III. DECONSTRUCTING THE LATINO APPEARANCE STANDARD
The Court’s reliance on facial appearance is misguided because there is no such thing as a Latino appearance. The appearance standard is distorting the identity of the Latino community by conceptualizing it as one monolithic entity. These conflations of identity ignore the diversity of the Latino community. The idea that Latinos are all dark skinned and undocumented is just a social construction and is not reality. The Latino community is highly heterogeneous in facial and skin appearance because of a long history of racial intermixing. Latino facial appearance varies considerably and runs the gamut from having light to dark: skin, eye color, and hair color. Socially there are vast differences in the community in language and citizenship status. The flawed stereotypes about Latinos affect both those who appear Latino and Latinos who are lawfully in the country.
A. How the Standard Distorts the Identity of the Latino Community?
The Latino community is not a monolith and to endorse the idea that there is a Latino
appearance is to distort the cultural diversity of the community. Aside from the obvious facial differences, there are also significant linguistic and historical differences in the Latino community. The community is so heterogeneous that the idea that government agents can detect a Latino appearance is highly problematic on its face. Even the terms Latino and Hispanic are problematic as they refer to an ethnic and not a racial group. Latinos are conceptualized as a distinct race when they are more of an ethnic group. However, the Brignoni-Ponce line of cases is treating Latinos as if they were a distinct racial group with a specific facial appearance....
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...nned Latinos because they readily fit the social caricature of what Latinos are supposed to look like. In Brignoni-Ponce and Martinez-Fuerte the Court performed a balancing test where it determined that the intrusion to an individual’s rights in an immigration stop was minor compared to the pressing governmental interest of border enforcement. However, the Court ignored the stigmatizing effect of the ruling on Latinos. The media bombards the culture at large with depictions of Latinos as undocumented immigrants. Brignoni-Ponce reinforces these depictions by making Latinos presumptively guilty of being in the country illegally. Citizens are subjected to undue scrutiny because the court is reinforcing the negative cultural association between Latino identity and criminality. It is unjust to impose these undue burdens on a population that is vastly law abiding.
The backlash that Sotomayor experiences because of her decision to apply to and her acceptance into Princeton reveals how most Puerto Ricans experienced forms of racialization, or racial classification, by Caucasian Americans. Sotomayor experiences the culmination of years of racial discrimination and oppression when her school nurse asks with an “accusatory tone” and a “baleful gaze” how she got a “likely” and the “two top-ranking girls in the school only got a ‘possible’” (Sotomayor 102). She expects Sotomayor to experience “shame” under her gaze because he...
People are discriminated against because of their race and social position every day. This has been going on for hundreds of years. In Mexican White Boy, Danny and Uno were discriminated against by people around them for being different, but along the way of discovering themselves, they form an unbreakable friendship.
Latino/a immigrants share similar experiences of anti-immigrant rhetoric, just like other immigrant groups. Many Latino/as in America have faced negative comments based on their identity. For example, Rush Limbaugh, a radio host, expounds negative comments toward Latino/as, particularly Mexicans. He claimed that Mexicans are “a renegade, potential[ly] criminal element” that is “unwilling to work” (Media Matters for America, 2/28/06). These malice comments were similar to those of other immigrants.
What would it be like to wake up everyday knowing you would get bullied, mistreated, and/or abused just because of where you were born? Discrimination still exists! “Discrimination remains and there is an increase in hate crimes against Hispanics, Latinos and Mexican-Americans, as one of the perceived symbols of that discrimination, the U.S.-Mexico Border Fence, nears completion. Instead of pulling together in these difficult times, we may see a greater polarization of attitudes” (Gibson). But why are hate crimes increasing towards Latin and Hispanic aliens and what types of discrimination are occurring against them? Understanding violence towards the Hispanic and Latin alien is divided into three main classes; the difference between legal and illegal aliens, the attacks and effects, and the point of view of different people towards aliens.
If a judge is discriminatory towards Hispanics, then there is an increased chance he or she punishes and/or sentences illegal immigrants or drug dealers at greater lengths because of his personal views. Prosecutors play an important role in institutionalized discrimination as well. They decide what cases will go to court, therefore they may pick a case in which the judge will sentence the individual because of their skin color and possibly the crime they committed. Racial discrimination cannot be avoided since it continues
...r own personal identity and how others view them. They are caught between to very different cultures and consequently often don't know how to find a way to balance the two. As Latino-Americans move farther away from their roots and struggle to find some common ground between the two cultures the polar duality in their identity will continue to be an extremely common theme in Latino writing.
Latinos have struggled to discover their place inside of a white America for too many years. Past stereotypes and across racism they have fought to belong. Still America is unwilling to open her arms to them. Instead she demands assimilation. With her pot full of stew she asks, "What flavor will you add to this brew?" Some question, some rebel, and others climb in. I argue that it is not the Latino who willingly agreed to partake in this stew. It is America who forced her ideals upon them through mass media and stale history. However her effort has failed, for they have refused to melt.
