“Who You Callin’ a Bitch” is an article by Queen Latifah that gives her ideal definition of how a woman should act in order to be proud of herself. She begins to describe a queen by describing why she has the right to call herself a queen. She explains that she must always be confident in her identity and therefore maintain a high self-esteem, a women who “handles adversity with grace” (Latifah 35). Latifah believes she is able to exemplify this because even though she has grown to become a popular singer and a wealthy artist, she started in hard times living around drug dealers and living in the projects (Latifah 33) implying that to be a queen, a woman must earn it, going through both good and bad experiences throughout life, and become a better person in the long run. Queen Latifah also evaluates on how her mother Rita Owens was a good backing and set the mold for herself in saying that “She made the ground fertile for me to persevere, no matter what the obstacle,” (Latifah 35). Her mother encouraged her through music lessons and sports, believing her daughter before she believed in herself. She goes on explaining how this “queen” mentality is all internal to work its way out and starts “with you.” Queen Latifah even portrays her ideal through her music career, hoping to influence her female fans to become their own version of a queen. She tries to keep her music positive because she believes that “what you put in the spoken and written word is what you get back” (Latifah 34). This shows that she has true to her belief that being a queen means never selling out and a woman can only truly value herself if she stays in the mindset that she must set her priorities so that better pay does not take the place of practices to better one’s self.
In the article titled “Moving toward a Culturally Invariant Measure of Ethnic Identity,” written by Robin R. Sobansky, Terry B. Gutkin, Ann M. Galloway, Anita L. Saunders, Georgette P. Yetter, and Samuel Y. Song, the writers evaluate and define ethnic identity in the bluntest form possible. The piece touches on how schools are becoming more and more diverse just as our entire nation is and how administrators and teachers must learn about and accept the individual identities of these students of various backgrounds. The article defines ethnic identity as the “enduring fundamental aspect of the self” as it pertains to students of different cultures (Sobansky, Gutkin, Galloway, Saunders, Yetter, Song 87). This includes positive attitudes towards the person’s ethnic group as well as that sense of self confidence that comes with feeling as though you are a part of something. The authors also mention the unique ways that one can detect or “measure” ethnic identity. One way they discovered was by means of interviewing white students and noticing that when they were asked about their own and heard the term ethnic, their answers implied that they believed this term referred to other races, or minorities, and not themselves. However they go on to introduce the idea that identity development can be measured in all groups (white or otherwise) using the Multigroup Ethnic Identity Measurement (Sobansky, Gutkin, Galloway, Saunders, Yetter, Song 89). This measurement analyses several components of the subjects identity including “ethnic affirmation and
belonging, ethnic identity achievement, and ethnic
behaviors” (Sobansky, Gutkin, Galloway, Saunders, Yetter, Song 89), as well as further testing on how the subject feels towards ethnicities other than their own. I have never heard of such a method but I have definitely never come across anything more efficient. The fact that the test they refer to can test the most minute elements of how a person feels towards their race/culture intrigues me and I would probably even look in to taking this examination sometime in the future out of mere curiosity.
Similar to Gloria Anzaldúa’s article “How to Tame a Wild Tongue,” I found an article that explains an observational study of how Latinos in the American school system handle the identities unique to their culture called “Mexican American High School Students Ethnic Self-Concepts and Identity” collaboratively written by Stephen Quintana, Theresa Herrera, and Mary Nelson. This was easily relatable to the essay from our text book in that the study begins by showing how despite the oppression Latinos face in school, it has shown to “stimulate ethnic identity development for Latinos” (Quintana, Harrara, Nelson 12). This quality was also seen in Anzaldúa’s writing when she became more proud and defending of her heritage towards the end of the piece. Both of these writing seem to show Americans to be highly adverse to accommodating peoples of different cultures and languages, which I find to be offensive, yet understanding considering some experiences I have had as an African American.
