Final Media Diary

Latinos in Media - Number of Entries: 10
 


   Based on my research during this fall semester about how Latinos are portrayed in American media, I have come to the conclusion that Latinos, to this day, are still underrepresented and treated with unfairness and discrimination.
  I say they are underrepresented because in films and television, Latinos are not portrayed fairly. Often Latinos are not given major roles, they are pushed to the side in favor of white people. If Latinos are given a speaking role, they are often the comedic sidekick, or just a fleeting, short role. Latinos have been proven to play more video games than white people but, in video games, white people are the chosen main characters. In this link I have shared previously, it explains that Latinos "typically appear as a non-playable character, obstacle to overcome, or simply part of the backdrop." https://medium.com/the-nerd-castle/d%C3%B3nde-est%C3%A1n-latino-characters-and-video-games-76b3441fe70
When the author says "obstacles to overcome" he means those Latino characters are criminals in the game, not a hero like a white character would be. Which brings me to my next point.

In media today, thanks to Trump and his supporters, Latinos face more discrimination now. With hashtags like #BuildtheWall on Twitter, more hate has been brewing up for Latinos. Latinos are being called "illegal, criminals, and rapists" by these people on television and social media. But with big problems like the riots in Honduras, it is not mentioned at all in American television like I wrote in a previous blog post titled "What's Happening in Honduras". Unless a Latino committed a crime in the United States, media news outlets like Fox News won't talk about it. I had to find out about the riots through family in Honduras.

In music charts, we have seen a Latino song charting in Billboard's Hot 100, Luis Fonsi's Despacito featuring Daddy Yankee, two Puerto Rican singers, but there's also the question of why just now? It's because most songs charting on Billboard are sung by white artists. Only white artists get more recognition than other minorities, like they have years past.

I was always are of racial injustice and Latino erasure, considering I'm Latina and I have noticed these things but this class has taught me that this issue has been going on for so long. Latinos have never been truly represented in any type of media, in favor of white people, but there has been some change. People have been calling out more diversity in films, tv, video games, and music. Perhaps in the next decade, things will be vastly different.

What's Happening in Honduras

  Right now my mother's home country, Honduras, is suffering. And I haven't seen any news about it in American media. If it weren't for my brother who lives there sending me videos about the destruction, I would have remained clueless. I hopped on Twitter and searched 'Honduras' and there were pictures, videos, and tweets coming from Hondurans begging for help from anyone willing to listen.
   What's happening is that the former president seems to have bought the election, and people want the truth, they want the real results. The election happened a week ago and no winner has been declared. The people want transparency and the former president doesn't want to give it them. The people have begun rioting as a result, looting businesses, putting churches and homes on fire. People have been dying. A 19 year old girl was shot dead while looking for her brother by the police who are loyal to the former president. There was a curfew in place that restricted people from being out from 6 am to 6 pm. Anyone who violated this would be shot dead. I saw a video that showed two military police dragging the body of a dead person across the road.
  13 people have been confirmed dead.
   And I've barely read anything from American media. The only news I have heard come from my family in Tegucigalpga and San Pedro Sula, the two places that were actively being destroyed from rioters and military police. Luckily my family remains safe as they stay indoors at home, but others have not been so lucky.
  Why isn't there more media coverage about this? Because it's just a small, third world country? America meddled in Honduran government before, but now, when my people need help, they stay silent. We only have Trump tweeting out his usual crap, and no help to these people who desperately need it.
 Racism is still alive and well; we all know that. But this is truly heartbreaking.

Latinos in Video Games

  During class last week, we learned that minorities were, like always, underrepresented but this time in video games. The only ethnic minority that is popular in video games are Asians because a lot of video games are created by Asian developers. 
  Despite being avid gamers, Latinos are the biggest minority that is severely being underrepresented in video games. The only Latino characters you see in a game are "typically appear as a non-playable character, obstacle to overcome, or simply part of the backdrop.” as per this article: https://medium.com/the-nerd-castle/d%C3%B3nde-est%C3%A1n-latino-characters-and-video-games-76b3441fe70. And while efforts have been made to represent more Latinos in these games, white and Asian characters are still the domineering groups to be playable characters than other minorities. 
  I would not call myself a gamer, I've only played two games on my boyfriend's PS4, but he has a lot of games and I've only seen 1 playable character that is Latino. Out of about 50 games, only 1 Latino character. The rest are white and Asian. 
  And this character is a villain. That's just sad. 

