Lecture 2: What does a Latino/a look like?

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Lecture 2 What does a Latino/a look like?

• Professor Daniel Bernardi /
• Professor Michelle Martinez

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In the last lecture

• What is this class about?
• Assignments
• Tour of the Website

Daniel Bernardi
Michelle Martinez
You can pause the lecture at any point, click on
one of the hyperlinks (text that is underlined)
to visit a site or view a clip, and then return
to the same point in the lecture when youre
ready.
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In this lecture

• Ethnic Labels
• Complexion
• Personal Essay
• Deadline!

Latino Comedy Project
You can pause the lecture at any point, click on
one of the hyperlinks (text that is underlined)
to visit a site or view a clip, and then return
to the same point in the lecture when youre
ready.
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Ethnic Labels

• Lecture 2 Part 1

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Who are we talking about?

• Hispanic In the U.S., Hispanic a government
  sanctioned term refers to people whose ancestry
  is from one or more Spanish-speaking countries.
• Latino Latino, predominantly a U.S.
  grassroots term, embraces resistant politics,
  panethnic awareness (more than Spanish-speaking
  origins), and recognizes the heterogeneity of the
  people it identifies.

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Problem w/ Hispanic

• Tends to Ignore Diversity
• Race
• Class
• Linguistic
• Gender
• Tends to Ignore Historical Specificity
• Chicanos/as vs Puerto Ricans
• Native Born vs Recently Arrived

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Oblers Big Point

• the term homogenizes class experiences and
  neglects many different linguistic racial and
  ethnic groups within the different nationalities
  themselves, various indigenous populations, the
  descendants of enslaved Africans, waves of
  immigrant populations from every country in
  Europe, Asia, and the Middle East.
• Susanne Obler

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Whats in a name?

• Like other ethnic labels currently used to
  identify minority groups in this country, the
  term Hispanic raises the question of how people
  are defined and classified in this society and in
  turn how they identify themselves in the United
  States. It points to the gap between the
  self-identification of people of Latin American
  descent and their definition through a label
  created and used by others.
• Susanne Obler

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Value of Latino

• Grass Roots Self-Definition
• Attempt to Embrace all Latin American
  Nationalities (including those that do not have
  ties to Spain or the Language)
• Brazilians
• 2nd 3rd Generation Chicanos Puerto Ricans
• Indigenous Groups
• Gender, Class and National Origin

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Problem w/ Latino

• According to Fernando Trevino, the adoption of a
  new term would merely "add to the confusion" and
  would ultimately hinder Hispanics' competition
  with blacks and other groups for much-needed
  government resources.
• "My point, he notes, is that the continual
  suggestion of new labels only hurts our people."

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Latinismo

• What about pan-ethnic commonalities?
• What about political issues like resistance?
• What about self-definition?
• the reality and significance of ethnicity
  in structuring minority groups' access to better
  housing, to improved socioeconomic and
  educational resources, and to political power has
  also fostered recognition of a much-needed
  pan-ethnic unity
• Susanne Obler

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The Big Point

• The Latino-conscious person sees himself as a
  Latino/a sometimes and as Puerto Rican, Mexican
  American, Cuban and the like at other times."
• Felix Padilla

Benicio Del Toro
Edward James Olmos
Raquel Welch
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What about race?

• For Susanne Obler,
• race, as it is articulated with class and
  gender, is indeed essential to consider in
  understanding the shaping of ethnicity, as well
  as the varied meanings and social values that
  Latinos/as and non-Latinos/as alike have
  attributed both to being Hispanic in different
  historical periods and, more recently, to the
  ethnic label Hispanic.

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Specific Case of Chicanos and Puerto Ricans

• Highlighting the significance of recognizing the
  historical presence of Puerto Ricans and Chicanos
  in U.S. society, the authors of one report
  explain, Hispanic resistance to assimilation is
  fueled by a consciousness of the wrongs of recent
  history... Other migrants have never had to
  swallow the memory of territorial loss of their
  homeland to the United States to become committed
  United States citizens."
• Susanne Obler

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Complexion
Richard Rodriguez

• Lecture 2 Part 2

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Who is Richard Rodriguez?

