La Raza

(I highly encourage reading my two last posts before this one)

To make matters even more confusing--after I just told you that Hispanic is not a race but an ethnicity, which is true--we do see ourselves as a race.

One of our rallying cries is "La Raza" which quite literally means "The Race". But we are our own race, we are a unique race, we are a mixed race.

Spain tried to keep it into categories at first.
1. Spanish + Indian (aka white and Native American) = Mestizo
2. Mestizo + Spanish = Castizo
3. Castizo + Spanish = Spanish
4. Spanish + Black = Mulato
5. Mulato + Spanish = Morisco
6. Morisco + Spanish = Chino

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e8/Casta_painting_all.jpg (here's an image link where you can zoom in) 

And on and on and on until it just gets ridiculous. After so many generations, what are we?

Most of us have dark hair, but not all

We tend to be on the shorter side, but not all.

We tend to have yellow undertones to our skin, but not all.

Brown eyes, but not all.

Some of us look white and for some of us, puedes ver el nopal en su cara "you can see the cactus on their face"--meaning that they are very "Indian" looking.

If pressed, I think a lot of people in Mexico when asked their race would answer Mestizo, but it's not often that people in Mexico are asked and there is little sentimental attachment to that label.

So then what? Honestly, I think most of us just look at ourselves as a new breed. A race created by Spain's imperialism. Whatever we are, we are. We look like this, we talk like this, and screw it, let's just all say that we are a race. 

Especially living here in the U.S., where we are other instead of common, La Raza becomes important because it helps unite us. Latin America is infested with colorism (which goes hand in hand with classism), but no one in the United States notices or cares that Juan is a few shades lighter than Jose. I honestly sometimes wonder if Americans can even tell. 

And so we have to stick together, once again. When we pushed out Spain a lot of our country was already mixed. It's not like the United States where the white settlers turned against their white motherland. Our revolutionary leaders were mostly mixed. 

I might be rambling by this point--sorry. I'll end it here, but with a big asterisk that I am talking about my own country, Mexico. I do not have any type of first-hand experience with Hondurian, Guatemalan, Puerto Rican, Cuban, etc etc culture. I have no idea if they feel the same way or what they see themselves as. 

The race of Hispanics

According to the FBI, I am white. 

I work at an immigration law firm, where I help to fill out forms and also do FBI checks. Here is the list of race categories from the FBI handbook on how to do fingerprints.

Here's the link to the handbook: http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/fingerprints_biometrics/guidelines-for-preparation-of-fingerprint-cards-and-association-criminal-history-information

As you can see, under the white category is Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, Cubans, etc, "regardless of race." That little last bit at the makes it pretty clear that they just didn't know what to do with us.

I also run into this problem when filling out forms. This little bit is taken from the DACA form, taken straight from the immigration website

http://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/files/form/i-821d.pdf <--you can go here to see the form and here: http://www.uscis.gov/i-821d to read about it.

This is a form I had to fill out myself, and this was the question was one that still plagues me. For 15 I could quite confidently check Hispanic/Latino. But what about 16? I'm none of those. Not in my eyes at least. 

The same thing happened with the 2010 census. Here's a link to it: https://www.census.gov/schools/pdf/2010form_info.pdf

As you can see, they ask you if you are Hispanic and then also to check a race category. While at least the census gave us an "other" box, we had to fill it in ourselves. And what could we put? There was a lot of confusion in our community at that time. We had no idea what the hell we were supposed to put. Some people just put Latino again, some mestizo, which what Spain called the child or a white person and a Native american, though by now most of us are who knows what generation of mestizo and who knows what percentage is white and what is Native American.

So a fun lesson to be learned here is that when looking up how many white people are in the United States, be sure to make sure it's the "non-hispanic white" answer. 

Here are some articles about the chaos the 2010 census created and how some of us just went ahead and marked ourselves as white.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/05/29/opinion/liu-study-hispanics-favor-whiteness/

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/22/upshot/more-hispanics-declaring-themselves-white.html?abt=0002&abg=0

Receipts for Hispanic vs Latino

So I know I've talked about this in class, but since tomorrow's class will revolve around the topic, I would like to once again remind everyone that Latino and Hispanic do not mean the exact same (and I do have sources at the bottom, so I'm not just pulling things out of my ass). 

To make it very simple, Hispanic is about language, Latino/Latina is about geography. 

You are Hispanic if you come from a country that speaks Spanish. "Hispanic is a term that originally denoted a relationship to ancient Hispania (Iberian Peninsula)." Remember that Spain is actually España  (what the country is called in Spanish), remember that h's are silent in Spanish, and so Hispania is pronounced Ispania and the connection becomes rather obvious. This means that white people from Spain are also Hispanic. This is why you can be black and Hispanic, Asian and Hispanic, etc, etc.

Hispanic is not a race.

Latino means your ancestry is from Latin America. So this map

Notice that Haiti is on the map. They speak French in Haiti, therefore they are Latinos but not Hispanics. The people on the other side of the island, however, The Dominican Republic, were under Spanish rule. They are Hispanic and Latinos. In Brazil they speak Portuguese because they were colonized by Portugal. They are Latinos but not Hispanic. 

