Hi Gilberto, Thanks for the background, very interesting. My wife is of Western European descent (Irish, English, and German) and is a fluent Spanish speaker. For the past few years, she has been working in a Two-Way bilingual Spanish/English school. The student body is composed of approximately 70% native Spanish speakers and 30% native English speakers. English speakers consist of whites, African-Americans, Asian-Americans, and Hatian-Americans. Spanish speakers are largely Puerto Rican and Dominican whith a significantly smaller population from South America. Initially, it may appear that only Spanish and English are being taught. Maintaining the students' individual cultural/ethnic identity remains a challenge (the Spanish speakers are from as diverse a background as the English-speakers). perhaps the greatest results within this two-way language program is not only the fact that the students graduate bilingual, but that their ethnic/c!
ultural
identity expands.
Gilberto Simpson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
On Mon, 17 Jan 2005 08:18:42 -0800 (PST), JS <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>wrote:
> Sorry, Gilberto,
>
> Okay, You are right, Baha'is are rooted in soil because Baha'u'llah had
> Persian parents, and Persians are Arabs anyway because they are all in the
> Middle East.
I didn't say all that. Maybe I'm just not being clear. I wasn't trying
to make some generalization about all Bahais. I was just talking about
Bahaullah. And I don't think "being hydroponic" is intended to be a
good thing or a bad thing. Just a descriptive thing.
I was born in the US but my family had only been living in the US for
a few years when I was born. Both my parents are Afro-Cuban and so I
grew up with that as part of my background especially in terms of
family gatherings. But alot of the Cubans I grew up around were either
Mexican or Puerto ! Rican. The Black people I grew up around were
generally not Latino. To varying degrees I would feel some kind of
personal connection with the United States, Cuba, Latin America in
general Africa, and Spain, and now on top of that the Muslim world. At
this point I'm "grown" and have sorted through my sense of
ethnic/cultural identity but I've noticed alot of people's notions are
different.
For example, there are Mexican-Americans living in Texas who have been
living there so long that that say "We didn't cross the border, the
border crossed us". There are indiginous groups in Latin America who
don't even speak Spanish because they've maintained a pre-colombian
heritage. Most "regular" Americans have been in the US alot longer
than my family and even the fresh-off-the-boat immigrants will often
have a strong sense of being from one specific place. Even if they
are mixed in terms of what country they are from, white people could
sa! y that they are from Europe.When I think about it, the ways in which
many people tell the story of where they are from is just different
from how I think about my own identity.
That's all I'm saying.
"My people are hydroponic"
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