4/27

In the other article, CLR James talked about going to an English, getting an English education, reading English books, and played English sports. “the education, the literature, the cricket, reinforced the English way of seeing the world.” I really resonate with this. My parents are from Cambodia but I was born and raised in the states. I grew up in a predominately white area. White people made up 86% of my town. I grew up thinking that the “white people” way or the “American” way to do things was the right way. I truly believed that my white classmates were better than me because their parents would speak to them in only English whereas my mom spoke to me in both Khmer and English. It was so ingrained in my head that Western culture is the correct or the superior culture.

Something that stood out to me in Gandhi's article was the quote, “When we are slaves, we think the whole universe is enslaved. Because we are in an abject condition, we think the whole of India is in that condition.” It reminded me of a video that one of my friend’s shared on Facebook. It was about a white man who traveled to North Korea to see what it is really like there. In the video, he said that the tours in North Korea are highly regulated and North Korea is very strict about what visitors can and cannot see. The video had many clips of Koreans who looked very lively and happy. If I did not know a thing about North Korean or if I had never heard about North Korea in the news and I watched that travel vlog, I would probably have thought North Korea is a really modernized country. People who think that North Koreans are suffering but in the video, the Korean folks looked happy. The man pointed out that since North Korea is highly regulated, the government might not let their people know what is going on in the rest of the world. I think that is very similar to what Gandhi said about the whole universe being enslaved. It’s really difficult to imagine a world different from yours when you haven’t been exposed anything else.