Chicano Identity
...t the majority of them do. What the United States is doing is basically lumping a bunch of ethnicities into one when they do that. So instead of being able to put down Mexican or Cuban on an application, you are forced to choose “Hispanic.” This is not right and a lot of the Chicano community gets upset. There are many reasons for Chicano’s to get mad about being labeled. They take great pride in who they are. There whole culture is unique, from clothes and foods, to beliefs and way of life. When you take pride in who you are and your culture, you want to be recognized. You don’t want to be generalized and clumped into a label that carries many different ethnicities and cultures. It is very disrespectful to the Chicano community overall when something like this is going on. When I say and use the term Chicano, it is a term that has been assigned and accepted from the majority of Mexican Americans. This is what they would rather be called instead of “Hispanic or “Latino”. It has been assigned through generations and generations of culture and tradition. To be labeled under something you don’t like as an identity is what is actually being negotiated. The mass-media has a big part in portraying Mexican’s and the Chicano community the way it wants to. Usually they are negative images in the news and mainlyin the movies. The stereotypes are that they are dirty, they steal, can’t speak English, live in the projects, are in gangs, don’t work and on and on. There is never something good on the news about Chicano’s or the Chicano community, it is almost always something bad. When a certain ethnicity is being portrayed like this, the United States and whoever else that watches TV see’s these stereotypes enough and starts to actually believe them. This is when negotiation comes into play. The only time that Chicano’s are portrayed good in the mediaand in the movies is when the director himself is also a Chicano. This way people are able to see Chicano’s being portrayed in a different light once in a while. Movies such as Labamba, Mi Familia, and Zootsuit show a more normal version of what it means to be Chicano. Which is being hard working, loving, and overall happy culture. There is negotiation not only in the media, but in the workplace as well. Traditionally, a Chicano man/father was the one who goes to work and earns the money in order to support his family. Meanwhile the woman/mother was the one that would stay home and take care of the children and keep the house clean. Nowdays, society has began to change. This traditional way is becoming no longer the case. More and more women are being forced to also work in order to support their children and pay the bills. The men don’t really have a choice because it is becoming reality and a new way of life. So we have Chicano identity being assigned through our ancestors and tradition, we have negotiations going on with the media and the workplace, but we also have a new Chicano identity’s being constructed. A new group a while back called the Zoot Suiters was formed from the younger crowd in the Chicano community. They wore nice suits, listened to different music, went to parties often, and was basically there own little identity. It was all about having a sence of pride in the way they looked and gaining respect. They would those a little bit of tradition but...