Kenneth Xu's Blog, page 3

Like • 0 comments • flag

Published on October 15, 2019 21:08

July 28, 2019

Kenny Xu Takes on D.C.

Dear Friend,
I would love to keep you updated with my life and my pursuits in a quarterly newsletter.

First, let’s get to business: I have started my new full-time role with Young America’s Foundation! My role is as a Development Officer for the Foundation. What it effectively means is that I go around the country cultivating philanthropic relationships between The Foundation and our generous supporters, so that we can make the impact that we want to make in the lives of young people. What a joy it is to travel around our great nation and build these intentional relationships. And what a challenge, with opportunities for immense personal growth! After all, some of you may remember my periods of activism and community organizing in high school and college, a white-hot desire to make a difference in my bloodstream. I am proud to say I’m beginning that journey, making an impact for a storied organization whose work is vital to the history of our country at large.

[image error]

Leaving
Davidson was hard, but I felt like I was definitely ready. I think I
will miss my friends the most. Over the past few years I’ve developed
some friendships I believe will continue for the rest of my life. I
also really liked the Charlotte area. The weather was so beautiful, and
it matters (it really does). Finally, I will never forget the
wonderful church that I went to for the extent of my college career:
LIFE Fellowship. This church, just like YAF, changed my life – and
taught me how to become a kinder, gentler, and more confident man of
Christ. My church, in addition to my ministry with Reformed University
Fellowship, really helped to enhance my spiritual life at a point in my
life when Christianity was really “love it or leave it” for me.

After
I graduated, I went on a road trip with my friends to Destin FL, New
Orleans, and Nashville. I ate at Hattie B’s, famous for its extremely
hot chicken, and I ordered the “Shut the Cluck Up” level of spice (the
spiciest), but to be honest, it wasn’t even that hot. I guess if I have
one talent it’s eating spicy food.

Then I
made my way to a 6-week missions and service opportunity with JAARS, a
Christian ministry dedicated to supporting overseas missionaries. This
was time I needed to take, and looking back on it, I’m confident I will
remember that experience 50 years from now when I’m telling these
stories to my great-grandkids on a rocking chair. The people at JAARS
(which works out of Waxhaw, North Carolina) are simply some of the most
humble and God-driven people I’ve ever known. I hope to make my way
down again one day just to see the work of the ministry continue to come
alive there.

Right now, I’m getting
acquainted with my new home in Reston, VA, while making sure to go to
the District often to stay involved with the action there! Yesterday I
went swing dancing, and I was a total flop! I am rusty! Time to take
some refresher classes. I’m still writing a lot, and you can follow my
writing at facebook.com/thekennethxu.
Top objectives: find a great church, meet new people, and make a
difference. What a life! Please pray for me, and if you’re ever in the
area, I of course would love to see you!

Best,

Kenny Xu

Like • 0 comments • flag

Published on July 28, 2019 20:59

August 21, 2018

Give to Beggars

His name was Sandy. He was a beggar on the South Side of Edinburgh, where I would often travel to take my math courses at the University when I was abroad. Winters were bitter, so he always had the same red and green coat on, a funky woolen hat, and a crooked, toothless smile.

I would pass by him nearly every day, and I would have never given him notice except for the science fiction book that he carried around with him. Finally, I asked him what he was reading. I don’t really remember the title, but it was thick. He was remarkably literate for a homeless guy. I thought about giving him my book, Trisk. (Kidding. Kidding!) Then I gave him 2 pounds and went to school.

The next week, I passed by him again. It was a really cold day, and Sandy was buried in blankets. There was a nearby Tesco grocery store, so I peeked in. I got myself a cheesy breadstick and got him the same thing. He was grateful. I continued on.

The next week I asked him if he believed in Jesus. Sandy said he didn’t really pay much attention to religion. I told him I was praying for him, and I gave him a book: “What Is the Gospel?” that I bought from my church for 1 pound. He accepted it, albeit grudgingly. I don’t really know what he did with it, but I don’t have any regrets about giving it to him.

One night, I was walking home. It was dark, but he was still wrapped up next to that Tesco. Normally Sandy wasn’t out so late (he had a charity hostel he stayed in most nights). I was concerned, so I asked him if anything was up. Turns out, there was something up – big time. Immediately he started to cry. I knelt down on the snowy ground.

“Sandy, what’s going on?”

“I don’t know man, I don’t know if I can do it, man, I just don’t know.” His voice was trembling with fear.

“Can you tell me what happened?”

He was about to get evicted. He told me that if he didn’t come up with 25 more pounds that night, he would not even be able to stay in his subsidized hostel for another night. They would kick him to the curb and he would have to sleep outside in the freezing cold.

[image error] A homeless person in Edinburgh. Credit: The Independent UK

“Hey, it’s going to be all right.”

“How? How is it going to be all right?” His tears were free flowing now. His voice filled with desperation. This was a man who did not know where he was going to sleep that night. Inwardly, I prayed. God, give me the courage-

“It’s going to be fine, Sandy,” I said to him, putting a hand on his shoulder. “It’s going to be fine because I’ll give you the money. I’ll give you the money.” And I reached into my wallet and pulled out 25 pounds and put them in his mitt.

He turned to me, wide-eyed. “Oh, sir, thank you, thank you!” he exclaimed, reaching to shake my hand. My hand was driven into his for a full ten second. “You don’t understand how much this makes me happy.”

“Sandy,” I said, wearily, calmly, “do you have a job?”

“No,” Sandy said, still elated.

“Sandy, I want to help you out. I believe in you, Sandy. I want you to find a job. Did you apply to be like a cashier at the Tesco, or something?”

“Oh, I would love to, I would love to, but they won’t, they won’t let me work without a proof of residence.”

“What?!” I was completely indignant.

“Yeah, like an address? You need an address to work here. And I don’t have a permanent address.”

My hatred of useless, big government regulations grew stronger. But I tempered my ideological frustration and took a deep breath. “I know a place that can help you,” I said, drawing off knowledge of a recent tour I took of Edinburgh’s charity network. I told him of a place I remembered called Invisible Cities. They hired homeless people to give tours of the city to tourist groups. Evidently, they paid these people a stable wage and put them to work. It aligned with my ideological convictions and I thought it would help Sandy out, as he claimed that he was a denizen of Edinburgh ever since he was a kid.

Sandy seemed very eager to connect with this organization. I gave him the number of the Invisible Cities manager and told him I would check on him later to see If he got the job. (He maintained a cell phone.) I told him I’d be happy to give a reference.

