side of each individual that reveals itself to be unrestrained. The group seeks and believes most not in truth and reason, but in blind obedience, cruelty, paranoia and fanaticism, knowing only simple and extreme feelings. Therefore, under the guidance of group psychology, public opinion is more likely to be guided, and when news reports are mixed with emotions, or show only the part that the power wants the public to see, there will be massive outbreaks of violent group conflicts. So often it is also important to note that when such events occur, there are people or forces with other agendas that get mixed up in them and quietly change the direction of things, or channel the emotions of the masses and ignite them in order to get the group to act more aggressively. Among them, there is no shortage of people who do not come to participate in the march or simply want to create havoc, looting.
In the interview with Grandpa, Grandpa was the one who took the initiative to bring up this event, and then it was also the first time that I went more to understand and learn about this event by checking the relevant information. Grandpa still remembered the event clearly and how he felt about it, even though he said time was not so clear anymore. After this interview, I also came to understand better why my grandfather started to worry about me whenever he saw a shooting happening or a mass march taking place while I was studying abroad, and called me every day to make sure I was safe. The concept of time may have blurred, but the personal feeling of being a participant in the event or a close observer, and the memories brought to Grandpa by the event, will not disappear. At the same time, Grandpa also mentioned in the interview the different treatment that Chinese doctors, or doctors of Chinese descent, received in the United States. Chinese doctors could only perform basic examinations on patients because their knowledge and expertise were not trusted. These racial prejudices are always visible in life, not to the extent that lives are threatened, but it is always there. In fact, the shadow of racial conflict and prejudice has never lifted, but has instead been presented in more intricate ways than people want to see...and still are.
During my time studying abroad, discrimination against Asians was also evident during one time period: the COVID-19 pandemic. The media referred to the virus as WuHan Virus, or China Virus from the beginning, and continued to do so even when the WHO officially stated that the virus did not originate in China. The hatred for Asians, especially Chinese, was heightened especially when then President Trump also called COVID the China Virus. I heard and documented many stories around me during that time. My classmates, friends were discriminated against in various ways, from different people and in different environments. "Fight the Virus, Not the People!" the National March Against Discrimination Against Asians, the banner of the February 29, 2020 March Against Discrimination, is in the Smithsonian National Museum of American History (SMNHM) The February 29, 2020 anti-discrimination banner was collected as an artifact by the Smithsonian National Museum of American History. This banner in the collection further illustrates the significance of Asian anti-discrimination at this time.
According to Stop AAPI Hate, From March 2020 to December 2021, 10,905 hate incidents were reported to Stop AAPI Hate. In one fifth of these incidents, the perpetrators blamed the new crown epidemic, lack of income security, and other issues on Asians or Asian-Americans. "Most anti-Asian incidents are not criminal in nature and therefore require solutions outside the criminal justice system," the report reads, "We do not support solutions such as increased policing or incarceration that would have a disparate impact on minority communities, which would not eliminate systemic racism and would perpetuate it." (Stop AAPI Hate, 2022). Some scholars argue that, unlike discrimination against people of African descent, discrimination against Asians in American society has historically been xenophobic. At its core, it is psychologically rooted in the perception of Asians as the "eternal other. In her book "The Making of Asian America: A History," American historian Lee Yi-lien writes that despite the repeal of discriminatory laws of yesteryear, Asian Americans have not yet achieved full equality in American society. Many Asians settled in the United States generations ago, but are still considered outsiders. "This has led to them being discriminated against and targeted for violence, murder, and hate crimes in their daily lives" (Lee, 2015).
From a broader perspective, anti-Asian racism is one of the manifestations of systemic racial discrimination in the United States. Like African-Americans, Latinos, Native Americans and other minorities, Asians have long been discriminated against and oppressed by the "white supremacy" in the United States, either explicitly or implicitly, and are also the victims of racial hatred and confrontation incited by American politicians for their own interests. So even decades later, whether it was my grandfather's experience or mine, prejudice and discrimination against minority groups have persisted. The issue of race has always plagued America, accumulating over the centuries and constantly erupting again and again, spurred by fuse incidents. It will not go away easily, it is a deep-rooted problem and we need to keep working to fight against racist remarks and behaviors and long-standing stereotypes against minority groups.
