Cultural Studies Fall 2017

In terms of discussion regarding the reading of Cosmopolitan or Mongrel reading and class discussion we ended up talking about the video shown in class of the singer Brother Marvin and his calypso Jahali Bhai.

“Indo and Afro Trinbagonian

We should learn to be one

Our ancestors came by boat

Taste the saltwater in yuh throat”

We were perplexed to read the lyrics and even more watch him sing in front of the audience. For someone that came fron NYC another man of color was seen as a brother, a comrade, a friend as Adam put it. As a woman of color, I have grown up not caring where my fellow colored friends came from but rather that we were all in this together, united against breaking the glass ceilings. That is why the discussion about douglarization was so hard to fully grasp. The stigma that is followed by being categorized under a dougla gene is uncomfortable for it brings forth the result of colonization has had on the oppressed. This attempt to find the racial and pure value of the bodies through the precention of hybridity kept us talking for a while for it is something that he saw in some boroughs in New York City. Blacks and Latino were encouraged to be friends, as they were great friends but when it came to procreating they were pushed towards a no from society, a society that wanted to maintain its pure non mixed roots. In turn to this comment I also remembered the notion of some people in my latino community that were more than willing to accept and treat their neighbor the same way but one did not marry outside their race for we were to keep our culture alive. It is only acceptable if you marry white.

What we saw through this reading and our discussion was how westernization and the idea as white being good and successful has stayed with the global community. So much that they refuse to continue on bringing color and instead of mixing they will cultivate their own roots to be as pure as possible.

Adam and I discussed the ideas behind Klor de Alvas arguments in Postcolonization of the Latin American Experience: A Reconsideration of Colonialism, Postcolonialism and Mestizaje. There was a bit of bias and I guess first witness knowledge from my part that agree wholeheartedly with Klors arguments on colonialism or in this case post colonialism and how it deferred very much away from the regular description.

As a Latina woman born and raised in Peru up until the age of nine I was introduced in a world that very much had been enriched by the culture of the Spaniards intermixed with that of the Incas. Adam’s brother, Jake had lived in Peru for about six months and he too had witnessed this integration of European culture within the society. From the cathedrals, the language, food and some of its holidays reminded him a lot of his time in Europe. When hearing so, I was reminded of my time in Europe and in specific Spain where a lot of the shops, houses, and cathedrals looked exactly like the ones back at home. I felt as if I was in an expensive Peru.

What Klor is saying is that colonization was different for south America, out of it were born the criollos, mestizos and mulatos (although no longer used as a proper term). Instead of colonization being carried out as its usual self of cleaning th country out f its natural resources and economical opportunities it decided to stay and imprint its mark on the society and culture.

I went to a private elementary school that cost $14,000 a year, and kept rising each year after.

I then went to a private, preparatory all girls high school that started at $21000 and kept rising each year after.

I am now in a private liberal arts University that cost $68000 a year and continues to rise.

I have received full academic rides for almost all of them and have never paid more than 5% of the cost.

Yet my cousins and friends, and all the kids I grew up with in my neighborhood went to public school. Out of the kids in my age group only two have managed to make it to college, only one of them is in a private college while the other one goes to state school. They both can only be there because they are some of the best athletes in each one’s perspective competitive sports. They got sports scholarships not academic. However they are both struggling with their academics and finding it hard to find a balance, we are all in our third year of college.

I like Kandice of the video I posted above was placed in a desegregation program that allowed me to get out of the future that was set up for me had I stayed with the kids in my neighborhood. This unfairness, the fact that I had to go and get a private education if i wanted to have a more successful future. I place myself in the position of a white latina that because of my whiter skin I was invited to represent diversity in my school where I met donors that would for the next twelve years fund my education. I was not the smartest in my class or the nicest yet I was still given a greater opportunity.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4K5fbQ1-zps

One of the reasons I began to get interested in education and the disparaties that occur within the system was because of videos such as these. If you watch it you will see a white, middle aged man, telling a group of older teens to race for a $100. The catch however is that they must move two steps forward if the statements he makes applies to them, if not they stay where they are. The first statement is take two step forwards if your parents are still married? If you grew up with a father figure? If you had access to a private education? and so on.

The majority of white kids continue on moving forward while the rest of the colored students remain in the back. He later asks the kids to stop and turn around and look who is behind. They are all in the race for the $100 but have a disadvantage because they have not had the same opportunity as the rest of the kids. The reality he tries to prove is that, regardless of where they stand in the race they still have to go through with it because life is not fair and once people realize their privilege and start using it for good they will make a change in the world.

