Never a dull day in this country. Today is "Day Without An Immigrant" and there are rallies and marches taking place in many major cities here. I don't know how many immigrants walked out in Vegas, but if they did, I wonder how the hotels are doing. I wonder how the farms in California are doing. I wonder what people looking for construction help outside Home Depot are doing without the hired help. I wonder how many Americans realize the contribution of these people to our way of life in America. I hope they realize that today and support the plight of these immigrants. I'm sure it wasn't easy for them to walk out, lose a day's wages, and risk detainment to demonstrate that there needs to be immigration reform. Critics argue they should just go about immigration legally. What these folks don't realize is that the immigration process is not what it was 30+ years ago. It's a ridiculously long and near impossible process. For example, "Siblings of U.S. citizens from the Philippines currently wait a staggering 23 years."
And in your conversation about the events today, be conscious of how you refer to people.
5 comments:
A good movie (comedy) to watch is "A day without a Mexican" It is about illegal Mexicans, but paints a good idea of what life would be like. I found it extra funny because I watched it when I first moved down and knew very little about the Hispanic community.
Just a note on the term Hispanic (it's preferable to use the term Latino).
from:
For a certain segment of the Spanish-speaking population, Latino is a term of ethnic pride and Hispanic a label that borders on the offensive. According to this view, Hispanic lacks the authenticity and cultural resonance of Latino, with its Spanish sound and its ability to show the feminine form Latina when used of women. Furthermore, Hispanic—the term used by the U.S. Census Bureau and other government agencies—is said to bear the stamp of an Anglo establishment far removed from the concerns of the Spanish-speaking community. While these views are strongly held by some, they are by no means universal, and the division in usage seems as related to geography as it is to politics, with Latino widely preferred in California and Hispanic the more usual term in Florida and Texas.
http://www.answers.com/topic/hispanic
an even better discussion of the Latino v. Hispanic term.
http://www.lasculturas.com/aa/aa070501a.htm
I'll spare you my ramblings on this topic since you might've read them already on my blog, but in reference to the hispanic vs latino debate, it doesn't seem to be very cut and dry one way or another from what I can gather. The only site I found citing any sort of statistics points to a preference for the term hispanic actually, though I don't know that i'd take the statistics as proof of anything other than a non-definitive stance on which term to use:
"A 2000 presidential tracking poll by Hispanic Trends Inc., a national polling firm, asked registered voters which term they preferred: Hispanic or Latino. The result was something of a surprise: A majority prefer the term Hispanic.
Of the 1,200 Latino registered voters polled, 65 percent preferred Hispanic, and 30 percent chose to identify themselves as Latino. Regionally, the results were similar."
From http://www.illinimedia.com/di/feb03/feb10/news/stories/news_story11.shtml and http://www.hispanicmagazine.com/2000/dec/Features/latino.html
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