Stereotypes About Myself: Why I Am Salvadorian Not Mexican

I would say we’ve all been stereotyped at some point, be it due to your sex, gender, race, or religious beliefs, the list goes on. Some are blissfully oblivious when in the face of being disrespected and or stereotyped, some just don’t care to look further into the situation. Others simply “take the high road”, doing the right thing even if it’s not easy nor popular in a difficult situation. Most often we can’t help the labels which society places on us, we were born with the skin color we have, our values ingrained into us by our families, and so forth. Personally, I’ve faced stereotypes relating to my race.

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,

One photo of a man holding a baby sparked this whole debate about Mexican fathers. The impression of Mexican men was that they were not active in their children’s lives. They were thought of as those who “shun those kinds of duties” such as caring for their children (Murray 311). When showed the photo, different people had different reactions. Some thought the man holding the baby looked tender; while others believed the photo looked forced and unrealistic. The people of Mexican culture saw nothing odd about the photo. The ones who questioned it were people from other areas of the world and anthropologists.

“We all use stereotypes, all the time, without knowing it. We have met the enemy of equality, and the enemy is us,” said Annie Murphy Paul who is a magazine journalist and book author that writes about the biological and social sciences. Stereotypes are a part of everyday life. Every person, young or old, has been labeled with a positive or negative stereotype. They are heard everyday and sometimes label certain groups of people. As Martina Navratilova said, “Labels are for clothing. Labels are not for people.” A lot of time stereotypes don’t fit what they are labeling. They can have a bad effect on people’s emotions, the way people interact with each other and their social lives. A common stereotype of many U.S. citizens is that all Mexican immigrants are criminals and have come to the U.S. illegally; therefore, this stereotype has a bad affect on the way Mexicans and other people think and act.

Reports show that Latinos are the most underrepresented ethnic group in film affected by stereotypical issues shown via pictures in our heads and through watching. I concur with this information as stereotype starts from a personal level, which is definite through meditation, this does not include all the negative traits portrayed by the out-group. Although we have some general stereotypical agreements within in-groups that cannot change. This stereotyping is evident in a case where a foreigner defines Bandido accurately while a (North) American will involve them with laziness, being dirty and all sorts of negativity on them. These findings make me feel that Latinos and Americans will always be contrary to their film industry.

Is it right to stereotype someone for who they are, what they do, and what they think? To stereotyping is someone that believes unfairly that all people or things with a particular characteristic are the same. When i'm around people taking, sometimes i hear that all mexicans mexicans jumped the border but that does not apply to all mexicans, i'll be talking about a time where i was stereotyped.

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.

The book Beyond El Barrio Everyday Life in Latina/o America by Gina M. Perez, Frank A. Guridy, and Afrian Burgos Jr. is a book about the stereotypes, citizenship, and community of Latina/os in the United States. Each chapter shows a new theme such as latinos in baseball, Latinas/os in the military, and Spanish radio. The book shows connection between different communities of Latinas/os and how they have struggled to be apart of the U.S. society beyond the boundaries that they feel limited to. This book was a difficult piece of writing for me to understand but has ultimately changed the way I view Latinas and has shown clear intersections of politics, representation, and citizenship of Latinas and Latinos in the United States.

As we have read in Healey’s (2011) textbook, the term “Hispanic” has been used to describe all different kinds of minority races, such as, Puerto Ricans and Cubans , etc., under the same token (pg. 318). The government identifies Mexican Americans and other minority races that have similarities in both appearance and cultural characteristics under one term (Healey, 2011, pg. 318). This causes the perception that they are all the same, taking away the individualistic origins of their place, culture, beliefs, etc. Most of all, this classifies false/mistaken assumptions that they are all immigrants, poor and same language speaking individuals, damaging each race’s individuality. Socially, the term Hispanic technically only classifies groups as

I am a Hispanic college student and naturally, that must mean I must have underwent various challenges and tribulations to get to where I am at. My mom must speak poor English and my dad must work in construction. I am a Latina so that must mean I am feisty and obnoxiously loud. I must be all of that because I am of Latino descent, right? Negative.

Being Hispanic to me is living the best of both worlds. I get to experience two perspectives in this world, being American and Mexican. The variety of flavors I eat daily at school; hamburgers, hotdogs,french fries and corn dogs.While at home and on the holidays I eat Tamales,Birria,Mole and Pozole. My ethnicity is questioned by others because of the color of my skin, asking me ''Are you Arabian?'' and 'Are you Puerto Rican?' are the ones most common asked. My skin complexion is what the worlds sees and judges upon not knowing the actual roots. As it says on Google, Hispanic means a Spanish-speaking person living in the United States.We get to have the privilege to admire ourselves being bilingual.There are a lot of Hispanics and other races in the United States that have been criticized and hated for no reason.My parents came to the United States to have a better education and future for their children. I believe that other families did they same since the United States is considered the 'free land' and the 'land of all dreams' since multiple people risk their lives trying to be apart of America.Americans says we steal their jobs when in reality the jobs look for us because everyone knows Hispanics work hard and get the job done.Many Hispanic use to go to Home Depots or gas stations and wait for a job to show up.

Sherman Alexei is a Native American writer, poet and filmmaker. In his interview with Bill Moyers called" Living Outside Borders", he discusses how being exposed to two different cultures have led him to greater understanding and consciousness about culture and cultural practices. Although he left the Reservation physically, the cultural effects of the Reservation still remain with him. His story is not unlike all immigrants who live in the U.S. I personally became more conscious about some cultural behaviors that I committed and never thought about it as unethical, such as stereotyping. I never realized how offensive stereotypes can be until I was stereotyped. Although being a victim of stereotyping has emotionally harmed me, it made me knowledgeable

As in the Spanish Colonial period, the Spanish classified the mestizos, Spanish mixed with indigenous, as different. Since the start of the new era, humans classified whiter skin to a high social status and darker skin as slaves or lower social status. While moving at the age of nine to the United States I was profiled based on my appearance, race, the difference in culture, language and social differences. While growing up, I had to learn that not everyone was willing to accept foreigners and respect people who are different. Because of the stereotypes that people believed in Mexicans: as being illegal immigrants, unable to speak the English language, or being a gang member. Currently, I have experienced many of

Undocumented workers tend to work in low-wage jobs. Although they work hard, their income is very low. Illegal immigrants are more likely to work in low-wage farming, cleaning, construction and food preparation because in most of the cases they lack traditional opportunities. Foreign workers represent about 14 percent of both the legal and non-legal US workforce. The typical stereotype of foreign workers is that they take agricultural jobs or service sector mostly earning little more than minimum wage or less in some cases. Immigrants represent more that 35 percent of workers in agricultural industries, construction and maintenance industries. Immigrants represent nearly 30 percent of construction workers. Manufacturing and food processing

Being Latina hasn’t always been easy. At first I really struggle with being able to accept myself and not caring what others are saying. I was always told that my loudness comes from being Latina but actually that is just how my personality is. I was always told that my skin, hair, and eyes were always too light to look like a Latina. I was always told that I didn’t fit the “normal” girl image because I was too curvy…because I was a Latina. After time all these different stereotypes took over my mind and everything that I would do or say was beginning to be dictated by this. They would tell me all these lies day after day and as time passed I would believe more and more of what they would say to the point were I wouldn’t even think for myself.