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OLIVER GOODRICH: Well, good afternoon, folks, and welcome to Soup and Hope. My name is Oliver Goodrich, and I am the Associate Dean of Students for Spirituality and Meaning Making and the Director of Cornell United Religious Work. I use the pronouns he, him, and I represent the committee of colleagues who have produced the annual Soup and Hope series. We're so thrilled that you all can be with us today, especially those of you who are joining us from sunny Ithaca.
I want to begin today by acknowledging the Indigenous peoples of all the lands that we are on today. While we're meeting on a virtual platform, I want to take a moment to acknowledge the importance of the land, the lands which we call home, whether you're here in Ithaca or elsewhere. We do this to reaffirm our commitment and our responsibility in improving relationships between nations, and to improving our own understanding of local Indigenous peoples and their cultures.
I arrived at Cornell and began my work here almost exactly one year ago today. And whether you are new to the Cornell community, like me, or you've been here for many years, I think we can all agree that the last year has been a year like no other. As we think back to one year ago, who among us could have imagined all that 2020 would have in store for us? A deadly pandemic, of course, a racial reawakening, a bitter partisan election cycle, and an increase in extreme weather events.
Given this season of social distance and human uncertainty, it felt all the more important this year for Soup and Hope to continue its annual tradition of bringing all of us in the Cornell community together for inspiration, for reflection, and for sharing. And while this virtual format will not have the same warmth of being together in person in Sage Chapel, not to mention no warm delicious Cornell Dining soup, it is our sincere hope this year that the series will invite you to slow down for a minute, to remember that you're part of an extraordinary community that is filled with extraordinary people, and to draw some hope and some inspiration from the terrific stories that we'll hear together today and throughout the coming weeks.
And so before we meet today's speaker, I want to share just a couple of quick logistical notes for our virtual gathering. At the conclusion of this afternoon's talk, you will have a chance to stay on this Zoom call and to offer your own messages of gratitude to our speaker. We'll also provide a community space for folks to gather and to reflect on today's words of hope in a separate Zoom meeting room, where you'll have the chance to see one another face to face. And I'll provide those logistics at the conclusion of our featured presentation.
And lastly, I would like to thank our dedicated Soup and Hope committee members for all of the effort that's gone into planning these amazing series of talks over the coming weeks. Thank you again, committee members. And so with that, I am happy to turn it over to my colleague, Amanda Wittman, who will introduce today's Soup and Hope speaker.
AMANDA WITTMAN: Hello, everyone, and welcome. I'm so glad to be here virtually in some ways with all of you in Sage Chapel, at least in our hearts, if not actually there in person. Again, my name is Amanda Wittman. I am part of the super committee. But more importantly, I am a friend, I hope, is what I call it to today's speaker.
I'm going to try to be "soup-er" brief so that we can get on and really focus on Hei Hei's talk today. But I just wanted to say I was so excited to nominate her, and then I'm so happy to introduce her as our introductory speaker for this year's Soup and Hope. Many of you will know Hei Hei through her work with Employee Assembly or around campus in all of her many roles. But I think her story today will help you get to know her better as the thoughtful and incredibly funny person I know her to be. Hei Hei will tell you her story and her background, impressive and brilliant in all the ways, but I'd like to introduce her as the friend, spreadsheet guru, wife, dog lover, rose wine connoisseur that I know her to be.
And I'd like to share one thing with you that I think makes her so special. You might not know this, but Hei Hei's superpower is asking questions. She asks the kinds of questions that are insightful, that cut you to the core, that make you think about the world in new ways kinds of questions. And I'm not sure she does this consciously, but I do think that her questions come from a place of wonder and a place of deep love for others around her. And her curiosity and openness, I think, really come through in her questions to herself and to others, and I think that those traits are what you'll hear in her talk today.
So I hope that you all have your soup ready and you are ready to be warmed in the presence of our wonderful Hei Hei. And if you're looking for a new soup recipe, I encourage you to check out her recipe online. She has so nicely and generously shared her won ton soup recipe with us. We'll place it in the chat. All right, everybody, enjoy. And now to you, Hei Hei.
HEI HEI DEPEW: Good afternoon. Thank you for that really kind introduction, Amanda. What I appreciate about Cornell and Ithaca overall is the sense of community that I've experienced. Within this community there's a warmth and openness I felt that is really inviting. My friend Amanda here is an integral figure in that community, a great friend, and a part of the reason why I feel very much a part of this community here.