Music

Right now, as I am typing up this blog entry, I am listening to Mana, a Mexican rock band from Guadalajara, Jalisco. Listening to this song sung purely in Spanish got me thinking about our lecture today in class about race and music. It made me realize that most of the music that is dominant in radio stations and the Billboard Top 40 or whichever is mainly by English speaking white artists. Sure, this year we had Despacito sung by Luis Fonsi featuring Daddy Yankee on the Billboard Hot 100 at No. 88 but it wasn't until they released a remix single featuring Justin Bieber, a white pop artist, that the song had more commercial success. It makes me wonder if there weren't a white English speaking artist on the single, would that still have happened? Would the song still be that successful if it was just the original non-primarily-English-language artists?

Honestly, I doubt it would have. The song would have done great regardless, yes, but probably would have only charted on such charts like the Hot Latin Songs chart and such. Despacito charting in a predominantly English language chart is a success for Latinos but it's 2017 and we're still marveling at achievements such as these when this should have been happening a long time ago and still continuing. But it's another step to having more non-English-language music be in the musical airwaves. 

TPS is Being Rolled Back

   It has been announced that the Trump administration has started to roll back the Temporary Protected Status for thousands of Nicaraguans and Hondurans. They will either have to seek permanent residency in the United States (which is already pretty difficult to begin with) or return immediately to their homeland. TPS was granted to these countries being their countries were either being ravaged by natural disasters, or wars, and even though it was being reported that Nicaraguan government didn't request to extend their TPS, it is still a blow to these people. Some of these people came to the U.S at a very young age and now they have no choice but to go back to a country that they don't even know anymore.
  There are also thousands of Salvadorans who are currently protected by TPS, and although nothing was said about El Salvador, this could still be troubling for them too.
  One thing that has struck me about this is that there has not been much of an uproar about TPS being rolled back, but Central Americans backed up those were affected by DACA being revoked. We should stand together and back each other up.
  I feel for my Central American people, for my fellow Latinos. These actions by the Trump Administration are acts steeped in racism and cruelty.

Discrimination against Latinos

So today I was browsing the Internet when I stumbled upon this https://phys.org/news/2017-11-poll-one-third-latinos-experienced-discrimination.html and I saw an image that I found interesting which I will post below. It shows the percent of Latinos that have reported different forms of discrimination because of their race. For example, 37% percent have reported that they've been called racist slurs, and 20% percent have reported violence against them.

It made me think of the time I was called a racist slur because I'm Mexican. I was told, along with my family, to mow some white man's lawn. It's infuriating that this is 2017, and we still have grown people behaving in this manner. It's disgusting. Being told that by someone was jarring, and it's not just a handful of people. So many Latinos are treated with disrespect that they had to make multiple surveys about it!

These surveys show me America still has a long way to go.

Harvey Weinstein

  For this week, I will be deviating from my blog topic to discuss what is happening right now in the media concerning Harvey Weinstein and his disgusting treatment of women. So far, 27 women have spoken out against Weinstein and I bet more will come forward because this horrible man has been in the Hollywood business for so long, and I know he has harassed more women throughout his long career.
    All of these women are so brave for sharing their stories, and I applaud them for coming forward to the world, the media. Harvey Weinstein, thankfully, has been terminated from his job as head of the Weinstein Company but I know he was terminated because he was outed. His company must've known his terrible behavior and for the sake of money, they kept quiet. He now says he will seek help for his sex addiction by checking himself into rehab. Let's face it- he's just a very messed up man who gets off by degrading and harassing women.
    I hope this revelation about Weinstein manages to fix some of the corruption in Hollywood, that women rise up and are treated with respect as we deserve, that we're treated as equals and not as objects for men to get off to. We deserve more.

