Joshua Wong – DB 6

For many people, Identity is shaped by the way in which we grew up, the community we surround ourselves with, the people we meet, by our culture. Personally, I believe Identity extends more than just our ethnicity or where we come from. For me, although my identity includes Guyanese heritage, I do not see myself as being defined by it. I am also an artist, I am an athlete. I am proud to be all of these things and I do not feel like or think anything that is apart of my identity I should feel ashamed of. That is not to say there are not things that could be improved upon. But shame is not something I feel for a thing that is inherently a part of me.

There were a multitude of interesting things talked about in the article. Especially because I read this after watching the videos provided. The first set of information  that I found interesting was that Mexican Immigration was at a net 0 and that most of the population especially in modern times are born here “90% of school-age latino children are born in the United States.” It is terrible how this countries rhetoric especially that of our last U.S president, has said so many degrading things about our own peoples.

the educational challenges of these communities were interesting. That fact that these people fall behind White and Asian Americans due to the fact that they are more likely to begin school later than their peers, are the least likely to attend preschool, and fall behind peers in testing of reading and math is failure of our education system to help motivate and provide models to help advance these groups. As the article noted as well, most Latino’s who pursue high education are more likely to get stuck because of other obligations outside of the classroom because our country and the circumstances we put our citizens in, they often have to decide between working and earning money so they can live or going to school.

“Defining Latino: Young People Talk Identity, Belonging”

This video’s main argument was about what Latino actually means and the issues that come from being Latino in the United States. I think one of the most important issues that was brought up in the video was how unwelcome and unappreciated Latino Americans were in this country. Hearing the testimonies by the participants in the video shed a lot of light on the issue. One that stood out was the woman who ended up learning Spanish as a second language because of the discrimination that her parents faced in this country. It never occurred to me that parents would restrict teaching their children their native language for fear of discrimination. It was interesting to hear that because of this, she was not considered latino enough by her peers.