Blog Post Four

    I am currently reading a book called "Why Are All The Black Kids Sitting Together In The Cafeteria?". I have dove right into the first two hundred and twenty pages in the past three posts and in this blog I will review from pages two hundred twenty too page two hundred ninety eight. In these pages the subject I found the most interesting was definitely the historical background of the Latinx community in America. In history we have learned a good amount about this subject and I found reading about it again very interesting. Another part of this chapter I found interesting about this section of the book was the section dedicated to Native Americans. 

    

    One of the things I found the most interesting was the history of Puerto Rico. I have visited it a few times in the past and found it to be a really cool place. On page 239, Tatum talks about how Puerto Rico was taken over by force in the Spanish- American war in 1898. While I do think that is very unfortunate, I also think that at this point unless there is a two thirds vote to leave the country, that it should probably stay with the united states. I also know that the US is in some hot water with various groups for politically "forcing" Puerto Rico to stay part of the country. The theory behind this is that the United states has invested into Puerto Rico so that if they decided to try and leave they would have an unmanageable amount of debt. It has been called an attempt to buy a country for almost nothing. Despite the fact that some Puerto Ricans do want to succeed, a lot of them enjoy being US citizens. It is a very complex issue that doesn't really have any easy solutions and that is why it'll probably stay the same.

    The next part of this section I found interesting was the part that addressed Native Americans. On page 262, the author talks about an advertising campaign centered around the statement, "Have you ever seen A real Indian?". I think that I have a very interesting perspective when discussing perceptions of native Americans. On one hand, I grew up watching shows such as tom and jerry which had stereotypical perception of Native Americans and reading books like lonesome dove that was a classic cowboys Vs Indians type of book. However, on the other hand, my father had worked on a reservation in the black hills. Out of  these two things, the one with the stronger influence on me were the stories that my father told me about the time spent on the reservation. This is definitely one of the areas that I think Id have the lowest amount of implicit bias because even though there aren't any natives in my community, I still learned about them and their culture from a young age. 

    Overall this chapter was very interesting and made me think differently than the others thus far. Instead of just reading along I took the time to delve deeply into my past and the past of our country think about how it has effected the world and my life today. While I did not pay as much attention to the raw facts of this chapter, I still found it intuitively challenging.