The episode, “Who Is ‘Us’, Anyway?”, of NPR’s Code Switch explores the question, “Shouldn’t you help out your own community first?”. It portrays the powers of the internet, under the influence of celebrity figures, in accentuating issues of race and equality. In this particular case, Latino immigrant, José Garcia, was deported after 30 years of living in the United States. He was a husband, father, and law upholding non-citizen, and so he was unfailingly granted a stay of deportation until one day, he was unawarely detained and forced to buy a one-way ticket to Mexico. His departure was recorded on Facebook live, and picked up nationally via major news stations including CNN and the Washington Post. This gained the attention of American rapper, Hakeem Seriki, better known as Chamillionaire. And in response to the backlash his involvement generated, he made his case on the matter. …show more content…
He is responsible for launching Robin’s Heart-Foundation for Hurricane Harvey relief, and investing in a number of promising start-up companies. So, it should not be surprising that he contacted the journalist responsible for Garcia’s story, and asked that he be connected with the family so that he could offer them financial support. It was not long after the journalist posted a screenshot of this email on his twitter account that Chamillionaire’s inquiry went viral. It fostered an array of mixed emotions from the public, a large number of them concerns about whether or not there was a black family he could have reached out and offered assistance to. Guest speaker, Arianna, suggests that the backlash was based on the stereotypes that the Latino and African American communities have about one
The United States has often been referred to as a melting pot. Whether or not that statement is an accurate representation of the denizen of the United States, it still carries with it the appropriate connotation. The United States is a mixture of many different peoples, cultures, and traditions. For millions of people, that means that they identify with the culture of the country they come from, as well as the culture of the United States. This causes feelings of isolation and discomfort for people experience these potentially conflicting cultural identities. In the poems “Legal Alien” by Pat Mora and “The Translator at the Reception for Latin American Writers” by Julio Marzán, this theme is explored in great depth. Throughout both poems, the use of diction, irony, and form emphasize the poets’ feelings of isolation as a direct result of conflicting cultural identifies.
According to Stephen B. Bright, many of the men, women, and children sent to prison in the United States everyday, are processed through courts without legal representation that is indispensable to a fair trial, a reliable verdict and a just sentence. We see many examples of this everyday. “A poor person arrested by police may languish in jail for days, weeks or months before seeing a lawyer for the first time” (Bright 6). Once convicted a poor person can face years in prison, or even be executed without ever having a lawyer present. The concepts of crime can be defined differently in different societies and can be classified according to race ethnic, gender, sexuality class, and religious identifications (Bright 6). Common targets of this “poverty-to-prison” cycle can be seen in When a Heart Turns Solid Rock by Timothy Black. The book shows how schools, jobs, the streets, and prisons have shaped the lives and choices of poor Puerto Rican boys at the turn of the twenty- first century. Rather than using a model of urban poverty that blame the poor for their poverty, Black instead focuses, through ethnography, on the social forces that affect the individual lives of three urban Puerto Rican brothers: Julio, Fausto, and Sammy. As viewed in the book, many targets for the prison system are poor African American and Latino men. People that come from poor neighborhoods are at a higher risks of being incarcerated.
Kavanaugh begins by introducing us to Maria, a woman who, due to her illegal immigration 25 years ago, has been torn apart from her family and deported to Ciudad Juárez, a city that has witnessed 600 crimes against women like Maria in the past 15 years. Kavangaugh’s introduction works to exploit the negative aspects of the American government’s current deportation system and how it can, knowingly, separate families and destroy the lives of productive individuals within our society. As Kavanaugh continues, his second paragraph brings into perspective the scope of the issue, quoting that there are potentially “12 to 14 million “undocumented aliens” (26) residing in the United States. Wh...
Throughout, the documentary one can come to the conclusion that most of these African- Americans who live in this area are being judged as violent and bad people. However this is not the case, many of them are just normal people who are try...
Ariana Vivas was only 9 years old when she handed a note to Illinois Representative Luis Gutiérrez during a press conference an advocacy group had organized. Ariana, like many young Hispanics, had been born in the Unites States. However, her father was part of the recent deportations that countless of undocumented immigrants and family members dread. Ariana’s testimony of her father’s deportation is a common story among children with undocumented parents. The documentary, Immigration Battle, explores the controversial issue over immigration. Immigration Battle takes you inside the halls of Congress to give you a perspective on the fight over immigration, the debate, the politics, as well as how Washington really works.
Harvest Of Shame, an interesting and touching black and white documentary from the early 1960’s, documents and exposes the deploring lives of thousands of American migrant cultural workers narrated and dissected by one of the best and first American broadcast journalists called Edward Roscoe Murrow. The principal objective of this movie is not only to show the poor and miserable lives that all of these people live, but to let all the other Americans who are above these workers on the social and wealth scale know that the people who pick up their fruits, vegetables, and grains have no voice, no power, and no help to battle the inequities and mistreatment they receive.
