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.