【Social Media & Social Movements】
In terms of social opinion guidance, the degree of media's mastery of public opinion discourse is closely related to its ability to guide public opinion. With the advent of the social media era, new media such as cell phones and the Internet are increasingly becoming part of public power resources and occupying an important position. Violent police enforcement or killings are often filmed. The high frequency of Facebook and Twitter has contributed to the change of the information dissemination ecology of the world society, and the dominance of traditional media has been overturned, and the pluralistic pattern of public opinion has gradually formed, and the era of pluralistic discourse has come. In the new media environment, the widespread use of new media, including short videos, has made it possible for people to receive news and information in a timely and rapid manner without using traditional media, and both ordinary people and social elites are able to express their opinions conveniently and relatively freely through the Internet, becoming subjects of public opinion with actual discourse power.
In this context, with a new round of communication technology revolution, social discourse has been redistributed in recent years due to the unprecedented rise of people's willingness to express themselves, and the traditional mainstream media's discourse power has been diluted and its ability to lead public opinion has been reduced. The diversification of media and the development of the Internet has allowed people to access information from more channels, while individuals are more able to use the Internet and social media platforms as a place to express themselves and tell their stories. Social media provides a platform for people to fill the gaps in the mainstream narrative.
My grandfather lived through the Los Angeles unrest, but some people would call it an uprising. When I was studying abroad, the most famous and widely spread movement was "Black Lives Matter". The most common description of BLM that you can find on Google is a decentralized political and social movement that aims to highlight the racism, discrimination and inequality experienced by black people. When its supporters come together, they do so primarily to protest police brutality and racially motivated violence against black people. Various social media serve as communication platforms and have different communication characteristics. For pro-BLM groups, eyewitness accounts of police brutality and racism appear on social media in the form of videos and images taken on cell phones. The spread of such evidence has gained tremendous support on sites such as Instagram and Twitter, with each share and repost generating hundreds of views per hour. Because this level of engagement is unique to social media, it is difficult to explain the true scale of the movement and its impact through mainstream media. This is especially important for the impression of protest that the public has been gathering. Under #blacklivesmatter on social platforms like Twitter, users can now see numerous examples of corrupt policing, as well as many examples of unnecessary force being used against peaceful protesters. The more similar messages they view, the more relevant messages the system will automatically push to this group as well.
Under the influence of the echo chamber effect, people tend to communicate with people who share their opinions and form groups. Today, the risks of the echo chamber and the "filter bubble" Today, the risks of the echo chamber and the "filter bubble" are considered something of a truism, explaining the bitter divides in public opinion that often appear toe strict party lines. According to an article named "The myth of the online echo chamber" from BBC that nearly 78% of Hillary Clinton voters support the Black Lives Matter But this data does not fully prove the influence of the echo chamber effect as a percentage, only that the echo chamber effect is often seen as a major cause of political polarization. People should be more rational about the impact of the echo chamber effect, rather than exaggerating it. But hashtags can also have a diversity of voices, and people may draw on different information when browsing hashtags, so beware of the backfire effect (where misinformation is corrected and the corrected information contradicts the person's original view, instead deepening trust in the original misinformation) - resulting in increased rather than decreased bigotry.
The BLM movement that began as a reactionary digital tool through the use of #BlackLivesMatter became proactive as its message on social media was used to inspire action from both an older generation of activists and an eager younger generation from across the socioeconomic, race, and sexuality spectrum. BLM’s use of Twitter and other social media platforms for organizing protests increased the engagement of many, both online and off. BLM’s message was made more mainstream as social media allowed users to both disseminate important information and share personal experiences related to the cause. Mass online interaction, exchange, and communication links people with common goals and values and assists social media users in gaining, maintaining, and cultivating resources and community support (Barnett Cosby, 2018). BLM’s use of social media draws on and modernizes traditional modes of insurgency. This strategy reenergized older activists and spurred the action and support of a younger, social media savvy generation of activists of all races, genders, sexual identities, and socioeconomic backgrounds (Olson, 2021). Social media has revolutionized the way political discourse and action is conducted. The accessibility of social media has in turn made social movements more accessible, which is directly related to the increase in offline participation.
