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Essay on institutional discrimination
Essay on institutional discrimination
Essay on institutional discrimination
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Alternative narratives have been used by the Chicanx Community as a mechanism to resist systematic and structuralized racism. The Chicanx community has continuously been subject them to be criminalized and oppressed. Two social issues in the Chicanx community are Street Vending and reproductive rights. Individuals are dehumanized for their identity and their are reproductive rights are violated when women are coerced to sign consent forms and into consuming harmful forms of birth control. The presentations Coyote Hustler and of the band Los Cambalaches along with the film No Mas Bebes, informs systemic and structuralized racism by creating untraditional art that is unique to Chicanx culture and reflective of their experiences. In making works …show more content…
in different forms such as music,dance, and film, it is empowering and helps eliminate the generated oppression and injustice the Lantix community encounters. The Chicanx community is criminalized in a multitude of ways. For instance immigrants are labeled "illegal", which not only translates into making individuals unlawful, but it also dehumanizes undocumented immigrants. In Illegal People How Globalization creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants, author David Bacon states that “One provision of the law, employer sanctions...prohibited the employment of people without an immigration visa allowing them to work...making it illegal for the employer to hire them, the law also made it a crime for those workers to hold a job (Bacon, 5).” The policies created by the United States prevented migrants from working. As a result of making work a crime, migrants are forced into blue-collar jobs like street vending, manufacturing, or custodial work, where they can get away with working without documents like a social security card. This puts undocumented workers in a vulnerable position to be exploited by their employers. In cases like street vending, undocumented workers are again, criminalized when they are simply trying to make an honest living. In efforts to resist the threats caused by criminalizing street vendors, the music video Coyote Hustle was produced.
The music video shows a mom selling fruit with her daughter and the lyrics state: “You will never know what it’s like to be me, you will never see me cry, I will howl at the wind and take my song to the sky, if the still of the night won’t feed me, I will do what I must to survive, there is only so much more one can take, make, break.” The lyrics of the song reveal the obstacles undocumented street vendors encounter living unanimously in the United States, but also the strength and resilience they possess. The title itself “Coyote Hustle” is symbolic as it represents hard working migrants who have come to the United States for a better life. A coyote is opportunistic and can live and adapt to different environments, like immigrant workers. This video brings awareness to street vending and displays how policies like broken window ideologies oppress and target the poor and undocumented Chicanx individuals. In making street vending illegal, it not only threatens the income of thousands of hardworking people, but it helps to perpetuate implications of identifying migrant workers or street vendors as criminals; which creates ethnic hostility towards the Chicanx …show more content…
community. According to Ana Muniz, in Police, Power, and the Production of Racial Boundaries, society views street venders as individuals who bring up violence and disorder in communities. For example it was mentioned that the noise pollution street vendors made by honking their horns and yelling in the streets, “elotes, elotes”, disrupt neighborhoods. These would be examples of the broken window ideologies, which includes small acts of disorder like loitering or tagging that are believed to lead to serious crimes. The criminalization of the chicanx community will is stems gentrification, colorism, and police brutality. This is also explained in Police, Power, and the Production of Racial Boundaries by Ana Muniz. Broken are the hyper policing of young communities of color, criminalization of everyday activities, activities that are normalize Criminalization of street vendors does not stem from gentrification, broken windows ideology, colorism, and police brutality.This is explained Police, Power, and the Production of Racial Boundaries by Ana Muniz. Muniz states, “Of all the threats discussed in the meetings, the targeting of street vendors crystallizes how residents in community groups define danger, community, the role of police, and their relationship to local government” “Community group members have adopted the broken windows ideology and used it for their own ends in attempts to oppose street vending in their area” (Muniz 58). For many communities like Cadillac Corning, gentrification pushed out many generations of individuals. Los Cambalache played jarocho music from Veracruz Mexico outside of retention centers, in jails, and in community events to empower the Chicanx community and promote resistance through their music. They demonstrate their resistance through fandangos. They serve their own community to maintain the resistance going. For instance at the jails, they taught the inmates how to play the guitar and various instruments. They created a beautiful space that united the inmates regardless of their gang affiliations, because in that space they created a community. The work that they do helps to humanize the individuals that are dehumanized through the criminalization of their illegality and crimes. They create a sonic space where inmates are taught skills to resist and uprise. These movements aimed to combat the unjust deportations of many immigrants. Reproductive justice also an issue that has been impacting the Chicanx community.
