Growing up, I wasn’t very attuned to politics. This isn’t to say that I was apolitical as a kid, but rather I didn’t really think about it in my day-to-day life. Even when I learned about the U.S. two-party system at school, I just saw it as something that I needed to learn — like math, chemistry, or English — to pass the class: I didn’t really have a strong opinion about either side to care to choose one or the other, so I spent most of my childhood aware of, but indifferent to politics.
My upbringing also played a part in why I wasn’t really into politics growing up. I was born and raised upper-middle class in Los Angeles, and in a fairly-conservative neighborhood (i.e. the suburbs). My parents were immigrants from Taiwan who immigrated in the 1980s for education, then work. They were registered Republicans, but over time voted Democrat (they’ve voted for Bill Clinton and Barack Obama in the past). They were socially-liberal on most issues (e.g. abortion, LGBT rights, gender equality), but fiscally-conservative, and I suppose this balance influenced my way of thinking as a kid, even now as an adult.
I didn’t really pay attention to politics as a kid, just because I was preoccupied with other aspects of my life, such as school, sports, and piano lessons. I was busy trying to get good grades and excel in my extracurricular activities to get into a good university, which was exactly what I did when I was accepted into UCLA, my number-one choice, during my senior year of high school. It was moving away from home (granted, 30 minutes away) to partially-live on my own in the dorms, and it was my first taste of freedom to do what I wanted with my studies, passions, and social life.
College was also the first time I was introduced to politics. Specifically, identity politics. College was the time when I began learning about third-wave feminism, LGBT theory, and white colonialism — all from a very-liberal angle. UCLA isn’t officially-classified as a liberal arts college, but it does have a notable liberal-leaning student body, especially in the Humanities (where my major was specialized). I hadn’t learned a lot about race, LGBT, and women’s issues in high school, so it was a lot to take in during my time in university.
At first, I appreciated learning about these liberal issues. In fact, I felt enlightened — one could also say “woke.” I began to manifest this knowledge in who I was, soon identifying myself as a “queer woman of color” in the intersection of gender, race, and sexuality. I supported social activism on campus for issues related to the systemic oppression of minorities due to our white patriarchy. I even agreed with friends who were vocal in their distaste for white men, and I cheered as loud as the rest when justice was served for the oppressed.
Labeling myself the way I was, I started to use this identity to justify areas of my life in which I didn’t have it so well. Whenever someone made a micro-aggressive comment on my race, I was easy to call it out as that person was white, and that all white people were inherently racist. If someone disagreed with the right to abortion, I was quick to counteract with the fact that the person was male, and he obviously couldn’t understand what it’s like to be female and having the right to her body. It was a lot of anger, righteousness, and also a sense of self-pity of being a minority that manifested throughout my college years, even for the next two years after graduation.
It wasn’t until a few years after I graduated from college and moved to France for work that my feelings on certain issues started to change. Moving away and being on my own, especially in a foreign country, forced me to adapt and reconsider ideas that I had about the U.S., as well as the ideologies I had been taught. I started to doubt the validity of these beliefs, yet I was unsure why I was doubting them in the first place.
I remember it was around the time I was 25 and had been living abroad for some time that I began to notice two things: 1) the fact that I was getting a bit jaded with expat life, and 2) the difference between my opinions and those of expats who were fresh out of college. These expats were very vocal about France’s lack of PC culture, and they wanted to find justice in teaching (erm indoctrinating) the locals with their liberal views. While I did acknowledge that the French aren’t the most politically-correct with their comments on race and gender roles, I also don’t think that it was our duty as expats to tell them not to do that. Sometimes, it’s just a clash of cultures, and we simply need to accept the differences.
It was also around this time that I stumbled upon conservative-leaning content online. Although I didn’t always agree with the opinions voiced, I also did agree with some points made. It was at this point that I realized that the liberal views I’d been taught in college weren’t as rosy and perfect as they were made out to be, and I started to question not only this side of the political spectrum, but also whether I truly believed in all of it.
The actual moment that sealed the deal for me, to no longer identify with liberalism, was the recent Black Lives Matter protest. After expressing my skepticism on the protest’s effectiveness for change, I was attacked by my liberal-leaning peers for not fully submitting to the cause, that I was privileged and enabling the oppressors. I did not expect such a reaction, and what made it even worse was that my liberal-leaning friends didn’t care to listen to what I had to say on the issue. To think that being liberal means accepting diversity with open arms, well, I clearly had the wrong idea.
After that incident, I realized that extreme liberalism was just as bad as extreme conservatism — it wasn’t a matter of listening and working to solve problems anymore, but rather blaming the other side and wanting to be right for the sake of being right. I also realized that the news people were getting on social media were severely-biased: just as much as conservatives only get their sources from, say, Fox News, liberals are only getting theirs from MSNBC, The Washington Post, heck, even Buzzfeed. That’s all that is recommended, and there’s no effort or thought to look up different sources, let alone fact-check what they’re receiving.
Media bias is rife in the liberal community. And I discovered that I didn’t want to be brainwashed by it. I didn’t want to see things in only black and white, because that’s not how real life works. Problems aren’t as simple as they appear to be — everything is nuanced. Modern-day liberalism is just as problematic as conservatism, and I do not want to be associated with all that comes with it, including men-hating feminists, white-hating minorities, and god forbid SJWs.
That said, I identify neither liberal nor conservative. Rather, I identify as someone who strives to seek knowledge. Whether it’s by reading news from various political sources or talking to people of differing values, I choose to seek the truth by looking at the full political spectrum, before forming my own opinions. As a result, I have beliefs that fall on both sides, some liberal and others conservative — and that’s okay. I believe as long as we aim to be open to dissent and listen, we could do a lot better in resolving issues in our society. Instead of polarizing each other, we need to unite — to find a middle ground that will require compromise from both sides, yet steer us in the right direction to improve our society.
