Power of Awareness
When introducing myself, I say my name is Deidania. “Hum.. Deidania where does that name come from?” People ask. Well, tell you truth I am not sure.. I know that my Godmother suggested that name to my mom and that is where I got my name. What people are really trying to ask and some do ask, is what race and/or ethnicity am I from? Before I even tell them, some people are already guessing. Are you Puerto Rican? Lebanese? Colombian? Italian? Cuban? Dominican? Yes, I have heard them all and then I say proudly “I am Latina, I am Dominican… well Dominican-American because I was born here in Providence. I was always confused when younger while living in the United States, I was considered Dominicana and when I would travel to D.R, I was considered a “gringa”. So where did I fit? What does this mean? Who am I? Why does your identity matter? Why does the languages that I speak matter? Why is Spanish and Spanglish so important to me and my family? Why is talking about it so important to me and many others in life. Culture is important because it is part of our daily lives.
Latina/Latino: Refers to people of Latin American origin. Latino is focusing more on geographic location. Brazil is considered Latino. Hispanic means whether you or your family speak the language, of Spanish. If you are asking, am I Spanish? I would say no because I was not born in Spain. (Even, though I do have Spanish ancestors). Why is this so confusing? Well let’s not forget that most Latin American countries have been colonized hundreds of years ago. There are about 20 or more countries that speak Spanish. (Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Equatorial Guinea, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Puerto Rico, Spain, Uruguay, Venezuela) www.learnalanguage.com Even though these countries speak Spanish, many of these countries have many dialects that are different from Spanish. We have to know the countries history before we can understand why.
Let’s talk about the history of Dominican Republic. Brief history: Known as Hispaniola, the Dominican Republic and Haiti are located in the Caribbean Sea. The Dominican was inhabited by the Tainos that called their island “Quisqueya”. The Tainos were the indigenous people of the Caribbean. The Tainos spoke an Arawakan language. The Dominican Republic was colonized by the Spanish conquistadors in 1492. The rape of the Taino women in Hispaniola by the Spanish was common, resulting in Mestizo children. The smallpox epidemic killed almost 90% of the Natives. Warfare and slavery by the colonists also caused many deaths. As the Tainos were enslaved they died of disease, poor labor and mass killings. Monarch Ferdinand first granted permission to the colonies to import African slaves. The first African slaves were purchased in Lisbon, Portugal. The growing demand of sugar cane cultivation led to an exponential increase of slaves workers. The enslaves population numbered between twenty and thirty thousand in the 16th century. History of the Dominican Republic - Wikipedia The Dominican Republic is one of the earliest European colonies in the Western Hemisphere. Historians says that Santo Domingo has its first church, its first University…. the main base for Spanish activities until the conquest of Mexico. The D.R. Intermixing resulted in a population of mixed Spaniard, African, and Taino descent.
There is a plenty of more history to learn about of D.R. And many other countries. What I know is the Dominican culture is like a ‘sancocho’. A soup that is mixed and complicated to cook but sure it is one of the best soups I’ve had. Sancocho is Healthy and hearty with full of vegetables and meats. It has platano, yuca, carne, longaniza, pollo, cilantro, oregano, ajo, maiz, ayuama, yautia, and don’t forget the white rice and avocado on the side. If you want to have a party, don’t forget the sancocho, the avocado, el arroz blanco, the cerveza “Presidente” and some Merengue, Bachata and some Salsa music. Dominican Republic has one of the most beautiful green mountains and villages. Full of crops, people dancing when they can, listening to music all the time, men playing dominoes and women playing bingo occasionally. It is so beautiful that I am grateful that my parents have taken us there to visit every few years throughout the summer. I’ve been there more than 10 times and every time we visit, I try to see something new. Let’s not forget the beaches, the sand, the ocean, the sun, the sound of music that you hear in every corner. Fresh caught fish to cook and fry. The tostones, the arroz blanco, the crops, the…. I can continue but lets not forget that most of the country is still corrupt, the country still creates bias, discrimination against their own neighbors, Haiti. Why I ask? Why? This sounds familiar like the United States and Mexico.
After the colonization of Dominican Republic, hundreds of years later was born a dictator named Rafael Trujillo. “Ruled the D.R. Between the 1930 and 1961 with an implacable brutality. He was a mulato who bleached his skin, wore platform shoes, and a fondness for Napoleon-era. Trujillo also known as “EL Jefe” came to control every aspect of D.R. Political, cultural, social, and economic life through the potent mixture of violence, intimidation, massacre, rape, treated the country like his plantation and he was the master.” (The wondrous life of Oscar Wao -Junot Diaz)
Trujillo was known for his 1937 genocide against the Haitian-Dominican community. The Parsley Massacre still plagues the country. What happened many years ago, still continues today with discrimination, bias, hate, and… “Trujillo ordered soldiers to kill Haitians indiscriminately and then worked to keep it a secret. A massacre resulting in tens of thousands of Haitians living in the Dominican Republic in 1937.” Www.npr.org “It’s impossible to distinguish people from different nations based on physical appearance alone. Haitians often have a darker complexion than Dominicans, but of course that is not always the case. A soldier would pull a sprig of parsley from a pocket and ask what it was. Those who answered correctly in Spanish were presumed to be Dominican and were released. Those who mispronounced it were summarily executed or tortured and then executed”. Www.nationalinterest.org
PART TWO:
This leads me to the fact that there is discrimination and bias, not only in The United States, but everywhere in the world. Being Latina means that you can be light skinned with blue eyes, to caramel color skin with brown eyes, to dark skin with beautiful curly hair. We can not classify Latinos based on what they look like because most of time when we do, we might be wrong. Like I said, our culture is a sancocho, a mixture, a soup that tastes good but at times complicated to cook.
