Embracing Who We Are
When I read about Nelda, Many thoughts cross through my mind. Trying to find the right way to explain the difference with all of these thoughts, was equally hard. So here’s what I came up with. Being Mexican American was to be one who is of Mexican descent who happens to grow up with the American ideals that surround them. Now, a Chicana/o is a Mexican American who understands the inequality in social justice between Mexican Americans and other Americans, causing them to stand up and try to break all of the inequalities that separate them from others (they are totally entitled to the breaking of equalities, my opinion). She is Mexican, but she is also a Chicana. She embraces having this dual identity. Like it is said on page 181 from the article of Angela Valenzuela, “Nelda further explained that while she will always consider herself Mexican, she sees herself as different from other Mexicans who “look down” on Chicanos. Thus, she manages the dual identities of Mexican and Chicana without seeing any conflict between the two.” Although there seemed to be opposition to one of her viewpoints, she stood strong by her identity.
If we take both Lorena and Nelda(keeping in mind the “job as a human being” and Chicana thoughts), they both just want people to succeed and/or to strive. In Lorena’s case, she was supporting the cases of many workers that were not receiving the necessities to live. Lorena says, “When I saw all this, I told my supervisor that my mission is to change one person’s life. Educate one person, so if their boss tries to be bad to them, they’ll say, “No, I know you can’t do that, that’s against the law.” If I can do that, then I’ve done my job as a human being. I at least wanted to give them knowledge to defend themselves with.” (194) Nelda also believed in this fight for equality, in this case she is fighting as a Chicana for the equality between Mexican Americans and Americans. Education has also helped with both of their causes, giving them the essentials to communicate this fight to others. Without this education, they would not have the means necessary to truly express how they feel about the issues at hand. Fortunately, they both maintained their schooling, which has and will lead to their future successes.
I feel schools try to put a damper on the individual identification of different people’s. This prevents students from growing. Being aware of these differences will allow one to know how diverse the world really is. In my situation, this damper was very noticeable, especially in my situation in Truckee(I’ve rambled on about this topic many times before). For example, WWII was always a great subject to talk about in my history classes, as I would have eyes glued to me while I sit there wondering “What the hell is wrong?” The teacher would more or less ignore me about these subjects, where I would typically be the one talking in the class mostly. I understand that people of the same ethic identity has caused some really messed up shit in the past, but let’s get past that, understand that it happened, and accept it. At my community site, the students are predominantly Hispanic(honestly I haven’t seen anyone of any other identity there). Students embrace their identity, since so many of similar identities are also there. I feel like the site embraces this as well, creating a network of students that could work together for their own greater achievements.
