Welcome to Horchata Squad 2.0, an official Emerald opinion section podcast with hosts Veronica Fernandez-Alvarado and Marian Fragoso. Featured in this episode are the eight commandments of Horchata Squad, some new momentos to brighten up the booth, a new round of shoutouts and a guest speaker, Vanessa. The trio’s conversation centers on the politics of dating as femmes of color, including discussions on fetishization and euro-centric standards of beauty.

This podcast contains language that may not be suitable for all listeners.

Catch up on the previous season of Horchata Squad on SoundCloud.

Music in this episode is the “Theme from El Chavo del Ocho” and “Fertilizer” by Frank Ocean.

This episode was produced by Alec Cowan.

The post Horchata Squad 2.0: The politics of dating as femmes of color appeared first on Emerald Media.

Welcome to Horchata Squad 2.0, an official Emerald opinion section podcast with hosts Veronica Fernandez-Alvarado and Marian Fragoso. The new additions to the show include some illuminating momentos from outside the booth and a shoutout to femmes of color within the University of Oregon community. The first topic this season is about the recent school shooting in Parkland, FL, and explores what gun ownership, media attention and mental health mean within communities of color.

Catch up on the previous season of Horchata Squad on SoundCloud.

This podcast contains language that may not be suitable for all listeners.

Music in this episode is Cafe Tacuba “Como Te Extraño Mi Amor” by Cafe Tacuba and “Fertilizer” by Frank Ocean.

This episode was produced by Alec Cowan.

The post Podcast: Horchata Squad 2.0: New hosts, same drink appeared first on Emerald Media.

The news about Aziz Ansari was beyond uncomfortable. The 3,000-word story of a 22-year-old photographer named Grace — not her real name — is a detailed account of a night of aggressive, selfish behavior by comedian and creator Ansari.

Ansari did not commit a sexual felony, but he did violate Grace by persistently ignoring her non-verbal and verbal cues. I do not think that Ansari should be put in the same category of power-hungry Hollywood men such as Harvey Weinstein.

But this story does force the conversation of what is acceptable in the bedroom. We need to talk about this unspoken power dynamic that appears in many hookup encounters across America. We need to talk about dominates and submissives.

Many people are divided on their opinion of Ansari, and it is due to the fact that many have experienced being either Ansari or Grace in this situation. In a feminist article written by Sarah Hoagland, she describes the power dynamic that is conditioned through day to day interactions in America and how it is mimicked in LGBTQIA relationships. Women and more feminine individuals are conditioned to become submissive under men/masculine individuals, who are taught to inflict and dominate during their encounters. Hoagland states that “one is not born a woman but rather becomes a woman.”

When people ask why Grace did not get up and leave at any point of the night, they are forgetting the submissive behaviors that Grace was conditioned to act in. In situations where there is an aggressive overpower of will, people assume there is only the reaction of fight or flight; but there is also freezing. This is a common response for people who feel like prey in high-stress situations where they will feel numb and unable to move.

For Ansari, readers can label his actions as simply disgusting and aggressive — which they are — but that wouldn’t discuss the issue for the many people that saw themselves as Ansari in this situation. We can’t deny common sexualization of dominant behavior. Ansari was taught this. As a 34-year-old man, his dominate behavior had to have been received as sexy to certain women in the past.    

It should be noted that if a person does enjoy to sexually submit to someone, it does not mean they are accepting oppression, but we need to ask ourselves why it is seen as sexy to overpower and inflict abusive actions unto another person. We also need to ask why receiving this aggression is portrayed as sexy. These forms of questions are negatively received in many feminist circles because it can lead down the path of kinkshaming. We cannot tell people what to be turned on by, but we should be able to have a discussion critiquing normalized behaviors in our society. We have to ask ourselves why domination is so sexualized and how that created a culture where Grace’s lack of response was seen as sexy.

This sexualization of aggressively pursuing women teaches young men to confuse sexual interest with consent. And America’s sex education also lacks conversations about consensual and pleasurable sex for both parties. Ansari is not a young man — he is an adult who cared more about having sex than the comfortability of the young woman he was with. But it happened and we’re talking about it, so what now?

We can begin to teach consensual pleasure-centered sex education that has been renowned throughout Sweden. We can begin to criticize and demand that Hollywood displays sex as a consensual act between two people and not something that one party has to fight for and the other party has to be the gatekeeper of. All answers here are long term and won’t solve the trauma that Grace had to endure during her night with Ansari, but it’s a start.    