A mother sees her children off to school at the school bus stop; however, they would never see each other again. The mother’s trip to the immigration check-in has caused a dramatic change in both her’s and her family’s lives. A story such as this, one where a parent is taken away and deported, is far too common in the U.S.A. An unsympathetic system of deportation has torn many families apart and has thrown away all the effort that immigrants have put into coming to America. Throughout the novel Enrique’s Journey by Sonia Nazario, a young boy named Enrique struggles to immigrate to the U.S. and faces many obstacles that infringe on his right to immigrate. The right to immigrate is threatened both in the U.S. and around the world by corrupt dysfunctional
Sonia Nazario, herself an immigrant, was aware of the acrimonious debate on undocumented migration through her work as a prominent Los Angeles journalist. The issue was brought to a head when her housekeeper’s son arrived unannounced from Guatemal...
Many families, composed of undocumented individuals, across the U.S, live in constant oppression and fear that at given moment their lives can completely change if a loved one is deported. This continuous cycle of devaluating the undocumented had caused frustration in hundreds of individuals who now join the fight against inadequate undocumented rights. In the book Dreams Deported many share their stories of resistance against the system that tears apart families and shatters dreams through deportation. The story of Hareth Andrade is one of strong resilience against deportation that portrays anti-hegemonic ideas and actions. Hereth and her younger sister came to the U.S in 2001 under tourist Visas but they stayed long after they expired thus
It has been nearly 75 years since the zoot suit riots first occurred in los angeles, and the emotional and physical toll that it had on hundreds of mexican-american citizens makes the event unforgettable. The brutality and discrimination we faced by thousands of white americans, and the lack of intervention by police officers made me truly understand how prevalent racism was during the twentieth century. The lack of interest that thousands of white americans had in helping the chicano immigrants was apparent, they wanted to put an end to the zoot-suiters who were potential criminals in their eyes merely because of the fashion choices we made. Ultimately, I believe that, although life has changed greatly since the early 1940’s, there are still
The article “The Life of Carlos, an Undocumented New Yorker” exposes the dehumanizing atmosphere Honduras reveals to the population at a young age, causing many teenagers such as Carlos to be in search of a new life in the United States while losing their innocence along the journey to survive. Carlos makes it to the United States, but quickly is thrown to an adult detention center, but temporarily released to be with his U.S. citizen Grandmother. Alexandra Starr’s article is coupled with Edward Keating’s photography of Carlos. Starr’s writing focuses on the story of Carlos which vividly includes many experiences an average person will never experience in their lifetime expect Carlos experienced this all before the age of 20. Carlos’s court
As long as civilizations have been around, there has always been a group of oppressed people; today the crucial problem facing America happens to be the discrimination and oppression of Mexican immigrants. “Mexican Americans constitute the oldest Hispanic-origin population in the United States.”(57 Falcon) Today the population of Mexican’s in the United States is said to be about 10.9%, that’s about 34 million people according to the US Census Bureau in 2012. With this many people in the United States being of Mexican descent or origin, one would think that discrimination wouldn’t be a problem, however though the issue of Mexican immigrant oppression and discrimination has never been a more prevalent problem in the United States before now. As the need for resolve grows stronger with each movement and march, the examination of why these people are being discriminated against and oppressed becomes more crucial and important. Oppression and Anti-discrimination organizations such as the Freedom Socialist Organization believe that the problem of discrimination began when America conquered Mexican l...
“Humans are born selfish, savage, feral little beasts, no different from wolves or tigers,” according to conservative journalist John Hawkins. In America, being an outsider, or other times called an immigrant, one gets treated differently, than they would if one is a full-fledged citizen. As an immigrant, one does not have an opportunity to live as a normal United States citizen because of those selfish human beings. The memoir Funny in Farsi by Firoozeh Dumas, and the editorial cartoons “Show Me Your Papers” by Mike Luckovich and “Great American Melting Pot” by Richard Crowson all represent the same factors of how immigrants are affected; these different articles and pictures describe the process of how the immigrants are treated differently, whether it is with jobs, with people, or the way others think of them—these topics are just the base of the problem with immigration, all pertaining to the way other U.S. citizens treat immigrants.
There were buildings set on fire and stores looted in a cry of anger and the need for social justice. However, these riots caught national and global attention. As King states in his “Letter from Birmingham Jail”, “.... an injustice anywhere is an injustice everywhere.” With Trayvon’s death a term was coined and for a short time “Black Lives Matter” circled the nation. It was not until another child, Michael Brown, was gunned down by Officer Darren Wilson that the term truly caught fire and spread. Three words, fifteen letters hold so much meaning but unfortunately many people of all races only see the surface value of these words. These words go beyond the black lives that seem to only matter to the media. The Oprahs and Michael Jacksons of the world are of equal importance to little Shaniqua and Tommy in Decatur, Georgia and people fail to see that. Jussie Smollett, actor, stated on a visit to NBCBLK that, “You cannot pick and choose when Black lives
Many Americans take pride in their country’s values: democracy, freedom, equality, and opportunity. One of the ironies of the American vision is that within such a seemingly equal and fair country, there are still several hateful concepts, such as racism, that are deeply rooted in everyday American life. One such example of racial tensions in the United States is displayed in the homeless community of Edgewater Boulevard, San Francisco. In Righteous Dopefiend, Bourgois and Schonberg describe the atmosphere of the Edgewater community and their observations of the racial tensions that exist within it during their time spent there. Although Edgewater is only a small fraction of the United States, the behavior, actions and opinions of its residents