JE#1A

I recall watching Loony Tunes as a little girl and loving every episode that starred Speedy Gonzales.   Most shows I watched as a young girl did not feature any one who looked like me, or who spoke Spanglish like I did, so I was excited to see someone or something that I related to on television. I enjoyed watching Speedy outwit his nemesis', he never failed to do so and I loved it. .. I think the reason I got such a kick out of his intelligence was because of how the show often portrayed the other mice. It definitely left me with a feeling of dissonance because, I wanted to relate to the qualities Speedy encompassed, but not the qualities the other mice were given, which included, laziness, illiteracy, and intoxication. Although I didn't have the vocabulary or knowledge at the time to piece this together like today, I definitely feel that there was a part of me that recognized those stereotypes and grew to dislike them. Perhaps this is where I began to cultivate internalized racism. I'm ashamed to share that at one point in my life I was ashamed of my family members who had accents in English because I knew how society viewed them, illiterate and therefore incompetent, just like the mice in the Loony Tunes. (Even though I looked up to these family members and knew how intelligent they really were.) This is definitely something I think I still struggle with today, feelings of incompetency because I have a regional dialect and many Anglo-Americans on this campus often ask me, "Where are you from?" or something of the sort. This bothers me and belittles me which ultimately hurts me because I don't want to be seen as illiterate or incompetent or as an "other". I was born and raised in the U.S and I don't feel that I should be questioned or seen as inferior, nor should any one who is making their life in the United States. I am sad that it is cartoons, or any social media for that matter, that parallel characters like Speedy Gonzales that feed into the nasty ethnic stereotypes that dehumanize us and label us as "other". After reading more on Speedy Gonzales, the reasons behind the feelings I could not yet verbalize or describe as a young girl became much clearer.