STRUGGLES FOR SPACE, CREATING LATINA/O URBAN CULTURES

BY I.V.

Racism is defined as the belief or doctrine that inherent differences among the various human racial groups determine cultural or individual achievement, usually involving the idea that one's own race is superior and has the right to dominate others or that a particular racial group is inferior to the others. Growing up I wasn’t exposed to racism until I came to the United States at the age of 4 or maybe I just wasn’t aware of it. Kids would divide themselves according to their skin color instead of playing with each other and I was so shocked because I would not know what to do about that. Racism is a word that has long been rooted in history, which includes many Latino and black communities. From the time of slavery, people of color have always been treated as lesser individuals then the white man. Even after the emancipation proclamation and the annexation of the amendments issued by Lincoln, black people were mistreated just like all other minorities.

The Black Panther also so known as the Black Panther party was an African American revolutionary group that original purpose was to patrol African American neighborhoods and protect residents from police brutality. The Black Panther came to light right after the assassination of the late Malcolm X. Similar to the struggle black people endured for equality and equal rights, a movement among the Puerto Ricans began in the United States in the late 1900’s. In wake of their struggle as well the Puerto Ricans also founded their own revolutionary group, called the Young lords that sought to end the means of unfair treatment of the Puerto Rican people by the oppressors. Just like the Black Panther group the Young lord group implemented their own methods of dealing with the oppressors and even had a list called the “13 point program”. Stated in the “13 point program”, “We want liberation for all third world people-No Puerto Rican is free until all people are free!. We are revolutionary nationalist and oppose racism-Power to all oppressed people (Young Lord Party).

When people are backed into a corner I believe that the only option there is to fight back. The Black Panther group would walk around carrying guns at times in order to show the police that they were not going to take it anymore. In the movie, “El Pueblo Se Levanta” the Young lords went and occupied a church and threw the trash that the sanitation department would not pick up in the streets to cause a roadblock. The two sides have suffered greatly at the hand of their oppressors but have rounded up as a community and fought back.

References:

Duncan, Garrett Albert. “Black Panther Party.” Encyclopedia Britannica Online. Encyclopedia Britannica, n.d. Web. 27 Oct. 2016.

“13 Point Program and Platform of the Young Lords Party.” 13 Point Program and Platform of the Young Lords Party. Young Lord Party, n.d. Web. 27 Oct. 2016.

STRUGGLES FOR SPACE, CREATING LATINA/O URBAN CULTURES

BY I.V.

Racism is defined as the belief or doctrine that inherent differences among the various human racial groups determine cultural or individual achievement, usually involving the idea that one's own race is superior and has the right to dominate others or that a particular racial group is inferior to the others. Growing up I wasn’t exposed to racism until I came to the United States at the age of 4 or maybe I just wasn’t aware of it. Kids would divide themselves according to their skin color instead of playing with each other and I was so shocked because I would not know what to do about that. Racism is a word that has long been rooted in history, which includes many Latino and black communities. From the time of slavery, people of color have always been treated as lesser individuals then the white man. Even after the emancipation proclamation and the annexation of the amendments issued by Lincoln, black people were mistreated just like all other minorities.

The Black Panther also so known as the Black Panther party was an African American revolutionary group that original purpose was to patrol African American neighborhoods and protect residents from police brutality. The Black Panther came to light right after the assassination of the late Malcolm X. Similar to the struggle black people endured for equality and equal rights, a movement among the Puerto Ricans began in the United States in the late 1900’s. In wake of their struggle as well the Puerto Ricans also founded their own revolutionary group, called the Young lords that sought to end the means of unfair treatment of the Puerto Rican people by the oppressors. Just like the Black Panther group the Young lord group implemented their own methods of dealing with the oppressors and even had a list called the “13 point program”. Stated in the “13 point program”, “We want liberation for all third world people-No Puerto Rican is free until all people are free!. We are revolutionary nationalist and oppose racism-Power to all oppressed people (Young Lord Party).

When people are backed into a corner I believe that the only option there is to fight back. The Black Panther group would walk around carrying guns at times in order to show the police that they were not going to take it anymore. In the movie, “El Pueblo Se Levanta” the Young lords went and occupied a church and threw the trash that the sanitation department would not pick up in the streets to cause a roadblock. The two sides have suffered greatly at the hand of their oppressors but have rounded up as a community and fought back.

References:

Duncan, Garrett Albert. “Black Panther Party.” Encyclopedia Britannica Online. Encyclopedia Britannica, n.d. Web. 27 Oct. 2016.

“13 Point Program and Platform of the Young Lords Party.” 13 Point Program and Platform of the Young Lords Party. Young Lord Party, n.d. Web. 27 Oct. 2016.

