Module #11 Spotlight on Sociology and supplemental topics

This section in each model is a way to emphasize key ideas (often sociologically-related) that enrich and expand the material in the textbook and the Chapter Notes. The instructor will expand the topics occasionally to include specific contemporary and relevant information and insights.

Chapter 9 in the textbook discusses material related to money and relationships in the family, including balancing work and family life.

This Spotlight draws attention to the following topics of Colonization of Chicano lands and impact on Chicano families, transnational families, and whiteness and the norm of the nuclear family

How the Chicano Movement Championed Mexican-American Identity and Fought for Change

Chicano activists took on a name that had long been a racial slur—and wore it with pride.

BY: KAREN JUANITA CARRILLO

UPDATED: JULY 25, 2023

In the 1960s, a radicalized Mexican-American movement began pushing for a new identification. The Chicano Movement, aka El Movimiento, advocated social and political empowerment through a chicanismo or cultural nationalism.

As the activist Rodolfo “Corky” Gonzales declared in a 1967 poem, “La raza! / Méjicano! / Español! / Latino! / Chicano! / Or whatever I call myself, / I look the same.”

Leading up to the 1960s, Mexican-Americans had endured decades of discrimination in the U.S. West and Southwest. After the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo put an end to the Mexican-American War in 1848, Mexicans who chose to remain on territory ceded to the United States were promised citizenship and “the right to their property, language and culture.”

But in most cases, Mexicans in America—those who later immigrated and those who lived in regions where the U.S. border shifted over—found themselves living as second-class citizens. Land grants promised after the Mexican-American War were denied by the U.S. government, impoverishing many land-grant descendants in the area.

Not White, But ‘Chicano’

Throughout the early 20th century, many Mexican-Americans attempted to assimilate and even filed legal cases to push for their community to be recognized as a class of white Americans, so they could gain civil rights. But by the late 1960s, those in the Chicano Movement abandoned efforts to blend in and actively embraced their full heritage.

By adopting “Chicano” or “Xicano,” activists took on a name that had long been a racial slur—and wore it with pride. And instead of only recognizing their Spanish or European background, Chicanos now also celebrated their Indigenous and African roots.

Leaders in the movement pushed for change in multiple parts of American society, from labor rights to education reform to land reclamation. As University of Minnesota Chicano & Latino Studies professor Jimmy C. Patino Jr. says, the Chicano Movement became known as “a movement of movements.” “There were lots of different issues,” he says, “and the farmworker issue probably was the beginning.”

Chávez Leads Fight for Farmworkers’ Rights

César Chávez and Dolores Huerta co-founded the National Farm Workers Association, which later became United Farm Workers (UFW) in California to fight for improved social and economic conditions. Chavez, who was born into a Mexican-American migrant farmworker family, had experienced the grueling conditions of the farmworker first-hand.

In September 1965, Chávez lent his voice to a strike for grape workers, organized by the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC), a predominantly Filipino labor organization. With the help of Chávez’s advocacy and Huerta’s tough negotiating skills, as well as the persistent hard work of Filipino-American organizer, Larry Itliong, the union won several victories for workers when growers signed contracts with the union.

“We are men and women who have suffered and endured much and not only because of our abject poverty but because we have been kept poor,” Chávez wrote in his 1969 “Letter from Delano.” “The color of our skins, the languages of our cultural and native origins, the lack of formal education, the exclusion from the democratic process, the numbers of our slain in recent wars—all these burdens generation after generation have sought to demoralize us, we are not agricultural implements or rented slaves, we are men.”

Tijerina and the Push for Land Reclamation

Next to labor, the land itself held important economic and spiritual significance among Chicanos, according to Patino. And civil rights activist Reies López Tijerina led the push to reclaim land confiscated by anglo settlers in violation of the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.

Tijerina, who grew up in Texas working in the fields as young as age 4, founded La Alianza Federal de Mercedes (the Federal Land Grant Alliance) in 1953 and became known as “King Tiger” and “the Malcolm X of the Chicano Movement.” His group held protests and even staged an armed raid on a small town in New Mexico, trying to reconquer properties for the Chicano community.

