Linguistic discrimination......



There are so many things that as a hispanic man I internalized and just accepted as reality. One of those things was linguistic discrimination. Among the greater hispanic(I the Caribbean and South American Hispanic nations) community there has always been a ranking of which hispanic nations speak the "better" spanish. It is something that I just internalized and accepted. Dominicans were always at the bottom of the linguistic totem pole, but that isn't the part that gets me heated or upset; I accepted it. Now after learning about how languages evolve, change, grow, and adapt over I feel like an idiot for never questioning this convention. There is no one way to speak spanish. Every nation has developed their own standard and within that that standard there exist different dialects. O but before I continue what is "good" spanish anyway. Not many have been able to give me a precise answer but the closest I have been given is a spanish that is close to the original spanish from Spain. That is interesting since within Spain there are slight variations of Spanish. Why are so many obsessed with labeling everything that is considered "good" that which is most similar of to the things of our conquerors?

I was having a conversation with one of the people I will be interviewing and it is fascinating to hear her perspective. Due to the fact that she obviously looks black she has always identified as Afro Cuban, but she has cousins that may be lighter in skin and acknowledge don't  heir racial roots. For many Latino people, their racial identity has been robbed. They can not answer that question since the idea of race is so tied up to nationality that it does not allow the consciousness to accept that which is so plainly obvious(unless it is). While many Hispanics/Latinos  have troubles articulating a racial identity, it seems much easier to articulate racial discrimination based on the idea that white is right(Dominicans better than Haitians because they have more white blood. Soap Opera stars always been white in skin tone not reflecting reality, creams to lighten the skin, being told to reproduce with a lighter skin spouse in order to refine the race). For many(from what I have seen) in Spanish speaking countries the idea of race is internalized. Racial relations may not seem to be as divisive as it his here, but I believe that is because many have just accepted that inequality based on "race" is just a fact(how do we determine, mostly on obvious looks).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3e6ChgL1EC4

I believe this basic documentary is on to something. Instead of embracing our multi racial background, when push came to shove most picked white. My religion(Catholic) came from Spain. My language came from Spain. I do not hate my White identity or influences but I equally embrace how my African culture has infused my food, music, art, dance, etc. For my own personal racial identity I am proud to embrace my bi-racial identity.....I feel for my Cuban friend who was told by another Cuban that she was not Cuban because she was too black.....Blacks, Native, Whites all inhabited these lands We fought. We mingled, and yes we produced a wide variety of multi-racial people.

For my project, I reached out to all the people I want to interview and started to develop my framework for how I want to tackle this project. I am reading a lot and watching a lot of documentaries, interviews, case studies that will inform my interviews.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7p30a4auyA