Blog 5

We live in an area with a very specific overwhelming demographic. There's nothing wrong with this (though many would like to say it is so). I, like many here at BYU, grew up outside of Utah. Yet, unlike my fellow “foreigners” I happen to love it here. Because we're Mormon, we take for granted how rare and different we really are. Putting us all together doesn't make us boring or provincial. China isn't any less of a place simply because its full of Chinese people.

I loved “The Story of My Body,” by Judith Ortiz Cofer. Yet its the fact that her childhood was so different from mine that makes it all so beautiful to me. I'd like to think that if I were to write a similar story of my own upbringing that she would be just as fascinated. Her interactions with her fellow students say a lot about what she had to go through for being unique no matter where she went. As children we can be cruel, but its simply out of ignorance. I had plenty of Japanese friends growing up in Seattle and I remember asking them what was wrong with their eyes. They never knew what to say, so I told them to ask their parents in hopes that they'd know the answer. Our inability to understand or appreciate people that are different comes from our ignorance, even as adults.

As an adult, I'd like to think that I understand what being different really means and that I don't have to ignore it to be respectful. In “A Touchy Subject,” Paul Fussell argues the point that many people like to think that classes in America don't exist. They like to pretend the subject is moot so that they don't have to deal with it. How often do we do that when someone is different in other ways? This certainly cannot be viewed as respect. We have to understand the world around us, as Mrs. Cofer did when she wrote her story. If we cannot understand difference in others than we will never be able to appreciate the authenticity in ourselves.