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

But Mister no one sees race.......

 I have the fortunate pleasure of being able to be a mentor in a very special program at the high school that I work in. I cannot go into too much detail about the conversations that occurred in the group since it is a confidential program. However, what I can say is that having conversations about race is more important than ever. Many students are uncomfortable to discuss anything about race. They assume that mentioning or discussion in a serious way is what is racist......It takes a few questions, but it is clear that they have very strong opinions and impressions because of race. The issue of race is one that is apparent is one were to just glance in the cafeteria. The issue of race is not something that is going to go away and by refusing to acknowledge it, we give power to those who use it for divisive purposes. How do people know what racism is if they are never allowed to recognize it? Many Americans try to full themselves by thinking we live in a post racial society when the reality is that we don't. Should we strive for a color-blind society? No, I don't think so because then by definition we would all have to be a standard. Anyway, I am getting off-topic. Hearing a young black student describe being white as a good thing and being black a bad thing is what answered this question for me. If this student never had the opportunity to to express his feelings, he never would of realized that he had internalized so many negative things about his race. People may read this and think that it is ridiculous that people could think in this way, but the reality is many of our minority students are bombarded with negative messages that they internalize. This internalization can lead to disastrous results. So, it is important to talk about race because it is the only way we as a society can finally start dismantling the inequalities that exist. 

I believe that there is a great majority of people who really want equality under the law, but they for whatever reason are passive. It is the job of those of us who care for social justice to be the constant voice for equality. We have to persuade that vast middle ground to stand with us and not allow injustice to continue or prevail. It does not have to be grand march or demonstration......it starts by having simple conversations with other humans beings. That is what it is about....seeing our common humanity and the richness of our differences.

Did I answer any questions? Sigh I think I rambled....

Another day....


It sucked missing class. I was  told what I missed, and I am very excited for the class vision we have created. As I stated in my other blog I want to interview a variety of people and get their impressions about living as a minority in a majority world. A few of the people I will interview have expressed mixed issues with their identities. The blogs of group mates seem to indicate that they also dealt with similar issues that some of the people I plan to interview dealt with. I was very moved reading their blogs, and I can personally relate to those issues. Being denied our identity is something that, I believe, is traumatizing to the core of a human being. We all crave for a sense of feeling wanted and a place where we belong. While these struggle, in theory I see my project as extending that conversation and allowing us to reflect at what others experienced and perhaps find some common trends that can help us learn why these feelings persist in minority communities and more importantly what we can do to fix it. I have already reached out to a few people I am interested in interviewing and have received positive responses thus far.  I am very interested in seeing how their dialect affected their acceptance in their community. Are you acting white? Are you a coconut? Etc....After I am done with this portion I will push myself create monologues that bring these themes to the masses.

Working twice as hard..........It is funny, I had heard this phrase growing up quite a few time, but it never really stuck with me until 8th grade. I was sitting in my Spanish class and the teacher had placed in the movie Selena for the day. A part came up where Selena's father was speaking to her and told her that she isn't Mexican enough for Mexicans or American enough for the Americans. She had to work twice as hard to get half the respect from either side. That scene kept playing in my head all day for reasons that I was unsure of. I realized that in many ways I felt the same way. I was not Hispanic enough for my Spanish friends, not street savvy enough for my neighborhood friends, not smart enough to be tracked in the academic track. I was more than a boy without a country; I was a boy without a tribe.

In the abstract, the phrase "working twice as hard" can seem general and trivial. What does it actually mean? How does it actually play out? Well, it manifests in me in one simple way. If I am not perfect, I have no value or worth. While others could get away with mispronouncing a word, I would notice that I seemingly always got corrected in such a harsh way. Phrases like "O you can't speak English"would regularly get thrown at me.  This caused me to desperately want to be perfect. In many ways, this was a good thing. It motivated me to achieve excellence. However, having this standard placed on me was tiring. I typically overload myself and I now realize it is because my desire to succeed in as many things as possible. I don't ever want there to be a doubt about my ability. As time went on and I matured, I became more comfortable with who I am and my capabilities. To put it more bluntly, I stopped giving a damn about what others thought of me. Now, I admit that my own insecurities creep up every once in a while, but I have found that by focusing on bettering myself and helping others those voices I call insecurities go away.

While I do feel that I need to work twice as hard, I also acknowledge my own privilege, which is being a male. It became very apparent to me that in the work place my efforts, contributions, ideas were taken more seriously than those of my female colleagues. Now, can I prove that there is active sexism going on? No, I can not. However, I don't think it is conscience or observable if just glanced at. That is what makes biases so dangerous. They, our biases, can hide deep in the sub-subconscience and corrupt the actions of even the most well intentioned of people. I suppose this post sounds morbid, butI truly believe that with awareness solutions can emerge that help us build a more equitable world.

