Before any further analysis can continue, the key concept of intergenerational historical trauma must be defined. The credit for the creation and the development of the theory does not fall within the Chicano community, but with the American Indian community. Dr. Maria Yellow Horse Brave Heart first coined the term “historical trauma” in 1985 (Brave Heart 2005). The term encompasses time from initial contact to the present day. The original action committed the first time colonizers set foot on the Americas, which includes: theft, genocide, rape, forced religious conversions, lose of languages, and cultural and spiritual teachings (Rodriguez & Gonzales 2005), have left marks on the oppressed which have become engraved into genetic memory. Its effects can still be seen within the Chicano community today, and despite the sufferings, we have survived, but with scars of the past that continue to bleed.
The Symptoms
It becomes important to acknowledge the existence and validity of this theory in order to provide an understanding of where many of the effects originate from, a necessary part to make it possible to cure. Brave Heart states that the symptoms of historical trauma are similar to PTSD (military definition), but the difference stands in that the trauma has not been caused by personal experience alone, but as a communal experience over a span of generations (Brave Heart 2005). Some of the symptoms she associates with the trauma include: survivor guilt, depression and psychic numbing (under which substance abuse can be categorized), compensatory fantasies, and internalized oppression (Brave Heart 2005). To this I would also include one other symptom identified by Patrisia Gonzalez, which is: rejection- feeling rejected by Latin...
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...ted by the oppressor. Then, when an individual becomes familiar with the truth, “biased and ignorant classmates and teachers who are ethnocentric” (Torres 2006, p.33) shut this person down and cause shame that “can act as a form of social control even in the absence of direct oppression” (Torres 2006, p.33). With this relationship, it comes to light that through a system controlled by the dominant culture instead of the whole, which is the “minority”, the cycle of colonial inequality thrives. While some think of schooling as a source of “advancement and empowerment [for] families and communities” (Piazarro 2004, p.157), it is also important to note that they are returning to and accepting a system put into place by the oppressor. To conclude whether it can work requires an extensive analysis that is not the focus of this paper, but as a discussion for another time.
In Subtractive Schooling: US-Mexican Youth and the Politics of Caring, Angela Valenzuela investigates immigrant and Mexican American experiences in education. Valenzuela mentions differences in high schools between U.S born youth and immigrants such as how immigrants she interviewed seemed to achieve in school as they feel privileged to achieve secondary education. However, she found that her study provided evidence of student failure due to schools subtracting resources from these youths. Both are plagued by stereotypes of lacking intellectual and linguistic traits along with the fear of losing their culture. As a Mexican American with many family members who immigrated to the U.S to pursue a higher education, I have experience with Valenzuela’s
The depiction of Native Americans to the current day youth in the United States is a colorful fantasy used to cover up an unwarranted past. Native people are dressed from head to toe in feathers and paint while dancing around fires. They attempt to make good relations with European settlers but were then taken advantage of their “hippie” ways. However, this dramatized view is particularly portrayed through media and mainstream culture. It is also the one perspective every person remembers because they grew up being taught these views. Yet, Colin Calloway the author of First Peoples: A Documentary Survey of American Indian History, wishes to bring forth contradicting ideas. He doesn’t wish to disprove history; he only wishes to rewrite it.
The systematic racism and discrimination in America has long lasting effects that began back when Europeans first stepped foot on American soil is still visible today but only not written into the law. This racism has lead to very specific consequences on the Native people in today’s modern world, and while the racism is maybe not as obvious it is still very present. These modern Native peoples fight against the feeling of community as a Native person, and feeling entirely alone and not a part of it. The poem “The Reservation” by Susan Cloud and “The Real Indian Leans Against” by Chrystos examine the different effects and different settings of how their cultures survived but also how so much was lost for them within their own identity.
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 conclusion, Kozal presented his article to make people aware of the social injustices in this country, resulting in inferior school environments, and poor educational structures, compared to wealthier/non-minority communities. Though it may seem to be unspoken, it's yet so clear that it's "Still Separate, Still Unequal.”
One of the leading Jewish theologians and a philosopher in the 20th century, Abraham Joshua Heschel, once said, "Racism is a man's gravest threat to man - the maximum of hatred for a minimum of reason." When the word -racism- is mentioned, ever wonder what a person thinks? Racism has been with us throughout eternity and has caused a majority of people in the America to be hurt and feel discriminated. The first people to ever experience this violence was the Native Americans, followed by black Africans and later on to other various degrees (Ponds). To heal racism, expanding ones capacity to experience the reality of others is a way of understanding how it feels to be discriminated because of the differences in race (Honour). Many people believed that the nation was entering into a color-blind society where racism could be healed if not then totally dismissed with the election of Barack Obama as president in 2012 (Ponds). With this prevalent going on in our society, questions arise: how do we teach our children not to be racists? How can we prevent this from going on? Teaching this involves taking one step at a time and going from there to the next level. By evaluating the two articles, "The Myth of the Latin Women," by Judith Ortiz and "Always Living in Spanish" by Marjorie Agosin, we can identify two sources that will help us understand how one can struggle and survive through living in a world full of racism.
