Racial Prejudice and Bias Against Hispanics
At some point in life, every individual has been treated like an outsider. It occurs
often with children or teenagers. However, one can still be regarded with this attitude as
an adult. Furthermore, an entire group can feel as if they are being treated as an outsider,
and sadly enough, it does happen regularly. One author, David Hernandez, spoke about
these occurrences through his poem “Pigeons.” With his poem, Hernandez argues that
Hispanics are never treated or viewed as insiders, but always as outsiders. Sadly enough,
I would have to agree with Hernandez’s argument, for in his poem he concludes that
Hispanics are viewed as “weird” because of their culture, are deprived by the public, and
are not accepted by any of the other cultures within the American society.
In the very first line of his poem, Hernandez throws out a shocking argument
statement. This line reads, “Pigeons are the spiks of Birdland” (Hernandez 1023). This
is extremely shocking since Hernandez was Hispanic, yet he is calling his people “spiks”
and “pigeons” in degrading ways. Nevertheless, he does it to make a strong argument.
First, he says that his people are viewed as pigeons because their culture is seen as weird
and odd. I would have to say that I agree with Hernandez’s feelings on this, even though
I do not agree that this is the right attitude to have toward Hispanics or any other race for
that matter. Many times the Hispanic’s dress or the way they do things is looked down
upon. It seems odd, though, that this is the attitude, since Americans have adopted
several aspects from the Hispanic culture, such as piñatas at parties and their many types
of foods like tacos, en...
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...aces and by many people, “[Hispanics] are not accepted
anywhere,” making them “the spiks of [America]” (Hernandez 1023).
David Hernandez’s poem “Pigeons” makes strong arguments toward the fact that
Hispanics are viewed with negative and prejudiced attitudes, are underprivileged by
society, and are not accepted in many aspects of the general public, and with these
arguments I would have to agree. Nevertheless, Hispanics are not the only group of
people who are viewed with a degrading or biased attitude. Many other races are treated
as outsiders, which is not right. Every human needs to reach out to others, helping each
person to feel included into society.
Works Cited
Hernandez, David. “Pigeons.” Making Literature Matter: An Anthology for Readers and
Writers. Ed. John Schilb and John Clifford. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2000.
1023-24.
Carson, D. A. New Bible Commentary: 21st Century Edition. 4th ed. Leicester, England; Downers Grove, IL: Inter-Varsity Press, 1994.
social groups. Whenever someone is placed in a situation where a certain stereotype can be
...is composed of many subgroups. This assimilation has caused the erosion of most cultural differences among the Hispanic and the Native Americans (Arreola 13). Therefore, these two cultures only compare in terms of their traditional aspects rather than their modern settings.
Throughout the history of mankind there have been numerous cases in which people were victims of oppression or hate. Among these cases the sole reasoning behind this oppression or hate being based on the perception of others. History has shown that society is responsible for labeling groups of people, generally these labels are misleading.
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.
In conclusion, prejudices exist all throughout the world. Some are harmful and others are not. The prejudices held by some Caucasian Californians against Mexican immigrants like "stealing jobs" and holding them in lower regard than others is an example of a harmful prejudice. Some solutions to eliminate these prejudices are to teach parents to withhold their negative opinions from their children, convince the media to stop glorifying comedians who make racial jokes, and to encourage the entire group to learn more about the lives and culture of the Mexican immigrants.
Lingis (1994) indicates that “One exposes oneself to the other-the stranger, the destitute one, the judge-not only with one’s insights and one’s ideas, that they may be contested, but one also exposes the nakedness of one’s eyes, one’s voice, and one’s silence, one’s empty hands” (p. 11). This “other community” comes into being when the stranger is exposed, having no common rational discourse with us. This stranger or intruder disrupts or intentions and makes us question our own cultural coding, “arresting one’s own intentions” during their encounter.
Kanellos, Nicolás, Felix M- Padilla, and Claudio Esteva Fabregat, eds. Handbook of Hispanic Cultures in the United States: Sociology. Houston: Arte Publico Press, 1994. Print.
The New Oxford Annotated Bible. Herbert G. May and Bruce M. Metzger, ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1957.
As far as personal experience, living in Miami,-Florida, as a none-Cuban Latin, makes it easier to have an insight in all kinds of prejudice and stereotypes within the same Hispanic society. This behavior makes it hard to not feel negatively judged by others who do belong to the majority group. Unfortunately prejudice is not simply an attitude that remains internal to its owner; it impacts behavior. When negative attitudes on the basis of differences translate into behavior, we have as a result, discrimination and the social inequity it produces. Therefore, efforts to reduce prejudice are well advised to take the social context into consideration when focusing on the individuals' attitudes.
...against them and it seems that the Hispanics are taking over white Anglo-American society according to racists. Two of the movies presented in class which had Latin American theme were «Spanglish» and “A better life”. Though “Spanglish” was not about racism instead it was about letting go of fear, cultural differences and language, next to “A better life” which had couple scenes of prejudices and stereotypes. For example when the police officer was sure the young boy had tattoos that indicated him being a part of a street gang, and wanted him to take off his shirt for evidence.
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.
Racism and prejudice has been present in almost every civilization and society throughout history. Even though the world has progressed greatly in the last couple of decades, both socially and technologically, racism, hatred and prejudice still exists today, deeply embedded in old-fashioned, narrow-minded traditions and values.
Studies reveal that consumers do not always know or remember actual prices of products. Instead, they encode prices in ways that are meaningful to them. Profession...
The price of a product or service is set by a business that follows a strategic plan depending on the type and quality of there offerings. Such a procedure takes into consideration multiple factors that should be treated, such as the manufacturin¬¬g cost, the labor’s cost, the distribution’s cost and the marketing cost. Other than satisfying the expenses of the company, the marketing plan also plays a significant role in the pricing decisions. The price of a product may have an attracting or repelling feature towards the customer (Monroe 1979). This idea is underlined by the behavioral research that clarifies that the consumer perceives the price as additional information of the quality of a product. However, other studies contradict such opinions by ignoring the power of price (Gabor and Granger 1966). Therefore, multiple researchers have looked up into this topic and conducted different and interesting theories. Most of the results are related to the psychological effects on the customers’ buying behavior and their perception of quality.