P.S. Not my third post. That is upcoming :)

Passion: most people I meet tell me that they have very little passion for anything and therefore it is very hard for them to pick a career. I have always felt that I have had the opposite problem. I am  feel passion for too many fields and possible professions. I am slowly starting to learn that I can satisfy these bugs in different ways than just trying to change careers a million times. Either way, I was finding myself in the same dilemma with approaching a project for this class. I can easily see myself in every one of the groups. So, how do I create a project that truly encompasses all the the aspects I want to explore? In my first blog there is was a strong theme of self- discovery and I truly believe I have been able to discover more pieces of myself by listening to others and reading about their journeys. That is why I want to interview a minimum of five people and try to learn more about their identity, their struggle, and their worldview. While as a class we have not yet explored this aspect of identity, there are many people who struggle with their racial identity and not because of external forces. I have met many people that seem to hate the racial category they are placed in. I must admit I didn't really listen to their arguments that seemed to be filled with stereotypes of minorities, instead I debated. Now I really want to listen and go beyond the stereotypes and truly try to understand how their racial identity affected them. I will have to study how great interviewers how able to inside the mind of the ones they are interviewing in order to understand the human condition in a better way. I will study how Barbara Walters, Diane Sawyer, Larry King and others were able to extract so much information from the people they interviewed without getting into a confrontation. If there is anything I have discussed in the two class we have had is that identity is complex.

After I gather all of my interviews I will try to edit it into a short video that will maintain the audiences attention. The full length interviews can be posted to our class website(if this is our main class project) for the world to see. It is very easy to judge front he outside looking in, but once one learns the motivations, intentions, circumstances around a situation true understanding can take place.  From these interviews we can see how language, race, identity, education may all play vital roles in the lives of these individuals. After completing my interviews, I want to write a few monologues that relate to the themes that emerges from the interviews and how it relates to my own identity. Actually, it is not 9:10pm and I just thought that these monologues will be based on the interviews! I am going to try(hopefully successfully) to bring to life the people I interview through a creative art form.

As for a class project I do believe a website where our work could continue to live is a great idea. We are going to learn from each other and that is a powerful goal.

 The question that has been racing through my head is why did I take this class? The answer is simple and straightforward on the surface, but like an iceberg, it is much deeper than I even know at this point. Despite growing up in public housing the question of race and identity was not one I struggled with. I grew up in a mostly African American and Hispanic neighborhood and did not know that to many I seemed different and that my friends seemed different. I did not know about income inequality, unequal educational inequality, globalization, the destruction of manufacturing jobs, redlining, race riots, and all the other major events that helped create the disparity that existed right in my own city of Elizabeth NJ. Yes, a part of me knew that just down the street there existed a different reality from the one I was experiencing, but I did not internalize none of this. Instead, I was just an average bilingual kid who was always happy.

I can still vividly remember the day I had my first internalization of racial differences. I was in the library checking out a book about Greek civilization and my Godmother asked me why I was checking out that book. I stated that it looked really interesting, and then she proceeded to ask why I didn't study ancient native Caribbean civilizations or something more of "my" people. I reacted with shock and horror. I stated that ALL civilizations were of my people. I didn't understand why they were not my people just because their skin tone was lighter than me. She told me that "they" would never accept me. While today I, more or less, understand what my Godmother was trying to do and express, it still does not take away from the sense of rejection I felt when she stated those words that I would never belong. It would be many years before I experienced discrimination and racism that brought me back to that memory. Was my Godmother right? Not completely, but I would be a liar to say that I do not question my ability to belong because of superficial reasons that should not matter. While today I can stand proudly as a minority man, there were times where I wished I was more of the norm and wished for the average childhood depicted in shows like The Wonder Years. Those shows painted a picture that was so different of my own reality and for a long time all I wanted was to have that reality.

I took this class not only to learn about the power of language in race and ethnicity, but in reality I took this class in order to discover about my place and my identity. I feel as if my experiences growing up give a human portrait to the issues of identity and race. This portrait is what is currently inspiring me to think of an individual project that involves interviewing various people from my old neighborhood and gauging how they have actually dealt with issues of race, language, and identity. Having a theoretical framework is always useful, but I want to discover how the issues of race, language, and identity play out in every day life. In the classroom we are currently in contains over 20 human beings that have had their own personal journeys in which they have dealt with or not death with issues of race and identity. Perhaps by I interviewing them I would discover not only about their identities but about my very own identity as well. This individual project could then evolve into self portraits about ourselves that we can put together to present to the world......Why did I take this class? I took this class in order to discover more my own story and the stories of others. In short, I took this class in order to get a closer look at the human condition.