For decades, Latinos have been targeted as a result of having “too many” children. This was demonstrated in the film “No Mas Bebes”, in the reading “Killing the Black Body ” by Dorothy Roberts and through the presentation of Laura Jimenez, executive director of California Latinas for Reproductive Justice. Reproductive justice is not a word to describe pro choice, but framework and movement created by women of color. California Latinas for Reproductive justice fight for the women’s rights to form families and provide the necessary resources to do so, as well as the right to not have children. Latina women in LA, specifically poor women encounter marginalized community higemics. Dorothy Roberts explains how women’s autonomy over their body was taken from through coercive acts of implementing Norplant in low income Brown urban communities. Roberts describes how reproduction was criminalized when women were either given the option of jail time vs. getting Norplant. This plays into the common narrative of what is known as the “welfare queen”, which implies that poor Black women conceive only to receive more government assistance. Because of these narratives women encounter reproductive injustices such as the implementation of Norplant to halt down their reproduction rates in poor
neighborhoods. Black communities are not the only ones that encounter reproductive injustice, but Chicanx communities as well. In the film, “No Mas Bebes” latina women who gave birth in the Los Angeles County hospital were unknowingly sterilized. Many latina women were deceived and lied too at the time they were giving birth. Doctors and nurses claimed that they would be unable to ensure that their babies would live, unless they signed paperwork for tubal ligation that consented women to permanent sterilization. Language barriers also played a part in aiding to sterilize latinas who gave birth in the Los Angeles County Hospital. To most the term “sterilization” meant a cleaning or the terms “tubes tied” meant that tubes can be untied. The efforts of trying to halt the Latino population removed women’s ability to choose. Roberts argues that reproductive injustice occurs as a result of classism and racism. The making of this documentary reveals the reproductive injustice latinas face and poor Women of color face, as a result of harmful ideologies of latinas having “too many children” or that because individuals are poor they are unfit to raise productive members of society. Even though the case did not win, the production of this documentary opened up the topics of issues of reproductive injustice for discussion. The narratives of these women must be shared to achieve justice and eradicate systemic and systematic racism.
In a story of identity and empowerment, Juan Felipe Herrera’s poem “Borderbus” revolves around two Honduran women grappling with their fate regarding a detention center in the United States after crawling up the spine of Mexico from Honduras. While one grapples with their survival, fixated on the notion that their identities are the ultimate determinant for their future, the other remains fixated on maintaining their humanity by insisting instead of coming from nothingness they are everything. Herrera’s poem consists entirely of the dialogue between the two women, utilizing diction and imagery to emphasize one’s sense of isolation and empowerment in the face of adversity and what it takes to survive in America.
Torres, Hector Avalos. 2007. Conversations with Contemporary Chicana and Chicano Writers. U.S.: University of New Mexico press, 315-324.
She explains how Mexican and Chicano literature, music, and film is alienated; their culture is considered shameful by Americans. They are forced to internalize their pride in their culture. This conflict creates an issue in a dual culture society. They can neither identify with North American culture or with the Mexican culture.
The opening section of this story is a third person narrative. The narrator immediately introduces a poor Chicano family with two young children. A few initial facts that the reader picks up in the opening paragraph are that both parents have to work, the children often play by themselves in back allies and carry their own keys, and the father has warned the children to always avoid the police.
