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.