Asian American Studies 197B
Spring Quarter 2002

Reflection Journal 1
Ching Huang, "Adopting a Community-Centered Perspective"

I feel that I have, to some degree, been influenced by UCLA-centric viewpoint. I think it is hard to avoid this viewpoint once you are part of the UCLA community. This viewpoint has aggregated by the emphasis on UCLA as an elite institution. For example, I had an internship with Merrill Lynch last year. What I had in mind going into the internship is exactly the UCLA-centric viewpoint. I viewed the internship as an opportunity for me to learn about the financial industry, but most importantly as a great resume-builder. This self-centric or UCLA-centric viewpoint leads us to engage in activities that will benefit us rather than benefit others. I think UCLA-centric viewpoint is so similar to self-centric viewpoint that it is very difficult for most of us to differentiate between the two. Both viewpoints involve engaging in activities that will benefit us rather than what others can benefit from us, therefore, it is rational for most of us to adopt the self-centric or UCLA-centric viewpoint. For most of us, we always think about ourselves first before we even think about others. And strangely enough, these viewpoints are rational by our standards. I think the correct question to ask is not whether or not we are self-centric or UCLA-centric, instead we should ask how often we adopt these viewpoints. Personally, I can say that I am relatively less self-centric or UCLA-centric than most people because I think it is just my personality not to be arrogant and care about others. Even though I am very proud of myself being part of UCLA, but I am more proud of myself as a person. The reason I say this is because I believe that if you give you will receive in return. That is if you help others, others will help you in return. This is a mutual relationship. It goes both ways. You cannot expect to receive if you never give. To a certain degree, UCLA-centric or self-centric viewpoint is acceptable. We are all self-fish, but we cannot be too self-fish that everything we do is all about us and never think about others. I would consider myself 50% self-centric and 50% group-centric-group-centered viewpoint. In other words, about half of the time I engage in activities that solely to benefit myself and about the other half of the time I engage in activities that solely benefit others. Of course, there are times I would also engage in activities that benefit both.

I believe it would be very easy for me to shift from UCLA-centric student thinking to community-centered thinking. I believe that I am a great tem player, that team success is my success. That is I think about the success of the team first instead of my own. I believe that there are many things that cannot be accomplished by myself alone, I would need the help of others. That is everybody is interdependent within a society. I think there are things that we can do to accelerate the transformation from UCLA-centric thinking to community-centered thinking. We can try to look at things not as one dimensional but instead multidimensional. That is not to practice UCLA-centric viewpoint all the time, but also adopt other viewpoints as well. This allows us to see problems in a more rational manner. Open-mindedness is also important. We should be able to accept new viewpoints to see problems from a different perspective. Seeing problems from different perspectives allows us to understand the structure of the problem instead of the frame of the problem. And lastly, we have to become of the community instead of the community become part of us. Therefore, it is very important for us to learn as much as possible about the community that we are going to intern for if we want to provide great services to the community.

Some community groups feel that UCLA students enter relations with community people with arrogance and a lack of appreciation for their contributions. These perceptions of UCLA students arise from the fact that most students do not have good interpersonal skills. That is how to deal with people from different backgrounds. There are steps that we can take to reverse these perceptions of UCLA students as people with compassion and great appreciation for their contribution to our communities. We cannot start any community-based internship with paternalistic view. That is to say that people do not know what they really want and we have to decide for them. This is very wrong. We cannot assume that we know everything and that others do not. It is very unlikely that we will make a better decision for other people than the people themselves. We have to listen to the needs of the community groups instead of assuming we know what their needs are. Ask if we do not know what their needs are. The more we ask the more we can relate with these community groups. Trying to relate with community groups will enable us to have a better understanding of their needs and what we can do to help them. We also have to learn to appreciate what these community groups have done for our communities. This allow us to establish a closer bond with them and eventually become part of them. And most importantly, we cannot have the arrogant mentality that sets us at a superior position and the community groups at an inferior position. Equality is the key here. Like I said earlier, things go in both ways. Appreciation, learning, and/or helping all go in both directions, not in one direction. If I appreciate what you have done for me, then most likely you will also appreciate what I have done for you. Hopefully, the existing community perceptions of UCLA students will change gradually as we implement the above proceedings.

I truly believe that our skills and access to resources can be great help especially to low-income immigrant workers. Most low-income immigrant workers are illiterate and therefore, they have limited themselves to access to services and benefits they are entitled to because of their lack of acknowledgment. I think our duty would be to inform them about the services and benefits they are entitled to and more importantly to help them to adapt into their new environment here in the United States. For example, I am very interested to take part in the Chinatown youth mural project. I believe this project will allow me to use my skills and talents and maybe my access to resources to really help low-income immigrant families especially those of new arrival. My goal is to help them to make their transitions into their new environments much easier. I do not how much of a help I will be to them, but I am sure that my help is better than no help. I also believe that I can use my skills and talents to guide young kids to head for the right directions. Or help them to gear towards the directions you would like to pursuit. Guidance is very valuable for kids from low-income immigrant families because how can the kids expect their parents to guide them toward the rights direction given the fact that the parents themselves are also "lost" in their new environments. I think I duty is to guide these kids towards the right directions so they would not head towards the wrong directions.