Scholars have many different opinions about what role social media actually plays in activism. In Allsop's literature, he divides these views on social media and activism into three main groups: slacktivists, paradigm shifters, and facilitators and begs the question: Does social media augment existing forms of activism or is it creating an entirely new form of it? I will not expand on these three identities in my essay, but I would like to elaborate on my own thinking about this question. I think it's about innovation in the process of enhancement. I don't think there is a dualistic answer to this question. In traditional societies, the subject and goal of action are highly unique and social action is centralized, and the ideas and behavioral guidelines conveyed through orders and policy situations do not require superfluous comparison and selection, so that the results produced by mobilization and action are more uniform. However, with the intervention of social media, in the new media context of universal communication, the members of society themselves are the recipients of information and the sources of information. When people record with the help of the mobile devices they carry with them, it is easier and more convenient to realize the timely dissemination of information on a large scale. This is innovation. By deconstructing the mobilizing information they receive and their own values, individual members of society complete the reshaping of values and consensus on movements in the "free market of opinions" constituted by social media, which then makes it possible for them to join social movements. In the Internet environment, members of society in general, as recipients, producers and users of communication content, have relatively divided the power previously monopolized by the traditional mass media, thus achieving self-empowerment. The new social media, as a media technology, has gradually become an invisible media power self-empowered by the members of the social movement. But I think this empowerment is widespread. Traditional mass media power is in the hands of a few, as the communicator acts as a gatekeeper and the audience is a passive recipient. The autonomy and interactivity of social media can empower the majority of people.
In the 1990s, when the Los Angeles unrest occurred, there were social marches in many cities in the United States to resist racial discrimination and police brutality, but people in other countries had a delay in accessing the event and were not even aware of it in many places. But the protests at BLM took place in more than 60 countries and on seven continents. This data comes from Wikipedia statistics, and since there are news sources for each event at the end, I think this data is credible. This shows that with the help of social media networks, information about social movements can be disseminated across geographies and even across the globe, so that participants and internet users who are inclined to participate do not see the issue of geography as a barrier to getting involved. The nature of social media allows it to cross time and space to a great extent, linking individuals and organizations with common interests and ideas in a network, enabling the scale of participants and supporters of social movements to expand rapidly in a short period of time, building a virtual community that may be transformed into an offline group. When people connect the location and actions of offline participants with the events that play what it gives through social media, it solves the challenge of communication between participants in different regions in traditional mass media. People in social networks are able to quickly know the time and place of important social issues and offline events and the possibility of participation, and to carry out various real-time, open and diversified social interactions in the virtual space in a timely manner.
However, social media also has many limitations in social movements. It is difficult for social media to treat every group equally in social mobilization, and the issues that seem to be discussed by the public are, in fact, the ones where one side is creating the advantage of mass public opinion to "minority to majority" dissident groups. At the same time, when people are free to add their personal emotional orientation and personal preferences to information, such information usually has no guarantee of objectivity and authenticity, and can easily become a source of rumors and even incite members of society to riots. With the development of technology, it is also worthwhile to continue thinking and studying how to consolidate the advantages of social media and develop its other possible roles in social movements.
The story begins slowly with Grandpa's personal narrative, and this interview created an environment in which both Grandpa and I were able to enjoy the intimacy between our loved ones. I describe the importance of many personal narratives in my essay, but also want to emphasize my role and significance in the cultural studies reflection process as the audience for the interview, or at the time of reading this, the audience for this essay. My reaction and my reaction after hearing the story is an extremely important part of this project. And the audience, WHO reads the article, will also be part of this project. With new thoughts, with a new critique to become a new storyteller. I explore the everyday life behind the story, the cross-cultural memories, and the important events of the times from Grandpa's perspective, sorting out and plumbing the points that I feel are important as a listener, and then plumbing the key concepts involved in reflecting on the narrative and the story.
The process of interviewing was a decoding and recoding process, and one of the most important key elements of the narrative INVOLVE was language. Language served as a prerequisite for my understanding of Grandpa's story and for Grandpa to communicate the experience to me. Language is one of the vehicles and modes of transmission of a culture, and has become an important condition for people to really get involved in a culture. Language learning has become easier and easier in the times, a convenience brought about by globalization and the Internet age, and the birth of translation software has made language barriers progressively smaller in the impact of information dissemination. In comparing my experience of studying abroad with my grandfather's and similar events, I feel that many things do not seem to have changed much in essence, but the multicultural perspective and access to information bring us more thinking and progress, and at the same time make it easier for us to fall into misleading and biased information. In my MACS study, I particularly remember a quote shared by my teacher that when we learn, understand, and are really INVOLVED in it, we will notice. We look at events, society, and the world a little differently. So as I said in my article, power is always there, so is prejudice and discrimination, it's just whether people want to see it or not.
My grandfather's study abroad experience became a beacon for me on my way to grow up, and all those experiences became stories that planted a seed in my heart, which grew and sprouted and shaped the foundation of my character. When I became an international student myself, a cross-cultural and cross-linguistic researcher, I gained a deeper understanding of my grandfather's story and added my own thoughts to it. My grandfather's story and mine may seem small, but individuals are the basic units of society, and we are all witnesses to history.
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