I see the themes of identity and representation so far in the stories I have read. I recently finished reading the chapters of Cynthia Nambo and Freda Lin’s story. Ms. Nambo is a Hispanic middle school science teacher at an all-girls school. Ms. Nambo talks about her own experiences of being refused her heritage by her father to assimilate. She talks about representation too. Michie talks about how Ms. Nambo was on the fence about signing up for this project because she was hesitant whether he would represent her story, despite his good intentions. She discussed how “progressive white educators” can publish a book on working with people of color and get recognized, while people of color who do the same are not. “I’m frustrated by the fact that you can do that, but we can't. It's a struggle every step of the way when we want to tell our stories” (Michie 66). Ms. Lin is an Asian high school U.S. History and Asian studies teacher at an overcrowded co-ed school. Her chapter talks about discrimination towards Asians and her experiences from grade school to college. She describes from grade school to high school that she rejected her Asian heritage until college. In college, she would gradually question her ethnic identity and learn more about discrimination towards Asians. As a teacher, she describes what she witnesses in the halls of Asian student's friends giving discriminatory “nicknames” to them. However, despite this Ms. Lin considers herself a role model to her students because “having an Asian American teacher they can talk to help with their identity development.” (Michie 94). Thus, Ms. Lin made it a priority to teach anti-racist teaching in her classroom and took steps to make it more than a black and white issue. I think people sometimes forget how important our identity is. For instance, these teachers have been talking about their identity issues in relation to their classes. However, I feel like I related the most to these chapters. For instance, I knew what made me stand out on paper when I applied for colleges and other opportunities. I called it the trifecta. I'm a Hispanic female pursuing a career in STEM education. While I knew these were qualities that would provide me an advantage for opportunities, I didn’t acknowledge why. However, the classes I have been taking throughout my college career I can recognize why. My language acquisition class and Latinx studies class have communicated to me the importance of identity in education and for the people. Identity is key in the classroom because a teacher is seen as a role model for those students. This doesn’t mean I necessarily have to have everything about me figured out. It just means I want students to question themselves and the society around them. It allows the ability for growth as a person and experiences that can be able to establish connections between other people. In these two chapters, I could recognize the issue of second-class citizenship, but also the issue of assimilation. In both cases, they talk about discrimination towards their race, which is sadly still around to this day. Both chapters discuss being seen as less, whether due to the language or the color of their skin. While assimilation is shown as having to deny their culture to avoid such intolerance from society, which is extremely disheartening.
I found it unbelievably that Asian studies textbooks for high school students were not available or yet written. I want to mention the representation of Hispanic/Latinx people, specifically in politics. I did a project on the importance of why the Hispanic/Latinx community needs to vote. In that research, I found surprising data. The data says there are 60 million and counting Hispanic/Latinx people in the U.S., but there are only 6,832 Latinx officials at State and Federal levels.
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![]() I experienced a few pivotal moments; these moments were a connection to my Intro to Latinx/Chicanx Studies class. There is one point where Ms. Kirby talks about cross-cultural teaching for the first time. She talks about being nervous in her teaching and thinking about white parents monitoring her more closely as a teacher than black parents (p. 23). She describes this as showing how deeply white supremacy is in the black community in particular. This is true for the Hispanic/Latinx community as well. In our class book, Harvest of Empire, the author talks about Puerto Ricans and the story of “assimilating” in America. The author mentions a poem, ¿Y tu abuela, dónde está? by Fortunato Vizcarrondo. The poem reminds all Puerto Ricans that black blood runs through them; however, being in America, they began to develop antiblack attitudes. The author describes it as "some rite of passage to becoming authentic Americans”. Ms. Kirby talks about suffering self-identity crises, which is also very common in the Hispanic/Latinx community as well. In the Harvest of Empire, the author talks about how Hispanic/Latinx is a buffer to the black-and-white society. For Puerto Ricans, they possessed a racial identity of losing their culture and language to “assimilate” in a white or black world. For Mexicans, they face having roots in American soil before America existed but still having to battle being fully recognized and understood. These are some of the topics that we discussed in my class, but I can see the connections between the black and Latinx community. There is a sticker I have seen with the phrase “tu lucha, es mi lucha” which means your fight is my fight. Ms. Kirby mentions George Orwell to refer to something. I have not read his book but know of them. In my search, I found 1984 mentions cult of personality, which coincidentally is the title of a song by Living Colour. Through some quick google searching and deep-diving into the lyrics, I realized it wasn’t a happy coincidence, but intentional. |
AuthorHello, I'm a senior at St. Edward's University. This blog is dedicated to Teachers College Press teaching social justice series. Archives
November 2020
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