In a perfect world, Ansari would have picked up on the non-verbal cues that Grace was showing, and Grace would have felt more secure to speak up on her uneasiness around Ansari. Their night would have ended awkwardly, but it would have left both parties feeling secure. But we don’t live in a perfect world, so all we have left is to talk about these gray areas and make them clearer.

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On the corner of East 13th Avenue and Alder Street, anti-immigrant graffiti showed up on the concrete base of the Great Blue Heron statue. “Deport them all” was written with chalk on the statue as well as pro-Trump messages.  

Passersby found offensive graffiti near the Knight Library last September. (Courtesy of the University of Oregon)

These anti-immigrant messages have been showing up on and around the University of Oregon since President Trump’s election. Over the past year, there have been anti-refugee stickers and white supremacist messages such as “white pride” on our campus. A 2017 report by The Oregonian/Oregonlive profiled white nationalist activity in Eugene. Our city recorded almost 60 hate crimes in 2017; vandalism and graffiti made up 20 percent of the reported hate crimes between January and October.

As a student of color, it is terrifying and exhausting to see these racist messages on campuses. According to research done by the Jed Foundation and the Steve Fund, black and Hispanic students are more likely to feel overwhelmed and have mental health issues compared to their white counterparts. Having to keep up with the course load as well as worry about whether the person sitting next to you wants to kick you out of the country is too much pressure to carry.

Our administration needs to directly address these messages because they are not simply chalk and stickers, but rather the bubbling of pro-white nationalism and hate crimes against our international students and students of color. According to the University of Oregon, 26.8 percent of the student body identifies as students of color and 12 percent are international students. Though President Michael Schill said he “condemns all forms of hate speech and racism,” as the head figure of our university, he needs to openly take a stand against the white supremacist messages on campus and stand with the students of color and international students.

The rise of hate crimes is not unique to the Eugene area; it has been a rising trend on campuses all over the United States. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, there has been a growing number of hate groups in the US, and 78 percent of recruitment is done on university campuses. The SPLC reported that the largest motivation for hate crimes post-inauguration was due to anti-immigrant ideals.  

If our administration can openly state that they are against white supremacists and hate crimes on our campus, then they will show our student body that this is a campus for all students. These students are asking for support and our administration is ignoring the hateful messages these students have to see. We know that the messages will not end here, and without the support from our university, it will not only encourage more hateful messages to appear, but it will also let over a quarter of our student body know that their mental health and well-being is simply not worth supporting. It shouldn’t be hard for our administration to openly denounce white supremacy, and it should be even easier for them to support such a large percentage of their student body.  

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Many people saw Coco, but not everyone saw the film through a Mexican/Latinx lens. To see Coco through that lens would be to sigh a relief (in my case a cry) at finally seeing yourself represented in film. The Disney castle with the mariachi theme in the opening credits made me feel incredibly happy; but I also felt growingly frustrated. It felt great that for once, a movie was not depicting my people under a Hollywood stereotype; but my expectations shouldn’t be so low in the first place.

We need to ask ourselves why Latinx representation in film is so low. Because at this point there is no valid excuse for the lack of Latinx representation in Hollywood. Hispanics make up the largest demographic of moviegoers per capita in the United States. Latinxs made up 21 percent of all tickets sold in 2015 though they make up about 18 percent of the U.S. population. A 2015 study by the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communications and Journalism found that only 5.3 percent of characters in 800 movies examined were Latinx. It is not a question of whether or not Latinx audiences would show up for a movie like Coco, it is a question of why Hollywood is so stubborn with the idea of people of color as main characters and filmmakers.

Hispanics make up the largest population of moviegoers in the nation yet they are represented in a little less than 2 percent of films. They make up less than 3 percent of film directors, and 6 percent of screenwriters. Because we live in a world where white is seen as normal, Latinxs are lucky to get to see themselves as drug dealers, maids, or mistresses. Fewer than 38 percent of actresses are Latinxs and yet they are the most sexualized minority group in Hollywood. Latinxs get thrown a bone once in a while and are suppose to feed for the rest of the decade.

Even when films are made with Latinx protagonists, Hollywood has continuously casted white actors in place for Latin American actors. In a study done by USC they show that out of the 700 popular films of 2007-2014 over 73% of film actors are white leaving less than 26% for actors of color.  We don’t want to see a brown face Ben Affleck and  Catherine Zeta-Jones. It is hard enough to get Latinx characters written but to also face the difficulties of getting cast in these roles is just ridiculous. Mexicans deserve to play Mexicans.  

