"It is better to die standing up than to live kneeling down.” Emiliana Zapata. It is easy to live life kneeling down, and it is frightening to take the initiative to act against many and to fight for the rights of our community. This quote constantly reminds me of why I need to go to graduate school and further my education in learning about oppressions.
As a freshman at Cal-State Fullerton I began to ask my self where inequalities come from and what causes them, why does society use the term minorities and why minorities are oppress. While working at the Volunteer & Service Center I was invited to join a group that plan an event called the Social Justice Summit. This event was a grassroots event that helped raise awareness about different inequalities and oppressions in the community to over 500 community members. With this event, I understood that there isn’t one solid answer that exists about what causes inequalities and oppressions. And even now, the only thing that is clear is that people need to know what is happening in the world. This is why I want to continue my education in the field of Ethnic Studies. Specifically I want to find out the struggles of the Chicano/a population. Find out about pass movements and what we can learn about those movements, what we can improve about those movements, to help the Chicano population today.
I have a passion in learning about Activism and reading and continuing my studies around my passion to learn about the oppressions and inequalities among the Chicano/a population. I have the need to learn how to come up with a way to end some of the barriers and struggles among this population, but in order to do this I need to learn more about the community. I have the ambition to furthe...
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...d of struggles does a Chicana face when they pursue a college degree. I want to learn how a Chicana lesbian challenge culture and what type of barriers, inequalities and struggles do the Chicana lesbians face. I want to research the social problems that women face when they don’t challenge gender roles. For example is Domestic Violence a culture problems cause by gender roles among the population because women are being taught to be submissive to men. My interest it’s in understanding how some of these challenges, barriers, oppressions, and inequalities play in to role when a Chicana tries to pursue a college degree and make a career for her self in the Unites States.
Finding a way to extend what I had learned at the undergrad level is extremely important. The answers that I’m looking for in regards to gender will only be found by pursuing a graduate degree.
Chicana Power is a book written by Maylei Blackwell; the book was published by the University of Texas Press Austin in 2011. It tells the story of the Chicana feminism development. Blackwell does a startling job of placing the Chicana movement into a much bigger context. Not only does she provide what she thinks, but along the books, she includes the stories of others. She talks about the social factors and she also expresses the political factors that helped with the rise of the movement.
Minorities, African American and Latinos, in America are faced with challenges daily in white society. There are many obstacles minorities experience such as: being judged based on race, stereotyped, or worst being discriminated against by peers. Sadly, minorities can’t seem to escape to harsh realities society created. Citizens in the white society categorize humans by their race to socially construct the achievements and legitimate political goals. Minorities struggles with these goals due to the challenges they experience. The location of these challenges can occur in various places including on the job and/or at school. You may be under the impression that such challenges occurs within the adult minority groups. However, this applies to minority children as well. When the children are face with
The Chicano Movement was a time that pressed forth for the equal opportunity of the Latino community and proved to America that Mexican Americans were a force to be reckoned with. In the documentary Latino Americans – Episode 5: Prejudice and Pride, it centralizes on the success of the oppressed community through significant leaders in that period. Union activists César Chavez, along with Dolores Huerta, playwright Luis Valdez, teacher Sal Castro, US Congressman Herman Ballido, and political activist José Ángel Gutiérrez all contributed to egalitarianism of Latinos across the nation. This documentary reflects on the importance of equal prospects within the workplace, the academic setting, and the social and political features in society.
A question that every high school student is faced with is: “What extracurricular activities so you participate in?” Some can answer confidently while others are slapped with a moment of sudden realization. These people are just floating along with the crowd, with no driving force or motivation. What I believe differentiates me from my peers and gives me a sense of uniqueness, is what I do outside of my academia. Out of the deluge of activities that are available, Latinos In Action is the one that I feel the most passionate about and shapes my persona the most.
My object of study is Hispanic women experience inequality in education due to the social constructs of subordination of women and Hispanic culture. Historically women have been conditioned with a patriarchal system, which a woman’s domain should be at home, to be a homemaker. The ideology of inferiority can and will justify the deprivation of natural born rights. During the progressive area and women’s rights movement women wanted to be seen as people, they wanted to have rights to own property, negotiate wages, legal documents, access to birth control, and the right to vote, those women who had the voice to deal with these issues were white upper and middle class women. During this time Hispanic women, amongst other minorities, were fighting battles against racism, segregation, exploitation in the work force, access to a good education, and oppression through Hispanic culture. It is not just a struggle to be Hispanic overcoming the inequalities within the education system but to be a Hispanic women within the education system has greater disadvantages. This case study will investigate what forces contribute to the inequality within the education system for Hispanic women in the United States.
