East Palo Alto and Palo Alto and cultural bridge work

I agree with a number of my classmates in thinking that collaboration and promotion are, when added together, the keys for the sustainability of libraries in general and especially for their outreach to minorities and other communities.  Love (2007) wrote that even “… a limited partnership, while still remaining strong, will set the foundation for a lasting relationship for new collaborative opportunities.” (p. 17) I agree that reaching out and forming organizational bonds is the only way to successfully a lasting impact on local communities, and that even the most limited partnerships can have lasting impacts on both the library and the other local cultural organizations.

Any outreach to other community and organizations is bound for potential difficulties especially with limited staff and limited budget, but reaching out is a necessity to foster goodwill in other local organizations and to solidify the library as a fully inclusive community center!! 

 As to an idea of my own for forming a bond between a library I might eventually work at and a community organization, I would like to see East Palo Alto and Palo Alto have a better relationship in general, and specifically in terms of their libraries. I think Palo Alto would make serious gains if it interacted more regularly with the East Palo Alto libraries. I think that just a stronger communication and promotion of the diversity of literature that is abundant in East Palo Alto libraries and sharing information about events happening in both libraries would be helpful for all of the cultures and identity groups living in Palo Alto.    

 I think it could start as simple as promoting each others events through websites and social media. The cultural diversity and social acceptance climate of Palo Alto would only benefit from its Eastern Neighbor. I mean we already have kids who are bussed in from EPA to Palo Alto for all elementary, middle and high school, why not share Palo Altos library "wealth" with East Palo Alto? I think there is no legitimate answer to that question.  

Reference:

Love, E. (2007). Building Bridges: Cultivating Partnerships between Libraries and Minority Student Services. Education Libraries, 30(1), 13-19.

Real People Really Have Their own Identities! Real Women Have Curves Film Critique

Real People Really Have Their own Identities!

Real Women Have Curves Film Critique

Drew Durham

The film Real Women Have Curves is a 2002 directed by Patricia Cardoso is a film adaptation of a stage play by Josefina Lopez.  The movie is focused on its protagonist a first generation (her parents were immigrants) Mexican American teenager named Ana Garcia (played brilliantly by America Ferrera). Ana Garcia is an overweight Latina rebel with a cause. She is out to prove herself, define herself by her own choices, and most of all to be the first in her family go to college. Her mother Carmen (played by Lupe Ontiveros) is strictly conservative in her ideals, her teachings and her perspective. Carmen constantly insults her daughter Ana about being overweight, and is strongly against Ana going to college, saying Ana must work and settle down, get married and have kids already, since Carmen’s other daughter Estella (Ana’s sister) owns the dress factor and seems uninterested in more than just her business, as it is struggling. Carmen works in her sister’s sweat factory making a sub minimum wage while working on fancy department store dresses. After asking her father for a loan to save the factory, Ana says that she never knew Estella worked so hard.

After discussing her future with her father and after much encouragement form her high school English teacher, Ana receives a grant to Columbia University in New York. Her mother Carmen refuses to give her blessing, but her father supports her no matter what. This final statement, Ana leaving her families home and starting her own new future, is a clear declaration of independence and a strong refusal of her mother’s conservative model of women as submissive and with less worth than men.  Estella, the dress factory owner, and Ana’s sister agrees with Ana’s decision.

The communication groups within the film are all Hispanic or Latino/a, but the purpose of the film is to have the audience relate to the characters and learn or be reminded of the value of individuality in any culture and how this individuality can cause rifts in any family and across all culture/identity lines. I liked the message of brave self-expression and self-definition and how these two together show the beauty of each and every person. I think the cultural communication was plain to see in Carmen’s strict limits and rules and Ana’s acceptance of all nuances, and differences. It seems to me that education changes a person a lot, I think especially in certain cultures it can be more difficult to hold strong on to traditional values if members of that identity group become more and more educated, this movie is a great example of that for first generation Mexican Americans. The culture difference in this movie is a generation gap, a paradigm shift.

The communication groups in the film are mostly generational groups and the people in groups who have been given authority. There is a brief interaction between Estela, Ana and a Hispanic executive Mrs. Glass who sternly refuses to give the loan so that the factory can have the time and power to fill the dress orders for the department store (thankfully Ana’s father loans the money just in time!).

