Student Presenters:

• Ory’An Saint-Fort
• Lily Arias

Transcript:

Hello, I’m Lily Arias.

I’m Ory’An Saint-Fort. We’re both freshmen at the University of North Florida.

That just happens to be one of our communities. Have you ever thought about how many communities you’re a part of?

Have these communities ever overlapped or do they stand distinctly?

A lot of people who find themselves standing between many groups and characteristics. The expression “ni de aquí, ni de allá” explains that feeling perfectly because for some of these people, it describes the hyphen that they’re forced to live in.

In this podcast, we’ll be talking about bigotry versus community for the class living in the hyphen immigrant cultures at the border.

We’re going to be using examples from the movie Zoot Suit directed by Luis Valdez, Borderlands/La Frontera, and a writing from This Bridge Called My Back by Gloria Anzaldua to discuss how we express ourselves in spite or in compliment to the people around us.

Wait. But what even is self expression? Why would people around us affect it?

Easy. Self expression is how you communicate your individual experiences and identity to the world and the people around us affect it in many different ways. For example, bigotry can have some negative effects while community will have more positive ones.

Oh, bigotry. I know that word. It’s the irrational or unfair adherence to beliefs on individuals based on group membership. I can see how that can have negative effects on a person. In community, a group of people sharing common characteristics.

Or a feeling of fellowships with others as a result. Do you think that there’s any other words that we should get out of the way?

What about code switching and internalization?

Oh, yeah. Code switching is when you change how you express yourself based on the context of your situation. Some people use code switching as a way to bring comfort to the people that they are interacting with. Moreover, internalization is another way that people can respond to their environment. It’s where you adopt and conform to the norms or acceptable societal values.

All these shape your identity. Even though you might take different dialects or languages to talk to different groups, your identity is a combination of it all; all those characteristics and aspects that you present within yourself and to others.

No one has a single identity. We all fall into several categories. Right?

Yeah. That’s what intersectionality is. The complex formation of all the social categories we fall into like our gender, race, class, sexuality, ability, etc.

Now that we have that cleared up, let’s get back to our main issue, bigotry versus community.

First up, we express ourselves in spite of opposition. I’d even go as far as say that bigotry forces us to express our identity.

Our first example of this is in the play Zoot Suit.

In this play, El Pachuco is the embodiment of the Mexican American movement going on at the time. He was the image and physical portrayal of the emotions the Zoot Suitors felt.

But wait. Will our audience know what a Zoot Suiter is?

Care to explain?

The Zoot Suitors or Pachucos were people involved in a movement during the 1940s in America that pushed back against the blatant racism that law enforcement was feeding to the media. A lot of people believe that all Mexican Americans were part of gangs due to the prejudice and stereotypes that were prevalent at the time.

In one of the scenes towards the end, Henry comes to terms with the fact that El Pachuco is his own expression. Actually, can we run that?

On it.

My worst enemy and my best friend, myself.

This comes after the scene where Henry sees his brother lying naked, curled up in the fetal position, defeated and ashamed of his actions.

Hadn’t his brother been the one that beat the other man at the dance?

He was. In fact, that’s part of what brings Henry to reflect on his sorrow and apathy towards the hatred that surrounded both him and his community. If he continued down the path of brash actions like when he got put into solitary confinement, it would have negative effects. He accepted El Pachuco as his own expression of identity as a direct response to the prejudice that Mexican Americans were facing.

The concept ties in really well with Anzaldua’s work in Borderlands where she writes, “The US-Mexican border is an open wound where the Third World grates against the first and bleeds. And before scab forms, it hemorrhages again the lifeblood of two worlds merged to form a third country, a border culture.”

Great point. The graphic and harsh wording of that relationship perfectly describes the tensions and backlash that people face living in the Mexican-American border. Yet in spite of the root causes of their oppression, people are able to form their own identity, a separate border culture.

That brings us to our next point.