Speaking of community, I want to take some time to thank you all for logging on today, for taking the time and being here virtually with me. When I was first asked to participate in Soup and Hope, I was really honored and really humbled to be considered. I wasn't entirely sure why I was asked to participate. Do Cornell community members want to hear from a financial analyst? I think the answer is probably no. Do they want to hear from the chair of the Employee Assembly? Perhaps.
Do they want to hear from a Chinese-American grappling with rising incidences of racism and aggression towards Asian Pacific Islanders? Honestly, I'm not sure. Whatever the reason you're here today, I appreciate your willingness to be here and listen to my reflections on being Chinese-American during this time, what my future is-- I mean, what my hopes for the future are and, where this hope comes from.
I think for you to understand where my hope comes from, it would be helpful to learn a little bit more about me, who I am, and how I grew up. I was born in a hospital in Manhattan and raised in Brooklyn in a neighborhood called Kensington. It's a neighborhood which most people have never heard of. People who currently live there probably have never heard of it.
It's a diverse community. According to the 2010 census, Kensington is 40% white, 24% Asian, 18% Latino, 7% African-American, and 3% other. I am the second daughter of four children, two girls first then two boys.
My siblings and I share the same word, "Hei," in all of our names. So from youngest to oldest my youngest brother is Hei Tong Before him is Hei Ching. I am, of course, Hei Hei. My sister, who's the oldest, was given the birth name Hei Man. She has since changed it to Heidi, understandably so.
My siblings and I are first generation Chinese-Americans. Our parents immigrated here from a city called Toisan in China. My parents divorced when I was about 12. My grandmother lived with us and did the bulk of raising us, speaking only Chinese with an incomplete elementary school education. My mother worked various jobs around New York City. She sewed clothes in factories and she cleaned rooms in hotels.
Growing up in a single parent minority household as one in four children comes with its own unique set of challenges. You feel a lot of personal insecurity surrounding your circumstance. Your life itself has a strenuous amount of uncertainty. It was an unstable time, and it was a taxing time for me and my siblings.
I think about that time now whenever I feel overwhelmed or when I feel the world around me feels so bleak because as dark as that time was for my family, we all made it through. Hei Tong is a nurse who works in cancer research. Hei Ching is a physical therapist who teaches children how to play basketball in his free time. Heidi is an entrepreneur who has a business with her husband.
How did we all overcome the unfortunate circumstances of our youth to become what I would humbly describe as contributing members of society? Some may chalk it up to hard work, education, and perseverance, the age-old immigration success story. I don't think it is that straightforward. I think we owe a great deal to a community of peers that supported us, the kindness and selflessness of those around us.
It was the presence of my grandmother, who could have spent her golden years relaxing somewhere but instead volunteered to be a living caretaker for unruly children. It was the presence of my aunts and uncles who helped to support us and fill in any gaps that we had. It was the presence of friends and their families, who understood our essential situation and did their best to be kind to us. All these people did their best to show us thoughtfulness and compassion, and they shaped us into who we are today.
Lately, I've been hearing people talk a lot about resilience. I think that's all good and well, but what I found more powerful for myself personally is the capacity for care that we have for others, the ability to look outside of ourselves and ask the question, what can I do to help. I think for myself, it is so important to step outside of my understanding of my perceived hardships to gain perspective, to perhaps empathize with others in the broader community. I think this is in part why I joined the Employee Assembly.
When I think about other dark times in my life, there exist slivers of light within each of these times. There are so many stories I can conjure up, so many instances of hope, inspiration and kindness. One point in time that really stands out for me is growing up in Brooklyn, post 9/11.
On 9/11 2001, I was in high school. That morning, classes were disrupted. Everybody was called into their homerooms. Our homeroom teacher advised us that a plane had crashed into one of the towers. Immediately after, there was quiet and then there were tears, not from everyone, but there were students who had parents working either in the towers or near the towers. Friends crowded around them, comforting them, making attempts to be reassuring.
We were all corralled into the lunchroom on the eighth floor in downtown Brooklyn, and from the lunchroom I caught a glimpse of the towers. The smoke seemed especially visible against the cloudless blue sky, not dissimilar to the sky we have today. Shortly thereafter, everybody was sent home. The train ride was the most quiet and somber train ride I had ever taken in my life.
There was a lot of fear that there would be more terrorist attacks. Some people worried about the future of New York City. Was it a safe place to be? Was it a safe place to travel to? A large part of our local economy came from tourism.
