Dreaming Forward: Latino Voices Enhance The Mosaic Summary

Maria was a senior in high school. Her plans after high school was to go to lone star college to do 2 years of basics, then transfer to Sam Houston University. Maria was excited to graduate high school because she was going to be to be the first child of her family to get a high school diploma but also be the first one of her family to go to college. Maria had big dreams.

Journey of Dreams The Gonzalez family go through struggle, endeavor to fight against, and go beyond prejudice, discrimination, in an effort to become socially upward and partake in “The American Dream”. Will they be able to? Even with a multicultural, multiracial, and pluralistic imprint? The Gonzalez family are a Latino family that live in Los Angeles.

• Briefly (1 paragraph) summarize the story in the video(s). Latino Focus - A Class Apart This video covered the Mexican- American historic civil rights court case Hernandez v. Texas in the 1950s. Discrimination against Mexican- Americans could be seen throughout the United States during this time but particularly in the southwest part of the country.

Social Capital refers to the networks of relationships among people who live and work in a particular society, enabling the society to function effectively. This term is essential to become successful in life. Another factor that can affect an individual is mindsets; this is the established set of attitudes held by someone. The book, The other Wes Moore and the documentary All the Difference both are inspired by the author Wes Moore and his mother Joy Moore. It explores the struggles between two young African American men and their different path in life.

After reading “A Different Mirror” by Ronald Takaki, Chapter 6 of “Chicana and Chicano Art” by Carlos Jackson, and Surveillance by Ashaki M. Jackson, I learned about how collectively minorities face oppression based on their race and how even through all the adversity they faced they still considered themselves to be American although others did not consider them to be. In the beginning of “A Different Mirror”, it describes how the end of WWII sparked a fire for minorities desire to be considered first class citizens such as white americans. Throughout the readings I also learned about how and why many minorities migrated to America. All in all this week's readings really opened my eyes, from the powerful poems in Surveillance to how chicano art has been publicly

Garza’s family continued to change the system once Garza was in junior high and she wasn’t allowed to take classes she wanted or was segregated by gender. Although, it took years for results, the efforts her family and community did helped along the

“The Latino population in the United States is increasing rapidly, and Latino youth comprise a significant proportion of the overall school age population” (Kristen E. Zychinski and Antonio J Polo, 2012). Yet, however, Latino youth demonstrate low levels of academic achievement. Academic difficulties are primary noticeable in low-income, minority adolescent groups and along with it comes and increase risk for depression symptoms. Adolescents from these groups are also less likely to receive treatment from developing or stopping it. This issue becomes a negative impact on Hispanic adolescents, which is substantial and can be the cause of adverse development in later adulthood.

Many of us are faced with tough times, hard decisions, and struggles but there are only certain people that have the willpower and determination to overcome those obstacles and change their life for the better. Many of us are faced by little challenges like when the alarm clock goes off for school. Do we get up and go to school or do we go back to bed? The immediate reward is going back to bed and getting the satisfaction of more sleep but the downfall is that you miss your classes. This didn’t seem like an important decision for me until I got to college.

In this book, author Tara J. Yosso demonstrates how institutional power and racism affect the Chicano/a educational pipeline by weaving together critical race theory and counterstories. Critical race theory is a framework used to discover the ways race as well as racism implicitly and explicitly shape social structures, practices, and discourses(Yosso, pg.4). Counterstories refer to any narrative that goes against majoritarian stories, in which only the experiences and views of those with racial and social privilege are told. The counterstory methodology humanizes the need to change our educational system and critical race theory provides a structure for Yosso to base her research. This results in a beautiful hybrid of empirical data, theory, and fascinating narratives that works to analyze how forms of subordination shape the Chicana/o pipeline, while also exposing how institutions, structures, and discourses of education maintain discrimination based on gender, race, class and their intersections.

The first of two essay questions focuses on Leo Chavez’s book , “The Latino Threat”. The questions and statements that will be answered include “ What is the Latino threat?, ‘How does he define citizenship?” ,“Identify and discuss two examples of the Latino threat” and “ Identify one policy recommendation and discuss whether you think it is achievable”. Leo Chavez’s book focuses on the guise of Latinos threatening the American way of life. He defines this as “The Latino Threat” , He states that the Latino threat narrative positions Latinos as not sharing similarities with any previous migrant groups into the U.S. and that they are unwilling and incapable of integrating and becoming part of the national community (Chavez,3).

“Precious Knowledge” is a documentary about the Mexican-American Studies Program offered to highschool students in Tucson, Arizona (2011). This documentary follows students enrolled in the Mexican-American Studies Program offered at Tucson Magnet High School: Crystal, Pricilla, and Gilbert; as well as the teachers of the Mexican-American Studies courses: Curtis Acosta and Jose Gonzalez. The students and teachers are interviewed throughout the documentary and explain how they are impacted by the program and their activism to keep the program is demonstrated. This film features individuals who opposed the program, such as superintendent Tom Horne and incoming superintendent John Huppenthal. They believed that ethnic studies were racist, promoted

Christopher Castaneda 3/2/2023 2nd period Multicultural Literature Dan-el Padilla was born in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. He came to the U.S when he was only 4 years old legally but unfortunately his visa expired while in the U.S which meant he had become undocumented. Padilla shows us throughout his memoir Undocumented how being undocumented challenges your life. Padilla argues what is succes and how you can attain it and how your social status does not define who you are. My own view on Padilla’s interrelated themes is that success can be whatever you’d like it to be because people have different successes and goals in life.

“The virtual personas of Latino immigrants (represented as a threat to the nation) make the authority that has accumulated for real immigrants in their role as workers and consumers vanish” (Chavez 47). In the public eye Latinos are depicted as noncompliant and dangerous citizens and noncitizens of the United States. “The virtual lives of ‘Mexicans,’ ‘Chicanos,’ ‘illegal aliens,’ and ‘immigrants’ become abstractions and representations that stand in the place of real lives” (Chavez 47). It is depressing to understand that the majority of the United States strictly sees Latinos as these distorted images. At the end of the day each individual’s life matters, we all need to become more compassionate for one another.

It is thought that Hispanics tend to have more hope in the American Dream. It makes sense, they’re more prone to live in terrible conditions because Mexico isn’t in the best shape. Americans are used to having all of these opportunities sitting in front of them. Hispanics don’t live the same way as Americans. Americans perceive the dream as unachievable because of the obstacles they have to go through.

Segregation of Mexican Americans from the dominant Anglo race has been around for many years. Since the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo Mexican Americans have been treated like a second-class race facing racism and segregation. As a result, segregation in the education system affected Mexican American children. An increasing number of Mexican Americans across California led to an increase of Mexican children enrolling in schools. Author David James Gonzales (2017), explores the degrading school facilities Mexican students were assigned to.