Author: Churan Xu
Elite spaces, namely the daunting crimson walls of Harvard that separate the rest of the world from the bubble within, money and social hierarchies, as well as excessive connections that are seems to be promised of individuals once they set foot into those gates. It’s the bubbles and the selectivity that embezzle the outsiders.
Most of the time, an exclusive set of culture and language characterizes this privilege. What’s sad is that thousands of Chinese parents would do almost anything to get their children spots in elite universities and boarding schools, only to find a highly corporatized and competitive culture. Kids immersed in prestige are solely interested in strategizing a resume to secure a landing at some soul-crushing job in consulting, tech, venture capital or investment banking (the “Holy Trinity”, with a newly added member). Truth being told, writing about privilege is a soul-crushing task itself. It reveals how the beneficiaries of a broken system tend to utilize their educational and social advantage to climb even higher in the ladder, rather than truly giving back or caring about the community. Regardless, privilege takes shapes in so many other forms and connects intimately to anyone’s sense of identity.
Lawrenceville School, Lawrence Township, NJ, USA
I: When is it ever enough?
Being born in a silver spoon,
Crème de la crème. They say
Was the way to go.
But some things in life you can only be born with.
It makes you oozy over who you are,
where you stand in the world.
The monster in your dreams.
duality of the human heart.
Always in search of more–
excess.
Who’s the fortunate one?
the Virginia rich,
or the middle class Asian who blends in too well.
Am I living in your excess or mine?
One of the biggest shocks I had stepping foot on this campus is feeling overwhelmed that everyone around me is incredibly talented. Olympiad-level figure skater, multi-million tech start up high school entrepreneur, artist who has already had a tons of exhibitions, you name it. I felt small, and this fear of being mediocre made me feel sick in the gut. I grew up in Shanghai, in a relatively well-off and comfortable household. By the time I succeeded in the strenuous process of boring school application, I felt majestically relieved– like I'd escaped from the traditional educational setup of Gaokao. The world was my oyster, and so I thought.
But the truth was as cold as a cement wall. Unshakeable, gray, and rusty. I weaved myself the biggest lie in the world. The truth is, deep breath in, that I would never be the top kid. And I remember so closely and intimately, how the disappointment sat in my stomach like a balloon about to explode, a water dam right before the flood breaks out of control. The vomiting sensation of inadequacy.
It took me a long time to realize I was trapped by the meritocratic system. Society forces upon us the notion that people who succeed do so because they work harder and never slack off. On the other hand, people who fail miserably are simply lazy. This conviction led to a diametric perception of the root of success, completely ignoring each person’s backstory. Being successful at a young age is especially dependent on the resources you could access as a child. Art, equestrianism, tech startup, virtually anything costs. But instead of telling you this, much of society and boarding school culture tells you that if you work hard, you will get everything. Maybe this is just another silly excuse I use to cheer myself up, but this realization almost brought me comic relief.
I’ve been pushing too hard on myself.
Amman, Jordan, the Middle East
II: My Black, Silky Hair
What I’ve Lost
teeth. metallic parts of headphones,
bad machinery. sticks
of lead. loves I once pressed
my lips to, firm and hard, on
their whole precious throats.
entire countries streaked
with black pepper,
entire countries
bleating with the creamy milk
of goats. it is absolute: this loss.
rivers and eyelashes. onions
waggling their roots. what I
will never know: new sisters
and stones curled into the center
of a palm. what I’ve missed:
kernels of corn, kettles of water.
I am lonely, in my lonely chest.
birds traipse out of windows. flags
lift their red and floppy throats.
cars shout; I will never hear them.
I want to catch so much of this earth
on the gentle tongue, but
outside: there is only snow.
and inside: there is only muscle.
I Wore My Blackest Hair: Poem by Carlina Duan
Growing up amongst the city jungle and radiant skyscrapers of Shanghai, socio-economic privilege was no stranger to me. It's a metropolis, after all. But one thing that slipped my head was the comfort of being the social majority in Shanghai. I was born with perfectly silky black hair, the smooth kind, and I would blend into any crowd in Shanghai perfectly. Every new year, ayis that I’ve never met would consult my mom about sesame desserts she makes for me to get this hair. Unlike me, blond, brunette, and virtually any other hair my Canadian or American friends had were subject to public whispers. Waiguoren, or Mandarin for foreigners, is pronounced with this spiky curiosity and assumption of exoticism, like how Tiao Tiao Tang dances on one’s tongue.
The people who were being commented on don't own the concept of foreigners– they don’t get to decide their label. This power imbalance striked me when I moved out of the country temporarily. I was a stranger in Jordan— non-Arab, not religious, not speaking or understanding Arabic. And the constant, embodied fear of estrangement finally hit me as I roamed through every corner of the Amman market, scared that someone is going to call me out– “Catfish!”--How I’m pretending to immerse myself in a culture I don’t belong to. Al-janib, or foreigner in Arabic, is ironically the very first word my teacher chose to teach me when I started the language learning process. It has scratched my heart ever since. The same way my wavy, straight hair stood out amongst curly brown hair under hijabs.
II: Community Service– to give back or not, that is the question.
“Each of us carries around those growing up places, the institutions, a sort of backdrop, a stage set. So often we act out the present against the backdrop of the past, within a frame of perception that is so familiar, so safe that it is terrifying to risk changing it even when we know our perceptions are distorted, limited, constricted by that old view.”
― Chandra Talpade Mohanty, Feminism without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity
It comes at no surprise that the boarding school I go to interact with the Trenton community with a white savior complex. For the generation I grew up with, talking about equal mindset and the lasting impacts of white privilege, colonialism, colorism, etc. has been the normality. That obscures the fact that it never became reality. Plus, looking back at history, forces of resistance and progress coexisted and interacted with each other fiercely.
The common narrative I heard in school about community service often sounds something like this. “I’m going to tutor homeless kids and I just feel so bad for them.” Meanwhile, girls casually joke about themselves wearing oversized hoodies, with their hair stacked as a loose bun, as the “homeless look”. “Food security is important. Give back! Treat the community with love!” We see these slogans everywhere in the community service office. But how much of it is actually sincere or genuinely cared for? Aren’t we, the more resourceful, doing it for the sake of college apps instead of a long-term interest in the betterment of the world? This hypocrisy really proves how impermeable the bubble is.
We’re all in it. We all know it’s toxic, but we would rather stay here because that’s all we know or could ever know. THE WORLD IS OUR OYSTER NOW.