While efforts to repatriate land got caught up in the courts, Patino says, “it had this big effect in terms of mobilizing young people to understand the ways the U.S. took land from Mexico—and from Mexican landowners in particular—and how this kind of empire-building was how Mexicans became part of the U.S.”

Student Movement Embraces ‘Aztlán’

Meanwhile, a parallel effort, led by poet and activist Rodolfo “Corky” Gonzales, organized Mexican-American students across the country. In a March 1969 gathering, some 1,500 attended the National Youth and Liberation Conference in Denver, Colorado. At the conference, the students looked to their indigenous ancestors of the Aztec Empire and identified a land called “Aztlán.”

In Aztec folklore, Aztlán was believed to have extended across northern Mexico and possibly farther north into what is now the U.S. southwest. The students embraced the concept of Aztlán as a spiritual homeland and drafted El Plan Espiritual De Aztlán as their manifesto for mass mobilization and organization.

Ultimately, the Chicano Movement won many reforms: The creation of bilingual and bicultural programs in the southwest, improved conditions for migrant workers, the hiring of Chicano teachers, and more Mexican-Americans serving as elected officials.

“A key term in Chicano Movement activism was self-determination,” says Patino, “the idea that Chicanos were a nation within a nation that had the right to self-determine their own future and really their own decisions in their own neighborhood, in their own barrios.”

https://www.history.com/news/chicano-movement

Transnational families negotiating migration and care life cycles across nation-state borders

Deborah Fahy Bryceson

Pages 3042-3064 | Published online: 04 Jan 2019

Cite this article

https://doi.org/10.1080/1369183X.2018.1547017

ABSTRACT

Over the past two decades, globalisation has propelled millions of economic migrants from poor sending-nations to seek employment in economically better-off receiving-nations, often establishing new offshoot family formation, notwithstanding national migration policies trending towards tightening border controls. State policies on border crossing and circular migration shape and frequently impinge on the development aspirations, welfare-creation strategies and ways and means of provisioning family life cycle care needs. In the process, transnational families often make material sacrifices and contend with emotional tensions between migrant parents or spouses and their stay-behind family members. Conversely state policies, which do not take family aspirations into account in migration decision-making, are unlikely to effectively meet their intended objectives.

Introduction

In 2015, world attention turned to the swelling mass movement of migrants risking their lives under hazardous conditions to gain entry to Europe from the Middle East and Africa. Despite raging political debate and the humanitarian exigencies of mounting numbers of migrants, analysis of migrants’ decision-making has been relatively superficial. In-depth information on migrants’ family structures within their home country, as well as their knowledge of border barriers, physical risks enroute, chances of finding employment, and emotional coping strategies related to physical separation from their ‘left-behind’ family members are scantily documented (Skrbiš Citation2008). Instead the scale of migration, migrants’ distress and the politically charged interface between receiving nation-states and migrants have dominated the literature and public policy debate.

The ‘migrant crisis'Footnote¹ has brought the significance of global family agency to the fore. The decision to migrate was treated as an outcome of ad-hoc individual decision-making in conventional twentieth century positivist social science, overlooking family strategy and the on-going evolution of family group decision-making that takes place over the course of the family's life-cycle and successive junctures of the migrant's stay abroad. Twenty-first century transport and communication advance has facilitated transnational family coherence. The strategic agency of family welfare-seeking across national borders crystallizes transnational families as a decentralised institutional force, influencing and influenced by labour market fluctuations and state policies.

This introduction focuses primarily on the modalities and agendas of transnational families in relation to nation states and the international market. Amidst the rising global mobility of people, agency within and between these three institutions is likely to collide as their established spheres of operation and institutional functions are reconfigured. The articles that follow trace transnational family formation and life cycle evolution from different vantage points, reflecting the authors’ disciplinary specialisations and geographical case study fieldwork.Footnote²

Some broad similarities and many nuanced differences in family migration strategies centre on gender and age that are critical to who migrates, who stays behind, who cares and who is cared for materially and emotionally at various stages of the family life cycle. The case studies contrast sending and receiving country contexts in Africa, Asia, Latin America and Europe. Emphasis is on members’ perceptions of opportunities, pitfalls, fears and interpersonal coping strategies in the face of inevitable dilemmas posed by the uncertain circumstances and outcomes of international migration.

