Townhall...
One
Way To Make a Conservative
By Mona Charen
7/8/2011
It’s
impossible to read Ying Ma’s
fascinating memoir, “Chinese Girl in the Ghetto,” without wincing. She
was born
in Guangzhou, China’s third largest city. Throughout her mostly
carefree early
childhood years, she kept her family’s secret: that her parents
repeatedly
sought permission to emigrate to the United States.
Her
family was not poor, at least not
by Chinese standards of the late 1970s and early 1980s. Yet her daily
life
would be considered squalid by first world standards. Her family lived
in a two-bedroom
apartment. She, her brother and her parents shared one bedroom (and two
plank
beds). Her paternal grandparents and an uncle shared the other. At
times,
another uncle slept in the living room. They shared the kitchen and
bathroom
(such as it was) with the family next door. There was no running hot
water, and
the toilet was a hole in the floor. The elderly had a particularly hard
time
crouching.
Ying
Ma’s childhood was nonetheless
relatively carefree. She longed for more possessions and eagerly
consumed
whatever Western products -- like nail polish and candy -- her
relatives
brought from nearby Hong Kong. But she excelled in school, was
surrounded by
friends, was doted upon by her grandfather and looked forward (here’s
the
wince) to a fantastic new life in America.
As
a child, Ying could not comprehend
the more menacing aspects of totalitarian rule. Her third grade
teacher, for
example, announced one day that instead of doing math, “You are all
going to
spend the hour confessing.” When the pupils expressed confusion,
teacher Fu
explained, “The school knows that each of you, or someone you know, has
behaved
wrongly. ... Now start writing.”
Ying
recalls, “I always believed my
teachers. Now I was genuinely worried. Did the school already know I
had relatives
from Hong Kong who brought me toys and clothing from the world of the
capitalist running dogs? Did it know I really, really liked American
movies...?”
Panicky,
she wrote about her brother’s
choice to hang out with some bad elements in the seventh grade. “For
days after
my confession, I lived in abject horror.” She thought the police might
come for
her brother. She wanted to warn him, but didn’t dare, because to do so
would
reveal her betrayal. Such are the torments communism imposes on
8-year-olds.
In
a better world, the Ying family
would emigrate to the sunny uplands of the United States and bask in
prosperity
and freedom. Emigrate they did -- but without money and speaking no
English,
they settled in a poor neighborhood of a poor city, Oakland, Calif. And
there,
Ying Ma was forced to confront some of the shameful aspects of life in
this
country.
Though
far less poor than her
classmates in China, the Oakland kids felt entitled to steal. On one of
her
first days in an American classroom, Ying Ma was shocked by the brazen
theft of
a shiny mechanical pencil one of her Chinese classmates had given her
as a
farewell present. Her outrage was pure:
“Every
one of my former (Chinese)
classmates understood stealing to be shameful. ... Our parents and
instructors
repeatedly condemned it. Those who disobeyed were severely punished
with public
reprimands in class followed by potential corporal punishment at home.
... In
the ghetto, however, I could not count on my classmates to know right
from
wrong, nor could I count on the adults to ferret out fault and dispense
punishment.”
In
a way that counted very much to a
young teenager -- safety and security -- Oakland was less civilized and
less
just than Guangzhou.
Ying
Ma was also a victim of racism --
though not in the way Americans are comfortable dissecting and
condemning. Her
mostly black and Hispanic classmates and neighbors engaged in daily
racist
taunts and sometimes violence. They victimized Asians of every stripe,
calling
Chinese, Koreans, Vietnamese and Filipinos “Chinaman,” “ching chong” or
“chow
mein.” Black high school students screamed abuse at a middle-aged
Cantonese
cafeteria worker, calling her a “stupid Chinaman.” Though Ying burned
with
fury, she could do little to respond. “Physically, we were usually no
match for
those who discriminated against us. Culturally, we were predisposed to
be less
confrontational than our non-Asian peers.”
A
black teacher who took an interest
in Ying Ma and helped to place her in the “gifted” program despite her
limited
English is remembered gratefully, along with the black friend who stood
by her
when she was physically attacked by a racist (Hispanic) bully.
As
with many other immigrants, the
Ying family was able to escape poverty by fierce hard work, planning
and mutual
support. Ying Ma herself was able to go to Cornell and then Stanford
Law
School. Despite her difficult path, she loves America. Her journey has
made her
the very best kind of conservative -- one whose love of liberty, order
and
self-reliance has been forged through gritty experience.
Read
it at Townhall...
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