• A prominent writer, an associate editor with
  Pacific News Service in San Francisco, a
  contributing editor of Harper's and the Los
  Angeles Times, and a regular essayist on the Jim
  Lehrer News Hour.
• Read Essays by Clicking Here
• Intellectual and Journalist
• Ph.D, Renaissance Literature, UC Berkeley
• M.A., Columbia University
• Read Detailed Bio by Clicking Here

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Rodriguez Complexion

• Personal Narrative
• Childhood
• College
• Intellectual
• Emphasis on evolving perception

Like some other Mexican families, my family
suggests Mexico's confused colonial past.
Gathered around a table, we appear to be from
separate continents. Richard Rodriguez
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Your Complexion

• Your Personal Narrative is Due Soon
• What does Latino/a or Hispanic mean to you?
• How has that meaning changed over time?
• What impact has media played in that process?
• You May Elect to Address Skin Color
• What is the relationship between skin color and
  your personal sense of Latino/a or Hispanic?
• Whether youre Hispanic, Latino or not, these
  terms have meant something to you.
• What, why, and how?

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Following Rodriguezs Structure

• Childhood / Parents
• Education / Peers
• Work / Laborers

I am the only one in the family whose face is
severely cut to the line of ancient Indian
ancestors. My face is mournfully long, in the
classical Indian manner my profile suggests one
of those beak-nosed Mayan sculptures - the
eagle-like face upturned, open-mouthed, against
the deserted, primitive sky. Richard Rodriguez
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Childhood

• As a boy, I'd stay in the kitchen (never seeming
  to attract any notice), listening while my aunts
  spoke of their pleasure at having light children.
  (The men, some of whom were dark skinned from
  years of working outdoors, would be in another
  part of the house.) It was the women's spoken
  concern the fear of having a dark-skinned son or
  daughter.
• Richard Rodriguez

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College

• At Stanford, it's true, I began to have
  something like a conventional sexual life. I
  don't think, however, that I really believed that
  the women I knew found me physically appealing. I
  continued to stay out of the sun. I didn't linger
  in mirrors. And I was the student at Stanford who
  remembered to notice the Mexican American
  janitors and gardeners working on the campus.
• Richard Rodriguez

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Summer Work

• I was not bound to this job I could imagine its
  rapid conclusion. For me the sensations of
  exertion and fatigue could be savored. For my
  father or uncle, working at comparable jobs when
  they were my age, such sensations were to be
  feared. Fatigue took a different toll on their
  bodies and minds.
• Richard Rodriguez

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Wealth Reputation

• At the point when my parents would not consider
  going on vacation, I register at the Hotel
  Carlyle in New York and the Plaza Athenee in
  Paris. I am as taken by the symbols of leisure
  and wealth as they were. For my parents, however,
  those symbols became taunts, reminders of all
  they could not achieve in one lifetime. For me
  those same symbols are reassuring reminders of
  public success.
• Richard Rodriguez

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Public Intellectual

• my complexion assumes its significance from
  the context of my life. My skin, in itself, means
  nothing. I stress the point because I know there
  are people who would label me disadvantaged
  because of my color. They make the same mistake I
  made as a boy, when I thought a disadvantaged
  life was circumscribed by particular
  occupations.
• Richard Rodriguez

Suggested Supplemental Reading Hunger of
Memory The Education of Richard Rodriguez by
Richard Rodriguez
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The Big Point

• Identity is Historical / Shifts Changes
• Identity is Ideological Psychological
• Family, Church, Government, School, Media
• Identity is Visible
• Signified by Skin Color and other Phenotypes
• Adaptable (from sitting in the sun or not to
  plastic surgery)

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Personal Essay

• Lecture 2 Part 3

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Key Points

• Be Honest
• Think Deeply About Your Past
• Talk About Your Identity in Relation to Film and
  Television (and the Web)
• Revise, Revise, Revise
• Be Honest

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End of Lecture 2

• Next Lecture
• What are Stereotypes?