The intercultural dynamic was mainly between Ana’s immigrant parents Carmen and Ana’s father and their first generation Mexican American child Ana. There was plenty of conflict and none of it was really ever resolved. Sometimes that how life is, not every story has a happy resolution for all relationships, in any given family this can be true. As for managing and resolving intercultural differences, I noticed mainly how it was left unresolved, how there was still this gap seemingly unbridgeable between Carmen and Ana at the end of the film. Neither Ana nor Carmen showed to be giving any ground or looking for any commonalities at all in their communications with each other. The feel good part of the movie was Ana’s father and her sister Estella who both realized Ana’s individuality to be just as important as her ancestry, or ethnicity.    

I learned or was reminded that someone’s culture can be comforting, but it can also be insulating, and used a protection from the rest of the world. We can live in ancestral predefined cultural or traditional bubbles or we can, each one of us, define the way we want to be identified as individual human beings. But this might mean assimilating or integrating and thus identifying with more ambiguous identity labels such as Mexican American as opposed to Mexican. Perhaps it is because of the narrowly restrictive limit of options for Ana’s future that she decides to leave the traditional role of a Mexican Woman for chance at a better life.

I like the distinction Arasartnam writes about in his 2011 text between assimilation and integration. The difference, he writes is in attitude toward the culture of origin. If the individual in question has a negative attitude toward the culture of origin and a positive of the host culture then that is assimilation. Whereas if the attitudes toward culture of origin and the host culture are both positive then that is integration. (Arasarnam, 2011, p. 70) In my eyes Ana is assimilating as she has a negative opinion of her mother’s values.

I really like the way that Ana is unafraid, perhaps brash, and rude at times, but honest with herself and staying true to what she wants. We can all learn that all people can really make their own identities, and are free to express who they, who we really are.     

References

Arasaratnnam, L. A. (2011). Perception and communication in intercultural spaces. Lanham, Maryland: University Press of America.

IMDB. (2012, 08). Synopsis for real women have curves (2002). Retrieved from http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0296166/synopsis

LaVoo, G., Brown, E. T., López, J., Cardoso, P., Ferrera, A., Ontiveros, L., Oliu, I., ... HBO Video (Firm). (2003). Real women have curves. United States: HBO Video.

lost and found readers!

As the article and our texts point out, cultural sensitivity isn’t easy, especially if you have been insulated by privilege and protected by ignorance your whole life. But there are less and less excuses everyday for this cultural ignorance.  The rising population, the media exposure, the exposure to more and more multicultural or non-Anglo ethnic books are all sure signs of a serious need for diversity sensitivity and intercultural communication training. I like the idea of carefully responding to who and what might be marginalized. Especially in terms of mechanisms for organizing and supplying information, such as the big publishers, who seem to not even care or want to have a fair and proportionate diversity in what they publish.

Libraries and independent bookstores are first and foremost community centers and thus have a responsibility to carefully serve their neighborhoods with at least proportionate diverse literature, and services and events to celebrate their patrons adequately.  

I like the idea in the 2007 Education Libraries article by Allard, Mehra, and Qayyum that “A Librarian can facilitate this (the interaction between minority and majority) by maintaining an awareness of the community members and providing and environment that is approachable.” (Allard, Mehra, and Qayyum, 2007, p. 8) I would add that libraries need to be fully inclusive and comfortable for all patrons we as the future as the new generation of librarians can change our libraries!!!  We can, and we must work to bridge cultural divides, and open closed minds and open closed hearts!! 

Allard, S., Mehra, B., and Quayyam, A. (2007). Intercultural leadership toolkit for librarians: Building awareness to effectively serve diverse multicultural populations. Education Libraries, 30(1), 5-12.

La Sala (the room) as cultural bridge

I went to an informal meeting of single Mexican American immigrant men who work in the fields near Pescadero, CA called LA Sala (the room) intended for socializing and sharing social resources.  I did this because I sometimes volunteer at Puente de LA Costa Sur in Pescadero, and la Sala is one of the things they told me about that I could use as a cultural observation.