A very good point made by the research article was that a strong backing to one’s ethnic identity can protect a person’s self-esteem and “neutralize the deleterious effects of discrimination on adjustment among Latinos and African Americans” (Quintana, Harrara, Nelson 12). The research went on to find that these students, who maintained an identity “central to their sense of self,” were able to handle stress better whether or not it was related to their ethnic nature. I see this to mean that people from other cultures that are able to maintain their identities through adversity are able to live, in a sense, more worry-free than those concerned about pleasing those around them through forced assimilation, relating once more to Anzaldúa’s writing when she asserts that she has no reason to change just to satisfy her oppressors.
Another element emphasizing the impact of discrimination towards these people’s identity is shown when the article mentions a study in which they would ask Mexican American students what it mean to be Mexican American. It was both shocking and depressing to find that some immediately began to mention their experiences facing adversity, not at all mentioning the variety of cultural differences that make them unique. These people are examples of what happens when a race is pushed too far by indifference; they are broken, in some cases needing psychological rehabilitation after being put in the mindset that, as one Mexican American youth put it, “’It [being Mexican American] means you’re different from everyone else.’ or more simply: ‘It means you are different’” (Quintana, Harrara, Nelson 17).
Gloria Anzaldúa began this article as a racially oppressed school girl but grew as the article went on to become someone proud of her heritage. The position taken in this article is rare and therefore quite admirable; the position of someone who, no matter how much others may put her down for her customs or the language she chooses to speak in public, stands strong to remain true to themselves. Anzaldúa first shows how she was oppressed in school as well as at home when she describes that her mother was “mortified that [she] spoke English like a Mexican” (Anzaldúa 78). She then goes on to talk about how she was even chastised for speaking English by native Spanish speakers, calling her a traitor in that she was “speaking the oppressor’s language” (Anzaldúa 79). She was accused of butchering the English and Spanish language when they were just a result of her “border tongue” which developed naturally over time (Anzaldúa 79).
It seems as though Ms. Anzaldúa can’t catch a break. Her tone turns from that of the victim to that of a civil rights leader, proclaiming that no person of any race should have to change what they believe is true to themselves in order to please another group of people. Not only does she ask why she has to be the one to change as opposed to her counterparts, but she asserts that if she were to change, she would not be able to look at herself as a legitimate person. She knows that she is bilingual and therefore the languages define her. She knows that she has nothing to feel bad about no matter how many may say otherwise because she believes that as long as she is true to herself, she has no reason to have her essence stifled. She will have no reason to succumb to the “tradition of silence” (Anzaldúa 82).
In Emily White’s “High School’s Secret Life,” she evaluates the student body of Calhoun High School in Seattle, Washington based on how they act during their separate lunch periods. While White’s biography at the beginning of the article mentions several periodicals that she has been featured in throughout her career in writing, such as Spin Magazine, the Village Voice, and L.A. Weekly (White 15), I have never heard of her, and don’t believe she can be considered a reliable source when it comes to evaluating teenagers. White makes some good points when relating the mingling of students in a lunchroom to the social customs of some primitive tribe, however, I don’t believe that the assumptions she makes should be totally be based on the students’ lunchtime antics. Being fresh out of high school, I still have the memories of my experiences in the cafeteria fresh in my mind and can say some of her generalizations are spot on. For instance, when White mentions the girl who was forced to have a different lunch than her friends and felt more and more distant from her usual group as a whole because of it, I could easily relate because this happened to me in two of my four years in high school. But small examples like this are not applicable to everyone. Most people don’t even notice the lunch periods, make new friends with the surrounding students and get on with their lives. I believe that White is too harsh on these kids in that she considers them a tribe just because of certain hierarchies, such as having a separate section for seniors or popular kids in the cafeteria, or other qualities that make her refer to the lunch hall of Calhoun High as a “proving ground” (White 15).
But perhaps I am being too harsh on Ms. White. As it states in Emily’s bio paragraph, this is just an excerpt from her book Fast Girls: Teenage Tribes and the Myth of the Slut, so perhaps White makes more observations in the lives of the average high school student could show them to seem more “tribal.”
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