During the Spring of my Sophomore year I took a class with Dr. Jayman in which we learned about the legitimation crisis as described by economist and theorist Jürgen Habermas. He employed an illustration now known as the systems theory to explain the entering of a legitimation crisis. He introduces three main systems, the economic system, the political-administrative system and the socio-cultural system. Each of these systems are intermingled with one another, if one fails the other two are bound to be affected. In regards to my research I place education in the Socio-Cultural System where once affected negatively by segregation it affect how society performs and the level of loyalty from those it directly affects. In turn this hurts both the political Administrative System as well as the Economic System.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8pwm7GK0BM

U.S. Schools Still Segregated

The reason I picked this as a means to use in my blog post is because AJ+ often appears in facebook video feed. That is actually where I found it. This video brings forth a couple of very important points regarding my research topic:

• 1954 Separate facilities unequal although said to be equal
• Research proves low income attending student that go to middle income schools will excel
• 1988 was the highest point of racial integration yet fell
• Black students in white majority schools where higher in 1988 with a 43.5% yet in 2011 that number fell to 23.2% equal to that of 1968. It showed a rewind in progress.
• Apartheid schools are described as such because they have less than 1% of white students have tripled since 1988 when there were 2762 schools to 2015 when there are 6727.
• Teachers are less experienced, and given less of the needed materials.
• Black Students by the time they hit 8^th grade are more than often behind by three years in their math and sciences.

These points are essential to my research because they function as proof that the segregation in American school is high when it should not be. As a superpower in the world community we should lead by example. Yet we have failed to live up to that potential.

Annotated Bibliography: The Impact of School-Based Poverty Concentration on Academic Achievement and Student Outcomes

I found an Annotated Bibliography regarding research ranging 50 years regarding the effect on the economic status of students based on their academic achievement. This research shows that the base of the socio-economic structure a school is built on can in turn play a much bigger role in the achievement of breaking a child’s own cycle of poverty. The annotated bibliography brings together research proving the relationship between family poverty and the achievement the student encounters in their life. Using literature on school poverty brought forth by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) legal defense fund.This is essential for my research for it brigs together many different literature on the topic of segregation and wealth in the United States.

http://www.prrac.org/pdf/annotated_bibliography_on_school_poverty_concentration.pdf

New York State’s Extreme School Segregation by John Kucsera and Gary Orfield

https://civilrightsproject.ucla.edu/research/k-12-education/integration-and-diversity/ny-norflet-report-placeholder/Kucsera-New-York-Extreme-Segregation-2014.pdf

I found a report carried out by the Civil Rights Project at the University of California, Los Angeles that was about 160 pages long and held too many words for me too fully understand. They released a report in 2014 regarding the New York City public school system and how the magnet school program has turned to be a voluntary desegregation pathway barely available for those lucky parents that win the lottery of magnet schools. It goes into detail about its attempt for desegregation yet during the time of Regan administration all of those efforts were stopped. Instead an interest in charter schools, school choices and accountability systems were focused on. The research talks about ow previous administrations, the remaining of segregation and current issues affect the continued slowing of desegregation in NYC.

Some facts and numbers found were:

• At the state level, Latino and Asian student in NY has doubled from 1989 to 2010
• Nearly half of public school students in NY were low income in 2010 with 70% of them being colored students
• Only 20% of total school districts across the metro were considered diverse in both 1999 and 2010

“The New York City public-school system is 41 percent Latino, 27 percent black and 16 percent Asian. Three-quarters of all students are low-income. In 2014, the Civil Rights Project at the University of California, Los Angeles, released a report showing that New York City public schools are among the most segregated in the country. Black and Latino children here have become increasingly isolated, with 85 percent of black students and 75 percent of Latino students attending “intensely” segregated schools — schools that are less than 10 percent white.”

This is a paragraph that caught my attention in the reading because it outlined NYC as the most segregated in the country. One wouldn’t think that the capital od the world, as it has been named before, the place with the head quarters of the US as being the most segregated in the country yet it is. This only shows to proof that many cities across the nation follow through in practicing the same segregation ideals of education as the City that never sleeps.

https://consetta.deviantart.com/art/South-Africa-Pencil-Test-94458739

https://www.thoughtco.com/racial-classification-under-apartheid-43430

I was looking through different websites talking about the system of Apartheid and came across this image. It is the image of a black woman, with very curly hair, and pencils sticking out of her head. For someone that may not be as aware of the cruel system that developed in South Africa they might move past it. Yet this image speaks levels of power regarding the Bantu Education Act of 1953 imposed on the people of color during Apartheid. The Bantu Education Act which later became known as the law that allowed whites to receive a better education that blacks, who were only good for work as the Prime Minister, Henfrick Verwoerd described them.

What the pencil test was essential was a means of measurement to help the government decide who was white enough to be profiled as white and who was black or nonwhite. The pencil test was part of a series of unofficial tests when one challenged the classification of their race. The way it work was by placing a pencil in one’s hair. They would then proceed to ask them to shake their head. If the pencil placed in the head fell out, he or she was categorized as white. If it did not or had trouble falling smoothly then they were classified as colored. The issue with this is that it was not a successful test because it caused for many members of an extended family be placed in different categories.

A persons way of life hanged on the ability of the pencil to fall out of the hair.

In a story presented in one of the many articles I shuffled through and found this picture it talked about a woman named Ms. Laing born to white parents. Yet she held the appearance of a mixed light skin colored person. After her racial classification was challenged at school by her peers she mas ultimately kicked out. This caused for her father to take a paternity test proving her whiteness. Eventually her family helped her with her reclassification as a white student. Regardless of, Ms. Laing chose to marry a black man and caused for the continuing of her ostracization by the white community and her family.