Coloring Ivory: Considerations of the Intersections of Minority Politics, Business & the Law in Elite Society

By Irene Chun

Coloring Ivory: The Intersection of Minority Politics, Business, & the Law combines Chun's personal experiences of growing up in the United States as an Asian American with research in fields such as education, housing, and disability rights, all

• Language: English
• Publisher: New Degree Press
• Release date: Aug 24, 2021
• ISBN: 9781637304709

Book preview

Coloring Ivory

Considerations of the Intersections of Minority Politics, Business, & the Law in Elite Society

Irene Chun

new degree press

copyright © 2021 Irene Chun

All rights reserved.

Coloring Ivory

Considerations of the Intersections of Minority Politics, Business, & the Law in Elite Society

ISBN

978-1-63676-698-0 Paperback

978-1-63730-469-3 Kindle Ebook

978-1-63730-470-9 Digital Ebook

Contents

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Introduction

Westchester

True American

How I was Told to Remember Race

I Was Told to Add Asian to American

Marlboro Red & Lights 

How the Law & History Made Me Think of Sex & Gender

The Money in Being Able-bodied

Conclusion

Appendix

Acknowledgments

Introduction

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In Korea, when a baby turns one year old, they are dressed in traditional garb for an elaborate party, with attendees ranging from parents’ coworkers to immediate family members or even neighbors. After hours of catching up on daily lives and drinking, the parents will put a line of objects in front of the baby for the final event. It is believed the object or objects the baby chooses will represent their future desires in life or their professional career. 

In the case of my first birthday, there was a pile of rice, a microphone, a twenty-dollar bill, a stethoscope, a pencil, and a ball. To the disappointment of my grandfather, I chose the money first, then the pencil, then lastly the microphone. He apparently took the money out of my hands, but I took it back and put it in my mouth. Choosing the money meant I would be financially successful, while the pencil represented intelligence, and the microphone indicated future fame.

It was during my senior year of high school, when the leaves had just begun to fall and the weather wasn’t quite humid and no longer required popsicles to provide sanity. I remember it so vividly because it was the first time I had ever looked for pictures of my younger self to decorate my high school dorm room. I had been staring at the one family portrait I had taken when I was eight years old, framed and hung directly below the Cinderella clock, as I liked to call it, that my parents had received as a wedding gift. 

There aren’t many pictures on our house’s walls, but I knew there were photo albums somewhere in the house. We don’t have an attic or a basement, so I didn’t have the moment, like in books, where I come across a dusty box full of relics from my parents’ past as well as mine, and I come to realize a truth. Instead, I looked below our dinner table, and there they were, three albums in varied sizes: one large purple album, another white one that Michael’s would call medium sized, and one that fits in the palms of my hands, covered in pastel balloons and teddy bears. 

I opened the largest one first, curious what events could have been so important for my parents that there were edges of documents just peeking over every other laminated page. The first page I flipped to had a document with the handprints and footprints from the day I was born, listed with the script of a doctor, unreadable except to the experienced allergy patient, one such as myself. 

As I continued to flip through the pages, I came across small, vibrant Post-its with the tiniest cramped handwriting you could imagine—all including the date and time of when a picture was taken of me and an observation of my daily behavior. The first ten pages also had 3D animal stickers pressed onto the right side of each page. That’s when I realized, yes, this was my mom’s, not my dad’s work. 

The other photo albums were similar. All of the pictures were laminated according to the time, day, month, and year the picture was taken. They all had me as the center of attention, capturing the moments I don’t have any recollection of, or may only vaguely remember because it had been a particularly embarrassing day, like the time I had gone to Disneyland for the first time and had not wanted to pose with Captain Hook because he was ugly, or when I had dressed up in my pink jumpsuit and matching cap to go to the park and a pigeon flew by and pooped on me. 

It’s endearing to look back at photos like these, see my eyes sparkle just a little bit more than now, look at my face without any wrinkles and see myself not caring what people thought of me when I wore my favorite raincoat, covered with cartoon frogs, on a day when there had been no rain.

As I flipped through the albums, a question kept popping into my head—why only three albums? I wanted so desperately to ask my mom, the person who loves to organize anything and everything. . . . Why only three? Why these three? I had seen other photo albums, every time we moved because of my dad’s job. I remember going through boxes every year and laughing at the silly poses I would adopt in order to coerce my parents into giving me an extra piece of candy or letting me stay out a little bit longer past my check-in time, 8 p.m., so I could catch fireflies and lay in the grass, just slightly wet after a midafternoon shower. It bothered me to see that the photos highlighted only my youngest years, never past 2003, and mostly shots of my first birthday party or our first and only family trip to Los Angeles. 

So, I asked just once. It was during my first year of college, on a random day I was home for a holiday break and eating lunch with my mom. If there is at least one thing we share, it’s how we hate eating late because of how much we’ll bloat the next morning. I was expecting a profound answer—something that would trigger me to write a quote down in my diary. Instead, it was a simple, You hate having pictures taken of you, which was true. But that was only in high school. It hadn’t been the case in middle school or before. So, I didn’t see the logic and still don’t. Didn’t push on it though, because it was nice not arguing about classes and whether I was being the model college student—one with a perfect balance of extracurriculars, a love life, and career aspirations. 

*

I don’t deny that there is power in being able to select the parts of my life I would like to share with the rest of the world. For the longest time, I disassociated my face and body from all my social media profiles because I didn’t want my classmates to know that I was poor or learned all of my vocabulary from renting dusty social science books from the public library. I wanted to hide how my family was broken and how I had been bullied through social media on a number of occasions throughout elementary school and high school. This culture of silence and leading a manicured life certainly was representative of my social media use. 

