This is a description of me to illustrate how culture, religion is vital to social location. This includes; gender, ethnicity, class, and background. This paper articulates the challenges I faced as a Bengali speaking in relation to my social location when I moved to the United States for my studies. My social location here is considered as a low middle class. I will also discuss how my simultaneous insider cultural status as a Bengali speaking had great effects on my life chances and any other person out there. Therefore, my discussion will concern the meaning of ethnic identity for the Americans with different historical context.
This is my own experience on how culture and religion, culture in a process is essential to social location. I am a Bangladesh native. I belong to the Bengali language speaking group. I come from a well-off family as my grandparent was a leader back in my village. My father is a high school teacher. I went to the United States to get a quality education. While there, I still practiced my traditions and way of life in my homeland Bangladesh. However, in school, I learned different culture through interaction. I am the first person from my nation who will receive an American degree. Being an Asian, many teachers believe that I am a mathematician. I had difficulties in English; my teachers discouraged me on direct translation of English from my native language. In America, my social location is considered as a low middle class, thus, I am the first generation of American. Because I don’t drink or date, Americans think that it is because I still stick to my Bengali tradition.
Anthropologists, they study other people lives in relation to their culture and how they alien cultural worlds. They are believed to write concerning cultures from an intimate affinity position thus, for the category of people who diverge as native and the indigenous ones. (Zavella) argues that, since culture is not homogenous, and the fact that the society is differentiated too, these scattered voices are just but critiques of the anthropologist’s dichotomy. Consequently, such critiques are yet to be integrated into the way in which the native anthropologists are widely viewed in their career. Therefore, I can argue that my feminist perspective itself was a problem in the larger historical framework and wide historical forces together with political struggles.
The anthropologists (John Ogbu) have since provided the information to explain the reason for the underachievement among the minorities in the United States. This includes the Mexican Americans. He emphasizes a cultural-ecological structure as the key role of the current historical racism. Also, the institutional based oppression is in a way shaping ethnic minorities; the opponent to the conformist to the available success for the dominant group. That, African- Americans, Chicanos, and Cholo youths adapt strategically to the 16 subtractive schooling. The America-Mexican Youth together with the Politics of Caring Account: S 4214197 is the main host to these forces of keeping out to preserve their traditional identities. Youths are rejecting schooling and underachieving. This is by chief strategy analysis who have these scholars identified involved. This is because of their correlation with academic achievement acting as white and also they have inferred minimum payoff to the effort.
The central allegation of culture-region is that importance of generation and whether women are of the first generation that implies, whether one is born in Mexico or of consequent generations of that born in the United States or recent i- migrants (Zavella). This has language implication use, a process of identification and cultural knowledge. A Chicana's generation effects, whether one feels marginalized, sense of solidarity and identification and with the other Chicanas, and whether there are more American than Chicana.
Identifying oneself as a Chicano feminist destined one to a contest and simultaneously illustrating from Chicano nationalists and belief, the white feminism being an insider and at the same time an outsider within of both the movements’ ideologies (Segura, Denise). In retrospect, I came to under-Stand that Mexican- American woman informants from the New Mexico drew.
Their ethnic identity in very dissimilar ways, which made me realize that I also need to deconstruct, problematize my own logic of Chicana feminism so as to see the nuances of social identity between my informants.
My social location an experience was a form of what (Zavella) term as a Universal feminist, fieldwork challenge: we always seek out women's experiences and at the same time we critically analyze male power in our daily societies. This ethnicity, the anthropologies have protected under the position of cultural relativism. On the other hand, feminism, however, notes that being part of a member of a certain group in their study carries particular tribulations. Thus creates one’s own ethical and dilemmas for the socialist’s foundation of their ethnicity, race, gender and political sympathies. (Zavella) analyses that, being an insider woman conducting ethnographic research with Mexican Americans meant continually negotiating her status. This is because members of the community being studied often made assumptions about her intents, skills, and personal characteristics. She reminds us that, insider researchers have the unique constraint of always being accountable to the community being studied. Along with the cooperation engendered by one’s insider status; comes the responsibility to construct analyses that are sympathetic to ethnic interests and that will somehow share whatever knowledge is generated with them.
There is a rising acceptance out in the field that other researchers and feminist have to
Willing fully expand upon their field. This also implies their site status on their situations
within the power, and social tides of academic discourse. (Arredondo, Gabriela F) states how the Feminists of Chicana ever contested the male-centered traditions, political and intellectual movement together with the white and middle class. Their center of attention of the feminist movement a second wave. They have simultaneously applied the concepts that form Chicano, and their studies in analyzing class intersection and race oppression. Even though many activists never use the term feminist, The Chicana studies were mixed union product and very problematic.
As per my illustrations above, I have faced a lot of challenges related to my social location and background ethnicity. I come from a capable family and among my people; I will be the first one to attain an American degree. However, I am imperceptible because of my race. I am a Bangladesh and therefore, cannot be a real member of American society this is evidenced from the history of ethnic identity for the Americans with different historical context. Historically, I cannot participate in politics. I consider myself as the first generation.
Works Cited
Zavella, Patricia. Women's work and Chicano Families: Cannery Workers of the Santa Clara Valley. Cornell University Press, 2018.
Lamphere, Louise, Patricia Zavella, and Felipe Gonzales. Sunbelt working mothers: Reconciling family and factory. Cornell University Press, 1993.
Arredondo, Gabriela F., et al., eds. Chicana Feminisms: A critical reader. Duke University Press, 2003.
Segura, Denise A., and Patricia Zavella, eds. Women and migration in the US-Mexico borderlands: a reader. Duke University Press, 2007.
