From Prada to Nada and Old El Paso

source: http://www.daemonsmovies.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/from-prada-to-nada-movie-photo-04-550x309.jpg

I recently saw the movie From Prada to Nada, a movie about a pair of Mexican American sisters who live the high life until their father dies. When the father dies they discover they are in debt and in turn are forced into moving to their aunt’s home, who lives in a low-income neighbourhood with a high Latino population. During the duration of the movie I really did not know if I should laugh or cry. This movie is a parody of Mexican culture. It is built of stereotype after stereotype.

You can watch the trailer here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LvY6WPO5DMc&ob=av3e

First one of the daughters claims she is not Mexican. This reinforces the image that Mexicans are ashamed of being who they are and that they wish to be American.

There is, however, one well-educated Mexican depicted in the movie (which I appreciate) – he is a university professor. However, he is the Mexican with the lightest skin in the movie, reinforcing the belief that lighter means better education, more money, and overall wealth. I want to note that I appreciated a light skin Mexican was included in the movie, to show that we do not just come in one shade (an issue I mentiond in my other post here: http://the-needle-in-the-haystack.blogspot.com/2011/07/little-to-think-about-when-it-comes-to.html).

Even though I was drooling at the sight of our delicious traditional foods, I had to laugh at the fact that every woman in a house party was dressed in traditional Mexican clothes. Nobody really does that in any of our parties. Yes, there are always the extra enthusiastic people who dress up for Independence Day, and it is a lot of fun, but nevertheless it is not the norm to find a whole party dressed up.

What I found most offensive was that the aunt seemed to be running a type of sweatshop in her house with a bunch of ladies working making clothes and whatnot. To add to this, when a well-dressed individual knocked on their door they immediately hid all their work because they believed it was la migra (immigration), who was there to deport them.

At the end the “good” Mexican heartthrob, was depicted as handsome, rugged, poor and with a macho attitude. This “good” Mexican ends up with the sister who did not like to acknowledge her roots. The second sister, who is studying to be a lawyer, ends up with the handsome, rich and white lawyer. Because of course in a movie full on Mexicans, if there is a successful and good person he has to be white right? He cannot be Mexican as well.

What also annoys me is that the half-brother of the sisters, who in fact is the one who buys their home, is married to this mean white woman. Why couldn’t he be married to a mean Mexican, or a mean black, or Chinese woman? It reinforces the stereotype that Mexican have this messed up dream to find a white person to love even if they are horrible people. It is ridiculous that to end up with a white person is somehow a “success.”

I hated that movie and I hated the fact that Televisa (a major Mexican television company) was part of the production. But I will talk about that next week.

To end this post I would like to invite you to watch two short commercials which air daily here in Canada. It is advertising Old El Paso Tacos.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3KXaF2_UzU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSTJ5Xe-E8c&feature=related

First of all, I do not know any fellow Mexican that eats that food. Real tacos are not that crunchy nonsense. There are all types of tacos and the only “crunchy” tacos we have are not even crunchy. They are called tacos dorados, and they basically consist of rolling your chicken (or whatever you prefer) in a soft tortilla and then frying them: all fresh and all delicious.

Not only do we not eat that food, they are trying to make it seem like it is all we eat. Then they depict everyone as being less than intelligent and having these huge dilemmas over soft or hard tacos, over how not to make them fall over. They also show us as all being rural and again in traditional clothes. In fact the real rural people of Mexico are the ones who eat the best and most delicious food one could find in Mexico.

Ask any Mexican you know, we do not eat that stuff and neither should anyone else because it’s really unhealthy and looks disgusting. I think it’s really unfair not only to our image, but to the public who thinks that they are eating Mexican food.

Moral: Make a real Mexican friend and go to their mom’s house to eat some delicious food, or better yet, come to my house; I’ll make you some great tacos dorados.

With love your Mexican blogger,

Belisa

My Experience Donating Blood

Last year I donated blood for the first an only time. I stopped not for lack of altruistic spirit but because I found something within the procedure that offended me completely. For those who have never donated blood let me break it up a little bit, you basically go to a station at your school or a mall when the Canada Blood Services are up taking donations. They ask you if you ate today, and if you haven’t, they send you to eat something so you do not pass out. You also have to be a minimum of 110 pounds, again so you do not faint. They also ask you if you have given birth within the last six months or if you are breast feeding. This is all to keep you safe from becoming too weak when the blood is taken out from you. All this is perfectly fine…

After you are told to sit down and fill a questionnaire, the questions you are asked to answer alone also seem very much standard, such as; “Are you feeling well today?”. When you are through with that questionnaire you are called to speak with a nurse to fill out another questionnaire. This is where the problems start.

