Before becoming the first Latina Supreme Court Justice, Sonia Sotomayor, born in New York City to Puerto Rican parents, delivered a speech at the University of California Berkeley where she argued that the United States frequently overshadows the many diverse cultures, and she explained how there are more layers to our cultural identities than it seems. In her 2001 speech, Sotomayor uses personal anecdotes to convey her multifaceted identity; thus, she changes her tone from a high intellectual voice to a casual and personal persona while also using vivid diction to argue the complex layers of cultural identity. Sotomayor employs many personal anecdotes throughout her speech because she wants to gain the audience’s understanding of the similarities …show more content…
It is important for the audience to know the distinction between two similar cultures because the general world struggles with separating cultural identities. In another personal anecdote, Sotomayor stresses that even Latin American communities have “their own unique food and different traditions.” While under one similar branch of cultural identity, Sotomayor wanted the audience to know that each culture is multifaceted and is not just black and white. Additionally, Sotomayor’s brief definition of her cultural foods “does not really explain the appeal” of her culture. This shows that many factors contribute to cultural identities, not just common languages or special foods, and drawing distinctions between the identities cannot be done. She wanted to stress that there were many differences within each family, even though they may look or speak the same …show more content…
Having to constantly switch between Spanish and English shows how diverse identities must transform into a homogenous society–where distinctive cultural identities merge into one cultural identity. Her frequent transitions from an intellectual voice to a more personal voice signify the differences between cultures and that the majority of cultures do not fully understand each other. Sotomayor seeks a heterogeneous society, where distinctive cultural identities mingle with one another without losing their distinctiveness, so she uses vivid diction to argue the complex layers of cultural identity because cultures are not created to conform to one identity. She begins her speech by using the term “Newyorkrican” to identify herself as both a New Yorker and Puerto Rican-born, but she later criticizes that “America has a deeply confused image of itself.” By saying that she comes from a very diverse culture, she establishes that she comes from more than just one cultural
serving as the first hispanic high supreme court judge. She has undergone challenges, of maybe discrimination. Just because she grew up being hispanic, people have a “stereotyped” version of what hispanics are most likely to be. Being hispanic does not mean doing illegal things, people like Sotomayor could succeed in things she wants to become. Proving everybody who thinks Hispanics are lazy/ illegal wrong. Sotomayor is the nineteenth most powerful woman in this country, she is classified on closing all top case files, and is known for honoring her heritage because she didn’t care what other people said about Hispanics, she went and achieved her dream of having a career connected to “crime in justice”. Sotomayor believes that education is basically the base or the first steps you take to achieve things in life. Sonia Sotomayor has accomplished her past objectives and keeps on having goals to accomplish, continually eager to make modification for the individuals who demonstrate that they need to roll out an improvement. Through her activities she demonstrated that anything is conceivable on the off chance that you set it. Sotomayor has been through numerous snags that she needed to confronted yet despite everything she succeed her objectives. Sonia Sotomayor is a good example for the individuals who may believe that it's conceivable to wind up somebody like her or surprisingly better. Particularly if she's speaking to the Hispanic race, she's a good example for the individuals who did not surmise that turning into a judge in the Supreme Court was
Sotomayor's 'wise Latina' Comment a Staple of Her Speeches - CNN. (5 June 2009). Featured
A story of murder, fear, and the temptation of betrayal is one that easily snatches up the attention of audiences. In “A Jury of Her Peers” by Susan Glaspell, the author uses her southern female characters to emphasize the direct relationship between friendship and connection. Her plot circles around the disastrous discovery of their fellow housewife’s marital murder, and the events that unfolded causing their ultimate decision in prosecuting or shielding her from the men in the story. The author implements revealing dialogue with subtle detailing and glaring symbolism to display the coveted friendships among women above other relationships and that the paths they take to secure them stem from inveterate personal connections.
There is a large Latino population in the United States. “By mid-century, one in every four "Americans" will be able to trace their heritage to a Latin American country”(Cauce & Domenech-Rodriguez, 2000, pg.4). By the year 2050, the United States population will be 30% Hispanic. Spanish speaking Latinos are the most prominent minority in our society, and because of this it is important that people put forth effort to understand their culture, language and any drawbacks that might come with living in the larger culture. Because of the large population of Hispanics in this area, it was easy to find a family to interview. The family’s country of origin is Mexico. A large portion of the Hispanic population in the United States is from Mexico. In fact, 60% of the Hispanic population in the United States has origins in Mexico (Saracho & Spodek 2008,
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...
Ever since the United States was established on the principles stated in our founding documents, it has been a herculean task of our justice system, as well as individuals in history, to ensure that these promises were maintained for all. In Sonia Sotomayor’s autobiography “My Beloved World” she gives us a glimpse of the difficulties of being a lower class Puerto Rican women attending Princeton University, therefore demonstrating the promise that was not kept by the Constitution in ensuring equal opportunity for all. The text shows us how certain groups are deprived from equal opportunity and how it affects their daily treatment and their chances at getting accepted to colleges. The unresolved contradictions questioned ideologies present today express a difference in what was promised and what was given, those which not only apply to the category of race as King emphasized, but also to class, gender and religion. In Sonia Sotomayor’s autobiography, the text reveals the unresolved contradictions of American history through the continuity of mistreatment to racial minority groups due to racialization, class formation and gender formation, ultimately preventing them from achieving this nonexistent American Dream and Melting Pot theory.
