The racial divide that was once so clearly black and white has now shifted with the new waves of immigrants to the US. Following changes and new allowances of immigrants, greater numbers of people started to immigrate to the US from Hispanic and Asian lands. The browns and yellows have put the black and white system in flux as the bigots do not know how to classify them. Population growth has shown rise in sectors that are neither white nor black. Jennifer Lee proposes a new system that does not base race off of white or not white, but rater black non-black.
In attempts to accommodate growing populations of languages other than English, signs such as these have been erected in public places. Interestingly enough, people speaking one language may not readily interpret the other. Bilingual speakers, on the other hand, find messages to be misleading. Translations in this instance are not only inaccurate; the messages have totally different meanings. In Spanish it reads:
“Notice to the Public: Please, we need your cooperation. Help us to maintain this clean historical museum. All of the people who com and visit, abstain from taking anything, cutting or writing names on the cacti. Also no eating, no drinking, no smoking, no taking shells from this whole visiting area. No admittance for children without being accompanied by an adult.”
It is important to note that there are grammatical errors in the Spanish as well as the English. It seems as though whoever wrote the notices was not highly educated in either language. Making whites look bad to Spanish and Spanish look bad to whites.
I feel that since the museum is located in the US it is uncustomary to have the English below the Spanish.
I feel that since the museum is located in the US it is uncustomary to have the English below the Spanish.
A Halloween costume goes too far. A white female Republican of Tennessee was greatly criticized by the media and surrounding black community for her photo taken with friend, a white pastor in black make-up, on Halloween. Following her facebook upload and quote of the photo (“Aunt Jemima You is So Sweet”). The inappropriateness of her comment and of the decision of the pastor to dress up as a black man were ridiculed by the outlying black community. Apparently the woman meant no harm, but the interpretation was not taking so sweetly by other political members.
Defining people by their place of origin and skin color is such a commonplace practice here in the US and throughout the rest of the world.
The dominant ideology in the US has put Caucasians and their beliefs on a pedastal above the others. Today the data is hard to shirk. It is unrealistic to see whites as a majority when the “minority” populations are soaring. Elements of uneducated assumptions are relevant in the case of the misinterpreted Spanish/English public notices as well as the misunderstood politician whom posed with her friend on Halloween. There is a culture lag amongst the languages of communication here in the US. Not only is there not a dominant language, the messages communicated through the means of different languages allow for different interpretations of messages. Although the example at the museum is minor, it only opens my mind to imagine what else there is that is not properly translated.
Human rights are exploited through many types of discrimination and abuse. Migration of minority groups allows for the patterns of exploitation to follow them from their homeland. The development of multinational corporations has opened up new means of discrimination, from skin, ethnicity, socioeconomic scale, and language. Today as a nation we struggle to differentiate one from another. We create borders and break down information to set us all apart when we really need to work together.
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