“Thank you sir, oh thank you sir,” he said to me, beaming.

“Sandy, I want you to know that I want to see you off this street. I would love to see you get a job,” I told him, at which he smiled his funny toothless smile and said he desired the same thing. Weary from the whole interaction, I took my backpack and made to go. Then, before I left, I turned back to him and said: “Sandy, I’m praying for you.”

The next Thursday, I came up to him again. I asked him if he called the number I gave him. He said he hadn’t, but that he’d get to it. I thought this was funny. Surely a desperate homeless person would jump at the chance to get a job? I encouraged him to call. “I believe in you,” I said once again. Then I left.

I never saw him again.

***

There’s a lot of things you can take from my month-long interaction with Sandy the beggar. I don’t know if I changed him. In the end, only God can truly change the heart of an embittered 50-year old who lived most of his life on the street. As you read, you can bet I threw everything but the kitchen sink at him in terms of trying to convince him to follow Jesus, to get up out of his blanket and get a move on with his life. Some of you may recoil at some of the things I said to him, thinking them too much, too direct, and too not-politically correct. I would only ask you, if you are this person: would 25 pounds save his life? What was more important to share, some bills or the Gospel of Jesus Christ, which affects his eternal salvation? Or at least, if you are a secular person, the job assistance?

Here’s another non-PC thing to say: you are morally obligated to give something to beggars who ask for it. This might come on strong. This might inspire the typical accusation: “Well Kenny, have you ever denied a beggar assistance?” (said often in a smug, condescending voice.) In which I would say, “of course.” I was a total hypocrite with regards to this rule. Partially because I was levelling the typical defenses against this uncomfortable moral statement: “they don’t deserve it.” “They’ll spend it on drugs and alcohol.” “I need this money.” But yes, I was a hypocrite. Everyone is and has been.

But I made a resolution this July to always give something – money, food, time – to a beggar who asks for it. And I hope everyone reading this will do the same.

I am not saying this with any disclaimers. No easy way outs: “if you can afford it.” “Unless you don’t feel like it.” “Not if he’s fat, he’ll just spend it on getting fatter.” It’s very simple. Let me say it. You should give to every beggar who asks for it.

The reasoning is very simple, and it’s very ideological: it’s the Christian thing to do.

For atheist non-givers, I will lay out a different case. But I think for Christians, this rule is even more obvious, and therefore even more embarrassing that Christians don’t make more of an effort to apply this behavior to their lives. (This applies to myself as well.) Jesus very specifically says this: “Whatever you do for the least of these [people], you do for me.” He is saying: how you treat the poor is reflective of how you treat Jesus. If you are stingy with your wealth, then you are stingy with Jesus. If you are judgmental to the poor, then you are Caiaphas nailing Jesus on the cross.

Christians are expected to model Christ-like behavior. This means, by the way, taking care of the lepers, as Jesus did. While we aren’t gifted with miracle healing, we are gifted with the ability to work miracles through simple acts of kindness – imagine the craziness of God putting me right in that situation with Sandy in his time of greatest need. God was giving me a make-or-break opportunity there, a place to where my faith was tested, and I had to perform. Sandy was an angel in disguise, and I performed. But there have been many cases where I might have been walking right past angels, and failed miserably. For those failures I publicly repent. I want you, the reader (yes, you), to keep me accountable for the next time I encounter a beggar, that I may reach into my wallet, and be generous with my money and my time.

Furthermore, all our wealth is given to us by God, and therefore we have no moral claim to it in the first place. We are stewards of God’s wealth, nothing more. Discerning Christians will surely remember the parable of the miserly servant, who was forgiven in his debt to the master but then lashed out angrily at someone who owed him a much more meager debt. When the master found out, he became so angry at the servant that he kicked him out of his house to starve. So it is with us. In a remarkable act of generosity, God has forgiven us of all our sins. If we fail to be generous to those in positions lower than us, we deny gratitude for the gift God has given us. We deserve Hell for that.

So I say to you, especially as a Christian, what excuse do you have? Will you hold on so tightly to your one or two dollars that you model Satan rather than Christ to someone who needs a light in their world? Remember: every act of generosity is an opportunity for witnessing. Even something as simple as a “God bless you” after your gift of one or two dollars will let that beggar know that you are a Christian, and are giving from the kindness which God has provided you. Giving is ministry. Christians must unite in action more than verbal assent to model Christ to the communities that need him the most.

Does this seem uncomfortable to you? Why? Why should it?

At my donor relations internship with The Heritage Foundation, I had the opportunity to connect with some of the most fantastically wealthy people I’ve every met. These people are multimillionaires; they own houses on Palm Beach and Greenwich; they own business you’ve probably heard of. These people are also extraordinarily generous. These people donate to Heritage, and then they turn around and write a fat check to the Boys and Girls Club of whatever city they’re from. I saw one donor donate nearly a million dollars to the lifesaving work of the Mayo Clinic. These people don’t view giving as a burden, but as a joy. Some of them plan to empty out their entire life savings to charity. They are motivated by God and by love for others. Giving to beggars is just the start, my friends. Giving is a habit. Let’s not wait until we are their age to cultivate these same habits.

But Kenny, we’re not rich like them. Bull crap. John D. Rockefeller donated 10 percent of his income to his church from the moment he earned his first paycheck, which was around 10 bucks a week or something like that. Don’t be a coward. Be like John D. Rockefeller.

This doesn’t sound very conservative of you, Kenny. Actually, it sounds very conservative. See the opportunity I had with Sandy? In giving to him, I got the opportunity to influence the direction of his life. I got the opportunity to share with him a way forward that involved dignified work and becoming a professional. If conservatives and libertarians truly believe that more money and power should be given back to the people (as I do), then should wholeheartedly support the idea that said people should be able to have the guts to take care of the poor on their own.

Conservatism has never been about making dumb judgments upon poor people. Conservatives firmly believe that big government does not, in the long run, help poor people. The welfare state is a disaster that keeps entire disadvantaged groups in a cycle of poverty that perpetuates itself generation after generation. To help these people break the circle requires more than our taxes – it requires individual effort, action taken by our civil society to help the lowest in our community. In a way, I’m exhorting you conservatives to be more… conservative.

There’s room for libertarians in this party, too. Famous libertarian theorist Robert Nozick that we must protect the right to give as well as the right to be given. I would go one step further and say that the right to give is one of the most fundamental rights we have – and that we should hold this right as a responsibility for all people. Not only is giving our right, but we must protect the sweetness and robustness of this right by being generous with our giving decisions. A land full of Ebenezer Scrooges is not a land where this right to give is valued nor likely to be accepted.