Issues in Latino Education is complicated to understand but we must know that Latinos in the United States in America are the first to dropout of school and less likely to attend college. There is an estimated 57.5 million people of Hispanic origin in the United States. About 25% of students in the U.S are Latinos and 3 out of 4 Latinos are U.S. citizens. Spanish is the second spoken language in this country and Spanish is the third most spoken language in the world. What? Oh no… people might be saying, another language besides English? This English-only phenomena in this country is on going. People think that speaking only one language is a benefit but in reality not knowing the facts that speaking more than one language has many benefits in the brain, in society, more culturally responsive, and if you are in business you must know the importance of speaking more than one language. “Latino youth are over-represented in class below grade level, their bilingualism continues to be treated as a liability instead of a rich cultural and economic resource.” (Ruiz, 1988) While other states and school districts are advocating for Bilingual and Dual language education others are taking it away. Let’s see, if our demographic of students are 80% Latinos and most of them speak Spanish at home, don’t we think that educating them in two languages has more benefit than one? Yes, we live in the United States and we need to speak, write and read in English but let’s remember that most of our students might speak another language at home, especially if they have arrived from another country and are fluent in that language. I am going to keep on talking about Latino education because it is an important topic that many do not want to talk about. “An important issue often overlooked in the literature, and one that critically affects Latino students in particular, is the racial disparity in the teaching force. According to the United States Department of Education, about 50 percent of the public school student population is a non-white. Salient conclusions in the study reveal that teachers of color have higher expressions for diverse students, provide culturally relevant teaching, develop trusting relationships with students, confront issues of racism through teaching, and become advocates and cultural brokers”. (Moss, 2016)
Bilingual and Dual language education is overlooked and at times people are not aware of the benefits and like many people think that students might get confused learning two languages. Awareness is very important and educating our own parents about the benefits of bilingualism is part of our duty as educators and community leaders. “Many dedicated educators know that the psychological empowerment that bilingual programs offer children often become the sole reason bi-cultural students persevere and stay in school.” (Aparicio, 2000) My questions that I always ask is why is Bilingual education looked down upon in certain districts but looked as an advantage in other districts? People pay money to be tutored or to learn another language. “Bilingual programs have been used as political tools, encouraged in wealthy school districts but dismantled in low-income neighborhoods schools.” (Delgado-Gaitan, 2007)
What does this all mean? Recently, Providence Journal wrote an article that Latinos students in the state of Rhode Island are last in the nation. Little state with big problems came in last…. Latinos and Black people have been oppressed for hundreds and hundreds of years. From slavery in the Americas to taking away land that belonged to them (Mexican-American war 1846-48). To killings and discrimination because you are either Black or Latino. The school to prison pipeline, to incarceration, to now a president that degrades people on national television because of their race, gender, socioeconomic background, and the list goes on. This kind of discrimination and bias has a huge social emotional affect and trauma on children and/or adults. We might think that stones hurt but negative, degrading, humiliating, disrespectful words hurt more. We can not take words back after it has been said and it is not ok to discriminate or create bias based on people’s culture and gender. “Cultural politics, he explained, is understood as the mechanism that schools utilize to inculcate a meritocratic and individualistic system that perpetuates inequality, racism, competitiveness, and cultural ethnocentrism. Schooling is analyzed as an historical process that creates relations of power and privileged knowledge. Cultural politics simultaneously maintains the status quo and transmits a “culture of silence”. (Giroux, 1992)
Some of us are more observant than others, I believe that I observe. I infer that some of us are more loud and speak their thoughts while other sit back and observe. Well, it is time to hear me, hear us, hear the people that can not communicate with you because of their language barrier. I am speaking on behalf of most or all Latinos students that have been underrepresented, underserved and neglected. For taking away what’s most important to them, their language which defines their culture. For telling us to only speak English not knowing that the United States does not have an official language. For not providing us with Latino/a and/or Bilingual educators that speak our native language. For not including my culture in your readings, articles and writings. For not attending the parent engagement activities and for thinking that our Latinos parents do not care. We are done being silent on the comments that people make when we speak our native language. For not assessing me in my native language and for having us take that standardized test that really has nothing to do with my funds of knowledge.
I teach because I love teaching, because more than ever I see the need and the importance of bringing my background knowledge to the classroom. I am a product of the “hood”, of Providence schools, of attending college in Rhode Island and then Massachusetts. A product of coming back to work where most of our population of students needs educators that understand where they come from. I am Latina, Dominicana y Americana, madre, hija, esposa, amiga, y quiero lo mejor para mis hijos y estudiantes.
I teach because I love teaching, because more than ever I see the need and the importance of bringing my background knowledge to the classroom. I am a product of the “hood”, of Providence schools, of attending college in Rhode Island and then Massachusetts. A product of coming back to work where most of our population of students needs educators that understand where they come from. I am Latina, Dominicana y Americana, madre, hija, esposa, amiga, y quiero lo mejor para mis hijos y estudiantes.
No more silence, let’s create awareness, encouragement, and bring our funds of knowledge to the classroom and in life. Growth is always needed.