Rohan Singh
I felt that the project we did on culture and identity really tied together a lot of the things that we had been talking about this course. One of the things throughout the semester that stuck out to me the most was the binary of being an immigrant and also American. Although I am not Latino this discussion resonated with me because I am a first generation American, my parents being from Germany and India. A lot of times I have felt that I am not totally sure where I belong – do I feel more German, more Indian, or just completely American? These topics came up a lot during the platica we did as our final project, where some of my Latino friends talked about how they were mixed race or didn’t speak Spanish, and thus didn’t always feel that they completely fit in with the Latino community. I think this course also opened my eyes to the different pressures faced by certain immigrants. For example, my parents’ cultures both value education, so I had pressure to do well in school. However if I didn’t do as well I would not be ostracized. I do think that many Latino people face a more intense type of pressure – if they are not a model citizen, many people throw racist remarks at them and say they are making America worse. Even those who are trying to help can be part of the problem – the advertisement we watched promoting DACA really emphasized that it seems like Latino people need to be PhDs in medicine and science in order to fit in, when in reality the vast majority of many-generational Americans do not have a fraction of these credentials. Overall, I think my main takeaways are that I think I have more in common with many Latino immigrants than I had originally thought in terms of questioning one’s identity and pressures that may come as being first generation. However I definitely feel there are much more severe pressures being faced by the Latino community. Perhaps my biggest takeaway from this class is how hard it can be to climb the ladder of American society, especially regarding wealth. I used to wonder why if my dad and mom could learn English, why did many Latino immigrants have more difficulty learning English? The discussion we had in class and readings about language isolation in the workplace was really eye-opening to me as it was something I had not considered before. More generally I think I was making judgments before considering the full story. Furthermore, my parents and many immigrant families I knew from my hometown were not fleeing violence and already had high levels of education from their native countries, so it was unfair of me to compare levels of English between two people coming from very different situations. I think the platica we had really helped me see that this issue of language-learning was very commonplace and even occurred among my peers. It was a great way to end the course because it was an in-person primary source that backed up the readings and conversations we had been having throughout the semester!
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