At the time, I myself had a job after school working as a waitress in a diner half a mile away from the World Trade Center. It takes more time to walk from the vet school to the CHB building than it would have taken me to go from the diner where I worked to the World Trade Center.
When I returned to work after 9/11, it was visible that the entire area was impacted, not because of the thin layer of white dust that covered every crevice of the surrounding area, but because it was changed. The amount of travel to New York City, and specifically downtown Manhattan, dramatically decreased, and those that remained in the area looked deflated. Months later, the diner that I worked at and several surrounding businesses had to be shut down. The local economy was no longer sustainable. It was a harrowing time.
But the following days and months after that attack, something was brewing in New York City and, I think, nationally. I think-- I saw it on the subways, I saw it in the streets. There was the sense of brotherhood. There was this reverberating sense that we're all going through something together. We were bonded together by this trauma.
I saw neighbor helping neighbor, I saw people across races, socioeconomic backgrounds standing up and standing together. It felt like the city had been brought to its knees for a brief moment, but we were all picking each other back up. And I had never felt more proud to be from New York or to be American because I saw the unity, I saw the capacity for kindness that we all had for one another, and I will never forget it.
But I also want to note, while my patriotism was at an all-time high, over time I was beginning to see some things that were a little bit unsavory and contradicted this almost utopian America that I had just described. Kensington, where I grew up, has a large South Asian community. Walking from my childhood home to the train station, I would pass by several halal shops which catered specifically to the growing Muslim community.
Growing up, two of my closest friends were Nadam, a practicing Muslim, and [INAUDIBLE], a practicing Hindu. I would visit their homes. We would gossip about teachers, and for fun we would use henna to tint our dark black hair to a white or chestnut brown. Their parents would offer a sweet treats and ask us about school. This was the community I lived in and the friends I grew up with.
Unfortunately, after 9/11, it was a community that was filled with heightened anxiety and worry. There were times when I would walk to take the train home from school with a group of my friends, and one of us, a Sikh friend who was not Muslim but wore a turban, would get pulled over by armed police officers with assault rifles. He would get patted down. His book bag would be thoroughly searched. A German shepherd would sniff him up and down.
It hurt my heart to see my 16-year-old friend treated like a terrorist. He wasn't a threat. He was just a kid headed home from school. It felt like there was a growing sense of fear, hatred, and hostility towards Islam and Muslim people in the country. I felt conflicted. The experience I had within this community did not represent what I saw in the media. It didn't sit right with me then.
And fast forward to present day, I see something of a parallel increase of weariness, suspicion, and hate towards Chinese people, but more broadly, the Asian Pacific Islander community. What does that increased hate look like? I've had a Vietnamese friend who was a health care provider be told by a patient that they'd rather not be seen by her, citing fears of catching COVID. My sister sees fires in her Brooklyn neighborhood denouncing Chinese people as diseased. The fires had appeals to remove Chinese people from the community.
My high school friend-- she was Korean-- was punched in the face while walking down the street, her assailant claiming she brought Chinese virus to America. My aunts call me on something of a consistent basis citing a different assault of an Asian person on something of a regular basis in some corner of the country, and I find myself wondering if perhaps people see me as the reason or cause of a pandemic that is wholly out of my control.
Last year, I myself was involved in a bias incident. The incident took place during a virtual Employee Assembly meeting. I had joined the Employee Assembly as a way to gain a better understanding of the university and see if there was anything I could do to contribute to the conversations, provide insight, or assist the staff probably. The meetings, prior to COVID, were open to the public, and we encourage community members to join and take part in discussing issues impacting the Cornell staff population.
As a result of COVID, this meeting transition to an online platform, but was still open to the public. As such, we had some disruptors join. They took over my background and placed a swastika sign behind me. They did the same to the then chair Adam Howell. They inserted disparaging commentary about Chinese people and Black people in the chat. Specifically in regards to Chinese people, some choice words and profanities were used. It was alarming, it was disruptive.
After letting the incident sink in, the sadness was swept away, and it was replaced by new feelings, feelings of anger. I was livid. How dare they do that to the Employee Assembly members? How dare they take this platform and sully it with this filth?
My grandmother used to say with mixed part frustration and what I perceived as resigned endearment determined that I was a rabble rouser. I was too free-willed and feisty for my own good. Common sense would dictate that I just had to move on. There was no way to capture these disruptors and bring them to justice, and there wasn't a realistic recourse for what happened. I knew that, but this incident did not sit right with me, and I could not just let it go and do nothing.
