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What is race as a social construct
What is race as a social construct
Race social construction
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Identity Essay The view of identity seems to be defined by facial features and social constructed views. Depending on the recent look of someone it may just be more then just color but also background. In this essay I will explain how I relate to some recent views based on philosophers I may agree and disagree with in order to describe my identity. Identity is much more then just being labeled as a race, it can be based on much more. I believe with many different philosophers like Jorge Gracia who wrote the “What Makes Us Who We Are?” chapter in the book “ Two Initial Objections”. I believe in being part in the view of Gracia’s view. I may have not been born in the same area as Iberian peninsula but my family was. In Gracia’s article, he claims that it is based on the common history of 1492 and from that point on your Hispanic in the Iberian peninsula. They have what defines them according to him. Shared qualities as the historians who once lived in that time means that people who lived there after that time there where considered Hispanic. He believes it is not a pure race, it is a mixed group of people. He believes in erasing the idea of essentialism. He also believes you should use ethnic names (according to Glasgow slides). Some problems with his view is that the name Hispanic has negative connotations with idea of labeling. That it is also based on the history of spanish culture which my family has been a part of. Moving from another place to that area after being born viewed as another problem because I may not know if my family had moved from that area at that time or after then migrated back. Gracia rejects essentialism and explains, “ After 1492, it makes little sense to speak of Iberian purity, a culture separate and... ... middle of paper ... ...ts gives me some knowledge but not enough to track down where my family immigrated from. I do not agree with Davis and see myself as just Mexican according to where I was born. To conclude, I do see myself agree with some of the authors’ view and disagree with some. I see Gracia’s view since my family has been in Mexico for a long time and how Moya categorizes the requirements to be Latino. I do not see the views with Davis and Alcoff and how I must be just one heritage. I also see Frye’s view and recognize in order too be fullfilled and be Mexican I must give up things that may resemble being white. Raised in a heritage of Mexican culture, it is my right to be known as Mexican American. Taking on this identity is what really makes a person who they truly and not based off looks. I am more then just then what I may represent physically based on my ideology.
Race was never an issue, but when looking at class sometimes rumors or stereotypes would be given. One of the largest intersection between Latinos is race or identity. For example, Amilcar Ramirez was Latino but looked black. Many Latino children have skin ranging from white to black and all dealt with these problems. Ramirez however faced opposition form Hispanics and African Americans because both would say he is not ‘their kind’ (Garcia, Kindle). Identity is still a large thing for Latino’s because many today are not just purely one heritage. This is still a problem when describing that someone is Mexican and Puerto Rican. There is no one thing to put down and that can be challenging to a lot of Latinos
In her book “Borderland/La Frontera, The New Mestiza” by Gloria Anzaldua, Gloria talks about what it means to be able to identify, culturally, one’s self. So what does it mean to be able to identify one’s self with a specific culture? What about when the culture you identify yourself with, to other cultures, isn’t legitimate? In her writing, Gloria expresses the struggles of Chicanos trying to find their own identity with language. By showing how she had to use several different styles of English and Spanish growing up, the rejections of both American and Mexican cultures, and by showing how the Chicano language finally came about, Gloria is able to effectively convey this point.
...s her argument once more, her tone is very stern and biased to her own personal view on the situation. Her essay has a very annoyed and bothered tone to it. Nonetheless, she does so in a very calm and abrupt way. Anzaldúa sets a heavy emphasis on language, whereas I believe that the name of their culture of people is just as important. An example of a coffee brand, it does not necessarily matter where or not has an amazing boost, but rather if the coffee did not have a name, what is the use that other people will buy it? Starbucks, anyone? Yes, definitely! Moreover, in Anzaldúa’s essay, she writes that till the day they got a name and a language, the Chicano’s came together and felt like people. The Chicanos may have kept their tongue, but their fighting spirit came from being united as a nation, going through the same struggle, sharing that bond of power together.
Further evidence is shown when the author states, “When I was in college: to call myself a Hispanic” (Rodriguez 72-73). In the early 1970s, the President Nixon established the responsibility to identify Americans by race: black, white, Asian, Indian, and Hispanic. Then, he realized that he was classified as Hispanic by the government when he was in college. This evidence is significance for convincing Rodriguez’s argument because it demonstrates that he doesn’t identify himself by race, and he doesn’t believe that he is Hispanic, even if someone defines him as Hispanic; moreover, he opposes classifying people by race. In “Blaxican”, there are some persuasive writing skills that are used to convince the idea that people shouldn’t classify themselves by race, and they have their own identity to classify themselves based on the assimilated
Our lives are defined by our experiences of growing up and of who people are when people are developing. Both, in their respective regards, are something that can be difficult to alter to the individual. Gender, race, classes, and other building blocks of our identity are always shifting to who anyone is and while a person can’t affect themselves, society can, and often does change their perspective towards their own identity and how they interact with the stimulation outside of their psyche.
Originally racial designators, the terms mestizo and Indian have lost almost all of their previous racial connotation and are now used entirely to designate cultural groups. Historically, the term mestizo described someone with mixed European and indigenous heritage. Mestizos occupied a middle social stratum between whites and pure-blooded indigenous people (see Socieconomic Structures, ch. 1). Whites themselves were divided into criollo (those born in the New World) and peninsular (those born in Spain) subgroups. In contemporary usage, however, the word mestizo refers to anyone who has adopted Mexican Hispanic culture. Seen in this cultural context, both those with a solely European background and those with a mixed European-indigenous background are automatically referred to as
Next, both the Blacks and Mexicans lived through their cultures and traditions from ancestors. It was very hard for either group to compete with the Whites' economy and lifestyles while keeping their beliefs strong. Now that we have an understanding of the influences on both groups' identity struggles, we w...
