Stephanie Guerrero

October 18, 2012

100W Prof. Rue

Expository Essay

“What are you?” a person will ask me, as if expecting me to reply with a   single race I identify to be.

“Well...” I reply, “I am a girl!... What are you?”

America is regarded as “the melting pot” dating all the way back to when immigrants were first settling on this continent. Today we live in a world in which our society wants to categorize and attach a race to a person. Race is regarded as a sort of  personal identification. Genetics aside, people are treated a certain way based on what race we believe them to be. Unfortunately this is our main classification amongst humans; it serves as a social construct. Even on questionnaires and quizzes, you are instructed to fill out one bubble to which single race you claim to be, not multiple. This can be confusing to anybody, because the majority of Americans are made of of two or more nationalities, but could look a certain race. According to a recent poll: 

“The question of identity is often front and center for American Hispanics. In a survey for NBC Latino by the polling firm IBOPE/Zogby International, U.S. Hispanics overwhelmingly identify themselves as one thing: American. Almost three-quarters of Latinos (74 percent) say they identify more with being American, and 19 percent  say they identify with both ‘American’ and ‘Latino.’  Only 4 percent say they identify more with their country of origin, and 2 percent say they don’t belong.  Another 2 percent say they are not sure” (Lilley).

In two different articles, The Breakdown of the Bicultural Mind and the Lugones paper, lied a similar theme. We read about two women struggling with identification discrimination; the struggle with this complex issue stems from how they think people perceive them and from  personal identity issues with themselves. Both coming from a mixed race background, each woman deals with trying to understand themselves by traveling between worlds through stereotypes, identifying with and loving others, and by trying to figure out the undefined world in which they belong to. 

“Negative stereotypes about various racial groups bombard us every day in the mass media and deposit their residue deep into our minds, often without our realizing it” (Rigoglioso). Unfortunately this is true not only in these two articles, but in today’s mass culture. In the Maria Lugones paper, she is coming to consciousness as a woman of color. She regards the White/Anglo race as the mainstream population and people of color as the outsiders. Herself being an outsider, she recommends to “world-travel” and although it’s done unwillingly to the mainstream worlds, it is mostly done out of necessity. In The... Bicultural Mind essay, the narrator insists that “people can’t read your mind, they read your color... They read your walk and talk... They are a declaration not of identity... They say nothing about where one really stands” (Moraga). She goes on to say “...white people are the only ones in this country to enjoy the luxury of being ‘colorblind’ with one another...” and refers to them as “Betty’s” and “trash”. Both women come from a mixed race background, and are very aware that other people read the color of their skin, stereotype, and automatically ascribe them to a particular race. These examples of stereotypes of course play into the negative kind that bombard us, and also could be regarded as arrogant perception. Lugones explains that it is actually learned to see others arrogantly as a product and if we “continue to perceive (people) that way we fail to identify with them- fail to love them...”.

Loving and identifying with another’s world is another commonality I found between the two papers. “We learn to love each other by learning to travel to each other’s worlds” (Lugones). The reason Lugones thinks traveling to other’s worlds is important because you understand “what it is to be them and what it is to be ourselves in their eyes.” The Bicultural Mind essay deals with traveling and loving other’s worlds more drastically than Lugones. “Light-skinned breeds are like chameleons, those lagartijas with the capacity to change the color of their skin” (Moraga). In her following sentences she made it clear that she herself travels: When she was in Brooklyn she was a Rican, in Harlem a Spaniard, and in Mexico a Cuban. She talks about all of the different lovers she’s had from every kind of ethnic background and how she would be seen from the outside as a different race, as well as she herself identifying with that of her lover’s race. “In love, color blurs but never fully disappears” (Moraga). Lugones, however, talks of the importance of loving others’ worlds to be able to identify, and points out how she failed to love her mother and to love women across racial and cultural backgrounds. She “was unwilling to become what I had been taught to see my mother as being” (Lugones). To be able to acknowledge this failure actually helpes Lugones realize what she should have done to deal with her personal identification issue.

The last way the two papers have a similar theme of struggling with identification discrimination is how they are battling it out in their own head. The women themselves would like to have a clear cut answer on who they are, what their heritage brings, and where their ancestors originate from. This pressure is a direct effect from society and media, since mainstream doesn’t particularly celebrate diversity but instead labels race  based on color. “Being stereotypically latin and being simply latin are different simultaneous constructions of persons that are part of different ‘worlds’...” Lugones goes on to actually point out that she may push away a certain world that is her heritage: “There may be ‘worlds’ that construct me in ways that I don’t understand. Or (I might just not) hold it of myself” (Lugones). In the Breakdown of the Bicultural Mind, Moraga thinks of herself as a “half-breed who looks like every other breed... But (she is) always hungry and always shamed by (her) hunger for the Mexican woman (she misses in herself)” (Moraga).  Moraga reveals that she is in pursuit of figuring out which world her ancestors come from. She wants it to be clear and concise, going back to identifying with only one. If she is of Indian decent, she wants it to be obvious as to if the mud had stained her red from head to toe. 

Both the Lugones and Bicultural Mind piece have the similar conflicts circulating each author; They both struggle in their heads to form a clear and singular race in which they can identify with. It’s best how Moraga states: “We are a mongrel nation. All is familia: ancestor and future generations”. 

Works Cited:

Lilley, Sandra. "We are American, say most US Latinos." NBC Latino n.pag. Web. 15 Oct 2012. http://nbclatino.com/2012/09/19/nbc-latinoibope-zogby-survey-we-are-american-say-most-u-s-latinos/.

Rigoglioso, Marguerite. "Racial Stereotypes Can Be Unconscious but Reversible." STANFORD GRADUATE SCHOOL OF BUSINESS n.pag. Web. 13 Oct 2012. http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/news/research/hr_racialstereotypes.shtml.