From that incident, I started to have more conversations with my friends of color, with those around me, those within the community. The Employee Assembly passed a resolution denouncing hate speech and hate crime. Many Thanks to David Hiner for sponsoring that resolution. I joined the Women of Color Colleague Network Group. I wanted to hear more stories from other Black, Indigenous, People Of Color, BIPOC for short, members from across campus.
From that, I joined a subcommittee, and together we worked on creating a survey for BIPOC staff to gain aggregated data on BIPOC staff retention. I'm going to take a moment to thank this amazing team-- Maria Wolfe, Susan Linn, Patricia Gonzalez, and Angelica Carrington. It's been a great joy to work with you all. Our hope is to take the aggregated data and report back on key themes and provide suggestions for improvement.
I participated in the Cornell Inclusive Excellence podcast, when I spoke about being Chinese-American. I want to thank Anthony Sis and Toral Patel for doing a great job hosting. I also decided to run for the chair of the Employee Assembly. And thanks to the votes from the Employee Assembly members, I've become the first woman of color chair of the Employee Assembly.
In hindsight, I recognize that something egregious happened that day, but I do see that it also put me on a bit of a journey to connect more with the BIPOC community, to take a keener look at the issues, and try my best to do all I can to support those that don't feel heard and don't feel comfortable voicing their concerns. And more importantly, I gained an ever-growing appreciation for all the dedicated people working on diversity, equity, and inclusion [INAUDIBLE]. Their work brings me great hope.
That incident also made me think about the current state of affairs of the BIPOC population, and specifically for those in the Asian Pacific Islander community. As a Chinese-American during the time of COVID, I find myself in a bit of a precarious situation. In this time, I've done a lot of self reflecting. I've looked inward and thought a great deal about what it means to be Chinese-American and what my hope for the future is.
When I think about what it means to be Chinese-American, it makes me think of my name, which has a unique origin and history of being both Chinese and American, Hei Hei Depew. The first part, Hei Hei, that is Chinese. The tale that I've been told is that I was named after an emperor in China.
As some of you may or may not know, even though Chinese people speak Chinese, there are many different dialects of Chinese. Consider them different versions of the same language. And depending on where you're from, you'll speak a different dialect of Chinese. Some common dialects of Chinese or Mandarin, Cantonese, Shanghainese, et cetera. One Chinese person can speak to another Chinese person in their dialect and have no idea what the other person is saying.
So this particular emperor made an order to create a common written language to unite the people. Through the written language, people from all corners of China could be unified in a common understanding.
You may also know the name Hei Hei from the Disney animated movie Moana, where there is a deranged chicken in Polynesia also named Hei Hei. I feel as if Disney owes me an explanation for that, but I digress.
To me, my name is uniquely Chinese and a part of my Chinese-American identity. The second part of my name is Depew. It is not a Chinese last name. That's the last name I adopted after marrying my husband. I didn't know very much about the last name, and my husband didn't have an elaborate story tracing back hundreds of years to tell me.
But I once saw a street sign title Depew Place by Grand Central in New York City, and there's an Amtrak train station titled Depew Station in Buffalo, which got me researching. And I found they were both connected and both were named after a Republican New York State Senator. His name was Chauncey Mitchell Depew, who outside of being a Senator, was also the president of the New York Central Railroad System.
He was a great orator and actually gave an oration at the unveiling of the Statue of Liberty in 1886, 100 years before I was born. He started off by stating, we dedicate the statue to the friendship of nations and the peace of the world. The spirit of Liberty embraces all races in common brotherhood, voices in all languages the same needs and aspirations. That sticks with me because that is America, the love of liberty, the camaraderie, this idea that we not only accept but also embrace all races.
Together Hei Hei and Depew, the very ideals of connectedness, unity, liberty, camaraderie, acceptance, that is a part of my Chinese-American identity. But to me, being Chinese-American means so much more than that. It means celebrating lunar holidays, like the Mid-Autumn Festival and the Lunar New Year. It also means celebrating Christmas and Thanksgiving.
It means I will always have a drawer filled with forks and chopsticks. It means I have a big family of siblings aunts, uncles, cousins of a variety of skin tones and eye colors. It means I have a deep reverence for the country of my ancestors, for their rich history, but it also means loving America because it's the only country I know, the place where I've experienced my growth. It is a place that has given me so much, but it is also a place which sometimes I worry does not love me with the same intensity that I love it.
I've always felt America belonged in some small part to me as my birthright. It is my home, and in some way, it is my own. But some questions I've been asking myself recently are, do I belong in America? Does America calling me as one of its own?
