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Race and Racial Identity Are Social Constructs
immigration to the united states in 1870s to 1915 from europe
racial and social identity
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One aspect of Oralia’s life that struck me as quite different was her families quick acceptance of her future husband Julio Peralta. Based on history and individuals discussed throughout the course and Julio’s different background, I expected more opposition from her family. As we have seen throughout the course, acceptance of a spouse with a different look or complexion has not always been so easily accepted by families. For instance, we can again refer back to the case of Rachel in The Color of Water who was shunned by her family and even forgotten about due to her intimate relationships with African Americans throughout her life. Some could argue that perhaps Julio’s acceptance by Oralia’s Mother, Father, and family could have been due to Julio Mexican ancestry which was similar to her mother’s who also lived in Mexico before emigrating to the United Sates. However, as history has taught us, complexion has often been a major factor as well in deciding whether or not an individuals will be accepted into a family. This perhaps stems from social constructs such as the Spanish Castes System in the 16th century which would separate the Spanish in the social order from the often darker pigmented individuals of the Americas. Perhaps because of social constructs such as the Spanish Caste System, the history of America has often shown us that in American society a lighter complexion would often mean an overall higher status in society while a darker complexion is often associated with a lower socio-economical status. As stated earlier Oralia states that her family was skeptical of this relationship believing that often Mexican immigrants often lived two lives, one in America with their a girlfriend and one in Mexico with another family....
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... common in American history read about in this course. Both these similarities and differences have helped shape her identify as an individual of mixed race for the better.
Bibliography
Hodes, Martha Elizabeth. Sex, Love, Race: Crossing Boundaries in North American History. New York, New York UP. 1999. Print.
Hodes, Martha. “The Mercurial Nature and Abiding Power of Race: The Transnational Family Story.” The American Historical Review 108.1 (2003): 84-118. Print.
McBride, James. The Color of Water: A Black Man’s Tribute to His White Mother. New York: Riverhead. 1996. Print.
McIntosh, Craig and Gorden H Hanson. “The Great Mexican Emigration.” The Review of Economics and Statistics, 92.4 (2010):798-810.
Sanchez, Georgia J. Becoming Mexican American: Ethnicity, Culture, and Identity in Chicago and Los Angeles, 1900-1945. New York: Oxford UP, 1993. Print.
In the eighteenth Century, Colonial European and Mexican artists were fascinated with the emergence of racial blending within the Spaniard bloodline. Works of art began displaying pieces that portrayed three major groups that inhabited the colony— Indians, Spaniards, Africans and other ethnicities. This new genre of painting was known as Casta painting and portrayed colonial representations of racial intermarriage and their offspring. Traditionally Casta paintings were a pictorial genre that was often commissioned by Spaniards as souvenirs upon their arrival from New Spain (Mexico). And yet, why would such works have so much fascination despite its suggestive theme? It is clear that Casta paintings display interracial groups and couples, but they seem to have a deeper function when it comes to analyzing these works. These paintings demonstrate that casta paintings were created to display racial hierarchies within the era. They depict the domestic life of interracial marriages and systematically categorized through a complete series of individual paintings. It is clear that the fascination of these works reflected the categorizing of new bloodline that have been emerging and displays these characters in a manner that demonstrates the social stereotypes of these people by linking them with their domestic activities and the items that surround them as well. Despite the numerous racial stereotypes that are illustrated in these works, casta paintings construct racial identities through visual representations.
The author was born in Washington D.C. on May 1, 1901. Later, he received a bachelor’s degree from Williams College where he studied traditional literature and explored music like Jazz and the Blues; then had gotten his masters at Harvard. The author is a professor of African American English at Harvard University. The author’s writing
James McBride’s mother, like Tateh before her, clasps the values of education and religion close to her; according to McBride’s depiction in The Color of Water, she enforces them with an iron fist, instilling them in her children as Tateh did to her, Dee-Dee, and Sam, though more out of tough love than for pride. Despite carrying on Tateh’s materialistic tendencies, Ruth keeps the balance by inheriting his recognition of the predominance of education and religion over wealth in terms of resulting quality of life. Ruth’s and Tateh’s worldview is passed on from generation to generation, from parent to child, like all values, whether or not parent and child consent to the continuation of the morals’ journey through time.
When Anne Moody was a young child she was not entirely aware of the segregation between whites and blacks. However, as time went on she began to see the differences between being black and being white and what that meant. One of the contrasts that Anne first encountered was that whites generally had better
McBride, James. The Color of Water: a Black Man's Tribute to His White Mother. New York: Riverhead, 1996. Print.
