Growing Up As A Latino Child - 1678 Words

Growing up as a Latino child, I never realized the segregation within my community in the city of Baldwin Park. I attended public schools with students that came from the same background and struggles as my own. It made sense living in an area with similar Latino families because I thought that was the way things were supposed to be. Even today in America. communities are segregated and made up of people with similar backgrounds. I never questioned why we were not surrounded by people that were African American, Asian, or any other race differing from my own. As I grew older, I started to realize how this was a problem because it did not allow for the community to be diverse. Today, I believe that by not being exposed to other cultures at†¦show more content†¦Consequently, these kind of habits can lead to the upholding of a system of advantage based on race. Specifically, racism is a system of advantage that continues to be perpetuated in the education system through ignoran ce and lack of information, which is affecting society through violence and inequality. In her essay â€Å"Defining Racism: Can We Talk?,† Beverly Daniel Tatum writes about racism being a system of advantage in which white people are the superior race. Additionally, Tatum emphasizes that the perpetuation of this system is a result of misinformation and lack of acknowledgement of racism in the education system continuing in society through schools, communities, and work places. Tatum writes, â€Å"There is still a great deal of segregation in our communities. Consequently, most of the early information we receive about ‘others’ — people racially, religiously, or socioeconomically different from ourselves — does not come as the result of firsthand experience† (Tatum 123). We are taught in the education system about racism from the perspective of white people, leaving out the experiences of people of color. Because the information we receive doe s not come from firsthand experience, it means the information we are sometimes told is usually incomplete, distorted, and shaped by cultural stereotypes (Tatum 124). Misinformation is taught to us in schools because it is one of the principal ways in which white people remain at the top of the hierarchy while people