Many of the 15 plus Mexican and central American single men who looked to be from about late twenties to late fifties are laborers that were bussed from the fields to the community church.  I found the meeting to be very welcoming warm, and full of a very positive energy.   The volunteers served traditional Mexican food to the immigrant laborers. One of the volunteers gave me a quick lesson on cultural and personal sensitivity, urging me strongly not to interview any of the men because many of them are intimidated by educated white men ad many have only a grammar school education and many have no formal education at all they are all pretty much illiterate to the point of not recognizing their own names. I was moved by how evocative, emotionally expressive the non-verbal communication was. It was a beautiful thing to see all this expressive open, vast happiness. Some of the men where quiet and some of the men were loud and boisterous but I could clearly see the emotions of each clearly expressed both in the talker and the receptive audience members.  

I only talked to a friend of mine in the group named Gabriel. We talked for a while. He kept saying things like thanks to god, and god willing. He rarely gives himself any credit. Gabriel is an incredibly humble man, who does a lot for many, many people. I learned a significant amount of information over a brief conversation and the whole time I observed him, the whole two hours I was there, he was quite abundantly and easily observably happy.

The part of the conversation that I will hold onto for a long time is our brief talk about work. I spoke of my observation that these men who had no material wealth what so ever to speak of, some of whom lived under tarps or in tents, seemed to be so effusively and tangibly happy. Gabriel said because they have work, since they have work they have each other, and they have life.” Talk about a revealing comment.  Its hard for me to believe this perspective, I am trying to be more receptive to all the non-materialistic perspectives, and I do believe that the best thing in life aren’t things, but to have next to nothing and celebrate life so abundantly is hard for me to integrate into my schema of gratitude in my daily living.

I learned a great lesson in cultural and personal sensitivity that not everyone has the basic privilege of a formal elementary school education, and I was reminded of the usefulness of nonverbal communication especially in terms of expressing emotion. Maybe we should all be give so much gracias a la vida, be so grateful for our work and for our lives.  This is a profound interculrutal bridge, we can all celebrate with each other or at least celebrate ourselves.   

where is the proportionate diversity in literature?

 where is the proportionate diversity in literature?

I have noticed in the bookstore where I work as well as in my local libraries in Palo Alto there is a drastic inequality, and literature injustice in regards to the amount of fiction books for books that focus on non-white non-Anglo Saxon (non-WAS) protagonists especially for the younger grades. I recently did a survey of a little over 1/2 of Linden Tree bookstore's 8-12 year old books and found that only 10% of our titles are about non-WAS protagonists.    
Think that even if the number was at 20% it would still be a little disproportionate to the Los Altos demographics, according to a the 2010 national survey showed that at least 30% of Los Altos residents (non including kids) are self identified as non WAS. This disparity, this huge gap between demographics and the diversity in the literature in our mainstream libraries and most bookstores is a shame.
The fact that online videos like the one we viewed for this class are happy examples, but are far too rare. Celebrating diversity is important as long as we celebrate with equal respect, equal love, equal pride for all cultures.
 We need to allow our diversity to show in our bookstores and libraries! Publishers need to allow authors of diverse and non-WAS backgrounds to get mass publicity and get their books prominently on the shelves. Librarians and booksellers need to read and promote books by non-WAS authors and books!! 
The Cultural influences on perception that Chen and Starosta talk about, is one possible explanation for this egregious disconnect between population demographics and diversity in literature. I remember as a kid going to an upper middle class suburban elementary school and seeing a few non WAS people. I remember my vast naiveté thinking that all the kids going to my elementary school must be in the same socioeconomic boat as me, going to a school called whose motto was friends around the world, but I digress. The point is, my limited mindset was a product of the cultural assimilation that was going on around me through out most of my early education.  This assimilation/homogenization, has created a false sense of security in false identities for some people. To identify as an American some would argue would say is saying “I am a proud to be ambiguous in my identity and I take more pride in where I live more than in who I really am.”  This cultural influence. can create immediate stereotypes or even lasting prejudice.
Whether there is active and acute prejudice (physical avoidance or selective exposure) is happening at the publishing, inventory, or display levels is almost certainly not the case anymore in most of the United States, but I wonder if there is some more subtle forms of cultural distance and dissonance is happening around the book world, not just in the United States. Can we really ever entirely rid our culture, our nation of prejudice in all its sinister forms? Lets hope so, maybe the racists just haven’t read the right book yet.     

 In libraries we can remedy this in many ways, advocate for diverse titles for inventory, display them prominently, and promote them when ever possible!