Unfortunately, liberals must think about a couple of things before they can be invited to this ideological pow-wow. Liberals should really think about how the expansion of their government (and a loss of Christian sentiment among the public) has contributed to a decline in personal philanthropy since the 1950s, without very much correspondent progress of the fortunes of the lower classes. Or how liberals tend to give less than conservatives, despite making more than them. Nevertheless, I’m only going to spend one paragraph making fun of my liberal friends. Because liberals and conservatives alike raise one particular honest concern about giving:

But are we really helping them? Or are we enabling their degenerate behaviors? Perhaps. Is all I can say. I can’t tell you whether Sandy was telling the truth when he begged me for the money that one fateful night. He might have been acting. In fact, there were signs to suggest he might have been lying. At first he said 20 pounds. I gave him 25, asking if it was 20 or 25 pounds for his expenses. He said 20, then stopped and said “actually, I think it was 25. Yes, it was 25.” He might have been actually lying about his living situation. Unlikely, but a possibility (he seemed very sincere otherwise.).

But does it really matter? Sure, they might use your money to buy drugs and alcohol. At worst he continues with his degenerate behavior with our money, in which case we didn’t do anything wrong – he was going to do it anyway. But there are so many better situations to this: we could save someone from eviction. We could give that person hope for a next meal or two. We should share with someone the Gospel! Why is only the worst-case situation, a situation in which we have no moral fault in, the only one ever considered? Why not see that in giving something to a beggar, we have the potential to give that person love and hope for the future?

[image error] Homeless people at Union Station. Credit: Alamy stock photo

My internship at the Heritage Foundation was right next to Union Station. At Union Station, all forms of homeless people congregate – slackers, addicts, the mentally ill, strange people. Some people arrive at Union Station with decision that were their own faults, and some don’t. Is it my place to judge? Or is it my place to lend and extend a hand to these people, without inquiring whether they are worthy or not?

One thing is for certain: the look on one of those homeless people, when you give them a couple dollars, spare change to you, is a look to be treasured. In that moment, you are their hero. In that moment, you could have been anyone – a degenerate like them, which we all are as well, just more socially settled – a porn addict, a stoner, a woman obsessed with her career, a man obsessed with his sports team – but in that moment we are their hero. They don’t judge us, but rather look upon us as beings worthy of finest praise. Why don’t we look upon them the same?

Like • 0 comments • flag

Published on August 21, 2018 07:01

May 19, 2018

Living Scotland Taught Me How to Love America

It’s funny, how living in another place makes you appreciate home just a little more. To be honest, I was never a huge travelling junkie. But I knew I needed these six months. Away from comfort. Away from friends. (Away from my reputation??) In a whole new world, a challenging one. But I’m glad I did. I enjoyed Scotland so much. I met the most wonderful people and developed some seriously strong relationships (many of which I will look fondly upon years into my future). And I was challenged, facing obstacles concerning my independence and unique cultural differences. But as much as I really admired the Scottish countryside and had fun roaming the cityscape of downtown Edinburgh, living there for a whole six months reminded me simply that there’s no place like the U.S.A.

One might think that Scotland and the United States carry few serious differences. We’re both liberal democracies, we’re both Western, English-speaking countries, and we both fought carry some serious historical beef with England. And indeed, one might be tempted, when gazing upon Waverly Place in downtown Edinburgh, a cosmopolitan mish-mash of Mickey D’s and Marks and Spencer, to believe that Scotland such seems to be a miniature United States.

Go to other European countries, and you’d find similar city centers, all dolled-up and brimming with malls and playthings, with their own Yo Sushi!’s and tourist traps. Go to enough European cities, however, and you may realize something, once you finally detach yourself from the whimsy of it all (it takes a couple weeks): there’s something foreign about these city centers, something that feels vaguely derivative about them all. The big shopping centers and brand names. The craft bars and hotels. Then you realize, at first subtly, before it becomes glaringly obvious: these city centers are derivative. They’re derivative of America.

Living and breathing these European city centers, I realized that America has its footprints all over these streets. When I first understood this, I felt an upswell of such bittersweet nostalgia for home I couldn’t shake it off, whether in Edinburgh or Glasgow or Vienna, Austria. Indeed, I was reminded of just how much the American model of urban development –big, beautiful, sleek, modern – has in fact been aped and imitated by a veritable cartel of European cities all vying to become more like us. It used to be, not even 200 years ago, that Europe was the center of fashion, culture, and society. Now, I saw with mine own eyes, the tables have been turned. The pupil has become the master. And no one – and I do mean no one – can do it just like the master.

Take New York. I am writing this in a bus at 10:00 pm at night while riding a bus with Manhattan in window. No city can match its grandeur, its sheer assertion of power over the landscape like NYC. Edinburgh chooses to blend into the landscape, building its small, winding roads around vast natural structures – the 1000-foot cliff known as Arthur’s Seat and the craggy ridge that houses Edinburgh Castle on its perch, for instance. New York chooses to pierce it like a freight train. Compared to New York, everything in Europe can’t help but seem timid. And I say this knowing that much of Edinburgh’s charm lays in the way it creases over the land elegantly, like a handkerchief. I do enjoy seeing that land. But there’s a difference between a seeing a cute girl and seeing a woman that makes you stop in your tracks and freeze.

There’s another thing about America that I could only get after spending half a year being driven on the other side of road. And yes, it has to do with driving. Scotland was built on the horse and carriage. It’s clear, by the cobblestone roads and the odd angles of its city streets, and its one-lane highways (I do mean one-lane, like – one lane for both sides of the road to share), that the Scottish people are a people of the horse-drawn carriage. (There are some exceptions, such as the modern feel of the oil city Aberdeen, and the industrial coat that blankets Glasgow, but the countryside feels almost Hobbit-like.) America is not. America is the land of the car. Everything worth seeing in America is built with the automobile in mind. Only in America – and I do mean only in America – do you have restaurants that are exclusively drive-thrus and gas stations, Sonics and Wawas. Only in America do the roads truly give us our distinctive national character as men and women of the asphalt. Only in America can I truly appreciate the simple, freedom-inducing pleasure of just driving. There’s a freedom in America interwoven through the automobile that you won’t get anywhere else. And I miss that.