LATINA/OS TAKE CENTER STAGE: CENSUS 2000

BY STUDENT

I was born in the Dominican Republic, a small country in the Caribbean that shares the island of Hispaniola with Haiti. Back in the year 2000, my mom quit her job, packed up our house, and left to Corona, Queens. I followed a year later. During that year that I had to wait, it seemed like everyone was obsessed with “Nueva York”. Many of my friends moved to different parts of “Nueva York” that year, and many of them moved with their families after, too. It was described as the land of opportunity where anyone could achieve the American Dream. I thought that as soon as I stepped off the plane, everyone would speak English and have blonde hair and blue eyes like most of the Americans in movies. However, I found that my family could easily get by without a lick of English. Wherever I turned, people were speaking Spanish! A large portion of Corona was, and still remains, Latin@.

In his book “Magical Urbanism”, Mike Davis tell us that sometime in 1996, “Latinos surpassed African-Americans as the second largest ethno-racial group in New York City.” This change was reflected in the 2000 Census. Davis tells us that, in New York City, there are as many Puerto Ricans as there are in its capital, San Juan, and that there are as many Dominicans as there are in its capital, Santo Domingo. Davis mentions in his book that Latin@s didn’t necessarily recognize this change. They did not realize the impact that this could have on the community.

New York City had the largest Latin@ population in the United States in 1990. The 1990 Census shows that about 1,784,000 people of “Hispanic origin” were living in New York City. By 2000, that number grew to 2,160,554, a growth of about 17 percent. This growth, although not exponential, brought Latin@s to the forefront as the largest ethno-racial group in New York City. Unfortunately, the 1990 Census does not provide information for specific places. However, the 2000 Census shows that 556,605, or about 26 percent, of New York City Latin@s live in Queens, NY. The growth of the Latin@ population is significant because the government uses Census data for the allocation of funds. Census data is also used by businesses to cater to the larger populations. For example, because the Dominican population has grown so much, there have been many Dominican restaurants, salons, and barbershops opened throughout New York City. Supermarkets have started carrying products that Latin@s use in their food, such as Adobo and plantains. Hopefully, as the Latin@ population continues to rise throughout the United States, the appropriate changes will be made to immigration law, especially in those cities like New York, where the Latin@ population is the majority minority.

Sources:
www.census.gov

Davis, Mike. Magical Urbanism: Latinos Reinvent the Us City. London: Verso, 2000. Print.

LATINA/OS TAKE CENTER STAGE: CENSUS 2000

LATINA/O DEMOGRAPHIC EXPLOSION

BY S.T.

I grew up in New York City. Everyone knows New York City as the “tourist attraction city”, the city that never sleeps and the most populated city in the Eastern seaboard. But what people do not always stop to do is look at the actual representation of groups of people. You have a mixture of Latino@s, African Americans, Asian Americans, whites, Caribbean’s and etc. We are spread out amongst all five boroughs with concentrations of groups everywhere. I live in South Bronx and personally in that area you find a lot of minority groups like Latino@s and African Americans. I am specifically going to focus on Dominicans.

In 2000, Latinos became the largest minority majority living in the US. According to PEW research, from 2010-2014 the population US Hispanic population grew 2.2%. In my opinion I think that a lot of Dominicans left DR and specifically moved to NYC because of the similarities of culture. When my parents first moved from the Dominican Republic she said she wanted to move to NYC because there were opportunities for her. And when she actually came to move in she saw a lot of similarities. She told me she started working as a home attendant and she saw a lot of Dominicans who were also in that job field. She saw that in the area of the Bronx there were a lot of Dominicans because they stick together, the environment felt the same for her. When she went to the bodegas she saw that it had the same type of ingredients for her cooking, a lot of jobs where she was able to earn more money doing the same things as she would in the Dominican Republic.

Latin@s population will only increase with the availability of jobs that best suite their needs. It is also important to remember that not all places are like NYC. Hispanic populations are not necessarily growing everywhere. From 2010 to 2014, the Hispanic population declined in 11 counties that have Hispanic populations. This can be explained by looking at the demographics of the cities. A lot of Latinos have gone put of tradition and gone out to explore different parts of rural cities and move to new places.

References:

Magical Urbanism: Latinos Reinvent the US Big City, Ch 1-4

Pew Research, “Hispanic population reaches record 55 million, but growth has cooled” (accessed Oct 25, 2016) http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/06/25/u-s-hispanic-population-growth-surge-cools/

TRANSNATIONAL URBAN LATINIZATION

BY T.S.

Japan, where I was born, has a big social issue which is sexism. The role of women has changed however, a place of women has traditionally been in the home in Japan. This thought existed not only in Japan but also in the United States. The internationalization from 1960s in the United States allowed women to become paid employment outside of their house. It changed economic condition in many ways and changed definitions of gender at the same time. Before the economic globalization started, definitions of gender was that men as providers and women were housewives. So how and in what ways did definitions of gender change throughout the internationalization? Are women treated equally in workplace today?

