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Model Midterm2 answers 2018 Web Highlights Index to Midterm2 Web Highlights |
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Christa Van Allen
Web Highlights: Minority Concerns and Efforts
1.) “Latinos/ Hispanics are defined as an ethnic group
rather than a minority because they chose to immigrate to the United States. The
assimilation that their group faces is not the result of the imposition of a
greater military power, or invasion... Mexican Americans face a different issue
post-immigration in terms of cultural identity and the need to assimilate”
(Peter Becnel, Final Exam, 2008).
2.) ””Border dwellers on both sides readily assert
that they have more in common with each other than with their host nations”
(Dear, 2013). It is interesting to see that even though there is this border,
they do not use it as a means of separation which is something incredible to
think when we have had to consider whether Mexican Americans are either
immigrants or a minority but, more like both. They don't even put focus on that
people of the border culture cross the border every day in order to get to work
the back home” (Kimberly Loza, Research Report Start, American Immigrant
Literature, 2016).
3.) “Alternative narratives have been developed by
both Mexican Americans and Native Americans and have helped each establish a
voice, record of their cultures, and arguments towards the dominant culture. The
narratives also describe their religion and creation ideas. Alternative
narrating allows Mexican Americans and Native Americans to maintain unionization
with their past” (Cana Hauerland, Final Exam, 2007).
What is the measure of national
identity? How do those original to the continent acclimate to the pressures of a
dominant force? Through the examination of three independent assignments the
reader will see the overwhelming influence of the dominant European cultures on
the United States, the way Mexican Americans view the border and how they have
taken control of their own stories.
In the first submission by Peter Becnel,
“Mystic Mixtures” describes the
typical label of immigrant applied to Mexican Americans, though this is of
course only half true. Many Latino Americans were within the territory that
became Texas, New Mexico, California, etc. before they were taken from Mexico.
Similarly to the Native Americans a large portion of Mexicans were suddenly
overtaken and either informed of their new national identity or pushed out to
make way for the new owners of their land. Any who stayed were forced to accept
new cultural norms, languages and occasionally beliefs.
Miss Loza illustrates a reason that made
these changes even more difficult than they first appeared. She explains in her
essay, “The Border Culture” that
citizens living on or near the border did not see it as any kind of barrier to
their day to day travels to and from work. However,
once a legitimate separation was enforced on them it became a consequential
decision. Stay for work or leave to be with family? Officially assimilating now
meant giving up the values of large extended family for unknown opportunities.
Being directly on the border created something of a third national identity,
something not completely affiliated with either the U.S. or Mexico.
I carried these considerations over into
Cana Hauerland’s “Mexican Americans and
Native Americans: The Original Americans”. With all the limitations placed
on Latino culture and familial traditions it becomes difficult to even correct
misconceptions. Without records, generations grow up completely disconnected
from their origins. Thankfully in recent history, a series of alternative
narration works have been created by the minorities that are depicted within
their pages. This presents the opportunity to regain the voices taken in history
and present a more personal perspective on matters that are important to them.
In conclusion, I find that national
identity is malleable. It is especially so to anyone that has been in transition
before. For anyone that immigrates to a new location or is displaced and usurped
by a dominant power, the shift from larger national identity to traditional
identity is a simple one. In the privacy of such roles it becomes easier to
maintain cultural norms. The language may continue a little longer, the
practices will be almost permanent, and the pride will carry on in genes.
Ultimately, what is considered most important to the Mexican American home will
remain physically or memorially and their voices will continue to ring out.