Living in Los Angeles there are social issues such as race, gender, and geography that are still intact from the past. The main one of the social issues that we are still suffering from and living with is the representations of gender in Los Angeles. Gender representations in The Revolt of the Cockroach People by Oscar Zeta Acosta which he discusses about women figure highly but hardly acknowledge them in the midst of a “semi-autobiographical account” of the Chicano Power movement. According to Acosta, women are just the concubines, mourners, and supporters to their men. Acosta barely talks about the powerful women who had worked very hard behind the prospect to promote the case and those that are point out are only described in sexualized
Refusing to be a victim of poverty, Cisneros made a commitment to be the voice of the Chicana culture. In
Armando Rendon in his landmark 1970 wrote the book I am a Chicano. This book is about how activist in the Chicano movement pointed to an empty monolog of the word Chicano. Chicano means an activist. Chicanos describes themselves it was a form of self-affirmation; it reflected the consciousness that their experiences. Chicanos means, nations, histories, and cultures. This book talks about how Mexican American also used the term of Chicano to describe them, and usually in a lighthearted way, or as a term of endearment. In a text it talks how Chicanos haven’t forgotten their Mexican origins, and how they become a unique community. The book talks about how Mexican American community’s long-suffering history of racism and discrimination, disenfranchisement, and economic exploitation in the United States. The
Moraga, Cherrie. “Queer Aztlan: the Reformation of Chicano Tribe,” in The Color of Privilege 1996, ed Aida Hurtado. Ann Arbor: University Michigan Press, 1996.
Nevertheless, Cisneros’s experience with two cultures has given her a chance to see how Latino women are treated and perceived. Therefore, she uses her writing to give women a voice and to speak out against the unfairness. As a result, Cisneros’ story “Woman Hollering Creek” demonstrates a distinction between the life women dream of and the life they often have in reality.
The movie “Walkout” is about the school system in East Los Angeles in the late 1960’s. During this time Mexican Americans were treated unfairly and were seen as second class citizens. The story goes through the different aspects that Mexican American/ Chicano students had to put up with within their own schools. They wanted and deserved equal education, but were constantly shut down by the city. This movie contains the four characteristics of Mexican American Art, which is what gives this movies such a strong and meaningful message.
The eternal endeavor of obtaining a realistic sense of selfhood is depicted for all struggling women of color in Gloria Anzaldua’s “Borderlands/La Frontera” (1987). Anzaldua illustrates the oppressing realities of her world – one that sets limitations for the minority. Albeit the obvious restraints against the white majority (the physical borderland between the U.S. and Mexico), there is a constant and overwhelming emotional battle against the psychological “borderlands” instilled in Anzaldua as she desperately seeks recognition as an openly queer Mestiza woman. With being a Mestiza comes a lot of cultural stereotypes that more than often try to define ones’ role in the world – especially if you are those whom have privilege above the “others”.
In Beggars and Choosers, Rickie Solinger discusses the era of “choice.” He analyzes how reproductive choices of poor women, especially those of color, were strikingly disimilar to the choices of middle class, white women. Solinger’s illustrations emplify how society should not base reproductive rights on class and
The struggle to find a place inside an un-welcoming America has forced the Latino to recreate one. The Latino feels out of place, torn from the womb inside of America's reality because she would rather use it than know it (Paz 226-227). In response, the Mexican women planted the seeds of home inside the corral*. These tended and potted plants became her burrow of solace and place of acceptance. In the comfort of the suns slices and underneath the orange scents, the women were free. Still the questions pounded in the rhythm of street side whispers. The outside stare thundered in pulses, you are different it said. Instead of listening she tried to instill within her children the pride of language, song, and culture. Her roots weave soul into the stubborn soil and strength grew with each blossom of the fig tree (Goldsmith).
To further compound this, Solinger discusses the issue of eugenic laws and the sterilization of individuals who were deemed to be unsuitable for reproduction. These standards applied to women who were either poor, minorities, or women who had a disability (Solinger 2015). Solinger describes the use of “coercion” to get women who fell under these categories to be sterilized (Solinger, 2015). The film “No Mas Bebes” epitomizes Solinger’s statements. The film is a documentary that chronicles the stories of the women involved in the Madrigal v. Quilligan case, in which the women sued L.A. county doctors and
“Listen, honey, if men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament.” Gloria Steinem, a renowned feminist and abortion advocate (“Changing the World…”). Indeed, the truth is that women are marginalized material in a male-dominated society. Abortion is the right women should have accessibility towards, whether she wants to abort or not. In the past, the right to have an abortion was limited to those who could pay or had a supportive husband. Yet, today, women still do not have an equal right to have an abortion. As a feminist advocate, I am addressing why every woman in the United States should have the right to an abortion without being judged.