Summary
One identity I have and I’m proud of is being Dominican. This is because I do not know how I would be if I were not. The Dominican Republic is just a beautiful island, full of nice and happy people that always makes you feel like home and always takes a snail out from you. The food is incredibly tasty and delicious. Another part of our culture that makes me feel proud of is the music. The music in the Dominican Republic is just part of who we are. The merengue will make almost anyone move at least their heads if listening to it. I did not know how important it was for me to identify as a Dominican before moving to the United States. I guess because I was just used to all of it while living in my country. But when you leave where you come from to go live or visit somewhere different you realize how connected or maybe not you are to your roots. Or at least, that’s how I feel. One identity that I’m not proud of and I struggle with is the fact that I’m a really shy person to the point of it affecting the way I socialize around others. It is truly challenging for me to change this about myself and I know I probably have lost the opportunities to experience different things in life because of this.
Something I did not know and I learned from the article is that Latino students had tripled in number since 1980 from 8.1% to 25%. I find it to be a huge increase and more when there are three states: California, New Mexico and Texas where more than half of their students are Latinos. I knew latinos were a big minority group in the United States and in more states than others but I did not think Latinos were as big as the statistics projects.
I chose the video of Fernanda Ponce, the main argument of the video is the stereotypes surrounding the Hispanics and Latinos in the United States like for example the fact that a lot of people assume they all speak Spanish but this is not true. The reasons that she uses are examples from real life like a video she mentioned of a woman who identifies as Hispanic or Latino was being discriminated against at a supermarket line because of her roots. My personal thoughts is that it is true that people tend to generalize towards the Hispanic and Latinos groups' culture whether it is about the lenguaje, the music, the food among others. People think we are all the same and that we have the same characteristics but we don’t.
2 thoughts on “Nicolle Carela | Conversation 6”
Hello Nicolle,
I also identify myself as being Dominican because my parents are from the Dominican republic and even though I was born in the United States I feel like the culture from our motherland can never be hidden but always be publicly told. I really enjoy merengue as I hear it, I dance automatically without being being taught since its in my bloodstream. I can agree that assuming someone that looks “hispanic” speaks Spanish is wrong because I have met people that were born in hong kong that speak Spanish fluent and funny thing is they rather speak Spanish hahah.
DR is definitely beautiful. I had a blast when I visited this summer and thank you for pointing out that ” People think we are all the same and that we have the same characteristics, but we don’t.” that speaks so many volumes, I think as a whole people struggle with this stereotype.