Elaine Qian

J. Orapello
English 12 H
4 May 2015
Exploring My Biases
I am biased on many things that are not mentally healthy for me to become biased on;
race and even the way a young woman should act. My restricting way of thinking has limited me
to a smaller pool of knowledge and a sense of insecurity throughout my life. Now I am taking a
huge leap by exploring all the bias ideas that I have that should be and need to be changed while
some I have already started to break out of.
I always looked up to my dad with eyes of admiration but; he is not well educated, he is
not amazingly talented, and he is the most biased person I have ever met. But as a child growing
up I believed everything he believed in hoping that if I had the seen the world the way he did he
would recognize me more and become more approving of me. It is not that my dad did not love
me but I felt as if we never had any mutual bond and that I could never understand him other
than the superficial things. To this day neither of us understands each other, I cant understand
his traditional way of thinking and he cant understand why I dont act like a girl. But when I
was younger I had no ideas for myself and I was more focused on breaking the wall that was
between us and I wanted to create that mutual bond between with my father. I started to believe
in the prejudiced thinking he believed in blindly. In some way I did obtain the approval and that
mutual bond that I lingered for but it never felt quite right. It felt as if I was manipulated like a
puppet and lacked the ability to think for myself. But I never gave it a further thought at that time
and continued to be prejudiced and hateful towards inferior races.

Later, as I was growing up and exposed to more views did I realize how wrong my dads
thinking were, especially his tendency to be biased towards other race and ethnicity. My dad is
basically a Chinese Nazi, he believes Chinese people are superior to all other Asian races. He
believes that all Asian ethnicity had once originated from China or had seen China as a superior
and that is not necessarily a bad thing. It just shows how much pride he has for the country he
was born and raised in, but he can be an extremist sometimes. His ingenuous trust and belief in
his country has turned him into a racial monster and since he is part of my environment I have
absorbed in his idea and his view of the world for too long to completely erase from my system.
Luckily, on the other hand, my mom is the influence that neutralizes my dads bias. With them
combined, its as if they are yin and yang. With both my parents influence I become the
generation that is able to become more accepting of others and their culture but at the same time
I still linger on the idea of my own cultural dominance over all other cultures which I understand
is obscure way of thinking but I can not completely wash that belief away.
My gullible nature is also the main reason that I was able to be influenced by my dad as
much as he has on me. I tend to rely on any information that I am given. I take in all information
as if they are correct and store them all in my database, it is more like I am so unsuspecting of
others that I am unable to distinguish correct information from opinionated ones. With modern
technology though it becomes easier to check the content of someone's information or so I
thought. But even scientists and news media contradict each other making it impossible to know
who is actually the correct one. There is also the problem with infusing news with
advertisements these days. Ads can easily slip into a news article and not even have the readers
recognize its. I become blurred and suspecting of anything that is said to me yet I feel as if I have
no way to call them as a liar. It reminds me the line from Drake and Josh, Are you calling me a

liar?- Drake I aint calling you a truther!- Josh. I feel as if Im unable to fully clearly
distinguish between anything anymore. It becomes such a tiresome challenge to pick out
informative and unbiased information that I rather just absorb everything that gets thrown at me.
Of course I do have preferences with regards to who the source is from. I find
myself more trusting to sources from my teacher and parents more than I believe what is said out
in the media. I limit myself from the wider pool of knowledge and ideas. Instead I feel safer in a
smaller pool where the information are narrower and only from one-point-of-view.
I believe the reason why is because I still think I am at that age where adults around me
are perfect human beings and that everything they say is unbiased and trustworthy information.
But now I am slowly seeing how unpretentious I was while thinking about such a complex
matter. I was the type of person who has no thought for myself and I just blindly followed other
people's lead. Its not because I dont have the capability to think for myself. But I just find it
rather tedious to do so, and the risk of thinking for my own is just too great for me to bear. I feel
as if it would label me as an outlier and the thought of having others attention all on me instantly
makes me sweat in fear and my hands start to shake uncontrollably. I cant deal with attention
and admiration because with all these great points to have it comes with a down side when I
dont meet others expectation, disappointment and loathsomeness. So even if it is wrong, I would
rather follow the crowd than be the one individual that stands correct but alone. By following the
thoughts of the majority even if it were wrong I wouldnt be penalized and laughed upon. I
would just be one out of many who made a slight mistake. My way of thinking may be quite
skewed, but I believe many people feel the same way. It is why most people are afraid to stand
out and say what they think, just like in class when teachers ask students questions, and there are
only a selective few that answers. Yes, some may really not have a clue as to what's going on but

right off the bat from personal experience I know there are also many who have remarkable
ideas. It is the same for me but it also goes a little deeper than that.
The reason why I don't speak my opinion is because that was how I was raised and it
became such practiced tradition in my family that it has affected the way I approach
circumstances outside of my household as well. In my family it is inappropriate for younger
members of the family to interrupt or speak out during an adults conversation. I felt that my
dad never treated me as a friend instead we had a strictly confined, parent and child
relationship. Luckily, school was able to help me develop a mind for myself and to provide that
comfort and acknowledgment that I was never able to receive at home.
I have not clearly found a solution for my biasim but I feel more secure and truthful after
fully exploring it in this essay. There were things that I was biased on that I had fully known I
had but were too scared to think about and there were also things that has been an unexplored
area for me.