GREAT JOB!!!

Excellent work folks!!! Thank you for keeping up with the bogs despite the drama and difficulty. Everyone will recieve full credit for your posts, cuz you da bombs! Lauren and I just finished grading your final portfolios and we were really very impressed! They are available for pick up from the box outside of Aya's office (694 Barrows, I believe). Have wonderful summers! I hope to see some of you in the STP class next semester. Keep writing!!

Mixed Raced Reader

             The mixed race reader was a smorgasbord of different dilemmas when it come to being mixed race. The bill of rights for mixed race people, clearly spells out these dilemmas but lets people of mixed race know they don't have to just choose one ethnicity, they can claim all of them. " i have the right not to keep the races separate within me...not to be responsible for people's discomfort with my physical my physical or ethnic
ambiguity." Alot of the mopes in the reader were borderlands poems, and described ones dilemma with being forced to choose between races or being looked down upon because they dont share dominant facial features or skin colors of one of their races. i can relate to the poem " a contradicting face" by isabella borgeson because growing up, some cousins often teased me for not looking "black enough". i shared features from my dad (African American) and my mother (Persian), but growing up with some of my dads family means dealing with contradicting face because i dint resemble my cousins, dad, or uncles enough.
           Another pice that strongly stood out to me was Cross by Langston hughes. he talks about being mixed with white and black and that if he accepts one ethnicity he is denying the other. at the time the poem was written, being mixed with black and white was coming from two completely different worlds. "my old man died in a fine big house, my ma died in a shack, i wonder where im going to die, being white nor black?" although his parents had him, they still lived in two separate worlds, therefor he was faced with a borderland of choosing between the two, because by being both, it made him neither. (hope that makes sense) haha
              

Mixed Race... It's some serious shit.

     After reading through the reader and understanding the lecture on mixed race, I learned that people are pretty messed up. They separate people and the world into racial groups and only acknowledge people of a certain background. When they ask "What are you?", they only accept one answer and forces the victim to choose one side, claiming "the side they feel more comfortable to" or "the side they lean more towards" is the right answer. This causes turmoil within the person and even causes him or her to change everything about himself or herself. This includes makeup, plastic surgery, language, dietary habits, changing hair and eye color, etc. just to conform to one racial group and so they can be more comfortable in their society by being identified to only one group. There are different perspectives to what "race" or "mixed" means to people. There is the fifty percent rule which states that if you are more than half of a certain race, then you are one hundred percent of that race and none of the other races. There is also the "mixed" rule in which a person can accurately compute the percentages of all their different races but if they identify themselves to more than one race, then they are just considered to be "mixed". There is also the rule that I hate most of all, the one drop rule. This states that if you have even a drop of "impure" blood or racial heritage (i.e. not white) then you are considered to be entirely that race and an impure child. I have also learned that race is a social construct that people make to identify others and to create a hierarchy in which one group can feel more superior to the others. There is no universal rule on race; it is artificial, something that humans have made to extend conversation and divide people into social groups.
     I feel like I relate most to Annie Xuan Clark in her segment "What are you?". My parents were Vietnamese immigrants and I was their American descendant. Although my life was not nearly extreme as hers, I share some uncomfortable memories similar to hers. I grew up not learning Vietnamese to drift further away from my Vietnamese roots and move more towards being more American. I would sometimes be called "moonface" or "yellow" as I pass by students on my way to class or on my way to the cafeteria. Also, whenever my sister would invite her friends over for a party or a sleepover, my mom would not cook any Asian food that day. She would just cook chicken, steak, mac and cheese, salad, etc. This makes me sad because I really love her Asian cooking, but I feel that she has to hide that talent just to impress my sister's friends and so my sister could fit more into the "American society".

Mixed Race Post

I really enjoyed reading the different mixed race poems because although the theme was the same, all of the experiences were so different depending on historical contexts of their mixes. I thought that Raquel Ramirez's poem "What are you?" was incredibly beautiful and affirming. It described how she was created out of beauty and love between people of different races who resisted the anti-miscegenation/discriminatory laws and attitudes. she describes a love that grew from different cultures but faced a common oppressor by listing out "No Irish. No Blacks. No Dogs."

This take was very different from Jolyn's "Reflection for My Father," in which she describes how her birth came from a history of war and violence during the Vietnam War. The imagery of the child screaming and crying really adds to the backdrop of war. The poem also alludes to the type of intrigued and somewhat hostile attitudes of onlookers who view her as an AmerAsian war baby. There seems to be a disconnect from the poet and her mother because her features do not match either parent.

"Don't Put Me in a Box" was another perspective that very poignantly described the frustrations of being mixed race and feeling oppressed by peoples' desire to classify your race. I especially think that this is an important message because it challenges the idea that race is finite and discrete when it's actually constructed.

Mix Race Post

In reading the mixed race section of the reader, it brought up several ways of looking at race. Being Chicano, I looked first at the Linda Alcoff reading called "Mestizo Identity" to start. Alcoff notes that often times Latin Americans see race and racial mixture differently than other peoples. Since liberation from Spain, leaders have not only acknowledges that we are mostly of mixed race, but that this quality is actually a strength. Yet the author notes that this does not always play out on the street. Though we are all of mixed race, socially we treat each other differently based on the color of our skin as to almost say that if one is lighter, he or she is closer to racial purity rather than the darker skinned mestizos. Yet as other articles note, racial mixture in non-racially mixed societies can across the board seem unpure regardless of how one looks and thus shameful. In a third reading, the author notes how the US census has failed to provide a mixed race category which leaves some children to occupy many roles. A parent from the article states that her child was white on the census, black at school, and mixed in her family.

Drawing from our lecture in class on race, it is apparent that race is not even a real thing but rather a social construct. This speaks to how absurd it is that our society is so racially motivated but at the same time as to how important it is for people of color as well as mixed race people to study to sociology of race in order to help alleviate racism in the world.

Post Try

Woooooooooooo I can post now! Yay :o

Get Yo Reader, Homies!!

You are all amazing! Great job in section today; I really appreciate the space that we have created in our meetings! You are all brilliant, resilient, brave and beautiful poets! Buuuut anyway, blog posts looking good (thumbs up)! This is a reminder to: PICK UP YOUR READER AT ZEE ZEE COPY which is in the Sather Lane little alleyway behinds Neds Between Bancroft and Durant!