Spring, Joel H.. Deculturalization and the struggle for equality: a brief history of the education of dominated cultures in the United States. 3rd ed. Boston: McGraw-Hill, 2001. Print.
Students will partake in a seven week and seven lesson series on marginalized groups in America, these groups include- Mexican Americans, Asian Americans, African Americans, Native Americans, Women, Arab Americans, and Children. Lessons will take place the last two months of school, once we reach the 1960’s in American history. This is in an effort to have students realize that there is not merely one group that has seen racism, discrimination, and a near destruction of their culture. The following lesson will be on Native American portion of the unit. The goal of this lesson is for students to understand that each period from colonization to self- determination had causes of historical context and can still be felt today by many Native Americans.
In public schools, students are subjected to acts of institutional racism that may change how they interact with other students. In the short story “Drinking Coffee Elsewhere” by Packer, readers are allowed to view firsthand how institutionalized racism affects Dina, who is the main character in the story. Packer states “As a person of color, you shouldn’t have to fit in any white, patriarchal system” (Drinking Coffee Elsewhere 117). The article “Disguised Racism in Public Schools” by Brodbelt states “first, the attitudes of teachers toward minority group pupils” (Brodbelt 699). Like the ideas in the article “Disguised Racism in Public Schools” Dina encounters institutionalized oppression on orientation day at Yale.
By the beginning of the twentieth century Mexican Americans found themselves in situations that closely resembled that of American Indians. According to Healey, both ethnic groups were relatively small in size only about .5% of the total population and shared similar characteristics. Both groups are distinguished by cultural and language differences from those of the dominant ethnic groups, and both were conquered, imp...
Native Americans have undergone a horrific past of genocide, discrimination, forced acculturation, miscommunication, and misunderstanding. They were frequently dehumanized and stripped of basic human rights. Treated as “savages” they were herded into areas of confinement and robbed of their language, culture, and way of life. In many instances of genocide, experts have noted a type of historical trauma that may be passed down through families, known as generational trauma. While the potential effects of this concept are not proven, the stories, images, and memories of thousands of Native Americans continue to be shared with their children, thus perpetuating, and never forgetting the pain and embarrassment that their people have experienced.
Native American’s place in United States history is not as simple as the story of innocent peace loving people forced off their lands by racist white Americans in a never-ending quest to quench their thirst for more land. Accordingly, attempts to simplify the indigenous experience to nothing more than victims of white aggression during the colonial period, and beyond, does an injustice to Native American history. As a result, historians hoping to shed light on the true history of native people during this period have brought new perceptive to the role Indians played in their own history. Consequently, the theme of power and whom controlled it over the course of Native American/European contact is being presented in new ways. Examining the evolving
In An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States, historian Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz’s reexamines the American historical record and moves it passed the typical narratives of colonialism, revolution, and American exceptionalism. Dunbar-Ortiz’s analysis will impact the field of Native Studies and even general United States history with its examination and focus on settler colonialism as a genocidal policy. It is, as Dunbar-Ortiz argues, impossible to write American history without the acknowledgment of Indigenous peoples. Dunbar-Ortiz shatters the myth of “free land” and conquered Natives. She instead focuses on “the absence of a colonial framework (7),” which she believes is the reason that most historians overlook Indigenous history. In other words, historians need to view colonization as an ongoing process and not a
Lacking the necessary support, many start to devalue the importance of doing well in school deciding that perhaps school isn’t part of their identity. In Susan’s case she’s eliciting multiple forms of subordination, and within each dimension she’s being subjective to different types of oppression; racial oppression, gender oppression, and class oppression, she’s experiencing cultural alienation and isolation and is not only based on her ethnicity as a Latina but is also influenced by how she is treated as a female, as a member of a certain socioeconomic class, and in relation to her English language proficiency, and even her perceived immigration status. In this sense, students like Susan experience different forms of discrimination or marginalization that stems from
Segregation in educational institutions taking place in the United States is not often talked about. People may consider apartheid schooling taking place presently to a nation that does not respect basic human rights. Thus, the injustices taking place in public schools are not easily classified because it is commonplace to many. It can be argued that apartheid schooling was never completely dismantled in the United States. Jonathan Kozol’s book The Shame of the Nation (2005) provides evidence and insight to apartheid within the educational system that children are currently experiencing. The structure in children’s curriculum, the way they are spoken to as well as the funding public schools are funded are examples to the inequalities that children face. Conceptually, structural violence is what keeps educational injustices to recur.