The novel “The Color of Family Ties”, by Naomi Gerstel and Natalia Sarkisian, through their research they found out that the ratio of disorganized family for Black and Latino/a families are higher than White families. That white families are more nuclear, which means a couple with their dependent children. In contrast, Black and Latino/a families has a high ratio that they often live with their extended families (Naomi and Sarkisian 47). This novel ties in to the “Looking for Work” novel because Gerstel and Sarkisian shows a research regarding how Latino families are disorganized, and the way how Mexican families lives are just like Gary’s family, the extended family. We know that Gary’s family are disorganized, but nevertheless, Gary has extended families members who he lives together with. Gary’s family showed solidarity love by just help each other out and spending time together. “We ran home for my bike and when my sister found out that we were going swimming, she started to cry because she didn’t have fifteen cents but only an empty Coke bottle”(24 Soto). This is Gary’s cousin Debra who needs fifteen cents to go to the swimming pool, of course Gary and his friend helped Debra out. Other time that showed Gary’s family love is that Gary’s mother always let Gary’s play with his friends outside, not because she does not love Gary is because
In The Color of Water, author James McBride writes both his autobiography and a tribute to the life of his mother, Ruth McBride. In the memoirs of the author’s mother and of himself, they constantly face discrimination from their race in certain neighborhoods and of their religious beliefs. The trials and tribulations faced by these two characters have taught readers universally that everyone faces difficulties in life, but they can all be surmounted.
In D. W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation the interactions between black and white characters represent Griffith’s view of an appropriate racial construct in America. His ideological construction is white dominance and black subordination. Characters, such as the southern Cameron’s and their house maid, who interact within these boundaries, are portrayed as decent people. Whereas characters who cross the line of racial oppression; such as Austin Stoneman, Gus and Silas Lynch, are portrayed as bad. Both Lynch and Lydia Brown, the mulatto characters, are cast in a very negative light because they confuse the ideological construct the most. The mixing of races puts blacks and whites on a common ground, which, in Griffith’s view, is a big step in the wrong direction. Griffith portrays how the relationship between blacks and whites can be good only if the color line and positions of dominance and subordination are maintained. Through the mulatto characters he illustrates the danger that blurring the color line poses to American society.
Martínez, Elizabeth Sutherland. 1998. De Colores Means all of us: Latina Views for a Multi-Colored Century. U.S.: South End Press.
When relating the history of her grandmother, Meema, for example, the author first depicts Meema’s sisters as “yellow” and Meema’s grandfather and his family as “white.” When the two families meet, the author has few words for their interactions, stating that their only form of recognition was “nodding at [them] as they met.” The lack of acknowledgment the narrator depicts in this scene, particularly between those of differing skin pigmentations, would indicate a racial divide permeating the society in which
I can personally resonate with Anzaldua is trying to convey to her audience. Although I identify as heterosexual Latino male Anzaldua sums it perfectly, in the following quote. "If you're a person of color, those expectations take on more pronounced nuances due to the traumas of racism and colonization"(65
Honour was a principle that members of colonial society protected fiercely but whether one’s bloodline automatically inherited respect was debatable. The diverse society of ten required the judicial system to settle when these interests collided. During the colonial period, the defining characteristic of Latin American society was its highly stratified society. The rights afforded to the different social classes differed greatly depending on which class they belong. Those with pure Spanish blood were the elites of the society. Beneath them on the social hierarchy lay the plebians, people with mixed racial backgrounds including creoles and mulattoes. Next were the “indios” (indigenous
Hughes, Langston. The Negro mother, and other dramatic recitations. Freeport, N.Y.: Books for Libraries Press, 1971. Print.
Sandra Cisneros’s “Never Marry a Mexican” introduces readers to Clemencia. Cisneros eludes Clemencia as a woman who appears proud of her Mexican heritage, yet knows not how the slanderous phrase “Never marry a Mexican” uttered from her well-meaning mother’s trusty lips about Clemencia’s own Mexican father negatively foreshadows her seedy life and gloomy world perspective later down her destructive journey of adulthood.
Racism has been a major part of America’s historical narrative and is apparent in not only current media but in literature from a century ago. W.E.B. Du Bois’ vignette, “Of the Passing of the First Born” is written about W.E.B. Du Bois’ infant son that passed away, and the struggle to decide where to lay his son to eternal rest in a place that would accept and love him, even though he was black. Similarly, Kate Chopin’s “Desirée’s Baby”, reflects upon the discrimination that a husband, Armand, shows towards his wife, Desirée, and their newborn child after he becomes convinced that they are from African descendance. Armand is proven wrong when he reads a letter explaining that he was, in fact, the one with an African lineage not his wife; however, this news has come too late as his wife has already taken her own life after being