It is difficult to say that Latinxs earned the right to see themselves as three-dimensional characters because to say we “earned” it is to discredit us as part of society. Latinx folk make up a quarter of our population and that should be reflected in film. I can tell you that if you step into any crowded area in a city, there will not be large groups of white people like an episode of Friends, but rather a diverse atmosphere of characters and yes, culture. This is the world we live in and Latinxs need to be a part of the filmmaking process and in front of the cameras as active characters we can root for. We don’t want to create watered down versions of our world to better suit audiences and producers who think we won’t show up to our own movies. At this point, to exclude us from the media is making the statement that Latinxs, a population of 56 million, are not only unwanted in the US but simply do not exist.

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On Oct. 13, University of Oregon President Michael Schill wrote an opinion column for the New York Times on the protest that happened earlier this month. His column criticized the students who interrupted his State of the University Address, stating that silencing him was not a proper form of protest. Schill ignores the position of power he has as the university president and dismisses the different set of regulations that are given to him as a leader of this institution.  

In his column, Schill wrote, “One of the students who stormed the stage during my talk told the news media to ‘expect resistance to anyone who opposes us.’ That is awfully close to the language and practices of those the students say they vehemently oppose.” The reality is that these students are marginalized students from an institution that Schill leads. They demand respect and fair treatment after almost a century of neglect. The protester said this because they were done with the mistreatment and wanted to make it clear that they will continue to fight for the rights of all marginalized students on campus.

Schill also stated that these protestors were moving further from helping people.

“Rather than helping people who feel they have little power or voice, students who squelch speech alienate those who are most likely to be sympathetic to their message,” wrote Schill.

These students are people who feel that they have little power or voice. That is why they interrupted Schill’s speech. A concern that is often shared is that administration brushes these students off by writing an email lightly addressing their struggles then leaving them to face their problems alone. They needed to make sure that university leaders were there to listen, and they needed to do that in a way that made it harder for Schill to brush them aside.

Later in the column Schill mentioned the “success” that the UO had when confronted with the Black Student Task Force in 2015.

“I invited the students in for a discussion, and although the matters we discussed, about systemic racism and educational opportunity, were emotionally charged, we established a respectful dialogue. More important, the discussion led to change.”

The difference here was that Black students all around the country were getting their university presidents fired and Schill feared losing his job, so there was no choice but to listen and comply— which, by the way, it was never fully done. The BSTF list of demands is still unfilled – only five of 12 have been checked off.

The UO didn’t remove the name of Deady Hall even though that was the first demand on the list: “Change the names of all of the KKK related buildings on campus. Deady Hall will be the first building to be renamed.”

Finally, Schill stated that “nothing can be gained by shutting [the administration] out.” I feel the need to make something clear to Schill about this statement.

Schill, you are in power. You have a mic; you are the face in front of cameras and you even had the opportunity to publish your opinion in the most credible and accessible newspaper in the nation, with a subscription in 195 countries. I, on the other hand, must publish my counter argument in a local student newspaper. The New York Times wouldn’t care for my opinion and their readership wouldn’t either. They only care about yours.

Those protesters did not shut you down, Schill. They made you listen.

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It goes hoop earrings, lip liner, crunched up hair and winged eyeliner. That was the aesthetic: the look that all my cousins rocked. They would kick back in their Dickies jeans and GenX shirts while nodding off to MC Magic and N.O.R.E. in the living room.

The cholx style came with an attitude that became iconic in all communities for “fuck you up” glares and high arch eyebrows. The cholx aesthetic that is known today derived from the Zoot suits style and the 1960s chicano pride movement. This look was dramatic and demanded attention during a time when many Latinx individuals would hide due to fear of harassment.

But it was also a look that raised problems from people outside of the community. Police would use this look as a reason to practice “stop-and-frisk” and store owners would use it as an excuse to follow people around in case of theft. A style that was rooted as a source of pride began to be associated with gangs and drug violence. In the end, the cholx aesthetic that we know of today is not as dramatic and has taken a more modern approach.

So you could imagine my frustration when I found a post on my Twitter feed from Kylie and Kendall Jenner in which they dressed a model in a flannel buttoned from the top, black slacks and hoop earrings.