It is clear that women became more active as women’s labor force participation increased 20 percent in 1900 from 55 percent in 1988. Even though women could work as domestic responsibilities, they were limited to work in low skilled jobs. Those jobs were low productivity and wages compared to men’s jobs. However, women were still expected to take care of children, and do household. These gender gaps between women and men show ideological construction that men is the great provider of family, while women do household. As “ Recasting women in the global economy” by Fernandez Kelly and Saskia Sassen states that “The economic internationalization has not abolished older patriarchal definitions but transformed”, changing definitions of gender made women’s position worse because they were expected to be able to support themselves and do their household.

Women’s participation in society is increasing today, thanks to the diffusion of feminist thought. Unfortunately, in general, women are subordinate to the position of men in terms of a work. I think that women’s position is affected by ideological construction not only gender but also race. In fact, women’s work condition improved and hourly wage rose in the United State but Hispanic and Black people do not apply to the fact. Changing definitions of gender is not easy and takes long time by transforming the relationships with economy and politics.

References:
Fernandez Kelly, Patricia, and Saskia Sassen. 1995. “Recasting Women in the Global Economy: Internationalization and Changing Definitions of Gender.”

CliffsNotes “Sexism in the workplace”, (accessed Oct 24, 2016) https://www.cliffsnotes.com/study-guides/sociology/sex-and-gender/sexism-in-the-workplace 

TRANSNATIONAL LATINA/O URBANIZATION

BY STUDENT

Women have been increasingly incorporated into the formal labor force since the mid-20^th century, largely in part due to the loss of the male working population during World War II. American women started working manufacturing jobs during this time to not only provide for their families, but also to provide for their service men and their country. However, after the war ended, suburbanization hit full-force in America, and many women went back to their traditional domestic roles in the private sphere. There were also a large number of women that wished to stay in the public sphere labor force and continued to do, but with much effort and determination on their part, as men were much more sought-after. Only a few decades later, America and other nations around the world experienced an economic crisis in the 1970s.

Manufacturing jobs were lost to overseas and foreign nations. America shifted from a production based economy to a service based economy. The international division of labor also shifted production to developing nations and consumerism to the developed nations. The feminization of labor came into effect and women were increasingly incorporated into what was left of production and manufacturing work here in the U.S. As Kelly and Sassen (1995, pp. 100) discuss in their article Recasting Women in the Global Economy: Internationalization and Changing Definitions of Gender, this resulted in the expansion of “occupations with features generally associated with women’s employment, including temporality, comparatively low wages, and reduced union membership”. The authors also mention that while much of the U.S. manufacturing industry has been outsourced or sent to foreign nations, major cities within the U.S. like New York City and Los Angeles have been able to retain a large labor force in the production of garments and textiles, as well as electronics. This point is particularly relevant because both of these cities have a proportionately large minority population, especially in regards to Latino and/or Hispanic populations. So while these cities, especially New York City, are considered global cities, they do provide opportunities for women of color to gain employment; but the low wage, low-skill employment is not truly allowing for upward economic mobility.

The authors define this moment in time as the redefinition of globalization to include international movements of labor, not just capital, and placed gender at the center of the process that enabled industries to compete both domestically and internationally. Still today, nearly half a century later, women’s employment worldwide is mostly low-skill, labor-intensive, low-pay work. According to the Institute for Women’s Policy Research (2016, pp. 2), “Women are almost half of the workforce. They are the equal, if not main, breadwinners in four out of ten families. They receive more college and graduate degrees than men. Yet, on average, women continue to earn considerably less than men… In 2015, female full-time workers made only 80 cents for every dollar earned by men, a gender wage gap of 20 percent”. Even more striking is that Black women earn 63 percent to a man’s dollar, and Latina and Hispanic women earn 54 percent to a man’s dollar. These numbers alone can explain why multinational corporations look specifically for women, and even more specifically, Latina and Hispanic women as the dominant workforce in manufacturing and production employment.

Source(s):

Kelly, Patricia Fernandez and Sassen, Saskia. Recasting Women in the Global Economy: Internationalization and Changing Definitions of Gender. 1995. Retrieved from: Blackboard.

Hegewisch, Ariane and DuMonthier, Asha. The Gender Wage Gap: 2015, Annual Earnings Differences by Gender, Race, and Ethnicity. September 2016. Institute for Women’s Policy Research. Retrieved from: http://www.iwpr.org/publications/pubs/the-gender-wage-gap-2015-annual-earnings-differences-by-gender-race-and-ethnicity