I say all of this not to make anybody feel upset or uncomfortable. I say this to provide some insight into how I'm feeling. I say this because, despite feeling this way, I'm still capable of envisioning a better future, a future where we can all be united in a better understanding of one another, a future where, regardless of race or creed, we can see in one another a reflection of our own shared virtues and shared rights-- life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
I've met so many people in the course of my short life, and the majority are kind and, for the most part, reasonable. I think the darkest and most bigoted ideas about marginalized groups are not shared by the majority of people. I hope that most people have the strength, conviction, and courage to denounce racism and xenophobia whenever they see it.
I have faith in the decency of people, that we're better than the worst that I've seen. I have faith that after our darkest hour, after a long stretch of time when we cannot see the goodness and light in one another, the dust will settle, and we'll be able to gain some clarity and resolve to be better than we have been towards one another. The capacity for care that we have within ourselves or other people is a wonderful renewable resource.
When I was reviewing the Employee Assembly priorities poll results, I read every single sentence that was submitted by staff members, and there were hundreds. What I found to be really heartening, was seeing over and over, the empathy staff had for others. Staff members asked, how can we best support one another? Yes, we are going through a pandemic.
Yes, we are stressed. Yes we are being asked to do more with less. But throughout all of this, I see there is a compassion for essential workers, for a diverse population, for one another as we weather this very difficult time. I've seen that there is a desire to reach out and help. That we can be strangers to one another but still feel compelled to do right by one another, this brings me great hope.
Lately, I've been comparing my love for America to the love I have for the football team the New York Giants. On February 3, 2008, 13 years and one day ago, the Giants won the Super Bowl. And four years later, they would win the Super Bowl again. They were doing well at that point in time. I loved them then.
And now, as they struggled this past season as perhaps one of the worst teams in the NFL, I still love them, even though at times I've had great expectations for them, only to be disappointed. They've made decisions I don't agree with. They've made me extremely upset.
With all this said, I still love them so much. I will stick with them and hope that they will be better. I believe they can be better. I believe this because I've seen them at their best, as I see the promise of America.
What is the promise of America? To me, it's to be a bastion of liberty, of acceptance for others, of strength through unity. This is the America that I hope for, and I will always believe in this unspoken promise for what it could be.
When I was asked to participate in this event, I felt really grateful for the opportunity. But immediately afterward, I felt a little bit of trepidation. To be honest, around the time I was writing this, the beginning of January, the current affairs at the time were looking pretty disastrous, and I myself was questioning my own hope.
Writing this and thinking about hope but kind of like two opposing feelings reconciling themselves. That felt like such a challenging time in American history. It felt like a time where the prevailing feeling was not necessarily hope.
But as I was writing this, recounting other difficult times in my life, I recognized it can feel so helpless, and the circumstances around us feel like they're all encompassing without an end in sight. However, after allowing some time to pass, when we take a look back, there's an opportunity to recognize that what transpired was a moment in time. And within your lifetime, there are a string of moments. We can see the start time through and have faith more promising moments are on the horizon.
I want to take this opportunity now to thank the organizers of Soup and Hope, Janet Shortall, Christopher Lujan, Oliver Goodrich. This is a wonderful program and provides an uplifting service to the community.
Sometimes it feels like there is a metaphorical distance we have from one another. A divide exists because perhaps we don't know one another and perhaps we don't understand one another, and that gets shortened every time we take a step forward towards one another in a better understanding of one another, a better recognition of one another. In such a seemingly isolated time when we must put a physical distance between one another for our safety, now more than ever I think it is important to find some way to take steps towards one another, to see one another with more accuracy and understanding.
So thank you for this platform and this great opportunity to take just one small step. In a little over a week, February 12, I will be celebrating the Lunar New Year, so I want to wish you all a happy New Year, not only in English, but also in three different dialects of Chinese-- Mandarin, which is the dialect the majority of Chinese people in China speak, and it goes a little like this. [CHINESE] Cantonese, which is the dialect the majority of Chinese-Americans speak, and it goes like this. [CHINESE] And finally, Toisanese, which is the dialect my family speaks, and it goes like this. [CHINESE]
I want to thank you all for your time. Please be kind to yourselves and also to others.
OLIVER GOODRICH: Wow. Thank you again, Hei Hei. Wishing you a happy New Year, and we're so grateful for your candor and for reminding us of the vital importance of closing the distance and cultivating community and care and compassion. Thanks, too, for your online undying love of the Giants, too.