Such an encounter becomes a source of discomfort and momentarily a crisis of racial meaning. Without a racial identity, one is in danger of having no identity" (Michael Omi, Howard Winant, 12). It is obvious when we look at someone we try to get a sense of who they are. We categorize people within our society and place them by gender, ethnicity, race, religion, and even social class. Because one of the first things we utilize is race and gender it is questioned that without racial identity one is in danger of having no identity. Personally, I believe that this is true, for instance, within our society gender roles are very apparent. We utilize gender as a form of identity, because many people now are coming forward with wanting to change their identity there has been ann uproar to try to fight against equality for citizens that identify with a different gender. What is to be considered is the same uproar that is occurring with people who identify with a gender is also occurring with citizens that are identified solely on race. Within our different generations there has been an uprising in mixed races, a person can be
Internalized racism has hit the individual level where half of all Hispanics consider themselves as white. One Mexican American asserted that he felt “shame and sexual inferiority…because of my dark complexion.” He also described himself with “disgust” loathing his appearance when he sees himself in the mirror. Stereotypes play a huge role in the Latino culture in the U.S where often the usual stereotype is that Latinos are job-stealers, uneducated, poor and illegal. “Envidia” or jealousy sabotages the Latino community because Latinos begin to question the qualifications of other successful Latinos. No one has the positive thought that Latinos can achieve and triumph in any field; they just can’t believe that. Latinos just stamp other Latinos with those stereotypes Americans say. Because of internalized racism, Latinos and Hispanics distance themselves from the Spanish language to support the English only movement. They are embarrassed of their inherited language and rather choose English to complete assimilation. “Almost 40% of Latino/a respondents prefer English as their dominant language…” (Padilla 20). Where I currently live, I always see on the day to day basis Hispanics and Latinos that immigrated to the United States from other countries sounding “white.” I speak to Hispanics; even Latinos in Spanish and they respond
Latinos who were raised in the United States of America have a dual identity. They were influenced by both their parents' ancestry and culture in addition to the American culture in which they live. Growing up in between two very different cultures creates a great problem, because they cannot identify completely with either culture and are also caught between the Spanish and English languages. Further more they struggle to connect with their roots. The duality in Latino identity and their search for their own personal identity is strongly represented in their writing. The following is a quote that expresses this idea in the words of Lucha Corpi, a Latina writer: "We Chicanos are like the abandoned children of divorced cultures. We are forever longing to be loved by an absent neglectful parent - Mexico - and also to be truly accepted by the other parent - the United States. We want bicultural harmony. We need it to survive. We struggle to achieve it. That struggle keeps us alive" ( Griwold ).
The Latino Threat Narrative has excluded Latinx from the sense of national belonging of the United States. Nation is a product of nationalism, which is “an imagined political community– and imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign. It is imagined because the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion” (Anderson, 6). In other words, nationalism is a socially, psychologically, and politically constructed community created and imagined by the people who perceive themselves as part of that community. It is social and psychological process that makes people believe they are connected to one another and share ties. However, nationalism is limited and exclusive, not everyone has the privilege of being part of that community. For instance, “the nation is imagined as limited because even the largest of them, encompassing perhaps a billion living human beings, has finite, if elastic, boundaries beyond which lie other nations”(Anderson, 7). In other words, nationalism divides communities and creates restrictions and prohibitions that are similar to immigration laws. The hegemony of American nationalism include people who are only of European descent, born in the United States and speaks only English. Particularly, Gonzalez due to her illegal status she was not welcome to be part of the American nationalism. Therefore, she was forced out and excluded from the American narrative. In this case, nationalism is a form of oppression against marginalized groups. Nationalism divides those who do not fit in the status quo. As a result, the idea of nationalism divides vulnerable communities from entering the narrative. Thus, the American patriarchal form of nationalism transforms into American Exceptionalism in which the United States brands
What is identity? Identity is an unbound formation which is created by racial construction and gender construction within an individual’s society even though it is often seen as a controlled piece of oneself. In Dr. Beverly Daniel Tatum’s piece, “The Complexity of Identity: ‘Who Am I?’, Tatum asserts that identity is formed by “individual characteristics, family dynamics, historical factors, and social and political contexts” (Tatum 105). Tatum’s piece, “The Complexity of Identity: ‘Who Am I?’” creates a better understanding of how major obstacles such as racism and sexism shape our self identity.
What is personal identity? This question has been asked and debated by philosophers for centuries. The problem of personal identity is determining what conditions and qualities are necessary and sufficient for a person to exist as the same being at one time as another. Some think personal identity is physical, taking a materialistic perspective believing that bodily continuity or physicality is what makes a person a person with the view that even mental things are caused by some kind of physical occurrence. Others take a more idealist approach with the belief that mental continuity is the sole factor in establishing personal identity holding that physical things are just reflections of the mind. One more perspective on personal identity and the one I will attempt to explain and defend in this paper is that personal identity requires both physical and psychological continuity; my argument is as follows:
Blended identity is the self-image and worldview developed from a combination of religious faith, cultural background from nationality, and current residency. It is the process of being ethnic in society.
With more than 400 years of history, the Mexican American people have invariably endured the dichotomy of self-distinctiveness. From the onset of the Aztec empire to the imperialisms of the Spanish rule and towards the current movement of cultural pluralism, Mexican Americans face a need to “construct a new identity