This part of the questionnaire is racist, homophobic and discriminatory on so many levels. You are asked if either you or your mother or grandmother were born in Mexico or Latin America. It asks if you have visited these countries for a significant amount of time. Yes, I was and so was everyone is my family, so? If they tell me we have some blood problems, then ok go ahead and believe that lie, but they are going to test everyone’s blood before putting it in a patient right? So what is the problem? Why do you have to make people feel like they are somehow inferior if all they are doing is trying to help?

The questionnaire asks if you have ever been a prostitute. It asks men if they have ever, even once had sex with another man. Excuse me how is this their business? How is this relevant? If they think homosexual men have aids and other diseases, good for them, they are going to test the blood first anyways. There is absolutely no need to be homophobic and ask these private questions to anyone.

Then the women are asked if they have had sex with a man who has ever had sex with another man. Huh? Who cares! You are going to test the blood! And honestly if you have you probably do not know anyways… They are also asked if they have been sexually active with anyone born in Africa. Wow… I feel like I being redundant here but they are going to test the blood! What is the need for this?

So not only are you giving your time to donate blood, being poked with a needle for around 30 minutes, but before all this fun begins your privacy is violated and you are expected to answer homophobic, racist and overall discriminatory questions.

That was the only day I donated blood and I refuse to do it again until these outdated methods are changed. I do not feel comfortable participating in something that is so discriminatory without the need to be. The blood is going to get tested before it is given to anyone; all of these questions are simply unacceptable. While I was being asked I felt like saying “Yes, I am a Mexican bisexual with a bisexual African boyfriend, oh and I have multiple tattoos and piercings”, just to see what they would say.

I want this to be changed because I definitely believe donating blood is something positive, and I like to help. We never know who needs the blood and what life we could be saving by donating. However, not in this manner, I do not want to be part of it. I also ask myself why is it that the first part of the questionnaire we answer by ourselves and then the racist part we do it with a nurse? Are they aware that people are more likely to walk out if they are seeing that? What do you guys think?

I leave you with the link so you can see the questionnaire for yourselves. Read it all over, the invasive questions are the ones shaded in grey at the last section.

 

http://www.bloodservices.ca/CentreApps/Internet/UW_V502_MainEngine.nsf/resources/Eligibility/$file/ROD2011-05-01.pdf

-Belisa

Speak Whatever Language You Want If You Are in America, or Elsewhere

I recently had the displeasure of finding this site:  http://www.notracistbut.com/  -  this tumblr is dedicated to showing public Facebook posts which start off saying “I’m not racist but” followed by something extremely racist.

This site is great in that it serves as a constant reminder of the kinds of backwards and racist thoughts that are still prevalent in much of the population (that age-old argument that we now have “equal” rights, or we now have a African-American president, so we cannot be racist is silly).

However, this site is not so great because it serves to infuriate me on a daily basis.

This post in particular caught my eye today: http://www.notracistbut.com/post/8799368871/bahahahahaha

Besides the obvious irony here that this person is actually at fault of not using proper English (your and you’re are not the same word), the claim itself is really foolish.  

ISSUE #1: NOT SPEAKING ENGLISH IS SOMEHOW BAD

Why do people assume that English has some kind of higher legitimacy than other languages? Granted it is most commonly used and blah blah blah, but it is really up to people to speak whatever they want, and if you can’t understand them that’s really your own problem.  I’m not talking about a business where a Japanese customer insists on speaking to a clerk in Japanese when the latter does not understand it - but let people converse with other people how they choose (i.e. Arabic speakers speaking in Arabic with other Arabic speakers). 

Why is this such an issue to everyone?  They feel more comfortable.  They are expressing their ethnic identity.  They are conversing with others and finding some kind of common ground, and most of them are either learning English or know it FLUENTLY – don’t assume that because someone is speaking in another language they don’t know English just as well or even better than you do. Moreover, every language has its own intricacies and things to offer.  We celebrate works written in English, but do we ever stop to think how many great pieces we are missing, hidden away in the languages many of us cannot speak? 

Before anybody gets angry I’m not saying that people should not learn English, but I am saying do not assume that i) they are not currently learning it or ii) do not already know it.  Moreover iii) It takes time to adapt to a new place and a new language.  There is nothing more annoying to me than when people laugh at accents or at somebody's inability to immediately master the English language.  If you suddenly found yourself in China (assuming you are not from there) and couldn't speak Chinese would you want everyone to laugh at you, to make fun of you, and tell you to go back home?