Top of Form

Chen, G.-M. (2005). Foundations of intercultural communication. Lanham, Md: University Press of America.

yet there is a growing concern for this completely insane discrepancy.

for just a few examples of the outrage

YALSA and publishers and the Children's Book Council

outrage and demanding diversity in publishing

dispropritionate percentage of children books of people of color, independent research

here are some recent government statistics and estimates that prove the gap

So basically if you are to remain unprejudiced while appealing to a mass market you need to know the demographics of your population and what percentage share of the market is and be accurate or at least not racist with who you publish. Or else many people of all races will be upset at your publishing company and the underrepresented hence further marginalized races will probably read less and you might well lose considerable money/market share, over the coming years until equality is served. Unless our expert government demographers are all wrong and people are being dishonest in their surveys, which I guess is a possibility.  

Houston we have a problem, speech can easily be far too mitigated

When talking about the reason for the Avianca 052 plane piloted by Klotz and Caviedes, Gladwell discusses how Klotz used plenty of mitigated speech. Mitigated speech is, as Gladwell explains means “any attempt to downplay or sugarcoat the meaning of what is being said. We mitigate when we’re being polite or when we’re ashamed or embarrassed or when we’re being deferential to authority.” (p. 194)  Mitigating speech is an easy way to get misunderstood, and to misrepresent your self in communications but sometimes that is necessary to save face and show all earned and thus due respect. Gladwell quotes experts and specialists on communication as well as some people in the new aviator training field which helped strengthen his argument. 

Gladwell writes about how mitigating speech is abundantly present in certain societies that have low uncertainty avoidance. As Hofstede suggested, there is strong evidence for a correlation between nationality/culture and different communication styles one aspect being the uncertainty avoidance that is such a apparent major issue in aviation as is power distance. Geert Hofstede’s idea of creating a power distance index is very valuable even today. Power distance is the amount of deference you give to authority in communication. Hofstede’s methods and measurements give us a measure for how communication styles differ between individuals as well as between cultures.  I see only possibilities for Hofstedes research! I see all the possible different populations, communities and subcultures that Hofstede’s methods and measurements could help us understand more accurately. 

Gladwell, M. (2011). The ethnic theory of plane crashes. In M. Gladwell, Outliers: The story of success(pp. 177-223). New York: Little Brown & Company. Retrieved from https://sjsu.desire2learn.com/d2l/lms/content/viewer/view.d2l?tId=1353956&ou=158593

mitigating speech

why do we need to praise 
undeserving authority with 
deferential speech
false pretense to a gentle servitude 
when we aren't the ones who have seen 
this leaders qualifications, abilities, personality, characteristics
and skills, we weren't the ones who gave them any authority
why must we serve them nothing but mitigated, and perhaps entirely dishonest words?

American Stereotypes, in global stereo

First of all as a rule I don’t accept much less agree with any stereotype about any group culture, subculture or any identity. There are exceptions to every rule, and most stereotypes have plenty of exceptions and holes in their logic. So this question and the affiliated stereotypes were not offensive to me (as I categorically reject them) so I say them all as a little funny, since as a rule I search for the humor in ridiculous things so I don’t give in to fear.

1. Americans walk very fast/always in a hurry. Maybe in major metropolitan cities, and some suburbs but try that one out on the Midwest the so called “heart of America”. 
2. Americans are wasteful in utilizing space, say that to the OCD and well organized, the so called “neat freaks” and some todays most promising engineers. 
3. Americans always try to talk everything out. Say that to mute Americans, say that to the voiceless. Say that to the most personal introverts, good luck getting everything out of those people verbally.
4. Americans are very straightforward in talking. Say that to Americans from several different parts of the world especially those from some Eastern and tribal communities.
5. Americans are rich/drive big cars/think only about money. This is so laughable I don’t even know where to start. The homeless say what?
6. Americans talk a lot but say little/have superficial relationships. Clearly these can easily happen anywhere, and let me tell you the Caribbean, and EL Salvador are two places tat loooove to talk about the little things, that have no lasting importance.
7. Americans do not care about old people, while our social security system is worst than broken, this by no means exemplifies the entire populations view on the elderly. Who doesn’t love their grandparents, and as their parents get older, who doesn’t care for them?
8.  Americans are outgoing and friendly, again I point to the extroverts as well as the introverts among us all, both of which are EVERYWHERE!!
9. Americans lack discipline. Who doesn’t?
10.  Americans are disrespectful of age and status. Again we do care for our elderly, maybe not to the same extent as some countries but there are plenty perhaps millions of exceptions to that rule. As for status, there are many countries that lack respect of status. Especially those living under government oppression.
11. Americans are ignorant of other countries. This is another laughable assumption. While undoubtedly there are a number perhaps millions of willingly ignorant people in America, there are also I argue even more millions of Americans that travel, study, learn, understand, and celebrate other cultures. And a good many more who are unwillingly ignorant as not everyone knows about every other culture or country in the world.
12. Americans are extravagant and wasteful. Many cultures and countries are materialistic, and obsessed with affluence. How do you explain slums in El Salvador without running water or enough food to eat proud to have cable or satellite TV?
13. Americans are loud, rude, boastful and immature. This is an immature and insulting guess about the country with perhaps the greatest diversity of all identities and cultures in the world! 

