Diana Tejero

SFE Essay

ETHNIC INEQUALITY: an analysis of two situations that try to

empower a minoritarian identity in the USA
Nowadays the world is becoming a cultural melting pot. Conflicts, migrations,
economy and the facility to travel generate a diverse mixture of cultures that co-exist in
different places in the planet. But that co-existence is not always easy: understanding
the difference is a matter that has to be taught together with the own culture to be able
to accept the people that are around oneself.
Education has the power to give us the tools to understand who we are and how
the world around us works, that is why it is so important to give an education based on
values as tolerance, respect, understanding and self-appreciation. However, when it is
put into practice it is difficult to follow all these principles and sometimes the measures
that are carried out do not exactly guarantee the transmission of these values.
In this essay I want to analyze two examples where ethnic equality/inequality is present
in different educational situations: two projects carried out in schools in USA to
empower latino students’ identity.
A “new culture” is being created in the world, it is a global culture, generated by
the phenomena of ​globalisation in the world. It is a culture of the WEIRD, Western,
Educated, Industrialised, Rich and Democratic, a term invented by Joseph Heinrich to
refer to the people who are the main subjects to psychology studies. The
western-educated people is expanding as the global culture and the people belonging to
minor cultures are losing the traces of their identity, especially when this conflict takes
place in the WEIRD’s country.
An example of this is the Latino/Mexican population in the USA. It is well-known
that in the USA there are many people with different racial and ethnic origin and that
most of that people are not integrated in the main culture. During my time in the USA I
could see an obvious separation between the ​main culture and the minoritarian ones in
the kind of jobs they had, the parts of the city they lived in, the schools they attended
to…
The process of acculturation takes places gradually and even if it is a two-way
process most of the times implies a minoritarian culture adjusting and adapting to a
majority. This process is not only about the changes that can be noticed externally but
about the psychological processes that the subjects of acculturation experiment inside.
Ideally this process should result in a cultural integration but it is complex and generally
assistance is needed to help the minoritarian culture improve their self concept and
don't feel like they are losing their original identity.
The FRESA project and the ​"​Aquí y allá" workshop were carried out in Oregon
and in California and both were designed to invite their Primary school students to get to
know their own culture and their peers' and to express through it. The main goals turned
around empowering the students who belonged to a minoritarian culture and the ones
from the main culture to express through it, to promote critical thinking and create an
anti-racist environment and to integrate the second language acquisition, thus the
groups that took part in the project were both part of a bilingual program.
In the FRESA project the teachers and the students together carried out a
research about the ways of sustaining the local community. It is called FRESA because
there are many strawberry fields surrounding the area and the parents of a lot of the
latino origin kids work in that fields. This kind of job is seen as a job for the poor people
and through the project they wanted to bring awareness about the work that takes place
in the fields, the relationship of this jobs with the local economy and how the daily life of
the workers are in order to give a better idea of it and improve the appreciation of it.
Through interviews to the parents, Internet research and observing and gathering
information about their surroundings all the kids created a project that was shared within
the school, the local community and in their homes.
Improving the self-concept of the kids helps to bring awareness of cultural
diversity and recognition of the different realities that co-exist in a place. Achieving the
level of integration of one culture and another is a complex process that implies a good
co-existence between the cultures, the respect for the difference and the finding of
common principles that both cultures can share. For instance, the FRESA project
doesn’t only help the kids be more aware but also creates an exchange of experiences
with the families and the other community members, making them participate in it
somehow.
Another example of the attempts carried out in education to integrate a
minoritarian culture within a bigger one is the Aquí / Allá poetry unit. Elizabeth
Schlessman, a 5th grade teacher in a school in Woodburn, Oregon used the poems of
Jorge Argueta to teach her students about cultural differences, identity and expression
of the self through a literature unit based on poetry.
It is common to find an ethnic minority living in a foreign country and
experiencing a different culture while longing for their original place and traditions. This
is part of the stage of separation, where the individuals fear the difference and are afraid
of not being accepted in the new culture.
“Breaking down a model, building up a draft” are the words Elizabeth used to
express the idea of integrating two cultures: observing the differences, understanding
them and creating a new model that belongs to the two cultures, thus, intercultural
situations affect to the two cultures, the travelling one and the receiving one.
In the poetry unit the students had to choose two different places they liked and
list different qualities of them. Some of the students in that class had Mexican parents
and the teacher encouraged them to contrast their home in Mexico with their home in
USA. During the workshops the students had the chance to share their process with the
class, to peep in the others’ realities and see them from a closer point of view. For that,
they used as an example the poems of Jorge Argueta, who writes bi-lingual poetry
books for kids and who belongs to a foreign culture, as well.
At the end of the poetry unit the students had created 2 poems, one in English
and one in Spanish where they compared two different places that meant something for
them.
 Through this project we can see a multidisciplinary attempt of integrating,
language, literature and interculturality values within a school unit. The diversity of the
students was used as a tool to teach them about poetry and literature and they were the
“main object of study” of their educational process.
These examples illustrate how school is a resourceful setting to promote
integration and coexistence of cultures. There are different approaches for integration
but the main goal is that they lead the students to improve their self concept and to grow
with the values and tolerance and acceptance of the difference.
The cultural emancipation is necessary to allow the kids to grow in a safe and
balanced environment and to integrate in the main culture harmoniously. However, it is
true that it is not always possible to dedicate so much time to these kind of projects
because the curriculums are very tight: the governments set the values and
competences that have to be taught but also a strict set of content and normally the
lessons are organized according to the content and forgetting the other aspects, which
are more difficult to evaluate.
Even if schools are a perfect environment to promote equality and diversity
recognition, it is important to include these values in the curriculum as a relevant aspect
to deal with. Specially in conflictive areas where ethnic inequality is a real circumstance.
Tolerance and observation are important tools to be able to create these spaces for the
students to express and to take an active role in their education and in their own
emancipation process, as part of a culture and as individuals of the world.