Questions for Professor Gaspar de Alba: week 2

Out of the House, the Halo, and the Whore’s Mask: The Mirror of Malinchismo.

1) Why do Latino parents tell their daughters to go to school not for an education but to find a man? This question really hits home since I have parents, at least my father, who would jokingly state these types of comments. For example one day my dad said, “You have to go to UCLA and date an Asian because they are extremely smart.” A racial stereotype and sexist joke but there is always some truth in a joke. Thank god I have a strong independent spirited mother that immediately snapped and told my father that I was going to UCLA to gain an education not a man. My father jokingly says you are right honey and moved onto the next subject. I know my father was joking about the sexist and racist comment that he said but it still hit a very big nerve to have my father encourage that underlining meaning that the sole reason women pursue to further their education is to find a man.

There’s No Place Like Aztlan: Embodied Aesthetics in Chicana Art.

2) Sometimes I catch myself in full aw when I realize that I was accepted to this wonderful school with the best educators in the world. And sometimes I look around and see unfamiliar faces, predominately Caucasian. I wonder why are there so many Caucasian and not a whole lot off faces like mine here. This sense of disconnection forces me to think and stereotype my ethnicity and others. I stereotype a certain class of ethnicity and assimilating negative and or positive attributes to this group. Is this human nature, to categorize everything in order to understand it? If so then we must surely know that humans are far too complex to be categorized and yet we all still do it? Why?