Assistant Editor Chelsea Whitton: How many words does it take to get to the buggy center of implicit bias in the literary world? Not very many (284) as it turns out. In “On Statistics” Zining Mok shows us how close we are to bias without realizing it. Despite the piece’s compressed length, its revelations seem to come slowly, and then all at once. We’re given an alienating, bug-eating premise, placed in an effete literary space and positioned at odds with the whole stiff scene (uncomfortable shoes, Wordsworth’s snobbery, the “man, suited and tied”, etc.). Then, suddenly, we are steeped in a rich, compelling argument about Western exceptionalism, as well as the unchecked privilege and xenophobia of ivory-tower liberals, all of which develops more or less effortlessly and leaves our perspective transformed.
To hear Zining read her essay, click below:
On Statistics
It is hard to walk on cobblestone in my formal shoes, and I arrive late for the insect tasting at the Wordsworth room, where the poet once lived and studied. I smile when I remember his complaints about this “nook obscure,” noting the chandeliers and pieces of stained glass in the windowpanes. I take my seat. Before me, the menu: cheddar cricket scones, grasshopper treacle tarts, chocolate-covered worms, each paired with a glass of wine.
A man, suited and tied, strides to the front of the room to proclaim that insects are the future for our proliferating human population. Numbers are recited into the room: numbers on pounds of livestock we consume each year, numbers on pounds of food for the livestock we consume each year, numbers on carbon emissions resulting from transporting the livestock we consume each year, numbers on the methane produced by the livestock we consume each year, numbers, suddenly, on China—its booming population, its thriving GDP, the concern that more and more Chinese are able to afford meat, and the appalling fact that China alone consumes a third of the world’s pork.
I guffaw, thinking that if there were people in this numbers-blinded world who could see through the bias in this statistic, it would be here, in this world-renowned institute of higher learning. Only, everyone turns to stare: at me, the strange person who must look, to them, Chinese and thus a lover of pork. Briefly, though, because the people here are schooled to be genteel. And every so often as they nose their wines, they jot down a tasting note, then lean right to admit new plates of food, before tilting left to wish their dishes away.
Zining Mok is a Singaporean writer and MFA candidate at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. Her work has appeared in, or is forthcoming from, The Rumpus, The Doctor T. J. Eckleburg Review, and Witness Magazine.
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