‘Transnational families’ are defined as familial groups with members living some or most of the time separated from each other, while nonetheless feeling a sense of collective welfare, unity and familyhood across national borders (Bryceson and Vuorela Citation2002). Transnational families are not new but they are definitely more numerous now than ever before. They are an evolving institutional form of human interdependence, which serve material and emotional needs, in the twenty-first century's globalising world.

The transnational family constitutes a multi-dimensional spatial and temporal support environment for migrants, as well as providing motivational impetus for migration. Migrants are nudged or prodded by their individual and family economic needs and aspirations (de Jong et al. Citation1985). Family members most likely constitute migrants’ core social network for financial and emotional support, be they home-based family members or those who have already migrated and are in a position to provide strategic assistance along the migrant's journey or at their destination.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1369183X.2018.1547017#:~:text='Transnational%20families'%20are%20defined%20as,(Bryceson%20and%20Vuorela%202002).

Whiteness

Whiteness and white racialized identity refer to the way that white people, their customs, culture, and beliefs operate as the standard by which all other groups of are compared. Whiteness is also at the core of understanding race in America. Whiteness and the normalization of white racial identity throughout America's history have created a culture where nonwhite persons are seen as inferior or abnormal.

This white-dominant culture also operates as a social mechanism that grants advantages to white people, since they can navigate society both by feeling normal and being viewed as normal. Persons who identify as white rarely have to think about their racial identity because they live within a culture where whiteness has been normalized.

Thinking about race is very different for nonwhite persons living in America. People of color must always consider their racial identity, whatever the situation, due to the systemic and interpersonal racism that still exists.

Whiteness (and its accepted normality) also exist as everyday microaggressions toward people of color. Acts of microaggressions include verbal, nonverbal, and environmental slights, snubs or insults toward nonwhites. Whether intentional or not, these attitudes communicate hostile, derogatory, or harmful messages.

In this country, American means white. Everybody else has to hyphenate. Toni Morrison

White Privilege
Since white people in America hold most of the political, institutional, and economic power, they receive advantages that nonwhite groups do not. These benefits and advantages, of varying degrees, are known as white privilege. For many white people, this can be hard to hear, understand, or accept - but it is true. If you are white in America, you have benefited from the color of your skin.

Stop and Think!

How does being white grant certain privileges? How might white people experience oppression through other social identities, e.g., class, gender, sexual orientation, religion, ability, etc.?

White people can possess other marginalized parts of their identity, but their race is not one of these. To learn more about how race intersects with our other identities, check out the section titled systems of oppression.

Being white does not mean you haven’t experienced hardships or oppression. Being white does mean you have not faced hardships or oppression based on the color of your skin. We need to be honest about the ways white people have benefited from racism so we can work toward an equitable, fair and just society.

In “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack,” scholar Peggy McIntosh writes, “White privilege is like an invisible weightless knapsack of special provisions, maps, passports, code books, visas, clothes, tools, and blank checks.” Here are some examples she gives on what white privilege looks like in day to day living:

I can if I wish arrange to be in the company of people of my race most of the time.
I can avoid spending time with people whom I was trained to mistrust and who have learned to mistrust my kind or me.
If I should need to move, I can be pretty sure of renting or purchasing housing in an area which I can afford and in which I would want to live.
I can be pretty sure that my neighbors in such a location will be neutral or pleasant to me.

I can go shopping alone most of the time, pretty well assured that I will not be followed or harassed

I can turn on the television or open to the front page of the paper and see people of my race widely represented.
When I am told about our national heritage or about "civilization," I am shown that people of my color made it what it is.
I can be sure that my children will be given curricular materials that testify to the existence of their race.
If I want to, I can be pretty sure of finding a publisher for this piece on white privilege.
I can be pretty sure of having my voice heard in a group in which I am the only member of my race.

