Chicanismo: An Affirmation of Race and Class by Ignacio Garcia

Last week's class discussion was one of the more exciting lectures and class responses I've recently witnessed.

I wish I would have had the following information from Ignacio Garcia's explanation on Chicanismo. Read "Chicanismo: The forging of a militant ethos among Mexican Americans (Tuscon, University of Arizona Press, 1997).

The Chicano movement gained its strength from the working-class sector of the community. Chicanos hang focus on racial origins and class position as a cohesion to that struggle (Garcia, 1997). This is so visible in environment at the campus of the University of Texas at El Paso. It is important to remember that UTEP is a commuter university and the students would not be ranked as coming from a high socio- economic income level. Most work, most go to school part-time, most have tight-knit families and are tied in to the strong Mexican patriarchal culture. I often reflect on what my brother Hector said about the Chicano movement in the 60s when he was a journalism student at UTEP. He said he was too busy studying, working and trying to raise a family to be involved in the Chicano movement. Meanwhile, my husband, a retired El Paso police lieutenant, was busing arresting protesters during the same time. My husband is white, my brother looks white, but is Mexican-American. And me - well, I have darker skin.

Chicanos are for the most part mestizos. How Chicanismo evolved and how it is interpreted by scholars and the Chicano's themselves is controversial. It is about race and class. Poet Ricardo Sanchez says, "Ser Chicano es vivir como humano (to be a Chicano is to live like a human).

How Mexican-Americans view themselves in America is tied to their present economic and social status. I would almost venture to say it is similar to a lesser or greater degree to the Irish-Americans, German-Americans and Vietnamese-Americans.

10-97 and What it Means

10-97 is a police radio code meaning that an officer has arrived at a crime scene. This is an important transmission when it comes to being first on the scene and assessing a situation for himself or herself and others who will arrive later. Assessing news stories, ads, and magazine covers should be a standard operating procedure for any consumer who is on the scene, but how many young adults today would care about what Taco Bell's Dinky is doing and what power do we have as a consumer to change market driven images such as Dinky and keeping those marketing ideas from surfacing again? How many parents, regardless of socio-economic status and ethnicity told their children that Dinky is offensive or cute? Gabriel Chavez complained because he was the former president of the chapter of the League for United Latin American Citizens. The Mexicans didn't like the connotations of the ad, but how many whites complained? Who at Taco bell designed the ad? What was his or her ethnicity? Did he or she have a college degree? Did he or she take an ethics class in college? If he or she did, what were they thinking during that class? Was the CEO of Taco Bell a Mexican , white or of some other ethnicity?

The Media - How We Grow Up With IT and What it Does

The era in which we were born and reared by our parents influences us on how we perceive ourselves and how we integrate ourselves in society. The media is part of that development. The mere fact that I am not a North Texan by birth will have a profound influence on how I view immigrant issues since I lived on the border with Mexico all my life. I also attended a private Catholic school - all girls. The Catholic nuns aggressively influenced us to pursue non-traditonal roles in academia and the work force. That was in the 70s. At Loretto Academy in El Paso we were sent out into the world to be critical thinkers at age 17 and 18. We were taught not to automatically reinforce the status quo.

Being a critical thinker and having an analytical mind enables us to scrutinize what we want and what the media feeds us, however, when it comes to consumption we can become suckers by the media's influence. Even if family has a direct influence on how we think about the media , we still face challenges within our external social circles.

Social theorist Georg Simmel analyzed the manner in which consumption may be used to cultivated "sham individuality." He cites fashion as an example. According to Simmel, sophisticated and blase consumption allows the consumer to differentiate him or herself. In my interpretation, advertising and the media contributes to "sham individuality" every time a consumer reinforces his or her beliefs on how a beautiful body is developed, maintained and perceived by race and class in American society. In a recent article by Christine Kearney, "NY fashion runways lack black and Asian Models,", Kearney quotes fashion art director Frank de Jesus that a white girl with blond hair is still the ideal of beauty. If Clairol says blond hair is is an attribute of beauty the consumer buys the dye, changes her or his image and thus fall to the influence of advertising and reinforces the status quo.

Why I Read What I Read

My reading habits have evolved over many years and were directly influenced by my mother. I remember flipping the pages of National Geographic on the living room floor and visualizing how I would write about a lost tribe treking in the steamy Amazon. But I became a cop and my interests shifted to reading police magazines like Law and Order and Police Chief to keep up with police policy, investigative techniques, and dreaming about getting a Sig Sauer so I could have a competitive edge over the shooting scores of my fellow officers (although the gun doesn't make the man nor the woman). I was self-employed in construction later and subscribed to Handy Man magazine to learn how a woman could build a better bathroom. Now I am an academic - an aspiring journalist. I have to read as much as I can. I subscribe to U.S. News and World Report, Texas Monthly (that was for a writing class- not my favorite), The New Yorker, Selecciones - Reader's Digest in Spanish to practice the language and improve my writing and The Columbia Journalism Review. I subscribe to the Denton Record Chronicle to learn about the local folks (I'm new to the area), the Star-Telgram and the Dallas Morning News (dropped it, but need to re-start it). I log on everyday to various news sites (American and foreign) and I watch CNN News Robin and Company , and chill with the weather guy Van Dillon who is more professional and not as goofy as Robin in the morning at 5:15 a.m. I watch Brian Williams on the NBC evening news.If I could, I'd subscribe to Al-Jazeera to top this off. NO - the reporters with Al-Jazeera aren't terrorists.

This is much toooooo long - but that is why I read and what I read and view because as a journalist I need to be up on the news and scrutinize what is put out in print, on the web, radio and TV. And about those I-Reporters who post shaky video.....hmmmmm. That's another story. That's all folks.