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Model Final Exam answers 2018 Essay 1: Revise & Extend Minority Identification & Analysis (Add African America) Index to Sample Essay 1 Answers |
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Kealey Treadaway
American Indian, Mexican American and African
American Literature and History
I chose to write with the optional
approach for my essay when defining minority, and identifying with references to
American Indian and Mexican American literature and history. I think that
describing my learning process, and explaining what I know and think about
minorities, and more specifically American Indians and Mexican Americans as
minorities prior to taking this course, compared what I know thus far will be
what works best for me. The majority of our readings and discussions is all very
new to me so I’d like to talk about what I have learned along with my feelings
on the topic, but also show what I am more interested in when looking at
minorities, immigrants, and dominant culture.
I can say that I didn’t know much about
minorities and I definitely didn’t know anything about American Indians as a
minority when arriving to this class. I either had never thought about it, or
was never put in a situation or even experienced a situation that made me stop
and take a deeper look into it. However, when I do think of minorities I think
of a different race or ethnicity group other than myself, being a non-Hispanic,
white American female. So for example, I think of African Americans, Latinos,
Asians, etc. but never thought of American Indians or the Indian culture.
However, Mexican Americans I am familiar with because they serve as a
significant population in the Houston/Texas area. So, learning about Mexican
American culture and identifying them as immigrants or minorities are both
interesting. Now, I understand it may sound ignorant to some that topics such as
minorities, being culturally different, or dominant culture do not cross my mind
that often but to be honest, I think it has to do with my own race and
ethnicity.
The society we live in considers me a safe, law abiding
citizen, and that gives me the privilege to walk around about my business and
not be judged or harassed. I am accepted by the community and church because my
religion is one of the world’s most famous, accepted religions in the Unites
States, Christianity. I may also have the privilege of being favored in a school
setting where I have the privilege of learning about my race more than others
do. Even though those are the facts, that doesn’t mean that I’m not interested
in learning about other minority groups and that’s why even though this class is
something new to me, I find it very insightful and interesting. Going into a
class with all new learning experiences and touching subjects, and reading texts
I had never thought about or was familiar with on my own gives my learning
process a heightened experience I think.
In this class, we define
minority as a term that describes any
ethnic or gender group that is either
non-white, non-male, or non-heterosexual. We also limit the
minority definition to three different attributes: historical,
physical/appearance, and socioeconomic or class behaviors or values. For
the historical attribute, we say that particular ethnic groups’ historical
experiences usually have to deal with involuntary contact, exploitation, and
deprivation instead of opportunity and freedom. We say that different ethnic
groups have distinguishing physical markers including their
skin color, the way they dress, and their speech and language differences.
Socioeconomic or class behaviors or values that the dominant culture regards as
distasteful or counter-productive but which may be affirming to a minority group
are things we see reading Mexican American and American Indian literature.
We can develop the minority definition
by contrasting it to the term immigrant or dominant-culture identity. The
simplest way to define immigrant is a person that comes to live permanently in a
foreign country. “The immigrant
narrative is the central story of the American experience, one whose norms
define the variations in our multicultural landscape, even when the immigrant
narrative is not operative as with
minority groups like Native Americans,
African Americans, and Mexican Americans.”
The immigrant narrative differs most from the minority narrative in the former's
voluntary nature. In brief,
minority
ethnic groups like Native American
Indians, African Americans and Mexican Americans come into contact with the
USA's dominant culture involuntarily, making them resistant to
assimilation. In contrast, immigrant
groups voluntarily come to the USA and implicitly subscribe to
assimilation to its
dominant culture, and this bring me to one
of our main text, The Distance Between
Us.
I
think of Mexican Americans as immigrants because when reading Reyna Grande’s
The Distance Between Us, we hear a
story of illegal immigration, but it also tells many other stories and shows how
they are all connected. It tells the story of poverty that forces children
out of school and into the fields. It tells the story of mothers who
abandon their children and fathers who drink worries away until they become
violent. It also tells the story of children who rise above their poverty,
abandonment, and abuse to live out their dreams and contribute to the literary
world. It’s a fact that Mexican immigrants make up the largest group of current
immigrants in the United States and over sixty percent of all Mexican Americans
reside in Texas and California. These immigrants voluntarily move to the U.S.
for opportunities and to live a better life whereas American Indians who were
here first were forced from their land and made the minority.
When reading The
Round House I saw how differently life is for minority groups such as the
American Indians. At the beginning of the story, we see how prejudice people can
be to the Native Americans and the struggles that they face outside of their
reservation when Joe is in the emergency room waiting area and a woman is making
ugly comments about Joe’s mother. We also see, what was to me, the main issue
throughout the book and that was the legal jurisdictions that play a part in
prosecuting Linden Lark. There are the laws that society has and then there are
Indians laws that come to confuse one another because of not knowing what land
the crime was committed on which leads to an unfair outcome of Lark not being
legally held accountable for what he did to Joe’s mother.
Concentrating more on American Indian
literature and history, I’d like to observe what I’ve
learned and found interesting about Indians' identity as a
minority
culture from the
readings in our American Indians' texts and learning about their history. I
thought that the creation story,
Iroquois Creation Story 1 was one of the most interesting texts to read
regarding the creation myths that North America grew on the back of a turtle,
and a sky woman created the sun, moon, and stars. I think that this story
represents the importance of animals in the Iroquois culture. Indians having
their own creation stories and how they are passed down from generation to
generation is a common factor among different tribes but also other minority
groups too. The legends and myths that are passed down help others understand
that particular groups cultural differences and beliefs.