ISSUE #2: BE AMERICAN

Now on to the second issue: this whole “be American” thing; does speaking a language other than English make us less American? 

What is American?

The only thing that I can deduce from these claims that speaking English is “the American way” is that we are too ignorant for our own good.  This country earns its profits from the labour of all kinds of people; all types of people contribute to the economy.  All types of people reside here.   Not only that, but Native Americans are the true “Americans” for having come here first (if we are going to use that logic); so maybe we should have all learned their languages instead of English.  Or maybe the citizens of Jamestown should have left because they could only speak their “foreigner” language of English and maybe they should have gone “back to their own country”.  When we start using this kind of logic in these examples everybody will scoff at them and dismiss them as nonsense – but when we use this kind of logic to target minority groups and really, moreso anyone who is not European we often take such claims more seriously.

Let’s be honest: the majority of people are really aiming these types of comments at anyone who is not European; speaking French or German is not nearly as “offensive” to these people as speaking Spanish or Hindi is, again because of this ethnocentric view that anything European is progressive, forward, modern, professional, and any other language is backwards, traditional, unprofessional, "fobbish" (don't even get me started on that word). 

And that my friends is the great hypocrisy of people that make these kinds of comments. 

But I leave you with this thought:

I myself speak 2 other languages in conjunction with English and am also learning my fourth.  So when people imply that those who don’t speak English are somehow less, lower, or unintelligent, you tell me who is smarter or at least making more use of their brain: the person who can speak one language or the person who can speak 1 (and in some cases, more) and is perfecting another one (like English) and will soon master it, someone who can come to a brand new land and learn to adapt themselves very quickly, or someone who thinks they are somehow better than everyone because they were born there and never faced much difficulty with having to integrate with what surrounds them?

Us being in these countries is not some great favour to us, we do not have to be "thankful" to the people that reside here.  Instead, just like any other human being, we deserve to live in a place that is safe, free from war, that offers more than poverty and low-wage, low-skill jobs.  We do not create the circumstances of our home countries, nor do we choose where we are born.  So if we are here, then we have the right just like anybody else, to speak or indulge in our own cultures.  Yes, we should learn English if you want to fully be able to take advantage and integrate with the society you find yourself in.  But to embrace our own culture is not something that is wrong - only to be looked down upon for doing so is.

-Malcolm

*For more reading on the concept explored in the last part of this post, I invite you all to read this: 
http://southasia.oneworld.net/weekend/migration-and-unfreedom

 

Why SAT Results Were Not Reflective of Student Ability, & Why This Is Still Relevant

Early SATs had questions like this:

RUNNER is to MARATHON
(RUNNER : MARATHON)
is the same as

A) envoy : embassy
B) martyr : massacre
C) oarsman : regatta
D) referee : tournament

E) horse : stable

In this case, C is the correct answer.

First of all, why is this a clear reflection of biased testing? Because only people of a certain class have ever encountered a “regatta” and know what it is (I sure didn’t). So if there are questions that privilege upper class individuals (and because wealth is racialized) what these crafty test makers concluded was that those students who were of a certain economic and ethnic background happened to be “less intelligent” all because the questions were ethno- and culturally- centric. Obviously such blatant favoring of particular classes and ethnic groups (i.e. upper-class white Americans) no longer occurs in the test.

Yet this is still of relevance. Not only did decades of such views on Black students or of students of lower classes change how society saw and treated them, but it has lent itself to a historical conception of the aforementioned groups; ideas like this only added to already negative stereotypes of these groups and stereotypical views can become so ingrained that even after knowing the tests were skewed these underlying ideas of such groups never really go away. This is just one miniscule example of why history is not really over after the events pass because they remain a part of the inner conceptions of both actors involved.

In the same token the British may no longer be colonizing South Asia, and the United States is no longer enslaving African Americans; but both of these practices brough with them conceptions of the aforementioned people, whether it was that they were “backward”, “savage”, “uncivilized”, “unintelligent” (etc.) and while the practice went away these conceptions did not necessarily disappear.  They were in fact still relevant in the subsequent treatment and general view of these persons colonized, enslaved, or not. such conceptions can be carried over decades, even centuries, and this is why history is never “over” – it remains relevant and very much alive.


Consciously yours,

Malcolm [Exorcise the Demons]