This aesthetic, a look that made many of my family members more vulnerable to police brutality, was being used for profit by two privileged white girls.

I know the complex association that Mexican communities have with cholxs. The truth is that this example of cultural appropriation is different from white girls wearing box braids or wearing a chief headdress because this kind of culture was something that Mexicans in my community are not proud of.

As a child, I witnessed the last wave of cholxs in my hometown of Woodburn, Oregon. I remember going through my city and realizing that I did not see one cholx person and then immediately thinking “thank God.” My siblings and I were pulled from going to our local school because our parents feared gang violence would harm us or pull us in.  

This culture was not glorified in my community and was looked at as the cause of many problems from low graduation rates and teen pregnancies to violence and substance abuse. But the reality was that these were kids from low income communities with troubled families that felt like they needed to belong. Latinx children turned to gangs because our community and America’s fear of the perceived ‘superpredator’ did not give them much of a choice. The cholx problem faded away but didn’t get resolved.

And though cholx culture did result in something bad; it is still ours. When white people dress in this style they do not recognize the suffering that our communities endured because of it. It becomes a joke or something fashionable, and not seen as a serious issue that resulted in large dropout rates and imprisonments in our communities. At the end, it’s our raza and our culture.

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Last week, Mateo Sundberg contributed an Op-Ed column about Columbus Day that has surfaced into conversations around my community. In his column, he argues that Columbus Day should be discussed and celebrated because Columbus’ contribution to Latinxs outweighed all the damage he created. I believe Sundberg’s column ignores the harsh reality of colonization and the generations of pain that come with it.  

Sundberg states that “after the pillaging, enslavement and pain, what was left was a beautiful mix of blood and culture.” This is a wrongful interpretation of history because it insinuates that all the pain that continues from the colonization of Latin America is obsolete when in fact we continue to suffer from the consequences of colonization. As the school rhyme tells us: Columbus came to the Americas in 1492, and the last Latin American country to end slavery was Brazil in 1838. So historically, the beauty began after 1838.   

The “pillaging” (which is defined as “to rob [a place] using violence”) never ended. Europe and the United States largely exploited Latin America’s natural resources with events like the banana massacre in Columbia and the gold mines in Northern Peru.

In Sundberg’s article, “the beautiful mix of blood and culture” was worth it. But did it really mix well? The “cosmic race” was an idea made in 1925 by Mexican politician and writer Jose Vasconcelos. Vasconcelos’ ideas over the “cosmic race” pushed ethnic superiority by describing indigenous people as “savages” and “undeveloped” compared to the European colonizers. The colonizers created a hierarchy of race in castas, which were paintings that labeled mixed race offspring of colonizers, giving degrading titles to groups of people who moved further away from whiteness such as Lobo (wolf/dog) and Salto Atras (jump back). These paintings are important because they set up the deeply ingrained colorism that is alive and well in Latinx culture. So alive that some of these titles are used today among Latinx people.

The idea of the “cosmic race” has been romanticized, but we cannot forget that this idea punishes those who do not show the “light skin” mixing that was pictured. This is why Latin America has a deeply rooted problem with colorism and favoring whiteness.

Sundberg then brings up “Dia de la Raza” that is celebrated throughout Latin America as “the beginning of Latino culture.” The problem with Dia de la Raza is that it is erasing the bloody reality of colonization. Through the long history of racial hierarchy in our culture, objects that are associated with Europe are put on a pedestal, while those associated with indigenous and African cultures are seen as savage—as we can see in the castas. Dia de la Raza is a problem in our Latinx community because it celebrates ethnic cleansing that was forced on our people.

“The celebration of Columbus is difficult to balance without overshadowing the Native American side of history.” To start off, there is no Native American side of history. The way that colonizers have masscared, enslaved and raped indigenous people is history. If anyone wants to know the true face of history, they must look at it through the eyes of the Black and indigenous people in the Americas. There are no sides, there is only truth.

“Yes, Columbus was a brutal colonizer. No, there is never an excuse for slavery. But…” There is no “but” because there is no excuse for slavery. There is no “but” when talking about the genocide of Black Americans and the suffering that continues in all communities because of it.

Finally, there is a difference between what Sundberg discussed as history being “covered up and forgotten by revision” and simply not glorifying it. It is not forgetting the brutal genocide that Columbus created to Latin America but rather the refusal to glorify the man who murdered, rape and created a long—and still vibrant—history of colorism and internalized racism in the Latin American community.

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