POLITICS & STUFF | A FOOD REVIEW OF HAI HONG

The Sun hired me as a politics writer but my blog is called “Politics & Stuff” so I’m technically allowed to write about the “Stuff” part! Here’s a food review of Hai Hong!! First, a little about the restaurant: Hai Hong is a family-owned Asian restaurant on 208 Dryden Road in Collegetown that’s been in business for 21 years. I will be reviewing 6 dim-sum foods based on 3 criteria: taste, presentation, and the “wow-factor”. 1) Water

Taste: Tasted like water

Presentation: In a nice glass so it couldn’t have been tap water

“Wow-factor”: Wow!

POLITICS & STUFF | American Dream

I am the child of immigrants. I am the child of two people who moved to another country with not a penny to their names and worked themselves to the bone for twenty years to finally earn a small house with a yellow lawn and white picket fence. My parents worked hard and endured continuous years of hardship because they were promised a light at the end of the tunnel. My family is The American Dream personified. And just as my parents’ lives were strung along by a longheld promise, my life has been shaped by that same promise.

POLITICS & STUFF | What’s Past is Prologue: Race and Poverty in Contemporary America

Imagine a society in which almost 1 in 4 African-Americans are in poverty; for white people, the number is less than 1 in 10 (Proctor et al., 12). Imagine that society in which not only black children are more likely to be born into poverty, but half of them will also remain there as adults. Only a third of poor white people will stay in the lowest income quintile (Reeves, 1). No, this isn’t the 1850’s. This is American poverty in 2016.

POLITICS & STUFF | Three Years Later: My Reflection and Frustrations with Public Forum Debate

My high school years were defined by my participation in public forum debate. PF is a two-on-two debate format that encourages discussion on current controversies such as gun control, education reform and constitutionality. While I am extremely grateful for the critical forums of discourse provided through the activity, PF debate, from my experience, was a shitshow of sexism, classism, ableism and overall privilege that hid behind the feel-good notions of intellectual discourse and academic exploration. It was also an incubator for frustration against the exclusivity and elitism that runs rampant in this activity. Not only did the coaching fees, travel and hotel fees, and even attire actively exclude students not financially well-off, a multitude of damning biases and prejudices run under the radar.

POLITICS & STUFF | The Problem of College Unaffordability

Arthur E. Levine once said, “When a quality education is denied to children at birth because of their parents’ skin color or income, it is not only bad policy, it is immoral.” It is because I believe education is a universal right, not a privilege, that I believe the United States federal government should help provide affordable college education through grants and federal aid. First, the cost of college has become an obstacle in accessing increasingly necessary post-secondary education. According to the US Department of Education, even when inflation was accounted for, “the cost of obtaining a university education in the US has soared 12 fold over the past three decades… [increasing] four times faster than the [that of] consumer goods, medical expenses, and food.” The uncontrolled increase in tuition in the years of recovering from a recession is making college an unattainable goal for millions of students, making the American Dream a privilege to those who already come from well-off families. In fact, Sara Goldrich-Rab and Nancy Kendall of the US Department of Education conducted a study in 2013 and found that those who come from low-income families are 12 to 16 times more likely to forgo college. However, in an era of fierce competition within the job market, those who do not have a college degree have little chance of climbing up the socioeconomic ladder.

POLITICS & STUFF | Asian-Americans and #BlackLivesMatter

As the consequences of racial inequality take center stage in US politics, America again uncovers its divisions across racial identities. From the abolitionist movement to the Civil Rights Movement, the fight for black liberation has been passed to the modern #BlackLivesMatter movement. Like many afrocentric racial justice movements, Black Lives Matter has been politically charged and has received much attention from both white and black Americans. However, the role of Asian-Americans in the Black Lives Matter movement has remained unexplored. Perhaps it is because we occupy a confusing space between white privilege and minority disadvantage.