After reading my friends post over at www.urbanonramps.blogspot.com about Ruben Navarrete's article on how too many Latinos keep each other down instead of encouraging each other to move forward. I got encouraged to post an article I wrote a couple years back. Let me know if you like it.

Here it is:

Malcom’s Infuence In My Life
by
Sergio Alfredo Castaneda
Professor Blackwood
April 8, 2003


There is an old saying that “reading the book is better than watching the movie.” In the case of the autobiography of Malcom X, this is absolutely true. Never before have I read an autobiography on someone and then seen the movie based on the book. The experience of doing both was refreshing. Reading the book was good because as the reader, one can see more in-depth, Malcom’s life and how he evolved into the leader he died as. In reading his story I learned why he says, “...people are always speculating-why am I as I am? To understand that of any person, his whole life, from birth, must be reviewed. All of our experiences fuse into our personality. Everything that happens to us is an ingredient” (pg.173). This is profound to me. Reading Malcom’s story gives me strength, as part of a minority, to change my life for the better. To help my people come out of oppression and victimization. As minorities, we must start taking advantage of the opportunities given to us, to better ourselves and stop complaining about racism.
Creating a beneficial and equal rights society. Black progress seemed to come to a halt in 1980. Seeing this as a Mexican -American (more Mexican then American) and being a leader in my community, I was able to learn a few things about progress in life. Progress to achieve high goals, such as gaining a college degree. Going to college is not so unusual for an Anglo-American, though for someone who grew up as a minority it is a great challenge.
Growing up around illegals and seeing the circumstances they lived under, shaped my thinking into a prejudice attitude towards the ones who appeared to be above us (whites), or so I thought. My blindness made me believe that I could not achieve what I really wanted in life which was to move past a high school education, into a promising career as a Family Therapist. On a daily basis, all that I saw were farm workers who came home everyday, tired from a long aphoristic day picking apples.


I never heard one of these tired workers converse about moving into a more promising future than stay working in the orchards for minimum wage. I didn’t understand why.
Americas measure of progress. Do you make more than 25k a year? Do you own a car? Do you own a house? Why can’t your parents buy you clothes at JC Penny instead of Goodwill? If you grow up in Mexico, measures of achievement are not based on the individuals ownership of material possessions. But more on the life one gives to his or her family. At least that’s what I remember when I lived there as a young child. Seeing people in the orchards be comfortable with what they had, didn’t measure up to me. It didn’t measure up because I was thinking outside the box that many immigrant workers stay in and because I was looking to an American standard of progress. I know that it goes far beyond just material gain. At least for me, as a son of two immigrant workers of whom I’m very proud of. I desire the satisfaction of making a change in my life and honoring all the suffering that my parents endured providing for me and watching over me.
We cannot get there by being angry such as Malcom X was. In his autobiography, Malcom X states that he “..learned early that crying out in protest could accomplish things” (ch.nigtmare, pg.11). This is an ideal that many minorities have. We cry in complaint hoping somebody will hear us. But no one likes a crying child. We need to be able to use our God given brains and start squeezing out solutions to our problems.
My life like Malcom’s. I endured some racism. Though not quite so dramatic, as I did not grow up in his era. But I had my blue devils encouraging me to be a menial worker. Trying to tell me how to think. This was the spark of my anger towards white people.

Thinking that I was pre-destined to become part of the “help” because of my disability to comprehend. This did not sit right with me and the only people that I could be angry at were the whites, though I did not discover this anger until later on, still not knowing why I had it. Not too long after, I discovered the movie “Malcolm X” by Spike Lee. Watching this film to me was like being enlightened. My understanding of whites was right. They were the oppressor and I was the oppressed, I knew why I was feeling angry. My thinking made me believe they were the reason why I couldn’t achieve the goal of becoming a successful person in life. Watching the movie helped me to seek inner power to self convert and stop making myself be a victim of white America. Which is an idea that many minorities fall into. And something I encourage my people to step out of.

I didn’t understand white America. To the point that I thought to myself that I was dumb and would never amount to be anything else than a minimum wage worker, sitting in class and not understanding what the teacher was teaching out of the English textbook. It wasn’t that I was dumb. It was that my comprehension skills were not as sharp as those who grew up in an American family whose primarily language is English. I viewed myself as an outsider being one of the few Mexican kids in my class, that was predominately white. The only way that I could express my anger was to change their norm. So, I rebelled against every rule they had at their school. This anger that I had didn’t help me have a fun filled high school experience or make many friends during my freshmen and sophomore years, even some of the Latin kids were afraid of me. But I didn’t know how else to respond to the grief I was feeling. I lost all interest in reading books because I didn’t understand what I was reading.

