De Colores Part 3

Richard brings up a good point about Elizabeth Martinez's part3 of her book De Colores. When she talks about the environmental racism it was a form of prejudice I had never thought of. To learn that people were living in such horrible conditions because other people (white people - the dominant group) felt it was okay to use their homes as dumping grounds and to dispose of toxic waste was sad to read. At the moment I'm taking a sociology class where all we talk about is racism. We discuss dominant groups and what makes them think they are superior to the people that are "below" them. What I've learned is that the people of the dominant group don’t have to go through what, say, poor people or even immigrants have to go through on a daily basis because they simply just don’t. If only it was that simple for the groups of people Martinez was talking about.

I read an article called "Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack" by Peggy McIntosh and it talked about all the privileges white people get to enjoy compared to their colored neighbors. It remained me of Martinez's 12th chapter in her book because the lists of things in the invisible knapsack are all "privileges" that white people have. They are not given these privileges but are somehow born with them because of the color of their skin. Martinez talks about how not only Latinos have been discriminated against but also other people of color simply because they were different from white people.

Other thing that Martinez offered me in he readings was a sense of past. I mean she was able to shed light on my cultural heritage that I had never known before. I had no clue about the major protests and walk out that Latinos were involved in or how they had to use the colored bathrooms with the blacks during segregation. It truly opened my eyes to how the W.A.S.P.s shaped history books and decided to completely or for the most part leave out people of color for whatever reasons.