Uncategorized – Page 6 – E367: Writing and Diversity

Your Dreams Do Not Have to Come at the Expense of My Dreams

President Barack Obama, in his speech to the people of America titled “A More Perfect Union”, tackles the issue of racial/ethnic divides in America and how we tend to lose sight of what this country is and what it could become from the constant influx of negative and narrow-minded comments said by people all over the country.

Obama highlights the fact that the American people, even though they “may have different stories,” hold on to “common hopes” and that though “we may not look the same and we may not have come from the same place, we all want to move in the same direction”. I definitely believe that Americans tend to lose sight of what this country is – a conglomeration of different races, ethnicities, genders, sexualities, religions, classes, etc etc. We are constantly battling it out on social media and out in the streets fighting between massive groups… even though in the end, don’t we all want the same thing? Unity? Love? Cooperation? Trust? Compassion? Hope? A better future?

Probably my favorite quote from Obama’s speech was:

“…we need to come together to solve a set of monumental problems… problems that are neither black or white or Latino or Asian but rather problems that confront us all.”

I was glad that Obama made constant references not only to black and white people in America, but also to Hispanics and Asians and immigrants who are just as much of the foundation of America as anyone else. By incorporating all of these identities into his speech, Obama makes sure that he is addressing and discussing a union in its entirety, not just a fragment of a union such as just white people or just black people.

Obama also notes that in order to better our country and to better this “union”, we all have our own specific instructions that come with who we are. For black people in America, Obama points out that they must “embrace the burdens of [their] past without becoming victims of [their] past”, and for white people, they must understand that what ails the African American community experience do not solely exist in their heads. Racial injustices happened in our past, they’re happening today, and without doing anything about it or denying them all together, they shall presume.

Another point Obama emphasizes that I especially loved was when he said:

“Your dreams do not have to come at the expense of my dreams.”

This beautifully ties the piece together by emphasizing that the various plights of people in America should not be compared for the sole purpose of guilt, victim blaming, hostility, or anything negative of the sort. The people of America, all of them, need to come together in order to form a more perfect union, and realize that they all have the same objective and that nobody will be left behind in obtaining that objective in the end.

Baldwin and Buckley Response

In the video of the debate between James Baldwin and William F. Buckley, it talks a bit about the possibility of one person’s sense of reality being eliminated for another. In a quote from James Baldwin, “whatever one’s reaction to this proposition is, has to be the question of whether or not civilizations can be considered, as such, equal, or whether one’s civilization has the right to overtake and subjugate, and, in fact, to destroy another”.

I feel that this is somewhat similar and different from Gloria Anzaldua’s piece How to Tame a Wild Tongue. The similarity I feel is the clashing between two different civilizations and between two languages in Anzaldua’s case. Baldwin is speaking of the possibility of one person’s way of life or civilization overtaking someone else’s. The difference I see from Anzaldua is that she speaks of the combination of her two cultures and how they make a culture of their own. Baldwin’s comment about domination is a lot more bleak as well.

Keeping Your Attention

I hate watching videos.

Anything longer than a ten-minute Youtube video rapidly loses my attention and never regains it. Due to this, as I am sure you can imagine, I was not exactly thrilled when I learned I had to respond to an hour-long video. Despite my initial apprehension, I tried my best to focus on the debate. Thankfully, this proved to be much easier than I assumed it would be.

My willingness to pay attention to James Baldwin’s speech is probably due to a variety factors. For example, he speaks eloquently and clearly in a way which demands attention. However, what I find to be most compelling is Baldwin’s frequent use of the second person.

Using the word “you” is a complex choice few writers choose to make. This is due to the power of the word. The omission of “you” allows for the audience to distance themselves from the content provided. It is easy to pretend the speaker is talking to the person next to you instead. In the beginning of his speech, Baldwin allows this to happen, as he starts his speech using the more academic “one” instead of “you.” Baldwin distances the audience by saying, “I feel has to do with one’s point of view. I have to put it that way – one’s sense, one’s system of reality.” (15:23-15:32). This way, he is able to start to gain the respect from his audience without spooking them right away.

This is a more comfortable way to live, always pretending like you have nothing to do with the content. However, in using “you,” the author (or speaker, in this case), forces the audience to live through the content.

Baldwin does not allow for a single audience member to escape the narrative he weaves. When he says “you” he means everyone listening. This is prevalent later on in the speech. Though it is impossible to live through the racism experienced by people of color as a white person, Baldwin does his best to put you in his shoes.