So before we go, I have just a couple of quick announcements and reminders for all of us. I know some of you have other Zoom meetings to attend to, but just a couple of quick reminders. I want to invite you all back to join us next week on February 11, when our speaker will be Ithaca community member and Cornell alumnus George Ferrari, Jr. You can learn more about the upcoming speakers and also get their favorite soup recipes on our website. I'll drop that link in the chat for you.
I also want to mention that our Martin Luther King, Jr. commemorative lecture this year will feature Ijeoma Oluo on Monday, March 1 at 7:00 PM. There'll be some additional information about this event that can be found on our website at the Office of Spirituality and Meaning Making, and will remind you about that again in upcoming weeks.
And lastly, for those of you who are interested in joining us for a community gathering to reflect on today's words from our speaker, in a moment we'll drop a link in the chat so that you can enter a meeting room and have some face-to-face interaction or sharing of your reactions to today's talk. And for those of you that are interested in sharing some words of gratitude directly with our speaker, I invite you to either drop those words in the chat or to raise your hand, and we'll unmute you so that you can have a moment to share your words of gratitude with Hei Hei.
So this concludes the formal part of our event Thanks again all of you for joining us. Hope you're able to take advantage of the sun today and take some hope with you. Thanks again, and invite you to stay for those you who'd like to share some feedback.
Thanks to those who are staying around. Appreciate hearing so much great feedback in the chat. And just a reminder, if you'd like to verbally share some encouragement or some gratitude with Hei Hei, go ahead and raise your hand, and we'll unmute you so you can share your feedback with Hei Hei directly.
OK, I see that Gina has a comment. Gina, I'm going to unmute you.
AUDIENCE: Great. Am I unmuted?
OLIVER GOODRICH: You are. Go ahead.
AUDIENCE: Well, I just wanted to say thank you so much to Hei Hei for sharing. I know Hei Hei through her great leadership and work on the Employee Assembly. I also serve in the capacity as chair of our division's Diversity Council, and so I'm always looking for ways to connect my colleagues with engaging in some of the difficult conversations around some of the challenges that we have going on in our world right now.
And so much of, Hei Hei, what you shared, your own personal story, your journey and your challenges, resonated so much with me. And I think that have shared beyond yourself at this time with all of us here at Cornell, and I'm just so appreciative-- appreciative to know you, appreciative for your sense of humor, which was new to me, and love of the Giants, which I also find heartening. So thank you so much.
OLIVER GOODRICH: Thanks, Gina.
HEI HEI DEPEW: Gina, thank you. I really appreciate all of the kind words that I'm reading and all the wonderful feedback. I think, again, it all brings me back to the community and the warmth of the others that I've experienced here in Ithaca, Cornell, Tompkins County. It's all been really wonderful.
OLIVER GOODRICH: If there are others here who would like to offer some feedback, please feel free to raise your hand, and we will unmute you. I think I see Celeste. Celeste, I'll go ahead and unmute you, and please share your feedback with Hei Hei.
AUDIENCE: I took some notes. I saw people who live in Kensington, have probably never heard of it. I thought that was pretty funny. I also live in New York City.
You know, I didn't think to connect the racism after 9/11 to the racism that is happening now after COVID, and I wonder if that is a common societal reaction to when something kind of large and affecting everyone negatively happens. That's really interesting. I would have never thought to make that connection. That's what I wanted to say.
HEI HEI DEPEW: Thanks for the feedback, Celeste. I don't know if there are any studies on it. I just I just saw it as a correlation for me, seeing an incident happen, and it's very easy to blame somebody, especially if perhaps they look different from you or you could see them out relatively easily. So those are just some observations I had.
OLIVER GOODRICH: Thanks, Celeste, and thanks, Hei Hei. We have time for a couple more folks to share. I feel a little bit like Hei Hei's handler because we do have a hard stop for 1 o'clock, but we have time to hear one or two more comments, if folks would like to raise their hand and be unmuted.
OK, well, seeing no more hands, Hei Hei, I want to thank you just once again for your candor and for your generous sharing. And we're hoping that the Giants have a better season next year, and we hope we get the chance to continue to hear your great wisdom and collegiality. Thanks so much for all that you offer to our community and that you've shared with us today.
And we look forward to seeing you all back hopefully next week for our next speaker. So thanks again, and take good care, all.
HEI HEI DEPEW: Thank you.
Soup & Hope’s 2021 opening speaker is our very own Cornell staff member Hei Hei Depew. Hei Hei's talk explores moments of hope when acts of racism impacted her life.