Which brings me to the people. Undoubtedly, the natives I have met in Scotland are men and woman of character, principle, and hatred for England. They are also unaccustomed to diversity, and don’t know how to talk, live, and breathe it like Americans do. The multiculturalism here in Edinburgh feels oddly forced, as if someone told them having black faces on this advertisement would be a good idea in the abstract, even though the black experience is not one that is very present in Scotland at all. Scottish people are nice, somewhat difficult to get to know, hard to crack sorts of people. It is not so much that the lack of diversity makes them this way – there are places in America where the population is 80 percent white, yet where I felt unequivocally embedded in its social experience. (Such as in my college town, Davidson – the College itself is a different story, of course…) It is that the Scottish have never had a true diversity ideal. There is no mythos, a dream for people of all races and creeds to be invited to participate in the Scottish experience. In short, they are not “melting pot” people. America, despite it’s long legacy of slavery and institutionalized racism, has internalized the melting pot ideal, and its people – tolerant, inviting, and interconnected racially and religiously through music, art, and culture – embody its fruits. That’s something I have only come to appreciate about my home country through my six months in Scotland. It is not that America has nothing to apologize for – it is rather that, for all of its flaws, we still maintain an ideal of diversity to which we strive, every day. A multicultural world is embedded into our consciousness.

I had the pleasure once of going to the open outskirts of the Scottish countryside, living on a farm in a homestay with a wonderful couple and their true farm-girl daughter. These are a prideful people, truly grateful for their country and saddened to see it eroding through the bureaucracy in London. I remember talking with the hard-boiled dad, out tending the sheep on the rolling hills. He said England – and its centralized values, its London-esque swagger, and its sweeping welfare state – is hurting the Scottish people. Opposition to England – all things England – formulates a significant part of the Scottish psyche. It’s fun, but it’s not vacuous. It is deeply political and historical with Scotland. (That’s why The University of Edinburgh is free for Scottish citizens and EU residents but not English natives.) The Scottish live under a shadow that grasps them, almost in a Freudian subconscious way, like the little sibling who can’t help but resent its older brother. America, having beaten the older brother and gained world stature in the span of a mere 200 years, approaches the world with bravado and Harrison-Ford-esque confidence. Our worldviews are plainly different. While America looks outward at a world that it prepares to meet on its own terms, Scotland is impinged by the shadow of its next-door neighbor. Perhaps independence – true independence, divested completely from Westminster Abbey – can win the brave Scottish people back on its feet.

I’ve had a beautiful experience in Scotland. They place a strong faith in education, in their communities, and in their government. There’s an undercurrent of nationalism in their psyche that subtly weaves its way around the population, while also constraining it due to objective realities. Scotland has pride, and I have enjoyed so much soaking it all up. But in the end, no country can parallel the grandeur, confidence, and idealism of the America the Beautiful. I’m glad to have been there. And I’m glad to be back – changed, but still the same.

Would love a “like” on my page, it helps support my writing and content producing!

https://www.facebook.com/thekennethxu/

Like • 0 comments • flag

Published on May 19, 2018 07:45

April 14, 2018

A Sport Called Quidditch

Years ago, I wrote a book called Trisk, which tells the story of an aspiring athlete named Curtis and his best friend Lucas as they journeyed to play in the major leagues of the greatest sport the world has ever known, a sport known by the masses only as Trisk. Trisk is a game where 4 teams of 15 players skydive out of an airplane into an abandoned city to fight for control of 4 “Trisk Balls” in a period of 3 hours while literally billions of people ogle at them for fun. (Yes, I predicted Fortnite.) Needless to say, I was a sports geek then, and I’m a sports geek now. Some things never change, like the juicy chicken breast of a Chick-fil-a sandwich or the tender, flaky crust of a Chick-fil-a nugget.

This is the paragraph where you think I’m going to talk about Quidditch. False. I’m going to talk about the time when I was ten years old, and my best friend Dave and I used to play on the front lawn where he played Link from Zelda, and I played some ghastly boss (usually named after one of my particularly spite-worthy teachers), and his objective was to push me around and fight me until I gasped for surrender. We rolled around on the ground laughing forever. Those were the days, Dave. (Those were also the days, Dave, because I used to sneak into his house and play his Xbox to avoid the thirty-minute time limit my mom set on me playing video games.)

Ever since Those Days Which Were, Dave, I had never quite regained the pure joy, the pure energy that I got for creating – and then playing – something totally original and new, something that I could explain – and then re-explain, a thousand times – to doe-eyed girls and they would actually be interested in what I was explaining to them about! (I have tried to get girls interested in The Resistance, for example, which is an established card game that everyone plays, and it was like that episode of The Office where Michael and Jan host a dinner party and it’s like the worst thing ever.) I had wandered my way down many lanes, desperate to play something – something original. Something truly fascinating. Something that would titillate sorry, bad word, stimulate every bone in my body with a lusty fire that would burn brightly like a humongous candle in my bones.

My friends, I think I’ve found it.

The game is called Quidditch. Think of an exhaustive list of every great sport you’ve ever watched. Ultimate Frisbee. Dodgeball. Flag Football. Combine all three of these games together and make everyone run around on a broom. Baby, say no more! Welcome to the concoction that sparked a fire in my heart ever since the first time I had the gall to stick a PVC pipe between my legs, a madcap experiment of so many different varieties of raw beauty, athleticism, grace, and passion, that the ensuing chemical mix can fumigate even the most barnacled old traditionalist into playing – and loving – this sport.

So original, in fact, is the concept of Quidditch that it was later adapted into a fictional game played by teen wizards in the children’s book series Harry Potter.

The premise of Quidditch is simple. There are three hoops on either side of the field. Your object is to either throw or drive the coffle (a fancy term for ball) into the opposing team’s hoop, without getting beaten by an opposing team’s bludger (a fancy term for ball), which are thrown at you by two mean-spirited, orc-like beaters who lurk at the gates of Gehenna searching for the next victim to club. But wait, there’s more! Call now, and you get a Snitch tossed in at minute 17, which is really just a hunky man sporting a yellow sock filled with a tennis ball tucked under the back of his shirt. If you are lucky enough to be called a Seeker, you have the privilege of doing battle with this hunky man-child to take this yellow tail (haha – get it? Yellowtail? Oh gosh, I’m on a roll today – a sushi roll! Fudge yeah!) off, while he pushes you down and laughs at you, probably shouting something like “I AM GROOT” in the process.