In American history, civil rights movements have played a major role for many ethnics in the United States and have shape American society to what it is today. The impact of civil rights movements is tremendous and to an extent, they accomplish the objectives that the groups of people set out to achieve. The Mexican-American Civil Rights Movement, more commonly known as the Chicano Movement or El Movimiento, was one of the many movements in the United States that set out to obtain equality for Mexican-Americans (Herrera). At first, the movement had a weak start but eventually the movement gained momentum around the 1960’s (Herrera). Mexican-Americans, also known as Chicanos, began to organize in order to eliminate the social barriers that prevented them from progressing in American society (Bloom 47). Throughout the years of the Chicano Movement, Mexican-Americans had a “desire to integrate into the mainstream culture while preserving their own identity” (Bloom 47). The Chicano Civil Rights Movement was a progressive era when Mexican-Americans had goals that they wanted to accomplish and sought reform in order to be accepted as a part of the United States.
Salinas, C. (2004). "Creating Successful Academic Programs for Chicana/o High School Migrant Students: The Role of Advocate Educators." The High School Journal 87(4): 54-65.
In this world we are constantly being categorized by our race and ethnicity, and for many people it’s hard to look beyond that. Even though in the past many stood up for equality and to stop racism and discrimination, it still occurs. In this nation of freedom and equality, there are still many people who believe that their race is superior to others. These beliefs are the ones that destroy our nation and affect the lives of many. The people affected are not limited by their age group, sex, social status, or by their education level.
In the 1970’s when Chicanos began to revolt and fight for what they believed in, there was a lot of violence happening. The riot in which there was “one resulting death, fifty injuries, and righty arrests demonstrates all the chaos and rioting that the Chicano community was experiencing. For many years Chicanos were considered the silent or forgotten majority. “This situation was to change dramatically in the mid- and late-1960s as an independent movement developed in response to the specific oppression of the Chicano people, which had a dynamic and revolutionary logic of its own”. Throughout this time there was also much progress occurring for the Chicanos. ‘They had rose from 652,879 in 1960 to 1,228,594 in 1970, an increase of almost 90 percent”, Chicanos were no longer becoming the minority but they were now becoming the majority. There was progress for the Chicano in school and in the work field. They were no longer ignored as they were in the past years. There were more Spanish-speaking teachers and more educational programs for the Chicanos. Although the Chicano community had advanced and was starting to receive more fair treatment, there was still a lot that needed to be done. There were no associations for Chicanos, and they were not really represented in congress either. In the 1960’s the advancement was noticeable and it was good for the Chicano community, but in the 1970’s the progress that had occurred had began to erode. Although progress in education had been made still only one fourth of the Latino population had a high school diploma. The jobs had became more available but they were very limited to the Chicano. They were being offered low paying jobs or agricultural jobs. The Chicano community was very underrepre...
However, understanding the feminist movement is to understand that there has been exclusion of certain groups of women; therefore, leaving out certain issues that those women are still needing to fight for on their own. Women of color had to fight and continue to fight to bring their issues to the attention of mainstream feminists. Latina women’s issues were not being represented in the issues that mainstream feminist were advocating for. Latina feminism includes issues regarding their culture, language, religion, and education and much more. Through the book, Chicana Feminist Thought: The Basic Historical Writings, edited by Alma M.Garcia, there is further evidence about the issues that Latina women experience. In the chapter ,“La Femenista,” by Anna NietoGomez, she states that “In order to establish themselves as a legitimate interest group or groups, the Chicana femenista has continually had to justify, clarify and educate people in the political philosophical issues of the Chicana woman” (NietoGomez 87). The fact that Latinas even had to clarify their issues shows that their issues were being ignored or not being considered important. Latinas had to prove that their issues were far different from the mainstream feminist, yet still important. NietoGomez states that, “Philosophical conflicts arose from those who felt that the Chicano movement did not have
The information acquired over the semester, whether through text or visual media, vividly brought the importance of knowing how one’s gender is identified and developed.
When comparing Charles Tatum’s and Gloria Anzaldúa’s narrations of Chicano discriminated history, they both have viewpoints that are essential for the audience to know and possess different viewpoints that need to be understood. Tatum narrates Chicanos inequities in his viewpoint in 3rd person while Anzaldúa experienced the cruel treatment in first person point of view. After analyzing both texts, I found some important topics that need to be shared with the audience and why it’s currently not taught in U.S. schools as history.
I was aware of these oppressions and have often times struggled with what I can do individually to work towards alleviating these oppressions. The Next Steps portion of the chapter on racism really outlined methods of actions that could be applied to all forms of oppression. One method entitled “FLEXing Cross- cultural Communications,” outlines productive communication, depersonalization, and open- mindedness when it comes to understanding and practicing competency. This model serves as a tool to motivate action to those form other cultures in ways that in the end everyone can
Women and gender studies contribute greatly to our understanding of the social and cultural world we inhabit. Studying the complex issues of this field has instituted many key insights. Two major insights that positively affected our society are the awareness through learning and through this awareness activism that can ensue.
Communities with Differing Student Racial & Socio-economic Contexts”. The Civil Rights Project Proyecto Derechos Civiles (2012):. Virgina CommonWealth University and Pennsylvania State University. Web. 21 Apr. 2014