Latino also is not a good way to judge what a person's race is, since Haiti is majority black, Argentina is very white looking, and there is really not one shade or look that we could all fit under.

There is, understandably, a lot of confusion surrounding this topic. There is a lot of overlap. Mexicans, as we'll see in tomorrow's presentation, make up the majority of the Hispanic population and since we are also Latinos, it is easy to see why Americans would think that the terms are interchangeable.

Tell your friends.

http://www.diffen.com/difference/Hispanic_vs_Latino
http://www.cnn.com/2014/05/03/living/hispanic-latino-identity/

Class vs Race: Where is The Real Issue?

Thalia gave her final presentation on a dangerous little article that attempted to link the recent riots and movements sparked by Ferguson and the like to class as opposed to race. The way the author argued was a bit disconcerting, as he seemingly aimed to eliminate our need for racial focus in exchange for a focus on class. I can see how these two things are definitely linked... When a white officer shoots an unarmed black man, they aren't doing so because they don't like the color of their skin; they shoot them based off of their assumptions made about this person because the color of their skin. They see a black man approaching them and link their skin color to thievery, aggression, murder, and poverty. One can argue that these assumptions are based on class, poverty to be exact, but this is where the author starts to make very dangerous assertions. The idea that Michael Brown was shot, not because he was black, but because he was assumed to be poor is a bit misconstrued and leads to a call of very dangerous, ineffective actions. The notion that we should take a stance of "racial-blindness" is to ignore a massive factor in the occurrence in these events. People don't make the same assumptions about a poor black man as you do a poor white man. In addition to this, if you're black, you don't even have to be poor to come off as threatening. The idea of a stereotype is that certain attributes are applied to you based off of one small characteristic of your being which, in this case, is the color of your skin.

The Role of Acknowledgement In Problem Solving

So many people today take the emphasis on Blacks in many modern movements, "Black Lives Matter" included, as threatening and condescending towards everyone who is not black. When people see "Black Lives Matter", there IS an emphasis on black lives. The Black Lives Matter movement IS trying to put black lives on a pedestal. When taking this out of the context of what is really happening around us, this emphasis on black lives is seen as a notion of superiority as opposed to equality. People need to acknowledge that there is a fundamental issue in America right now that strictly pertains to blacks. The idea that all black lives matter doesn't mean that other lives don't, it's simply trying to emphasize that black lives do matter, but without a proper understanding of what is really happening in our society right now in terms of the way judicial force is dealt with the murders of unarmed blacks, this movement is nothing more than elitist propaganda.

Those who oppose the Black Lives Matter campaign view the system as such:

The assumption that we are all equal, despite current events, perverts the real issues at hand and makes any valid movement pushing against these injustices look racist and ridiculous. The way the movements perceive the system actually looks like this:

Without acknowledging that there's an issue, no argument or logic can work, as everything will be taken out of context, nothing will link, and the arguments pushing for justice will simply fall apart.

White Privilege 1010 @ Fort Gordon

Outrageous! Army soldiers at Fort Gordon are made to sit through a “white privilege” presentation!
Posted by Fox & Friends First on Monday, April 6, 2015

Fox News has covered a story that took place at Fort Gordon where soldiers were sent an an unauthorized training session. It was called Equal Opportunity training. My guess is that this was a move for the government to make moves to educate and bring up the discussion of race and privilege. I, being an African American male, with views of sexual fluidity, and more of an egalitarian perspective on things that easily picks up on the systematic racism that has been built into this nation's laws; don't think that the government has the jurisdiction to really touch on race relations and education. The government has done enough by failing at its core goal; to protect the citizens, their rights and strive to be a fruitful nation. The government has allowed itself to be purchased by the highest bidder, Capitalism, and barter and trade it's citizens opportunities to Globalism. However I must digress, This Equal Opportunity Training was held in a classroom setting and in one of the slides there was a statement that said, "Race privilege gives whites little reason to pay a lot of attention to African Americans or to how white privilege affects them. To be white in America means not having to think about it." It seems like we aren't the only ones pondering about White Privilege in class... What do you all think about this statement that was found in this presentation? Do you think the Government has the jurisdiction to talk on such a topic as such? Have they been properly educated as such? In light of such, people have voiced their opinions of such all ranging from accusations of government brainwashing to the lecture truly being needed. I think the way they stated white privilege was phrased well.

The Many Problems with #AllLivesMatter

All lives matter. Every life matters. Human lives are "important" which is why there are laws against murder, even suicide. This fact is freakishly obvious, so there's no need to reiterate the blanket statement.

It is important to recognize the lives that are undervalued. Black lives are not valued in the United States the same way white lives are. By suggesting that black lives matter, the claim is that black lives matter too. Stop neglecting black lives because they also matter in addition to white lives that are already highly valued. Saying black lives matter, does not lessen the value of other lives, simply asserts that black lives matter and need to be held to the same regard.

Saying that "All Lives Matter" in response to "Black Lives Matter" is misunderstanding the issue at hand. It supports the colorblind theory that all races should be seen as equal, or not seen at all, which ignores the existing issues that were created on the basis of race. Pretending we are post-racial does more harm than good: just like those who support "All Lives Matter."