"Brown to the Bone"

    I recently re-watched the film Blood In, Blood Out which is about three Chicano cousins and gang life. I watched this film when I was younger and of the three cousins, I connected with Miklo the most. Now that I'm older, and I watched it again, I realized why. This character has white skin, looks like white, and he doesn't feel comfortable in his skin. His light skin is what makes him feel different from his Mexican blood. 

 

   As someone who is of Mexican and Honduran descent with light skin, I can relate to his plight. I inherited my mother's light skin but not my father's deeper skin tone. I have been confused for someone who's white by my own people and they always have this shocked look on their face when I reply in Spanish. It makes me feel like I'm "Other". Of course I know that light skin Latinas exist, but growing up, American media when portraying Latinas only shows people with caramel to coffee colored skin. The only media that shows off different colored Latino/a skin is the Latino/a media. Thank God I grew up watching Univision too... 

 

   Miklo's desperation to fit in with his Chicano family is something that resonates with me. I wouldn't go so far as to join a gang, but I can understand his need to feel like he is truly a part of his culture. 

  

Brutal History

This morning on my bus ride to school, I read this article: http://www.history.com/news/the-brutal-history-of-anti-latino-discrimination-in-america. It was about how Latinos have been treated in the U.S for so long. It showed me things that I didn't even know about my country. It showed me things that shocked me, and disgusted me. It's sad to see that racists have been and still are prevalent in the United States for decades. We should have been past this a long time ago.

Fellow Mexicans were lynched, attacked, beaten throughout the 1850s up to the 1920s. Even children! And it's always been about the same usual racist garbage: Mexicans stealing white people's jobs. This has been happening for so long! And then the United States forcibly removed thousands of Mexicans from here - even citizens - because anti-Mexican sentiment was so strong.

Reading this article brought a wave of sadness over me, but the only comfort I have is that at least racist Americans can't do any of that horrible stuff anymore to Latinos.

Mexico City Earthquake

On Tuesday morning, a 7.1 earthquake hit Mexico City on the anniversary of the 1985 earthquake that killed 10, 000 people. When I first heard the news, I felt instant panic. I felt so worried because my father and my family live in Mexico City and I was scared that something had happened to them. Luckily, they were okay. But at the time I found out, an estimated 40 people were dead. Now the death toll has risen up to 217 deaths, some of them children. What happened was devastating but the people of Mexico are holding strong, and survivors are helping others to repair what has been destroyed.

On Twitter, there are videos of the destruction and buildings being decimated in one second. Each video has been heartbreaking to watch because the people of Mexico has already gone through enough with the last earthquake that hit. What warms my heart is that the people of Mexico has received an outpouring of support from people all over the world. Here's a handful of celebrities that have tweeted about the earthquake: http://www.billboard.com/articles/news/7972833/beyonce-shawn-mendes-more-stars-tweet-support-for-earthquake-victims-in-mexico

The media has been very supportive but I fear that it won't last long especially with Trump as President fueling hatred towards my people. I've seen some unsavory tweets from Trump supporters cheering that this has happened, as if this were some form of divine punishment. It's sickening and I hope that's the last I've seen of that, though highly unlikely. But my people will remain strong and brave in the face of destruction.

Injustice at UC Berkeley

The other day I stumbled upon this article http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-hot-dog-vendor-video-seizure-20170911-story.html and to summarize, this man took a video of a UC Berkeley officer taking a Latino hot dog vendor's hard earned cash while giving him a ticket. When I saw the video, it filled me with such fury. Why is this person targeting only the Latino trying to earn a living, and not the white people drinking alcohol nearby in a public, college setting? It distressed me because, okay sure, you can give him a ticket but to take his money from his wallet as well? That's like kicking someone when they're already down. And it broke my heart to see a fellow Latino being treated that way. In the video, you can see he's devastated when the cop took his money.

 Luckily, the man who took the video put up a GoFundMe page for the hot dog vendor and so far, it's raised over 30, 000 dollars. The man who took the video was outraged at what was going on before him and he's Latino too so he had to help out la raza in any way he could. I really hope UC Berkeley looks into this and apologizes to the hot dog vendor. No one should be treated in such a way, be humiliated like that.

Hello all, my name is Perla and I'll be mainly using this blog for my Media 10 class at SMC. I've been at SMC close to three years with the hope to transfer soon to a nearby university.