This invisible preconception preludes the common many Latinos feel offended by; the feisty Latina, loud, spicy, with strong family values, and the ones who do the job a gringo doesn't want to take. I've become to embrace the funny side of many of them. I feel proud of the traditions, ethics, language, and strong values which contribute to form
Today, the Hispanic population has grown tremendously over the years. We have watched the Hispanics community growth rate grow faster than any other racial and ethnic group in the nation. The Hispanic culture and community has populated all around the United States, introducing new traditions and customs. I was traveling to different to city in the States, I notice the wide spread growth of Hispanic communities, For Instance in Miami the Cuban and El Salvadoran culture is heavy populate in the area. In New York the Puerto Rican culture is dominating through out the several boroughs. I have come around town and Hispanics are known for their good food, which tends to have more diverse people try new cultural customs. Hispanic or Latino Americans are a group of people made up of distinct characteristics. Hispanics or Latinos are defined as a people of Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, South or Central American, or other Spanish speaking cultures.
According to Mae Ngai, Author of “Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of America,” The United States as a nation is currently in the process of perpetuating one of the worst examples of institutionalized racism under the guise of anti-immigration policies that seek to deny individuals of specific races the chance to thrive in the United States. The victims of this according to the author are individuals who are of South American and Asian descent. In her discourse presented through the book, the line between race and a person’s status as an illegal immigrant is non-existent. Her publication demonstrates the different ways in which race and illegal immigrant status are closely related. The thing with racism is that it is manifested through a scenario of some races being more superior to others whether this is mentioned expressly or not. American society today is without a doubt defined by the immigration laws it has put in place (Ngai, 72).
“[He] said he wasn't getting any responses, so on a hunch, he decided to drop the "s" in his name. José Zamora became Joe Zamora, and a week later, he says his inbox was full” (Matthews). Because of this preceding idea of people like José that we get from modern television, we associate this stereotype with every Hispanic we come in contact with. A great example of this is the misconception of Sofia Vergara’s role on the popular American sitcom series, Modern Family. Because she has an accent and is considered to be unintelligent, we assume that almost all Latinos are like her because that is what we have witnessed to be the common stereotype. “Zamora says, ‘Sometimes I don't even think people know or are conscious or aware that they're judging -- even if it's by name -- but I think we all do it all the time’" (Matthews). This minor detail in José’s name caused employers to be uninterested in hiring him just because they knew he was Hispanic. Sometimes events like this open our eyes to how oblivious we really are to issues like this in our
As of today, modern society contains an abundant amount of information about Chicana/Latina demeanor. Information seeps out of commercial ads, TV Shows, movies and the like. Many sources, such as these, attempt to sell a specific product and end up also selling information about, the way Latinas supposedly carry themselves in society, now and in the past, their supposed usual and most dominant characteristics and where they come from. This information is infested with mere stereotypes and is not in any way factual, and most importantly it gives, usually negative, meaning to Chicana and Latinas in the dominant society. However, these stereotypes come about so often, through Television, and other forms of media that that have significantly illustrated Latinas, to the entire world, to be a completely different product then what they actually are or can be. Not only does the portrayal of Latinas through media create false images it reproduces these images greatly, causing them to be
Latinos face a lot of discrimination when they come to the united stated or they try to assimilate to the American culture. Most immigrants have to deal with the police investigating them because they think they are all drug dealers or are in some type of illegal organization. They also have to deal with people calling them names because of their skin color. Americans also accuse Hispanics of stealing their jobs (Ramos, 53). They also face seeing racist graffiti on homes or wall of a building and they have to face hate crimes (Plunkett, 15). They sometimes get excluded from white communities (Plunkett, 39). Latinos are also blamed for serious problems the country faces (Ramos, 195). There are reasons for Americans to discriminate Latinos and reasons why they shouldn’t discriminate them.
Such strategy “is a subtle means of establishing a feeling of commonality [and] to imply identification and a common purpose and struggle” (Stewart, Denton, and Smith 145). However, United We Dream is still lacking the “substance” in consubstantiality in many of its messaging. These common images, ideas and attitudes are necessary to get non-Latino immigrants to identify and participate with the organization and increase their membership. The group, which promotes diversity and dignity for all immigrants (United We Dream web) seems to focus all of their messaging and resources around the Latino image. United We Dream can improve some of their current strategies, such as story telling, by using the consubstantiality concept of the identification theory, and can also develop new material directed towards some of the non-visible immigrants who want to be noticed and received resources and feel part of a group in which they can share similar
In Susan Straight’s novel Highwire Moon, a mother named Serafina was racially profiled by the police as they assumed she was an illegal immigrant due to her inability to speak proper English. The author understood the stereotypes present in the status quo America, therefore writing, “The policeman tackled her… ‘ID? ID? You got ID?’ ‘Mydotter! Mydotter!’ she screamed … ‘Okay, okay, you need a doctor. In Mexico. Get a doctor in Mexico’.” (Straight, 8) Without taking the time to understand whether Serafina was an illegal immigrant or even from Mexico, the policeman’s underlying bias was based on her ragged clothing, inability to speak proper English, and her complexion. These biases originated due to the phenomena of rhetoric in politics shaping the constituency’s beliefs and creating determinantal