On page 155 in the “Caught” chapter Alex Heley writes “...my working vocabulary wasn’t two hundred words.” He writes this about Malcom. The type of person he describes is the type of person that I was. Every other word that came out of my mouth was a foul word. I didn’t have much to say.
I knew there was a need. Something was missing from my life and I didn’t know how to address it. But it was there. This something was not helping me get anywhere. All that I knew was that I had this anger and nothing else. What do I do with it? I couldn’t keep on trying to fight against the system. I was letting the system keep me down and I couldn’t figure out how to move past that. So, I began asking myself questions. What is it that I really need? And I began getting answers. Realizing that I did not need to change my surroundings, but more my inner-self, was a milestone breakthrough in my life.
A step towards personal progress. There is a book written by a man named John Perkins, the title of the book is WITH JUSTICE FOR ALL. In the book there is a story Mr. Perkins tells about a woman meeting Jesus at a well. It reads like this “...Jesus opened the conversation with the woman. He let her felt need determine the starting point of the conversation. She was at the well to get water: He asked for a drink. Notice that He didn’t just talk about her need; He brought his own need. Her need was water; His need was water. Asking her to give, by asking her to help Him, He affirmed her dignity. Mans’s most deeply felt need is to have his dignity affirmed. He wants to feel his somebody-ness---to know that he is a person of worth. That is what the woman at the well needed to know. She needed to know that she was as good as a Jew.” And just like that woman, many people today who belong to a minority group need that affirmation. Affirming people causes them to rise above their past, and helps them according to Mr. Perkins.

Realizing my own personal need. The beginning of my senior year in high school is when I knew I had to change my attitude towards others. I discovered no self-love inside of me. The past three years with the attitude I had, did not take me anywhere. I was still the same person with no more than 200 words in my vocabulary. With a violent past behind me. A past that was hunting me. Making a relic out of all the evil things I did, I felt I had nothing to contribute to society.
Meeting my personal Jesus. She was tall, white and spoke my language. Her name was JoAnne Brower. She had club called God’s Gang to Light. It was a ministry to reach out to gang kids. And there I was. Needy. She came to me and introduced her self with five tough looking gang bangers behind her. All who were smiling as they introduced themselves to me. Which I recall was kind of strange. Gang bangers don’t smile much.
JoAnne or Jomama as I later found out she went by invited me to hang with them. It took a while before she broke in and I actually started hanging out with them. Being around them and being part of their leadership, doing volunteer counseling with the Mexican kids that would pop into center helped me understand my need. Just like the one at the well, I knew I was messed up and thirsty for something. All these children would come in and play basketball or pool and hang out. Some of them would share the things that were going on with their family. And I was able to counsel them. That moment I knew I could actually bring a change to a cycle that was keeping my people down.
Getting over the barrier. It was one of the hardest things for me to believe I could go to college. One because I couldn’t afford it and still can’t. Second, I didn’t have the right counseling. No one in my family has attended college nor aspired to. I’m the first one. About six months before the school year ended, there was an announcement that a local foundation was going to be giving out scholarships to the high school graduates whose parents work for First Fruits of Broetje Orchards. I was praising God for that news.

I fit the category. Both my parents worked for that orchard. So, I saw the opportunity and went for it. At the end of the school year I was the first ever in my family with a high school diploma and a full paid scholarship to the local community college. Even though, all I did my first year of college was prepare myself for college. It opened a lot of doors. Doing every volunteering opportunity available. Receptionist for the local senior center, little league referee, tutor for the local children’s center, I was even a summer trainee for a church leading kids on outings.

There is no excuse. No one can say that they ‘can’t do it’. Trying to get some of my friends to follow in the same direction was tough. I heard about every complaint imaginable. Shortage of money, language barrier, I’m too Mexican and the list keeps going. The only people that I could think would not be able to do it were the undocumented. But I was wrong. In an article titled “Undocumented Grads to Get Tuition Breaks From Calf. Institutions,” a John Ghering explains the problems are over. Our Governor Grey Davis has signed a bill to help undocumented students to be able to attend college and still pay in-state tuition. There are millions of scholarships for minorities to be able to attend college. The Hispanic Association Of Colleges and Universities(http://www.hacu.net) has a tremendous amount of resources for Hispanic students to take advantage of. The Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute (CHCI) is a non-profit and non-partisan educational organization established in 1978. Their mission is the development of the next generation of Latin Leadership. The Ethnic Majority (http://www.ethnicmajority.com) is not only committed to empower Latinos but Africans, and Asians to achieve advancement in politics, business, at work, and society in general.

And in the future, once I get my four-year and my Masters, there will be M.O.C.O.S which is going to be dedicated to the advancement of children of illegal aliens in education.

In conclusion. The help is here. We as the minorities have all the resources and help we can think of to achieve a full college education. The challenge is, are we going to do it? My personal goal is to empower those in oppression and to unite them to create a strong enough force that is going to tear down the walls of oppression.