Ok, not all Snitches are hunky men. Some are hunky women! Because Quidditch is also a co-ed sport, strictly enforced by the all-powerful Gender Rule, bow down, be-yotches. The Gender Rule, praise be, has vanquished many a cowering team, including mine, the Edinburgh Holyrood Hippogriffs, with its unyielding demand that at most 4 of one gender may start in a team of 6-7 players (4 Chasers, 2 Beaters, and 1 Seeker). It is a tough, but fair ruler, but it also once cost us a victory at a game against the Glasgow Grim Reapers when we caught the Snitch (worth 30 points compared to a goal, worth 10 points) but had too many men on the field, nullifying our victory. Nevertheless, it ensures that the sport remains healthily co-ed, so if you’re single and ready to mingle… it’s pretty romantic when you’re gasping for air with your crush at the bottom of a five-person scrum pile over a fumbled coffle. At least, that was how my friend Sam put it.

Quidditch is a sport that rewards patience, strategic planning, hard work, good genes, decent family structure, not being the middle child, etc. You have to plan out your attack with precision. For example, we run a play called “Ram Right.” We take all our big guys, and we tell them “Go Right!” and they grunt like the hapless minions they are and bulldoze the way for our driver (the guy with the coffle) to shed some tackles and bam-bam his way to the other team’s hoop. You can also pass the coffle between members of your team, if you are one of the 4 percent of men who are not anxious about channeling your primal masculinity through physical violence. (Or if you just want to be more strategic.) I play a traditional receiver position, so my role is to routinely beat coverage, catch the ball like a boss, and smash the ball in for the touchdown goal! Who’s masculine now! Huh? That’s right Ben Song! You were popular in middle school but now look who’s on top!

Speaking of Asian male rivals that I beat to submission, I had one of the proudest, mano-a-mano, classic America v. Britain, Chiang v. Mao, victories against Kevin Li, aka cocky Chinese boy #5, at the British Quidditch Cup. First, I have to set the scene. It is midnight. It is actually 11 am. Edinburgh Holyrood Hippogriffs face off against Southampton Quidditch Club for a classic showdown waiting to happen. Before I jog to my starting position, a wise veteran from our team shoots me a stark look.

“Better watch out for Kevin Li. He’s good. He’s fast.”

I know the type from my flag football days. The shifty guy. The guy who will slip by you like the Yakuza. Dodgy like a C-rated noodle joint in Chinatown. Steaming with sexy charisma, I fire back, “don’t worry Matt. I got this.”

On opposite sides of the 100-meter pitch, the Edinburgh and Southampton Quidditch clubs line up, the ring of our infamous “Sportsball!” cheer still tolling in my ears. The coffle is placed halfway in between us, as well as three bludgers, dodgeball-style. The scene is set, like an old Western. Nothing but land and the enemy ‘boys ahead of us.

I lined up right in the center of our side of the pitch, directly under the coffle. My job was to sprint the 40m and get to the coffle first, before… Oh my gosh. Staring directly at me on the other side of the pitch, face red with mirth, was Kevin Li.

I challenge you to a Shaolin Showdown, was what he was telegraphing to me.

“READY!” The referee calls to all of us. But I can only look at Kevin Li.

“BROOMS UP!”

I bolt into a sprint, my Firebolt clutched brazenly beneath my thighs, my cleats purposefully striking the ground, human chopsticks dancing with the dirt, hungry, hungry for the prize. But I realized as soon as I got up that Kevin Li was over a third of the way to the coffle. He had cheated! Gotten a head start before the whistle! I later was able to confirm with one of my teammate subs this very fact. It angered me when he got the coffle and immediately maneuvered his way into a goal before we were even ready. 10-0 Southampton. But in exchange for those 10 points, Kevin Li paid a dear, dear price – pissing me off.

Down 20-0, our team was in a pit (of misery. Dilly Dilly!). I was legitimately afraid I would lose to scat-cat Kevin Li and his triad of meaty henchmen. But one moment in the game turned us around. Our 90-pound vice captain, Sara, had the ball on a turnover we had caused. Then the biggest player on Southampton’s team, a 250-pound beefcake, immediately ran her over, completely flattening her. It looked so mismatched I flinched. But get this – Sara maintained possession of coffle, even as she was going to ground. And, hopping right up, she flicked it to me in a daze, and I took off. For me, that was moment that changed the momentum of the game.

After that mind-bending, impossible burst of charisma and adrenaline from our vice captain, I went into kill maim destroy mode. In one drive, I splattered one Southampton kid onto the ground as I attacked the hoop, refusing to go down. On another, I was getting tackled by a big boy, but managed to flick my left arm – the one containing the coffle – just out of reach, putting enough spin on my throw to make a 5 meter shot at the goal while getting pinned and tackled down. The ball sailed, caressed the air for a thin, gaping second, and took the plunge into the hoop. That was just one goal out of the 7 goals our team scored since going down 20-0.

And then it was 70-30.

Kevin Li was on the bench, exhausted and watching his superior score a third goal while he could only remember how many times our team denied him the goal, including that one time I tackled him in the open field.

But then we received one of our biggest scares. Up 40, even if Southampton caught the Snitch, they would still lose, being at a deficit of 30 points. But two successful drives from our enemies made the score 70-50. If they caught the snitch, they were going to win! All our hard work would be lost! Suddenly, I was sweating (I was already sweating.). Was it to be that our efforts, our assists, our absolutely stellar play would be denied by one lucky stroke?

But no. In comes Lorenzo, our Seeker. Driving hard on the Snitch in minute nineteen of the game (The Snitch comes on at minute seventeen), Lorenzo dives for the legs. A scrum ensues, and he emerges, yellow sock cleanly nicked from the rudder. The referees huddle to confer. But there is no controversy, and the whistle is blown. Edinburgh Holyrood Hippogriffs beats Southampton. We’re the winners. And I scored three goals.

Fame and glory. I feel like I’m on a cloud. A cloud of VICTORY SUCK IT KEVIN LIIIIIIIII!!!!!!!!

The moments of your life you cherish are the simple joys. Friends. Winning. Winning. I had it all right then. Quidditch has become the unexpected highlight of my semester. And by the way, semesters to come. Quidditch USA is alive and well… and recruiting, I hear.

The drama. The limelight. The pure passion and joy of victory. The sweet sweet taste of scoring a goal while getting wrapped up and thrown to the ground. The dirt beneath your cleats. It’s all there. It’s all there at a sport called Quidditch.

All photos courtesy of Claire Purslow Quidditch Photography and The British Quidditch Cup.