I’ve taken advantage of this part of social media and created a rather quiet, mysterious persona—one that was highly educated and artistic. It doesn’t show the goofy me or the talkative me, but that isn’t by mistake. In truth, I didn’t begin posting photos of myself or my body until January 2020. It wasn’t until continued badgering from friends and family that I posted that first picture of myself on New Year’s Eve. 

I am not alone in having experienced a rather tumultuous childhood that coincided with a radical age of innovation and disruption of age-old conceptions of what it means to be an influential force in politics. With the advent of social media, both Millennials and Generation Z have had to grapple with a shifting definition of what it means to maintain a private life without sacrificing being excluded in public settings for not knowing the latest pop culture trends or not knowing about words like simp. 

No one can deny the benefits of the nontraditional modes of communication that have come with the turn of the twenty-first century. However, with unorthodox changes and innovations, there have been just as many proponents of maintaining order as seen fit by generations that did not experience such ardent and public outcries of injustice, as represented by social movements like Black Lives Matter. Older, established institutions will assert their dominance and discomfort toward social radicalism by firing an employee or denying admission. It’s enough to cause young political voices to censor themselves, because though social media has created an arena that is difficult to regulate, it can still create misunderstanding and sensationalism. 

This is not to suggest that the twenty-first century has said good riddance to patriarchy or racism as a whole. How lovely a world would be if concepts like feminism and socioeconomic equality were commonplace and it didn’t take the tragic losses of lives to make people realize the danger of not questioning leaving justice in the hands of those who are not trained in the law. It should not take radical events for privileged sects of society to step out of their comfort zones and combat injustices that may not necessarily affect them personally.

How many times is the most educated personality on the street willing to broach topics that discredit their individuality? Their identity? Unless it is directly linked to the personal ability to earn a salary or protect one’s social reputation, the motivation is small while the risk is too large. And I understand that, I do. And yet, as a multi-minority individual, I can’t help but sigh at the privilege some of my peers and mentors unknowingly possess. I don’t deny my personal privilege, especially when I am able-body presenting and have learned how to navigate social and educational circles I was not born into. It isn’t just their race or skin color. It’s the option to diverge from their parents’ expectation to take charge of the family business, having paid full tuition for elite educational institutions for all of their lives, and still having enough to fund a comfortable lifestyle. 

My closest friends are some of these people. I care for them dearly, but I am uncomfortable every time they groan about not wanting their father to give a call to an old friend to help secure an internship. Or when they say they haven’t thought about recruiting for full-time jobs because they’ll work as an influencer and then marry off into a wealthy family. How do you disassociate and recognize that privilege if it’s all you have ever known?

I know it’s a complex process, and that identity isn’t something that evenly partitions itself. Whether it be ethnicity, religious affiliation, gender, sex, or any other consideration, everything works together. A rookie student in the social sciences would be able to tell you that this is an example of the importance of intersectional analysis and justice work. Identity is a composition, not a singular note, and oppression does not work in a selective manner. Privilege is an amalgamation of factors, from what you are born with as a means of biology, to whatever advantages you are given because of the institutions you are associated with, or how you present yourself on the outside. 

How does one do this deconstructed analysis of oneself? Of one’s privilege? Do you write in a bullet journal or film a confessional for the world to see? I don’t think it needs to be as radical or performative as many influencers make it seem. You don’t need to prove to one hundred or one million followers that you are a particular identity, or that you are doing something unorthodox to subvert the stereotype that the privileged members of societies do not have the livelihoods of the general public in mind. Those accusations are sweeping, and they lack the specificity I prefer when debating sociocultural issues. 

Don’t demonize an entire department in the government without realizing how the hierarchy dictates decisions. Don’t denounce an entire corporation as if their diversity teams, minority leaders, and human resources leaders don’t exist. Pinpoint specific policies, practices, and leaders who have failed to uphold basic conceptions of morality and humanity.

I would like to eventually write about so many different subjects and share them in the public arena. This book only covers a few. I am writing at a formative part of my youth and my early twenties. As a result, some may claim I am too young and naïve, too inexperienced to write a book about morality, law, minority politics, and business. What would a college graduate know about the world? I don’t aim to convince those who have lived decades more than me or those who have dedicated their lives to the study of the phenomena that I am just beginning to wrap my head around. But what I can offer, as a young scholar, are the insights I have accumulated through being fed both conservative and liberal doctrines at the educational institutions I have attended and encountered. 

As a twenty-something-year-old, I can tell you what it means to be bombarded with contradictory images and messaging from corporations, how my ideologies have been both contested and supported by mainstream media. As a fellow human being, I can appeal to the readers’ hearts, because even if the specificity of our life events may vary and the injustices we have faced will not be the exact same. Power and privilege lie in holding a position where I am able to offer anecdotes from my life and hope it pulls a heart string, enough to make readers care more about the personal well-being of others. 

I want to help people who want to learn more about what exact systemic barriers exist for multi-minority individuals like myself, who struggle on a daily basis to combat demons from the past and the binaries of success and identity. For some, this book will be eye-opening, the first time they sit with the pain that their neighbors and friends face on a daily basis due to discrimination. For others, it will feel like a memoir of their own lives—the first time, or perhaps the tenth time, they feel recognized for their experiences and for their intrinsic value as human beings, worthy of care and basic rights. Others will bypass the academic findings and propositions posed in the book and be angered by the supposed insanity of some