I would like to tell you a story of a little girl who moved from Havana, Cuba at the age of four because her parents wanted her and her siblings to grow up in a free nation. This girls name is Orcadia Perez, but after she became a U.S. citizen at 14 she changed her name to Maggie. This young girl who has spent most of her life in the United States, who considers this nation her home has unfortunately experienced persecution for her Hispanic ancestry. What makes this story even worse is that her father served this nation as an officer in the U.S. Army. Her family experienced bigotry and discrimination during her childhood out of what she believes to be pure unmitigated ignorance from a lack of education and understanding of Hispanic culture
Maggie Perez is a child of a United States military service member. She has traveled to multiple army bases across the country during her life, she married a distant uncle of mine, Nick, and her name is now Maggie Schubert. She also has three sons and six grandchildren, and she has spent most of her work as a legal assistant. Maggie came to the U.S. as a legal immigrant and obtained her citizenship, an achievement that she cherishes.
During an interview that I conducted over the phone with her she described some of the differences that she experienced in her transition from a Latin culture to what she describes as an “Anglo based culture.” In my opinion, by spending her childhood in the United States Maggie is a child of two cultures Anglo and Latino even though she has spent such little time in Cuba. Maggie has been able to maintain her Latin Roots through her parents, one of the significant differences that she has experienced and had to overcome was the language barrier. She discussed that “for the first five years of my life I was raised in Spanish, but I was taught English in kindergarten in Miami”(1:45). Even though she was taught English since her arrival in Florida, her mother at home would “get really upset if we used English and we would have to revert back to Spanish”(5:07). Personally, I believe that by being a bilingual speaker increases a person’s cognitive ability, considering various languages have different word meaning and structure. Being able to speak multiple languages not only helps us as individuals increase our own intelligence, but it also exposes us to differences in culture. Becoming educated in different languages and cultural differences can help people with the process of fitting into new cultures while holding on to elements of their heritage that helps make a person unique.
However, on the other hand, education can be dangerous when used to expose people for the wrong reasons. We see an example of a cartoon made by Walt Disney that shows how Germans would indoctrinate the school children to be anti-Semitic from a very young age. We see in the cartoon at point 5:20 young school children being taught to be ruthless to anyone who is perceived to be weaker than the Germans. (Walt Disney: The making of a Nazi 1943, YouTube) As Maggie describes “Spanish is a very different language because it is so emotional and we have words that don’t exist in English”(1:45). As we have seen through history this can be very accurate. For example, in Eastern Europe in World War II, especially Poland, there was a difference between Jews who lived in the cities versus those who lived in rural areas. The Jews in rural areas tended to speak more Yiddish, whereas the Jews in the cities tended to speak more polish. The difference in language is a clear way to differentiate between groups of people and in some cases makes it easier to discriminate against the groups.
Throughout history, groups that have differed culturally, and socially from the majority have always faced discrimination. Despite growing up in a time period of great revolution and social reform, Maggie still experienced discrimination from individuals who were less educated and resisted the social upheaval. She mentions some instances of discrimination while being in school as a child. For example, Maggie responds to one incident in particular , “I did have this very openly racist teacher, who instead of saying Orcadia Perez he would say “Or-cadia Pee-rez” and I corrected him I don’t know how many times until I got tired and I figured out he did it on purpose every single day. So little things like that were common place truthfully” (11:20). What I see in her story is the pure and simple ignorance of a man who refused to embrace or acknowledge the diversity of the students in his class and to change with the times. Even though this man is an educator he demonstrates his lack of intelligence through his ignorance in his refusal to correctly pronounce Maggie’s name. This teacher’s ignorance also demonstrates his lack of understanding of Maggie’s culture. Of course, this type of discrimination was common, especially in mostly southern states where she lived while her father was in the army. However, the worst of this discrimination came when she was five, when she and her whole family stopped for a meal at a Denny’s, and the staff refused to wait on her family. “my dad, my mom, my sister, and I, and my father looks a little less “Hispanic” than most Hispanics because my dad comes from a part of Spain where there is a lot of fair haired and eyed people, so he looks a little more Anglo” (11:20). In truth the first time I met Maggie I did not realize she was of Hispanic descent because she does look more Anglo than most Latinos do. It was not until I was older and had learned Hispanic culture through taking Spanish classes that not all Hispanic people look tan. However, this ignorant man jumped to an unnecessary conclusion based on the color of some of the people present and looked down upon Maggie’s father as he was most likely seen as an Anglo man who married a Hispanic woman. Something similar to this happened in the 1930s in Nazi Germany where people were shunned and persecuted when seen having interactions with the Jewish people. Although these two examples are not nearly as bad as what African Americans have experienced, it is still upsetting. I am bothered because this is a family who came to this country, who loves the country, and who volunteered to defend it and they are treated like outcasts because they have a different skin color and an appearing atypical racial family. As the story goes the Perez family was sitting for a long time, waiting to order when Maggie finally said to a waitress “excuse me we need a menu and the waitress looked at my parents and said ‘one moment.’”( 11:20). After a little time went by a big man came back and said to 2nd lieutenant Perez “We don’t serve your kind here” ( 11:20). This is a terrible and inexcusable way to treat people who wanted nothing more than to have a meal, but also to a family who dedicated themselves to the country that welcomed them. Naturally, a five-year-old would not understand this, but her parents did and told her, “to get used to it because she will experience it her whole life”( 11:20). It is reasonable to assume that this man was not an educated individual and was a person uncomfortable with the concept of diversity and inclusion. This may have lead him to his disregard for the family’s culture and feelings. Now, granted, not all uneducated people are racists there are many even today who are highly educated and in seats of power. An example that is found on a site called Ethics in Education shows through history how the Nazis would indoctrinate their youth into anti-Semitic tendencies through math problems. One of these problems involves calculating the growth rates of European races and predicting the population issue for the German race, and then at the end of the problem it assures the children there are means of safeguarding the future of the German race. Fortunately, Maggie has not been negatively affected by this horrible event and she has found herself to be more tolerant and welcoming of new people because she knows how it feels to be an outsider both culturally and socially.
Nazi math2
Among the three most important of racial groups in Europe, the following population growth was detected in the time between 1900 and1930. Teutonic people: 124 million to 149 million; Latin people: 103 million to 121 million; Slavic people:166 million to 226 million. Assuming a constant level of increase, calculate the growth rate and the total increase of the three groups for a 10-year period. What will be the population
Michael Wiles, Ethics in Education: Sample Mathematics Lessons from Nazi School Books.
percentage of the three groups in the year 1960 if these trends continue? Calculate, for the three points in time, the percentage of the European population represented by each group. What great danger do you perceive for the future of the German people if no basic change in this reality occurs? Fortunately there is justifiable hope that a reversal of these population growth rates is at hand.
It is Maggie’s belief that through education we can expose ourselves to a number of different cultures, and through this exposure, we can become more tolerant and understanding of the differences in people. However, throughout history education has been used to influence young minds to be prejudicial against other races, we see this thru practices employed by the Nazi Party in Germany. Education is a powerful tool when used properly and it is a great first step in exposing ourselves to other cultures around the world so that we can learn to be more accepting and tolerant.