I can be casual about whether or not to listen to another person's voice in a group in which s/he is the only member of his/her race

Download “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack” by Peggy McIntosh

WATCH: White privilege and constructing white racial identity

Stop and Think!

What are some misconceptions about whiteness that DiAngelo or McIntosh have helped you unveil?

Why does understanding white privilege matter?

What is White nationalism?

White Dominant Culture
White dominant culture describes how white people and their practices, beliefs, and culture have been normalized over time and are now considered standard in the United States. As a result, all Americans have all adopted various aspects of white culture, including people of color.

White supremacy is an ideology where white people are believed to be superior to nonwhite people. This fallacy is rooted in the same scientific racism and pseudo-science used to justify slavery, imperialism, colonialism, and genocide at various times in throughout history. White supremacist ideologies and their followers continue to perpetuate the myth of white racial superiority.

The belief of white superiority has been part of the United States since its inception. The white European imperialists who settled here believed they were inherently superior to nonwhite groups. These beliefs justified atrocities like the genocide of Native Americans and nearly 250 years of African slavery. After slavery, white supremacist ideologies manifested into a series of laws that would limit the freedom of African Americans, known as Black Codes and Jim Crow. White supremacy and its legacy can still be found in our legal system and other institutions through coded language and targeted practices.

Direct and violent forms of racism that promote white supremacy have been on the rise in recent years. These acts are more directly linked to white nationalism. White nationalism is a concept born out of white supremacy. A key difference is a focus on nationhood. White nationalists in the United States advocate for a country that is only for the white race due to feelings of entitlement and racial superiority. They also believe that the diversity of people in the United States will lead to the destruction of whiteness and white culture - hence, the correlation to white supremacist ideology.

bell hooks explains systems of oppression through the idea “Interlocking systems of domination”

Internalization of Whiteness and White Dominant Culture

Racism is perpetuated by deeming whiteness as superior and other racial and ethnic groups as inferior. The prevalence of white dominant culture and racism leads to an internalized racial superiority for those who adhere to it. This internalized dominance "describes the experience and attitudes of those who are members of the dominant, privileged, or powerful identity groups. Members of the [dominant] group accept their group's socially superior status as normal and deserved." [as defined by CARED: Calgary Anti-Racism Education]

When people of a nondominant group (people of color) are discriminated against, targeted or oppressed over time, they often believe the myths and misinformation about their group. Known as internalized racism, it happens when an oppressed group believes the racial views that society communicates are true, and they act as if they were true.

Stop and Think!

How does white dominant culture leave others out?

Reflect

What are some of the disadvantages of not being sensitive or supportive of cultures and lifestyles of different ethnic and racial groups?

How can we begin to normalize cultural practices that are not related to white-dominant culture?

Confronting Whiteness

If you identify as white, acknowledging your white racial identity and its privileges is a crucial step to help end racism. Facing your whiteness is hard and can result in feelings of guilt, sadness, confusion, defensiveness, or fear. Dr. Robin DiAngelo coined the term white fragility to describe these feelings as "a state in which even a minimum amount of racial stress becomes intolerable, triggering a range of defensive moves." Since white people "live in a social environment that insulates them from race-based stress," whites are rarely challenged and have less of a tolerance to race-based stress.

For those of us who work to raise the racial consciousness of whites, simply getting whites to acknowledge that our race gives us advantages is a major effort. The defensiveness, denial, and resistance are deep. Robin DiAngelo“White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism”

The feelings associated with white fragility often derail conversations about race and serve to support white supremacy. While these feelings are natural human reactions, staying stuck in any of them hurts the process of creating a more equitable society. The defensiveness, guilt, or denial gets in the way of addressing the racism experienced by people of color.

For white people doing anti-racist and social justice work, the first meaningful step should be to recognize their fragility around racial issues and build their emotional stamina. “White Fragility” author Robin DiAngelo breaks it down.

Besides your own internal reflection, processing, and daily commitment to anti-racist work, try participating in affinity groups, or caucuses. These groups are people sharing common interests, backgrounds, or experiences, coming together to support each other.

https://nmaahc.si.edu/learn/talking-about-race/topics/whiteness