Lets put this in persective. Let's get the ugly out first. Let me frame it as democratically as I can. When an immigrant arrives in America, in this day and age he has already been exposed to negative issues about African Americans or Blacks as the case my be.
As I presented this scenario to my students in 2003--you come from Poland , you move to the Bronx, you are so happy to be here, you see some Black brothers, some Latino brothers and they are cool and you want to be friends. The American whites,began to inform them of the negative image and actions that are attributed to Blacks. When I peeped the hole card,some students sensing that I had tapped into a mindset that they thought was a secret tried to deny it only to have a chorus of their classmates, state that in fact it's true.
Hispanics, are subjected to these misstatements, but what they don't realize is that they themselves are relegated to the bottom rung of the ladder. It is in this position that white America sees them. As such, when you have a band of 7 youths in Long Island kill a South American immigrant solely because he is Hispanic,it shocks Black Americans.
Posted By: Marta Fernandez
Wednesday, March 4th 2009 at 2:02PM
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