“This means, in the case of an American Negro, born in that glittering republic, and the moment you are born, since you don’t know any better, every stick and stone and every face is white.And since you have not yet seen a mirror, you suppose that you are, too. It comes as a great shock around the age of 5, or 6, or 7, to discover that the flag to which you have pledged allegiance, along with everybody else, has not pledged allegiance to you. It comes as a great shock to discover that Gary Cooper killing off the Indians, when you were rooting for Gary Cooper, that the Indians were you. It comes as a great shock to discover that the country which is your birthplace and to which you owe your life and your identity, has not, in its whole system of reality, evolved any place for you. The disaffection, the demoralization, and the gap between one person and another only on the basis of the color of their skin, begins there and accelerates – accelerates throughout a whole lifetime – to the present when you realize you’re thirty and are having a terrible time managing to trust your countrymen”
(18:21-19:45).

The other positive (or danger, depending upon the person you ask) of using “you” is the type of sentences it forms. When Baldwin uses the word, he is not asking you to think about his content. Instead, he is demanding that you do so. By using “you” Baldwin forces the audience to listen, as he is the one in charge of its collective fates. This choice makes the audience into characters in his story, forcing the audience to feel the speech instead of just listening to Baldwin speak.

So despite all of the issues stacked against Baldwin, in the past and present, he is able to methodically involve the audience through his use of “you” within his speech. This leads to an effective and memorable argument. Though his argument is clean, logical, and passionate, it is his use of “you” that takes this speech to a new level.

(For the sake of quoting, I used a transcript of Baldwin’s speech which can be found here: https://www.rimaregas.com/2015/06/07/transcript-james-baldwin-debates-william-f-buckley-1965-blog42/ )

“Abstracting from immediate experience”

The “scholarship boy” “abstracting from immediate experience” as an attempt to reformat or understand his drastically different life within the classroom and household is something that I feel I have noticed not only within myself but as Rodriguez mentions within the rare scholarship children whose ambition gleams from their eyes and dwindles their confidence.

What I took from The Achievement of Desire: Personal Reflections on Learning “Basics” was that there is a space in which some children might stumble upon, especially those of working class/minority families, where they must decide, at a relatively young age, what is most important to them considering what they know they are capable of and most importantly what their environment is like.

The “scholarship boy” here aka Rodriguez became passionate about knowledge not knowing the level of intimacy academia requires or what he would have to give in order to fulfill his desires. These desires happen to fall out of line with not only his immediate family but his culture and effectively alter his experience with them. Although I have never considered myself much of a “scholarship boy” to this extent, I will say that I can relate to his feeling of guilt and withdrawal. Children generally have little conception of management or balance and wildly chase their desires unaware of the bewilderment it could cause around them. He mentions his passion separating him from other academics in college, what was once rewarded in primary and secondary school is now frowned upon as an adult because apparently no one of his background should know as much of or care as much for academia as he does which again can be confusing and frustrating. After years of struggling to find his pace yet still deepening his love for knowledge Rodriguez is finally able to describe his roller coaster with learning and accept it.

This ending is very heart-warming to me. Seeing that Rodriguez persisted among his constant reflection and dissatisfaction gives me hope that we are all able to do the same, being that we are consistent in our search and willing to fail on the way there. This excerpt makes me think of the phrase “ignorance is bliss” especially when he quotes one of his teachers who says “The importance of the praise of given the un-solitary, richly passionate life is that it simultaneously reflects the value of reflective life” I think that means – those who live more passionate lives are usually not reflecting (unlike the reflective one) they are acting in the moment and giving their truest selves and opinions within their judgments rather than allowing what they know to cloud their proposals. As for the one who is more reflective, they will only allow themselves to be as passionate as their understanding of the moment allows them to be, “Abstracting from immediate experience”

Response to Anzaldua

Anzaldua’s essay “How to Tame a Wild Tongue” is a fascinating perspective on how seemingly minor distinctions in language can have a large impact on the people that speak it. While she does spend a portion of the essay comparing Chicano Spanish and Standard Spanish, her message is not about the similarities or differences of the languages. Rather, Anzaldua’s purpose is to show the validity of Chicano Spanish as a language that Chicanos can be proud of. To Anzaldua, her language is one of the most essential defining parts of herself. An insult to her language is an insult to her.

“So, if you want to really hurt me, talk badly about my language. Ethnic identity is twin skin to linguistic identity-I am my language. Until I can take pride in my language, I cannot take pride in myself”

What stands out the most to me with this piece is the anecdote Anzaldua includes at the beginning of undergoing a procedure at the dentist. The key parts that stick out to me are the horrible smell, her tongue pushing away cotton and needles, and that she is physically unable to restrain her tongue’s movements. Each of these elements applies to the rest of the paper. Anzaldua mentions the resentment and discomfort Chicanas feel towards themselves when speaking to people from other Spanish dialects, as they consider Chicano Spanish “illegitimate” or a “bastard language”. This can be related to the smell produced by the procedure. This disgust or resentment Chicanas feel towards an aspect of themselves is reflected in Anzaldua’s disgust at the smell of the plaque being scrapped away from her teeth. Anzaldua’s tongue pushing away the cotton and needles reflects her convictions in pushing away negative outside influences and keeping her Chicano Spanish. “I will no longer be made to feel ashamed of existing”. Finally, the wild tongue represents Anzaldua’s pride in her language and her inability to be kept quiet or restrained. While this metaphor may seem to fall apart with the assumption that Anzaldua proceeds with the procedure, she does close her essay with a message of the patience and persistence Chicanas have.