Would love a “like” on my page, it helps support my writing and content producing!

https://www.facebook.com/thekennethxu/

Like • 0 comments • flag

Published on April 14, 2018 09:10

February 23, 2018

Black Panther: An Ethnic Fantasy Worthy of Universal Applause

Black Panther reminds me of the time I first read American Born Chinese, a graphic novel about a Chinese kid growing up in the all-white Midwest, one where I was first confronted, in startlingly mature form, my own struggles with race and fitting in. I wanted to be like White people – but I wanted to not be like them, too. I wanted to transcend them in some great way, showing that I wasn’t beholden either to racial trivialities or stereotypes. In American Born Chinese, half of the novel is set in Kansas, but half of it is set in a Chinese fantasy-land known as the Monkey Kingdom (an actual Chinese mythological kingdom), with rich characters rooted in Chinese culture. Author and artist Gene Luen Yang drew these monkeys with yellow faces, but not as a derogatory statement, but as one of empowerment – inverting the yellow-faced “chinky” stereotype into one of great honor. He created a fantasy-land for Asian people to call their own.

That’s exactly what Black Panther does with Wakanda for Black people, and for the record I love it. In today’s America, multiculturalism is cheap: companies have commodified it and politicians have hijacked it to win votes and artificially fire up their base. But ethnic worlds, ethnic fantasies, these worlds are truly radical and subversive. Wakanda is Black dreaming fulfilled – and I do not doubt it gives Black people real joy to see a world of their own creation on the big screen. They deserve it.

I think the mainstream media is starting to recognize just how important fantasy and science fiction is to the development of the modern persona. Humans are not just rubbery cartilage mixed up against calcite and blood. Humans have dreams – and their self-realization stems often from those dreams. Especially for the poor and impoverished, dreaming is sometimes all they have. And when you take away even that, they have nothing. Black Panther is a dream, but a richly built one that appropriates the best of African culture and gives Black people young and old a heritage of which to be proud. I love that.

I wrote a long time ago about the innate desire people have to pretend, and the need to cultivate a culture that encourages that dreaming, that playing, rather than one that forces us to live cynically in stone-cold reality. Thought that piece referred to cultural appropriation by so-called “privileged” groups, I want to be consistent – “underprivileged” groups desire, even need, the ability to appropriate, and to pretend, and to live in borrowed worlds from other places, even more than privileged groups do. One of my favorite books of all time is called The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. In this book, Oscar Wao, an overweight loveless Hispanic nerd, is portrayed by author Junot Diaz often in the terms of his comic-book heroes. Here’s one quote that mashes together both superheroes and Latino-speak:

“You really want to know what being an X-Man feels like? Just be a smart bookish boy of color in a contemporary U.S. ghetto. Mamma mia! Like having bat wings or a pair of tentacles growing out of your chest.” (Oscar Wao)

Oscar vicariously lives through the X-Men he adores, seeing their lives as an escape for the s-show his is. The book combines seamlessly surreal settings that mix reality with sur-reality, and even fantasy. It shows us that reality isn’t all we have – we have dreams too, and sometimes, those are more important.

A new genre is emerging, called Afro-futurism. It re-imagines science fiction as distinctly African, rather than Gandalf-White. I first encountered it when I read The Ear, The Eye, and The Arm by Nancy Farmer, about three kids running away in Zimbabwe circa 2080. It’s a beautiful genre. It asks us difficult questions, yes about colonialism, Black identity, etc., but also about the power of dreaming big. I have no doubt that Black Panther will encourage its young Black audiences to dream big – big like King T’Challa. If it achieves that goal, then it is worthy of the wreaths of honor bestowed upon it (and its 87 Metacritic rating… yeesh!)

I’m so glad Black Panther exposed the wonder, jubilation, and inspiration of ethnic science fiction and fantasy to a wider audience. This movie is many things, but I see it as the culmination of years and years of work convincing people about the power of fantasy and science fiction to change lives, especially lives for which “king” is the last word you would use to describe them. For that, I say: Wakanda Forever!

-Kenny

https://www.facebook.com/thekennethxu/

Would love a “like” on my page, if you’re up for it.

Like • 0 comments • flag

Published on February 23, 2018 08:53

February 21, 2018

What Billy Graham Was to a Young Christian Boy Like Me

“I find that young people across the world are searching for something, but they don’t know what it is.” – Billy Graham, 1998

Billy Graham had the gift of faith. Everyone knows about his trip to the woods at Wheaton College, his first – and final – commitment to uphold the Gospel in pure faith, to never doubt God again like he had in his early years. When I first heard that story, I was 13 years old. An eighth grader, studying world religions in middle school. I was suddenly confronted with a confluence of paths, one in which I was simultaneously exposed to the multitudinous religious diversity of the world and, perhaps more radically, borne witness to the man with an unshakable faith that one – and only one – was the true and righteous path with God. Billy Graham was the first time I had ever heard that faith – not skepticism – was rather the right virtue. That the man who pursues God endlessly and without a doubt, is still the better man in the end than the doubting one, whether or whether not God exists at all.

You can’t fake faith. Christianity asks us to give up so much – in fact our entire selves – that the decision about whether to follow Christ or not, the decision that Billy Graham asked millions upon millions of people to make during his illustrious, 75+ year career of preaching, is perhaps the only decision worthy of the many signifiers Graham had piled upon it. “Life-changing.” “Critical.” “Scarring.” The “Hour of Decision” that Billy Graham preached repeatedly, over a course of years and years, asked everyone in the room – often a stadium fit for football games – to make a decision. Follow Christ or reject Him. You cannot straddle the line.

Agnosticism, Billy Graham argued, is intellectually weak and spiritually deadening. In the end you must choose to be a Christian or to reject Christianity. When the rich young ruler rejected Christ, he was left “grieving,” emotionally devastated, according to the Bible (Mark 10:22). There are consequences for your decision. Serious ones, he said. Ones in which you will stand account for on the Day of Judgement.

His rhetoric electrified me at a time that I remember being taught to “be myself” and “explore,” rather than commit to any one thing. To search, without knowing what to search for. At Harvard University in 1998, filled with perhaps the greatest series of intellectual giants he had faced yet, Billy Graham answered the same questions he had answered when he was just an upstart young preacher from Charlotte, N.C., making his first speech in L.A. “What is the meaning of life?” “Why am I here?” “Who is Jesus?” “Why should I care?” It doesn’t matter whether you are an octogenarian living in a rocking chair or a 18-year old freshman in college, pliant to whatever anybody throws at you. Billy Graham would always give the same answers, because that’s what he believed. You could not faze him with “fine-sounding arguments,” though he knew all of them and, if he wanted to, could have squashed them all like a fly on the wall. He chose a different path – a loving path, knowing that no matter what curtain of intellectually haughtiness you would hide behind, that you are just another guy or gal in this world trying to figure it out. And he would calmly, with a glint in his eye, tell you about the Gospel one more time.