 I will end with reaffirming my own belief in the necessity for increasing understanding and celebrating diversity as the best and most effective means to create connections between all cultures and identities and a good way to start is to stop as the brilliant saying goes “making asses out of you and me” (stop making any more assumptions).   

Stereotypes are rude assumptions that are based on a handful, handpicked and not at all randomized examples, thus stereotypes are illogical, unscientific, and reasonably if not entirely baseless.  So yeah, you are right, they have some truth to them they provide evidence to the extent of arrogance, the areas of ignorance and the source of fears of the person who subscribes to the stereotype!

This said, the Arasaratnam text makes some interesting points about stereotyping. Specifically the idea that stereotyping can help us predict and explain someone’s behaviors and categorize people to gain understanding of cultures and subcultures as separate groups is a useful idea. But in practice, at least to me stereotypes are more constrained and inflexible. In order for Stereotypes to be effective and useful they must be impermeable and unchanging, otherwise they are not my idea of stereotypes. If categories are ambiguous then what is the point in any separation at all? What is the purpose of division if all groups are flexible and living, evolving, adapting and ever growing? That’s my question. Why does there need to be separation? My answer, there is no point in separation, except to identify within a group. For the outsider to judge the insiders is basically divisive, creates a false distance and can be demeaning.

 Its one thing to ask someone what their culture is, it is quite another to place someone in a category based on looks, behavior, language or other observable characteristics, again the outsider versus insider thing I just talked about. While we need to understand and place and define people just to make sense of the world this in no way means stereotyping as I understand it. We can take it one person at a time, and contextualize and identify an individual, but as I have said before each person really only exemplifies themselves. We can take on identities as insiders and take pride in that group but that is for the insider to do. Not for outsiders to judge.

 As text Arasaratham text says talks about the three models of stereotype change, two of which I will discuss below. The bookkeeping model where a person encounters a number of instances which contradict an existing stereotype. The others conversion model is when a change is a dramatic onetime transformation which occurs as a result of an encounter with a significant stimulus which disconfirms an existing stereotype.

 I loved when as a junior in high school I went to CAMP ANYTOWN which is now CAMP EVERY TOWN, it taught me and reinforced on me how lame judgments especially of cultures, identities or groups you are an outsider to.  The conversion can when I torn down signs the staff had put up on the bathrooms for whites and colored people. I cried a lot at camp Anytown and it broke down some personal barriers.  

  http://www.mercurynews.com/bay-area-news/ci_21574337/camp-everytown-destination-from-high-school-heart-and

Arasaratnam, L. A. (2011). Perception and communication in intercultural spaces. Lanham, MD: University Press of America.

side note: I was talking to my dad about culture the other day and I gave my definition of culture. A self identified group of people who create their own limits of acceptable and appropriate behaviors, beliefs, words, and body language that all of which must fit group norms.  My dad is Bill Durham an anthropologist and human biologist.

I argue that it is our insistence on the artificial significance of these differences that has created horrific and perhaps entirely unbridgeable rifts between people from different cultures. Things like slavery, genocide, massacre, torture, mass incarceration of non-white people, racism of all kinds, and many evils only exists because of our insistence on the one percent differences. To avoid provoking racists, we would do well to celebrate our differences only while acknowledging the similarities, lest we shall create and maintain reasons for those distances and related evils again. 

Oh and if stereotypes are to be amiable and permeable, there is even less need for them at least to the non-ignorant.

Alas, you can justify anything these days, even in a world of far too much information.