Whether it be in sports, politics, or the business world, the constant battle of men versus women rages around every corner, and though many discriminations against women are present, there is not always something that is done about it. In “Women’s Right to the Suffrage”, Susan B. Anthony is persuading the US that women should be allowed to vote. She argues that women are undeniably considered people, therefore should be entitled to the right to vote, given to all US citizens through the Constitution. Because of this, the fact that government considers men to be rulers over women, she believes is the worst discrimination of all. Throughout her speech, Anthony utilizes rhetorical strategies, but her most effective includes her use of logos,
Oboler, Suzanne (1995). "So far from God, so close to the United States": The Roots of Hispanic Homogenization. In M. Romero, P. Hondagneu-Sotelo, & V. Ortiz (Eds.) Challenging Fronteras: Structuring the Latina and Latino Lives in the U.S. New York: Routledge, 1997.
Cofer uses the rhetoric appeal of ethos to establish her authority to make the argument that Latina stereotypes are just myths. Growing ...
This series presents viewers with some of the most compelling and complex Latina women, allowing a focus on the ideologies that harness and shape national identities. There are communication dynamics between the Latina community as well as characters from other communities within the prison. The audience follows their background stories through flashbacks while getting a view of the characters’ ideas and beliefs in which they follow. To understand an individual’s acceptance of their national identity, it is ideal to empathize how they were raised and how they learn to adapt or follow ideologies overtime. These flashbacks are a tool demonstrating stereotypical and non-stereotypical practices as Latinas. Examples are their tough attitude and defending their place in the hierarchy or their use of English to Spanish depending on who they are talking to and the situation. Other examples are the argument of the typical work fields and branching out from them, as well as their music, attire, and religion. These women construct their own identity as individuals and as a group. With Mary Bucholtz and Kira Hall’s “four semiotic processes,” they “provide a clear account of how social identities come to be created through language.” Trying to show not only language means to verbalize in Spanish, but their actions are a performance based off their beliefs and ideas which are a sign of language/communication just as silence is a form of communication and body gestures. As well as their “tactics of intersubjectivity” framework explaining how these identities are constructed and why the Latinas perform their language and identity in a particular
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
The history of the United States is littered with exclusionary methods that create complex webs of structural racism that have persisted from the times of indentured servitude and slavery to the modern day. During the 1970s specifically the practice of redlining was in full swing, and many people of color were forced to work unskilled or semi-skilled jobs due to widespread workplace discrimination. These structures serve to create obstacles to the success of minorities, those not traditionally considered to be ‘white’. Generations of people of color have been affected as they are continually denied access to better education, higher paying jobs, and even legal citizenship. One particular example is Justice Sonia Sotomayor, whose memoir My Beloved World details her experiences as the first generation daughter of working class Puerto Rican immigrants. Rather than being seen for her vast accomplishments in high school, at Princeton University, and as a United States Supreme Court Justice, she has had to battle assumptions made about her character and the path to her success that cause her to be racialized as lazy and therefore unworthy of achievement; assumptions that are solely based on her race, class, and gender. Despite the promises made by the United States to provide equal opportunities for all its citizens, many minorities are still subject to the ideology that they are lazy, undeserving, poor, and inferior purely because of their race, as shown in Sonia Sotomayor’s interactions with her school nurse and a shopkeeper in an upscale store. Regardless, members of these historically disparaged minorities reveal contradictions as they strive to overcome the racism they must face every day yet are still faced with discrimination in ...
There was no better defining example of the division of main stream views and that of a particular ethnicity as in The Myth of the Latin Woman: I Just Met a Girl Named Maria. Ortiz Cofer provided me with a very clear and a very defining expression of how her Puerto Rican culture could easily be misinterpreted. When discussing the dressing habits of her Puerto Rican culture Ortiz Cofer stated “As young girls it was our mothers who influenced our dec...
I definitely identify most with modern American culture. Although I am half Hispanic and half white, I was raised more “white” than Hispanic (e.g. food, language, holidays, music, etc.). On the surface you can see a white American, English speaking, femininely dressed young lady, but I am much more than what is on the outside. Like I stated earlier I was raised more “white”, but I still identify a little with my Hispanic culture. In this paper I will be addressing 10 surface and 10 deep aspects of my cultural identity.
When women migrate from one nation or culture to another they carry their knowledge and expressions of distress with them. On settling down in the new culture, their cultural identity is most likely going to change and that encourages a degree of not belonging; they also attempt to settle down by either assimilation or biculturalism. Consider identity issues of women from the borderlands like feminist Gloria Anzaldua. Her life in the borderlands was a constant battle of discrimination from the Anglo, she was caught in a world of two cultures, various languages, and male domination, “She realized she had two options, to be the victim or to take control of her own destiny” (Borderlands). In her book, Borderlands/La Frontera, she discusses conflicts of linguistic, sexual, and ethnic identity that exists on the border of Mexico and the United States. Gloria Anzaldúa articulates in one of her chapters, “How to Tame a Wild Tongue”, that “ethnic identity is twin skin to linguistic identity;” the languages she possess wield extraordinary influence over her cultural identification (Borderlands). In her book she combines both Spanish and English to emphasize the significance of the position from which she writes, yet Anzaldúa also depicts the near impossibility of reconciling the cultures her speech reflects. When she speaks English, she speaks “the oppressor’s language” (Borderlands); when she speaks Chicano Spanish, she speaks “an orphan tongue” (Borderlands). As a result, the implications of language on her identity are, at times, problematic. Since the English speakers she must accommodate deem her tongue “illegitimate,” she deems herself illegitimate (Borderlands). Her life struggles in the borderlands compelled Gloria Anzaldúa to be resilient and even hopeful. She will use her native tongue to “overcome the tradition of