Conversation Analysis: Stereotypes Against Latin People

Being Hispanic is being able to enjoy and demolish your mom’s tamales at Christmas. Being Hispanic is also being able to explain horchata to your friends and watch soccer games with your family. It’s being able to be proud of your culture and roots. However, being Hispanic is living in fear. Being Hispanic means sometimes you don’t know if your parents will come home from work. It’s being petrified that your dad may get pulled over because he is driving without a license. Being Hispanic is seeing your mom come home, tired from a low paying job, because she could not pursue an education. Hispanic means working hard in life to make your parents proud, to make all the looks of discrimination worth it. Being Hispanic is also being told “no” repeatedly,

Latinos are all illegal immigrants/dangerous thugs who sleep around, do drugs, and break the law, universal generalizations seen in the twenty-first century. Stereotypes have become a method of systematic suppression in America, a way to judge Latino immigrants and their children, to trap them in an endless cycle of misery and discrimination. Michael Dorris perfectly explains negative stereotypes influencing a minority in “Crazy Horse Malt Liquor”. Dorris describes the stereotypical views of Native Americans, and how they have a pattern of being negative, similar to how stereotypes about Latinos tend to be negative. The people of America form opinions based on stereotypes, stereotypes about Latinos that aren’t necessarily true. Stereotypes have become part of a system;Hollywood exploits them and then used as a form of judgment, which harms both the physical and mental health of both Latino immigrants and Latino citizens.

“It is important to have an understanding about some of the myths and stereotypes of Latino/Hispanic Americans that contribute to the prejudice, discrimination, and bias this population encounters” (Shusta, Levine, Wong, Olson, and Harris 191).

Latinos in U. S. A. and Hollywood’s Discrimination Hispanic or Latino, is a segment of the population in the States of the American Union that has grown in quantity, economy and education, and everything indicates that it would continue in the same way, as a result of the Hispanic people has inhabited here, even before this country conformed as the United States. Latinos also have made important contributions to this country in all aspects and levels and areas to society, of the sort of the arts, sports and politics. Cinema is considered an art, the seventh art, as well it is a form of expression and reflection of society and its times. In consequence, filming is a very important business, and Hollywood is the mecca of the industry. Then, we could expect that the significance of their presence would be properly portrayed.

“He’s a young Latino what is he doing in this neighborhood? he must be lost, he has to be poor.” that’s just one of the stereotypes I hear often. “Hispanic people are poor” When in fact most Hispanics are well off. Yet repeatedly I have heard that stereotype in movies, songs, shows, and school. I have been through this many times as I have lived up through 19 years of existence. Its something that I have gotten accustomed too.

When people first hear Hispanics or Mexicans people first think Spanish music or Mexico for one. Some people may have different opinions on stereotyping Hispanics in saying that all Hispanic people love tacos and speak fluent Spanish and only Spanish. Not all people who come from a certain race, religion, or ethnicity fall into the stereotypical categories that people put them in. Placing people in stereotypical categories is wrong because it causes for misjudgment amongst people in society. It is dangerous to define a person based on stereotype because one person does not define a whole race and who an individual person is.

In today’s modern day we see how people can experience discrimination based on race. These statements or actions can sometimes ruin a person’s life or worse, it can lead to a cause of death. We see discrimination everywhere, it’s similar to that of a mosquito bite, something you may encounter everywhere and that can be very bothersome. When the term Hispanics or Central American crosses an individual’s mind, the first initial thought is “illegal immigrant” or “Mexican”. Hispanics are assumed to be uneducated and are highly associated with nefarious activities, therefore only being able to obtain jobs as maids, gardeners, caregivers and street vendors, because media and films have stereotyped them as such group.

Hispanics or Latinos are persons residing in the US who descended from a Spanish speaking country of Latin America and the Iberian Peninsula. The population listed in the US under the term "Hispanic or Latino" is very significant; 17% of the total population in the U.S, so its presence in the mass media is notorious and important. Further Hispanic or Latino ethnic group are the second fastest growing in the entire US population, behind Asians. According to the demographic projections of the Census Bureau, in 2060 the Latino population will reach 31% of the US population.

Listing the movies or programs that has been extremely popular such as Maid in Manhattan, Spanglish and Family Guy. These three program all share the stereotypical that was strongly presented. For example, they all happen to a single mother raising a child, speaks in Spanish accent and their appearance. They all have black hair, caramel skin tone and a sassy attitude. This exactly proves my point, as I said earlier, these directors all have the same perception of Latinas.

They are all ilegales, mojados. This is what some say about hispanics. They say that t you need to elaborate on this.This is called a stereotype. A stereotype is a widely held but oversimplified image or idea of a particular type of person or thing. Why do we have stereotypes? Because we love to group people. Our society loves to tell people who they can, and will be. “People think that I should act a certain way because of my sex, personality, nationality, race and gender.” This quote is how many people feel when they are stereotyped. They feel like they have to be a certain way to fit in.

People also acquire attitudes by socializing with other groups, like teachers, television, parents and even religious groups. “Social learning approaches to stereotyping and prejudice suggest that attitudes and behavior toward members of minority groups are learned through the observation of parents and other individuals” (Myers, 1996). Investigators have found that differences in self-monitoring influence the link between attitudes and behavior. Individuals who are low in self-monitoring strive to make certain that their actions match their principals, values, and attitudes (Snyder, 1982).If a child that was raised in a white family that has negative attitudes towards blacks, will have principals, values and attitudes against black people.

Jamie Escalante (played by Edward James Olmos) is on his way to the first day of a new job as a high school teacher. During the drive, we see Hispanic foot peddlers selling fruit, Hispanic males riding in the bed of a truck, and a graffiti drawing saying “we are not the minority”. We also see many Hispanic shops indicating the community is not only predominantly Hispanic, but as if the community were an entirely separate country. When Jamie arrives in his class, we are met with characters that fill the positions of Berg’s six stereotypes. While there are multiple examples of how these characters demonstrate stereotypical behavior, it is more important to evaluate how their behavior is challenged and ultimately reformed during the course of the

Portrayals of races and groups in the media are in a constant state of flux. As each decade passes by, the stereotypes and presumptions surrounding certain races gradually change. Consider the Mexicans, or those of Mexican descent; originally they were portrayed as weak, traitors lacking strongly in confidence, or as great lovers, regularly switching partners. With stereotypical films such as Viva Cisco Kid, The Kissing Bandit, and The Magnificent Seven being released during the early and late 1900s, these stereotypes stayed with Mexicans for the most part of the 20th century and well into the 21st century. In time, the portrayal of Mexicans eventually began to change and not necessarily for the better.

Although, some may say that black and indigenous people are quite similar in some respects, but their treatment in terms of race and racism in Latin America were quite different. Wade regards to their similarities when he states ".... both are seen as minorities in nation-states intent on a future of homogeneity; both are at the bottom of a ladder which represented parallel hierarchies of wealth, education, civilisation and race; both are inputs into the progressive, modernising process of whitening the nation..." (Wade 36-37) This is a very true statement however the ways in which they experienced these similarities was different due to their individual race as well as time period.

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