We’ve analyzed how bigotry affects us on its own, but now we’re going to talk about how bigotry lives within communities and how that leads to a separate identity.

Anzaldua talked about that concept in our last quote, but she delves much deeper in her book, Borderlands specifically the chapter titled, How to Tame a Wild Tongue. She speaks on how language does not live in concrete terms. Chicano Spanish is not incorrect. It is a living language for people who cannot entirely identify with either standard Spanish nor standard English; a language which they can connect their identity to.

She believes that Chicano Spanish is a third language that came into existence due to the nature of the people who live near these borders. She was exposed to both Spanish and English. Because of that, she felt comfortable using a language that adopted words from both instead of using one or the other.

Furthermore, she felt as though she was isolated from Spanish and English as separate wholes. On one hand, she quotes being told she’s speaking the oppressors language by speaking English. She’s mutilating the Spanish language. On the other hand, she’s told by her Anglo teacher that if she wants to be American, speak American. If she doesn’t like it, go back to Mexico where she belongs.

That definitely sounds like bigotry to me. Although she fits into Latino culture according to ethnicity, she doesn’t feel as though her way of expressing herself conforms to some people’s view on language.

Which unfortunately, some people accept the rejection of their expression and internalize the norms that the community wants them to have. This is known as negative code switching.

However as the negative implies, this is a harmful practice because it forces people to repress their true identity in order to present a face to a community that doesn’t fully accept their intersectionality.

On the bright side, when people do find a community that accepts every aspect of their intersectionality, they’re able to freely express themselves.

That is our final point. This Bridge Called My Back is a beautiful example of how community affects expression because the book itself is a community of writers that share their experiences with intersectionality. At the end, Anzaldua explains the process of creating the book and thanks to many people and publishing companies that help share their identities.

Remember our definition for community? You said it was the feeling of fellowship that came along with similar characteristics. That feeling ties into the social aspect of identity and expression. She voices this in the text, “We are not alone in our struggles and never have been. We are kindred spirits and this interconnectedness is an unvoiced category of our identity.”

You’ve hit the nail right on the head. When the authors came together to share their stories, they were not only connecting with each other, but also opening up a bridge for the readers to feel a sense of belonging as well. Anzaldua couldn’t have worded that any better. “Who we surround ourselves with is an inherent part of our identity.”

Since the book itself acts as a community, it allows the readers to feel comfortable enough to express themselves. It shows that community is more of a concept than the concrete in-person group of people that that first definition implied.

That’s why this book and literature on self expression as a whole is a beautiful example of our final point. The work that authors put in was vital and highly appreciated by many people. Anzaldua expresses this in her forward to the third edition of her book where she states, “Without the writers who risked their work with two unknowns, who risked revealing their vulnerabilities, this book would not have affected so many in such deep, permanent ways.”

In the end, it’s clear that people as a whole can affect an individual’s identity and expression in such deep, permanent ways whether that be positive or negative.

Bigotry can push communities closer together by forcing us to recognize common oppositions. The fear that comes with witnessing people face animosity to characteristics we see in our own identity is enough to drive a community.

Yet bigotry can also be a fact in communities splintering off of each other. When someone carries with them characteristics that do not strictly fit under one community, people might not feel the need to support all aspects of their identity. The adherence to qualities that were once deemed distinctive to community rejects any change to the norm that comes along with time.

But when we do find a community that is accepting, it propulses us into fully embracing all those wonderful aspects that make up all of our identity. Those who have dealt with the interconnectedness that comes with navigating numerous different marginalized social circles are often more sympathetic to the plight of those whose intersectionality they do not experience.

Understanding how societal interactions influence how we protect our identity to others is important.

Of course. That’s because that knowledge can help us with navigating how we go about supporting each other within our communities and how we reflect on our own actions towards other communities.

Wonderfully said. Remember, as Anzaldua said, “We must now more than ever open our minds to others’ realities.”