In an age of almost schizophrenic alternate realities, one red and one blue, bubbles and fake news, “post-truth” and “post-modern,” Billy Graham’s voice of certainty – pure certainty, unhindered and unencumbered by the happenings of this world – will be missed. Perhaps it will not be missed in any greater capacity than by young people like me, growing up in a world where we’re taught to be ourselves without knowing even who “ourselves” are. I am not gifted with the faith that Billy had, but I am now mature enough to understand that faith is a virtue, not a fault, and that there are few who exemplified that virtue better than Billy Graham himself.

– Kenny

https://www.facebook.com/thekennethxu/

Would love a “like” on my page, if you’re up for it.

Like • 0 comments • flag

Published on February 21, 2018 06:53

January 25, 2018

Freshman Again

I literally lost my breath today. I went to a Scottish Dancing class for the first time and the instructor taught me more about the balls of my feet than I had ever learned – or cared to notice – before. At one point, while I was furiously trying to keep apace with the dancers, I slipped and fell like a bar of soap down to the floor (catching myself with my right arm, barely – just barely). The girls I was with did not hesitate to laugh out loud – affectionately, I would care to hope. I pilfered one of my typical “Kenny faces” (my classic “no biggie” shrug I’m sure many of you are familiar with) as I desperately tried to play off the situation. No luck – they just kept laughing and laughing… and soon I began to laugh too.

It’s been like that, except on repeat every day, now for the past two-and-a-half weeks. Edinburgh is built like a fantasy lover’s board game – Gothic steeples gracing the skyline as endless smoke-sieved bay windows look out upon the playfully winding roads, the grand Edinburgh Castle, one thousand years of elder glory, overlooking it all like a sentinel in the night.

I’ve written pretty extensively about the “freshman feeling,” but that was all in relatively theoretical terms, freshman year distant enough such that I could view the first-year experience in tired, jaded, old junior eyes. But no such distance separates me now from the viscerality of what it means to be unloading that minivan, moving into your dorm, kissing your mother goodbye once again.

Or what it means to fumble your keys on the first day you move in, locking yourself out of the apartment and having security come in to let you in – and charging you a $%*#Q&%*Q&F TWENTY pounds for the trouble!

Or what it means to come into class two minutes late, and have the entire lecture hall of 250 onlookers staring directly at you as you make way too much noise trying to find a seat, soaking in the judgment like a sweaty sponge, like the clumsy brick you are.

Or what it means to dance the night away at a dance they taught you ten minutes ago, with a girl who knows, according to my calculations, zippo, zilch, about you, except that you have high cheekbones and dimples when you smile.

It takes my breath away.

-Kenny

https://www.facebook.com/thekennethxu/

Would love a “like” on my page, if you’re up for it.

Like • 0 comments • flag

Published on January 25, 2018 15:54

November 13, 2017

One of the Most Awful Articles I’ve Ever Read

We should be embarrassed that we even share a breathing space with Ivy-League-educated but nevertheless massively bigoted Ekow N. Yankah after he published this essay in, and therefore soiled, The NY Times Opinion section. In an intentionally provocative but nevertheless depraved article called “Can My Children Be Friends With White People?”, Yankah attempts to argue that the Trump-y climate of today’s politics has so threatened the safety of his children that he can no long trust, or assume the worthiness of, today’s white people. He says:

“As against our gauzy national hopes, I will teach my boys to have profound doubts that friendship with white people is possible. When they ask, I will teach my sons that their beautiful hue is a fault line. Spare me platitudes of how we are all the same on the inside. I first have to keep my boys safe, and so I will teach them before the world shows them this particular brand of rending, violent, often fatal betrayal.”

Well, Prof. Yankah, if you teach your kids that friendship with white people is impossible, then you’ll surely be right.*

And:

“We can still all pretend we can be friends. If meaningful civic friendship is impossible, we can make do with mere civility – sharing drinks and watching the game.”

Sir, one question: what is the name of all that is holy is “civic friendship”? As if the core part of friendship with other people to you lie solely in the politics that you presumably share?

This is a misguided man who has let social justice completely inform and envelop who he is. Remove the Xanax-reinforcing world of national politics out of his brain, and he has reduced himself to a laughable caricature that Ivy League educations are supposed to drag you out of. Instead, it has reified the swamp in which he is wading – no, drinking.

This is a sad article that only reinforces the unfortunately well-evidenced stereotype that many Americans have against elite college educations and the warped values they project, which increasingly frighten the public (and me) with dense, erudite distortions of who we are as the American people. No doubt, this man has not only internalized the blithering nonsense of the race-baiting Left, but has made his career out of it. At every turn, he was egged on by his well-heeled, Princeton-grad anti-West colleagues to make a statement like this in the name of being a true social justice warrior. Instead, he has made himself and his cause an embarrassment and an eyesore to society.

This is what happens when you believe the United States still retains the same hegemonic character that it had during the days of slavery (as various members of my college do, in a Dean-of-students-supported email that said that “this country is land stolen from indigenous people.”) This is what happens when you chew up every Washington Post op-ed that tells you that Trump is an existential threat to society. This is what happens when you let politics consume and destroy your life. You become an animal, driven only by amygdalic instincts that tell you to hate those who don’t look like you, in a world where everything is seemingly against you and your race. I thought we had emerged from this kind of tribal past better than this. But tribalism is making a comeback. It’s growing bigger and more legitimate, culminating in a spread on the pages of The New York Times itself.

Shame. Shame, shame, shame.

Hey guys, if you’re interested in my content, I’d love your support:

https://www.facebook.com/thekennethxu/

*Credit to Henry Brooks, Davidson ‘19

Like • 0 comments • flag

Published on November 13, 2017 19:46

October 5, 2017

Privilege

Sometimes, we forget to do our life accounting.

I am so, lavishly, amazingly privileged. I won’t deny it. If I were to deny my own privilege, I would be denying the blessings and gifts that have resulted from no merit of my own – which are many.

But we have to be careful. The discussion of privilege on campus at Davidson has gotten so unbelievably toxic that people are willing to sacrifice everything – including facts – to manipulate their narrative according to their beliefs.