Social Identities

In Gloria Anzaldua’s “How to Tame a Wild Tongue”, she is concerned with an assorted view of topics, such as; nations, cultures, classes, genders, languages. She is arguing in which the ways that identity is tied into the way that we speak. She is also stating that people can be made to feel ashamed in their own skin. This could be seen as hurting someone’s sense of face or in other terms their social identity. I found it empowering to see that she had struggles through her since of language and native tongue, she had to suppress her native language in order to get through life in America. This is something that I have had to internalize and deal with since I am from the west coast.

“Until I can take pride in my language, I cannot take pride in myself. Until I can accept as legitimate Chicano Texas, Tex-Mex, and all the other languages I speak, I cannot accept the legitimacy of Myself. Until I am free to write bilingually and to switch codes without having always to translate, while I still have to speak English or Spanish when I would rather speak Spanglish, and as long as I have to accommodate the English speakers rather than having them accommodate me, my tongue will be illegitimate.” (Anzaldua 38)

I like this because it connects to the quote before this one. Through this essay, she tells her story and the realizations she’s made to become the person she is today. This shows how much she grew and realized through the experiences of not being able to be herself. This really is my favorite quote because it can apply to everyone. It just means that you have to be proud of where you came from and your origins in order to truly be proud of who you are. Everyone has different identities and ones that can be utilized in certain situations and some that can’t. For example for myself being from California I am unable to communicate in the ways that I do with my friends back home while I am talking to my friends here. This is because the style of talk back home is much slower and different slang. This is not a negative thing it is just something that I have to be conscious about when communicating with others. Identities are awesome and I feel as if it is something that us humans are working on non stop throughout most of our existence.

Tara Lockhart’s Piece on Anzaldúa

I was instructed to read Tara Lockhart’s piece:

“Writing the Self: Gloria Anzaldúa, Textual Form, and Feminist Epistemology”

along with Anzaldúa’s piece, to make connections between the two, and to analyze Lockhart’s view on Anzaldúa’s story through a more feminist, textural lens. The link to Lockhart’s piece is found below if you want to give it a look:

Link

Being at A Crossroads & Being One Herself

“Who is to say that robbing a people of its language is less violent than war?”

-Ray Gwyn Smith

Gloria Anzaldúa’s piece is one filled with raw emotions, harsh criticisms of language and the way we use it, and an exploration of her inner-self and how she has coped with the hardships she has faced being a Chicana woman.

Growing up on the physical borderland of the Texas-US Southwest/Mexican border, Anzaldúa lived in a place she called a “place of contradiction where hatred, anger, and exploitation are part of the landscape but also where she finds a certain joy, especially at the unique positioning consciousness takes at the confluent streams.” (page 356). Anzaldúa grew up in a place where she was reprimanded for speaking Spanish on the playground and was told to control her Spanish tongue in order to seem more professional and to be respected in a society that did not understand her and her people.

Anzaldúa lived her life constantly grappling with the many languages and dialects she was able to speak such as Standard English, Tex-Mex, and Standard Spanish. For her, Tex-Mex was her preferred language – it made her feel welcomed and at home. She was often told by other people that her Chicano Spanish was incorrect, when really, it was a border tongue which developed naturally; it was a living language. (358)

The thing about being a Chicano is that if a person has a low estimation of her native tongue, they automatically have a low estimation of her. (361) From the other readings we have looked at in class, we can understand that this is very specific to people who do not speak English or even “proper” English dialects. Anzaldúa experiences language as a monumental part of who she is.

“I am my language.”

-Anzaldúa (362)

When looking at Tara Lockhart’s analysis of Anzaldúa’s piece in “Writing the Self: Gloria Anzaldúa, Textual Form, and Feminist Epistemology”, she offers insights of how Anzaldúa’s switching between English and Spanish throughout the piece is meant to be a strong, polemical statement. Reading Anzaldúa’s piece, I noticed how powerful it was because of the fact that it integrated both English and Spanish so effortlessly, showcasing Anzaldúa’s familiarity with both languages, and somehow making the reader uncomfortable in a way that Anzaldúa definitely meant to do. Her incorporating Spanish was to make English-only-speaking readers confront their own limitations and turn them into the “other” – something that they may feel as though they cannot identify with if they consider themselves a part of the dominant culture.

