​“It is difficult to get a man to understand something if his salary depends on his not understanding it.” – Upton Sinclair.

​We live in an era of illusions. This is the normalcy that has been abruptly ripped out from under us as we face lock down. Each society is founded off a prevalent illusion that it must maintain to give itself the veneer of legitimacy. This is because our brains like things to make sense, we want to believe there is some order in the world even if that order is built off twisted logic. Stereotypes operate off this principle. They are based off a fixed image you create in your mind. While some of them may be grounded in a grain of truth the damaging aspect comes from the fact that you have imposed a fixed image on someone else – no matter what they do because of this fixed image they are either automatically labelled as conforming to the stereotype or threatening it. One of the common stereotypes I have found is that Asian students are somehow magically more capable than their western counterparts. Proponents of this view point to high PISA scores (forgetting that in China’s case they only self-select their best and brightest – only the best students from Jiangsu, Beijing, and Shanghai three of the richest parts of China participate), the importance of education in Asian cultures, and the prevalence of Asians in the white collar professions. 

"If you aren't careful the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed and loving the people who are doing the oppressing." - Malcolm X

*Note this is an opinion piece in response to
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/104416895/queens-birthday-honours-former-prime-minister-bill-english-made-a-knight

Confucius once said that the beginning of wisdom is to call things by their name. It sounds like something you’d pull out of a fortune cookie, but the more you think about it the more it makes sense. After all the motto of my alma mater (Latin for that place which charges you 30,000 dollars for a fancy bit of paper) is sapere aude – dare to be wise. It seems fitting that I should exercise the capacity for wisdom, instilled upon me in exchange for a kidney and my firstborn child, especially when it comes to reading the news.