Am I privileged because I am Asian? Hard to say. We have to be very clear about what we mean by privileged here. On one hand, Asian Americans beat even white Americans in many major indicators of social status, such as income ($77,000 per year against $62,000 per year, per the Census Bureau) and level of education (70 percent to 59 percent with at least some college). But on the other hand, Asian Americans experience spectacular social stratification. Economists Christian Weller and Jeffrey Thompson of the Center for American Progress highlight the fact that Asians experience wealth inequality to a greater degree than even white people. So my skin color alone cannot account for my so-called “Asian privilege.”

A more likely scenario is that I am privileged because of the hard work and the assimilation of my Asian family to American society, and the immense value my Asian parents place on education. Even among the “typical” Asian I live in a special case. My dad was one of two students in his class of twelve who managed to graduate on time from the Georgetown Ph.D. program – all while still learning English. He had to spend countless hours working his way up the corporate ladder while my mom invested an immense amount of energy raising me and my sisters. My parents’ marriage is another immense privilege of mine. Economists from the Right (such as AEI Economist Nick Schulz) and from the Left (such as Harvard educator David Ellwood) can all agree on one fundamental fact: two-parent families develop children with greater social capital (knowledge, willpower, habits) than corresponding children from single-parent families. When all is said and done, I probably owe significantly more privilege to my parents’ stable marriage and their values, not to some abstract concept such as race.

Am I privileged because I am male? Far from it. More likely, I am privileged because I had mentors whose lives modeled social respectability, who taught me to maintain values of leadership, honor, and temperance. Being a man hardly solidifies your position as the alpha dog in society – today, fewer men work that ever, and even fewer men get degrees (especially compared to women, who according to a TIME study now get Bachelor’s degrees at a rate almost 30 percent higher than their male counterparts). Furthermore, a much higher percentage of men are fringe members of society (incarcerated, blacklisted, etc.) than women. Am I saying this as some kind of men-rights activist? Hardly. I’m saying this because the presumption of a Y chromosome as automatically conferring inherent privilege is probably incorrect. More correct is the notion is that male mentorship, critically important in developing a healthy sense of masculinity, is the real privilege here. The mentorship role is a role in which the various pastors and teachers (and most importantly, the father) have influenced and continue to influence me today for the better. The key connections in my network to men of character and leadership have projected upon me pro-social values that, for example, a poor child in rural Kentucky or urban Detroit is less likely to receive. This is the privilege not of maleness, but of male mentorship and exposure to a healthy socialization. For this I am immensely grateful – not to be a man, but to have been able to learn from very good men.

Am I privileged because I am Christian? Definitely – but not in the sense that the Marxist would prefer to say that I am privileged. The Marxist says that the Christian is privileged in America because he is in a social power structure that prefers Christians. Maybe if I was in, for example, Lincoln County, NC, this argument would have more weight. But I go to a secular liberal-arts college composed of many diverse religious groups. Before I came to Davidson, I went to a largely Jewish, secular public high school in Princeton, New Jersey. So while I of course value these diverse experiences, I don’t believe my Christian privilege shows in that regard. On the other hand, I know where I am truly, unequivocally privileged – in the ability to express my faith freely, in a country that tolerates all of its expressions. The United States is the first country in the world to adopt total religious freedom as its credo, and to this day it is still the freest. And I’m not just talking relative to oppressive autocracies like Saudi Arabia or China. I’m talking France and Germany, which at present day still maintain laws banning public expressions of faith, including the hijab and many forms of evangelization. Indeed I am proud to have the privilege of living in a country where religious freedom is a guaranteed right – no ifs, buts, or wells. Now that’s a privilege.

What I’m trying to do here is to get you to see a picture of a different attitude towards privilege than we currently have at Davidson College. At Davidson, the common dogma is to repeat, over and over again, the same Foucaultian critique of privilege and oppression based on only a couple irreducible characteristics – Race, Gender, and Sexuality being the top three. To focus solely on these inherent, largely non-negotiable characteristics of people imparts a certain degree of fatalism in the idea of privilege – you can’t change your race, and you (generally) don’t change your gender or sexuality either. If someone is born a white, heterosexual male, one will likely stay a white heterosexual male, and when people throw insults at you for being the colonialist scumlord of society, it’s easy to get frustrated because you can’t change these characteristics. Or let’s turn this the other way: say you’re a black, lesbian woman living in the inner city. If someone comes up to you and tells you that you’re a victim, that you live in a white supremacist nation full of white supremacists, that your status on the social hierarchy will forever be determined by three unchangeable characteristics of yours, then what incentive would you have to even attempt to change your situation? To even try to make it up the totem pole? All this bends towards a truly deplorable push towards sad, spiteful identity determinism.

[image error] The first issue of The Davidson Mirror, where this article was published.

And yet this is the rhetoric going around campuses all over the nation. I see it with my own eyes, in the words of rich $44,000-a-pop speakers like Ta-Nehisi Coates who make a tidy profit preaching the bitter sugar of black bodies exposed to a white hell. I saw it last Saturday, at a symposium on tolerance, when a girl I knew said directly to me: “Kenny, I’m sorry, but women are just oppressed. They just are. You can’t deny that.” But more importantly, I saw it in the eyes of a younger friend I knew, who told me that she didn’t want to apply for Carnegie-Mellon University’s Computer Science program because she thought she wouldn’t be able to survive in that environment because of her race. I had to tell her that with an attitude like that, she wouldn’t be able to get anywhere. I’m not saying my parents have never experienced any racial barriers. They did. But what I am saying is this: if they ever thought, if they ever succumbed to the odious idea that their destiny was tied up into the oppression of their race or gender or sexuality, they would not be where they are today. The privilege rhetoric we have today is nasty, it’s bitter, and it has real consequences on our future. Most of all it’s untrue.

Because the true privilege that affects us day to day comes from the privilege of choices. My parents chose to immigrate to America. My pastor chose to take me up as a mentee. My Asian-American friends and I chose to reject identity determinism and live a liberated life apart from the stereotypes and pressures of our race. What the privilege of choices should teach us is that our lives are immense blessings given to us by the sacrifice of others. This should give us immense joy, not frustration. We should be thankful and generous with our time. We should work to give to those who are less privileged than ourselves. But we should always recognize that in the end, it’s our job to be good stewards of the blessings that we’ve received. That is the privilege that can unify, rather than divide, heal our nation’s wounds, make our next generation even more privileged than ourselves.

This article was originally published in the first issue of The Davidson Mirror.

***

Hey guys, if you’re interested in my content, I’d love your support:

https://www.facebook.com/thekennethxu/