An important, interesting aspect of Anzaldúa’s piece that Lockhart brings to light is the fact that Anzaldúa’s essay is formatted in a way that she utilizes many page breaks and uses the white space to her advantage.

“Patches of speech and ideas are simultaneously held apart for contemplation.”

-Tara Lockhart

Anzaldúa uses these page breaks to make the reader pause and think about what she has just discussed, especially when she incorporates Spanish into the piece – she wants the reader to feel uncomfortable, to feel confusion, to feel the raw emotion Anzaldúa is emitting at being at a crossroads and ultimately, being a crossroad of multiple identities and languages herself.

I’ll end my response with a quote from Lockhart that caught my eye and for me, really captured Anzaldúa’s message:

“Chicanos are held together by their differences and this realization and recognition of difference is crucial to hybrid identity.”

-Tara Lockhart

Red is Red

Language serves as both a tool for a unification and as a means for separation. The relationships between different identities associated with language and dialects often fail to mix seamlessly, as discussed in Barbara Mellix’s piece examined in class. This leads to a confusion of identity due to the constant need to change oneself in order to fit the impossible standards set by society for that particular environment. Instead of examining the segregated nature of language identities, Min-Zhan Lu explores the areas where these language identities interact and intersect in “From Silence to Words: Writing as Struggle.” Lu discusses how language ties into education, class, and personal identity in ways which overlap and change over time.

Growing up “as a student in China,” Lu was quick to notice the differences between her identities categorized by the languages she used for each (437). She spoke English with her immediate family and tutor, “Shanghai dialect only with the servants,” and Standard Chinese at school (438). Despite the difference in language, Lu had little difficulty flipping between identities. Instead of feeling as though she was losing a piece of herself each time she was forced to speak differently, Lu discovered an overlap in language identities. Lu’s life sits at the intersection of language and culture. Instead of a wall separating her identities, Lu’s life is more of an intersection where all of her experiences meet and interact. She explains how what she learned in her English lessons “seemed to enhance and reinforce what [Lu] was learning” while in the classroom (439). This demonstrates the link between languages, which is not always obvious at first. Though English and Chinese differ heavily from each other, both having different roots and alphabets, the two languages are undeniably woven together. As Lu explains, “red” in Chinese and in English “[correspond] to the patch of color printed next to the world” (439). Although the two languages certainly look and sound different, the core ideas are shared. The color red is called something different in different languages, yet the color remains the same. Yet again, the languages are able to intersect and coexist instead of directly contradicting each other.

As she continued to grow, Min-Zhan Lu’s connections between her different language identities became more complicated. During this period of time, China was politically and socially uneasy. English was labelled as the language of the enemy due to tensions between the Chinese and the “American and British Imperialists” (439). The animosity between the countries lead to English being labelled as a language of the enemy for a period of time. At the same time, Lu picked up a new language, one made up of definitions taught in school. For Lu, “red” was no longer just a color. In school, “red” became “Revolution at school, ‘the Commies’ at home, and adultery in The Scarlet Letter” (441). The culture surrounding Lu resulted in a simple word carrying a variety of meanings in all of the languages making up her identity. However, despite the difference in secondary meanings, the word “red” and all of its translations still describes the same color. So despite the differences in culture, despite the differences in language, Lu’s identities were still entangled with one another, even if the threads became a bit mangled and distorted.

Though Lu’s relationship with language and identity is complicated, especially in regards to her education, family, and personal identity, there is an undeniable intersection where all of these elements mix. Language is not as simple as different sections with rigid borders between different languages. Instead, there is a special fluidity demonstrated by Lu and her identities which connects people.

From Outside, In; Barbara Mellix (A Response)

Through the perspective of a young girl of color acclimating herself to ordinary life within the systems that “organize” America, Barbara Mellix invites us to apprehend the inner controversy that regularly takes place in the minds of people who are underrepresented and ironically, misunderstood. In this excerpt she compromises the “ordinary everyday speech of “country” coloreds” to acknowledge the language gap that exists between corporate America and common folk, she also captures her experience chronologically so that we may understand the confusion one might suffer through each milestone being raised surrounded by English rules that oppose “proper” English as well as the misconceptions that occur because of this style of upbringing.

I can relate to this confusion myself, also coming from an area where “proper” English is frowned upon. I can say from experience that when you are accustomed to these “other” forms of speech from where ever and whenever you were raised it becomes difficult to see the world from the perspective of regular “proper” English users. I know that language is a way to communicate with each other what we can give and can get from our environment, therefore it is sometimes inevitable that your understanding of the world is a result of how you communicate with it. I believe it is unfair to say that one form of speech is more or less optimal than the other but,I do think it is fair to agree that it would be easier to interact with a more narrow basis of dialect and language. Either way, as convenient as it may be to ignore each other and water our differences it should not be so much to ask that we seed the common ground that is apparent in every interaction and grow to understand one another from there.