Uneasiness between blacks and Latinos pdf PDF

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Reading Reflection on Chapter Titled Uneasiness between blacks and Latinos...

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Darder, Antonia, and Rodolfo D. Torres. “Our Next Race Question: The Uneasiness between Blacks and Latinos.” The Latino Studies Reader: Culture, Politics and Society, Blackwell, Oxford, 1998.

The reading talks about the different Minority groups like Blacks and Latino. This reading describes how in order to identify as black or latino you need to understand and know what it is to be Black or Latino. We have a few people who are discussing what it means to be black and what it means to be latino. According to the author, the main argument in this reading is, the division between Blacks and whites was a distraction from a bigger issue which is tension between Black and Latino and whether they are both against each other or have the same views. The information presented in the reading is important because it answers an important question that the author made in the beginning, which was whether or not blacks and Latinos have the same views and issues or are they more against each other. According to the discussions between the different people in this reading, blacks and Latinos are not really alike meaning they have different views about what being black or latino is really like. For example, on page 184 towards the end of his long statement Klor de Alva states, “blacks are American, They’re Anglos” After saying this West seems a little bothered by the statement that Klor made and he refuses to accept that he is being called an Anglo. This is an example of how different the views between a Latino and a Black person are. For this reason the argument presented by the author is convincing as he presents evidence through the discussion of Klor and West. The reading is very consistent in keeping a specific type of energy for example a discussion between two people and this is a discussion that can be described as calm but passionate about what each individual is saying and they don’t seem to present a negative energy. It seems like after each statement the other person adds to the discussion trying to go against the statement that person made. For this reason the author does not have any inconsistencies nor does he flip the page to a different subject every five minutes. On the contrary if there is a new topic the conversation will change naturally. There are many meaningful parts of this reading for me, for example when West stated in page 185, “ I see them primarily as people of color, as brown people..” I understood where he was getting to as soon as he said brown. Of course like Klor said not all of us are brown but I believe that the majority of “Latinos” are not white and we are seen as brown people. Similarly how black people are considered black people by the majority of the people here in the US. I don’t take offense to being called brown even if my skin color is very white. If I had to ask two questions to the author, the first question that I would ask is, It's obvious that Blacks and Latinos have very different views. Would you agree that having different views is one of the main causes of why we clash even when we both live in the same neighborhoods? The second question I would ask is I live in a community where there's both black and latin American people. There's so many issues between both of these groups, How would we even start to sort out our differences?...