Assimilation and Identity

Ilan  Stavens's Latino USA: A Cartoon History identifies the dismissive attitude American's have towards Latino Americans socially and argues against it under the premise that its insensitive and demeaning. He models is argument in a novel way which at first glance, may appear to be humorous and satirical, but is actually deeply rooted into the social injustices Latino Americas experience in American culture. 

I completely understand and agree with Stavens's premise. My mother was born in Uzbekistan and my father was born in Tajikistan. I am ethnically a Bukharian Jew. Unfortunately most people i meet are ignorant of Eastern European and Asian history and therefore, I identify as "Russain" because i speak Russian. For the sake of saving myself a long and tedious explanation, I identify with Russia. This is something I am not comfortable with doing but as a result of improper education and ignorance, I have to resort to it. Does this mean that all of Eastern Europe including the Slavic states and the ex-Soviet block states have to wear a "Russian" label? Does one have to adopt a stereotypical label as a result of ignorance in order to assimilate?

America is a country of immigrants. Its original inhabitants are few and far between. There is no ethnicity, race, creed, or culture that has any reason to deem itself dominant and worthy of recognition over others. 

Its Not An Oxymoron

Feminism. Who's to say that there is only one definition, one perception, one right and one wrong characterization of feminism? In her essay "Its Not An Oxymoron: The Search For Arab Feminism", Susan Durraj retells her journey of finding her own definition of feminism. 

Before reading Durraj's account, I wasn't convinced of the claims women made regarding their struggles and inequality to men. In western culture, women had the right to vote, the right to an education, property, a job, divorce, and all of the other civil liberties men have. The feminism of women with all of these privileges wasn't a feminism i could identify with, I simply was not convinced. 

Durraj shared my concerns and could not identify with western feminism herself. Durraj proposed the question, "Where was my feminism?" (p.298). As opposed to western women, Durraj did not see oppression in performing house work. She was raised in a very conservative family where her mother and father exercised specific roles to maintain the integrity of the family and the household. She was more concerned with women that struggled to get to their University by taking a multipassenger taxi in which they were groped numerous times. Or with women that couldn't afford to go to a University because they had familial responsibilities to take care of their younger siblings. Durraj explains that these women could not be considered feminists by the standards of the western women she had met in her feminist theory class, "but by the standards of a different feminism-one that allowed women to retain their culture, to have pride in their traditions and to stilll vocalize the gender issues of their community...they believed in the dignity and potential of every woman; they wanted to erase class lines between woman" (p.301). This is the feminism that Durraj found for herself and identified with, this was the result of her journey.

After reading her account, I too have adopted this definition of feminism. Her version of feminism encompasses the macro, as opposed to the micro. Her brand of feminism is more concerned with the fact that women are still kept illiterate and birthed into lives of subordination as opposed to who will do the housework.