Blog 3: Shifra M. Goldman's Essay

In Shifra M. Goldman’s essay, she discusses points on images and icons that represent self-determination within race, ethnicity, and class. For race, Goldman points out that the Anglo-Saxon settlers brought racism to North America. Antonio Bernal displays the struggles of all people of color who were discriminated against in his untitled mural. His mural incorporates not only Mexicans and Chicanos/as, but African Americans as well. What is interesting is that his mural also incorporates a woman in the front with a sword that is referred to a “soldadera” or a woman solider. Goldman discusses ethnicity as not necessarily of whom the person is, but more as what society makes them, over a period of time. Goldman points out how the Anglo-Saxon’s were attacking the Mexican’s in different ways including stereotyping. Chicano/a art began to arise because of the attacks by the dominant Anglo-Saxon’s. As for class, Goldman points out that there are different class divisions such as upper class and the working class. Goldman focuses on the working class, which included many Mexican-Americans and Chicanos/as. Emigdio Vásquez made an acrylic mural, which was a tribute to the working class and displays different Mexican-Americans and Chicanos/as as miners and agricultural laborers. Goldman points out that Mexican-American and Chicanos/as went through cultural resistance from the Anglo-Saxons, and therefore maintained their culture by celebrating race, ethnicity and class. These forms of maintaining culture and expression were quite prevalent in art and during the Chicano movement. Yolanda M. López not only emulates race, class, and ethnicity, but her gender as well within many of her artworks. An oil and acrylic image by López that reflects these is her Runner: On My Own! From ¿A Donde Vas, Chicana? Getting through College series from 1977. It expresses her self-determination to get through graduate school at UCSD as she is running through campus which can be interpreted as her going through the journey of graduate school while her facial expressions make her appear fierce and determined, which all together encompasses her race, class, ethnicity as well as her gender.