journalists-from-west-virginia

"I can’t imagine what the adjustment was like for my parents settling down in a completely foreign land without an Asian community to offer support. They are braver than I could ever be. We had a small Chinese restaurant — one of two in the town. So there was one other Chinese American family, but they didn’t have kids my age. I was the only Chinese American student in my school system. I definitely had to deal with challenges and racism throughout my upbringing, but I wouldn’t change anything because those experiences shaped who I am today. There was also a lot of kindness in our little town. I spent lots of time with my friends and their welcoming families."

"I have not experienced another incident in person, but I get messages on social media every day that include racist language and bullying. I think the best thing we can do is provide facts. The fact is the virus does not discriminate against any group of people, and Asian Americans are not more likely to spread it. It’s also important to report on hate crimes, assaults, and attacks against members of the APA community so they are not normalized."

"I think the entire time, because even though you learn how to adapt, and you become part of different friend groups and the community in some ways, just being so different from everyone else, I always felt that. And I mean, I'm not going to sugarcoat it. There were definitely times in my life throughout my childhood and growing up in West Virginia, where the other kids made sure that I felt different, and told me to go back to where I came from, and asked me if I could see because my eyes were so small. And I think that stems from a lack of education about different cultures. And also kids can be racist and bullies. And unfortunately, that's true no matter where you are in the world."

"As a journalist, you have to always have your purpose, and the reason why you are doing what you do, in your mind at all times. And so I'm constantly thinking about the fact that we're in a deadly pandemic, and people need answers, they need the truth about what the administration is doing. So that's what I really focused on and tried to allow that to drive me and not allow the distractions to get in the way."

"We have never conformed with that class of philosophers who would keep the people in ignorance, lest they might change their opinion from former predilections."

"Wherever there is arbitrary rule, there must be necessity, on the part of the dominant classes, superiority be assumed. To assume superiority, is to deny the equality of others."

"Politicians, religionists, colonizationists, and abolitionists, have each and all, at different times, presumed to think for, dictate to, and know better what suited colored people, than they knew for themselves"

"A moral and mental, is as obnoxious as a physical servitude, and not to be tolerated; as the one may, eventually, lead to the other."

"That there have been in all ages and in all countries, in every quarter of the habitable globe, especially among those nations laying the greatest claim to civilization and enlightenment, classes of people who have been deprived of equal privileges, political, religious and social, cannot be denied, and that this deprivation on the part of the ruling classes is cruel and unjust, is also equally true. Such classes have even been looked upon as inferior to their oppressors, and have ever been mainly the domestics and menials of society, doing the low offices and drudgery of those among whom they lived, moving about and existing by mere sufferance, having no rights nor privileges but those conceded by the common consent of their political superiors. These are historical facts that cannot be controverted."