I like to compare the Iroquois Creation Story from American Indians to Mexican
American beliefs and what I know about The Story of the Virgin of Guadalupe
because we can see the similarities and differences in religions and beliefs.
American Indians tend to believe and worship in spirits and animals whereas
Mexican Americans follow more along the lines of Christianity and God, the human
saints and Virgin Mary. Even though the American Indians and Mexican Americans
values on religion and their beliefs are both very strong, this seems to be one
of the biggest differences between the two. This was a point I wanted to bring
up because as history will show us American Indians and Mexican Americans are
commonly mistaken for one another when looking at a person’s skin color.
Although American Indians and
Mexican American texts share similarities in their values of religion, family,
and culture, they still remain unique in their identities
Before taking this class, I was familiar with the thought that Indians are not
the immigrants that some people categorize them to be because they were actually
here first. All the land that we know was once theirs long before other
minorities took over. I’ve learned that American Indians do not fit the
immigrant profile so they count as a minority in any modern historical sense.
As historical background can confirm, American
Indians also seem to be the minority for the fact that they have been voiceless
for so long. American Indians suffered forced migration and had their land
ripped away from them. They did not get to choose what happened to them but
instead were murdered, enslaved, suffered intermarriage and forced assimilation.
When I spoke earlier about the historical
attributes that deal with minorities and the involuntary contact that minorities
experience, the difference between minority and immigrant in this sense is that,
immigrants voluntarily leave not only their homelands but also their parents.
(Kind of like what we see in The Distance
Between Us.) So, in turn, immigrants' children or grandchildren eventually
leave their parents or their parents' culture behind. I think we contradict this
thought however when we read the poem, “Green Chile.” In this poem he is
speaking of one of his favorite foods that his grandmother makes for him and
talks about the food and how it is prepared as if you were in Mexico. This is
something that stays relevant from the Mexican culture for him, and is far from
being left behind.
Some consider Mexican Americans similar to European
Americans of a century ago that arrived in the United States with modest
backgrounds but were eventually able to participate fully in society. In
contrast, others argue that Mexican Americans have been racialized throughout
U.S. history and this limits their participation in society. I want to put my
efforts forth in trying to identify with this statement because as a future
educator one of the issues we see is that Mexican Americans have lower
(sometimes much lower) levels of education than non-Hispanic Whites and Blacks.
Why is that? Is it because Mexican Americans have a long history of working hard
labor jobs at such low wages that they are put at the bottom of the economic
status? I think that children of those families aren’t given the chance to
succeed like non-Hispanic whites and African Americans are.
For
immigrant cultures, generational discontinuity is often interpreted as progress.
“Immigrant
cultures see immigration as freedom, opportunity, and the American Dream, but
for American Indians immigration meant genocide, loss of land and status to
immigrants, devastation of cultural and economic infrastructure—an "American
Nightmare" instead of the American Dream.” Does that mean that we are the
immigrants taking over to make American Indians the minority? And are we
becoming the minorities compared to Mexican Americans?
Moving on to our final focus, African American
literature and history, I was very limited on what I knew about the topic. What
I remember most from school is that when we spoke about black history it all
focused on Dr. King and the famous “I Have a Dream” speech. Sure I knew a few
other famous names we focused on during black history month such as Rosa Parks,
Eli Whitney and Fredrick Douglas but after reading some of the literature
provided in this class I feel like I understand black history and African
American literature in a better sense.
I think
our class has provided me with a better understanding of the lives of the
African American slave. Even though I know how slaves were treated, the details
that Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs provides gives me a better
understanding of what these slaves went through, not only as an African man or
woman, but as a mixed race child, or a slave parent. When we spoke in class
about the realization that black parents had to fear having their own children
as slaves is gut wrenching. As a mom myself, I just couldn’t imagine having that
fear instead of feeling joy. A slave who is pregnant will only worry about the
life that her child is going to have, that child is not free. When readings
these pieces of work I think I realized that of course slavery is an awful thing
first and foremost, but I came to the realization that while slavery is terrible
for the men, it’s even worse for the women.
Take what
we learned in reading “Kindred.” In the beginning of the story when Dana first
travels back to the past, there is a scene where she stumbles on a cabin in the
woods one night. Dana hides in the trees and bushes when the white men approach
the cabin on horseback and she watched the man get beaten and dragged off but
the woman is left there beaten and raped. This is just a small glimpse about
what we know about slavery and how awful the women were treated. They were
looked at like possessions and the white men felt they could do as they pleased
to these woman with no rules, laws, or any consequences for their horrific
actions. I believe that this is one of many examples as to my thought on how
slavery could be considered worse for woman then it was for men. However, I am
not taking away that it was awful all around for both genders.
The last
piece of literature that I want to address is the poem by Maya Angelou that we
read, “Still I Rise.” I read this poem before we were to discuss it in class and
while reading it I got a sense of woman empowerment. Not having any knowledge or
experiences with Africa American literate before, after reading this poem I
thought more about African American empowerment and focused on African American
woman empowerment. Through this poem, I think that
no matter what happens or what
is thrown at Maya Angelou, she
lets her readers know that she will always
rise. I think the theme of "Still
I Rise" is about self-respect, and confidence. In the poem, she reveals
how she will overcome anything with her self-esteem. This brings me to how we
see African American woman in today’s society. I think that African American
woman are becoming less of a minority because of their accomplishments and the
struggles that they overcome.
