JE#2

All through grade school, my biggest question was where are the brown people? Over the course of all subjects every year, I only learned about "American" history aka white history. The US always seemed to be the center of all history and in the end, all stories ended up with the US being the "hero" of it all and if it weren't for the "bravery" of our soldiers and the many wars the US won, the US would not have freedom. The history taught in schools no way represents what truly happened in the US. It's painful to think that some little chicana/o-ito is out there somewhere questioning where the brown folks are at in history. I truly did not know Mexicans existed in America  until I got to the end of the book and learned about Cesar Chavez. US history is set up in this black and white binary that no matter what, the whites a aren't the ones to blame for any war nor slavery nor trail of tears. Every fault belongs to those uncivilized people of color who should be grateful the white man came right on time to save them or else they wouldn't have survived like they had for the past hundreds of years. Learning about Anglos in grade school made me question my identity because I couldn't relate to the people I was learning about at all. I felt like I was forced to feel proud of the land of the free, proud of this democratic nation that believes in "We the People" and "Equality for all".

What I learned all throughout grade school was a narrow one-sided story that in no way compares to De León's book. "They called them Greasers" does't only add the other side of the story but it gives background to why and where Anglo's attitudes towards Mexicans began. Having this background knowledge provides a better understanding of common stereotypes and prejudice feelings. This book explains the relationship of Anglos, Tejanas/os and Mexicans and how classism dealing with the color of their skin contributed to the racism and this image of untamed, uncivil and disorderly people. These few chapters spoke more truth than all the history books from k-12. Historical amnesia continues to be reinforced every November for Thanksgiving. In school we are taught that if its wasn't for the pilgrims, the indians would't have had food and would have suffered. But the truth is never spoken of. We never learn about the huge massacre that happened after Christopher Columbus arrived. We don't learn about the rape of hundreds of women and the land robbed from the original "indians" already living here. But every year the same happy story is told in school and children continue to feed into this lie.

My own historical amnesia, I would say is at a 6. Every day I continue to learn more and more about my history and my past. Although I don't exactly know my roots, I know that my ancestors must have been a part of everything that I am learning and the past is starting to get less blurry because I am learning that brown people did indeed exist! Not knowing that brown folks actually existed in history always made me feel lost and left to the side to wonder. Through school, I felt like an outsider, like all we did was learn about "the man" and brown people were irrelevant. At some point I remember telling my mom to send me to school in Mexico so I could learn about what really happened to "Aztlan" (or why Mexico lost all of the land it did). But now as I begin to finally decolonize my mind from the white mans history I have began to find myself and continue to grow from learning my true past which has helped me see where I want to go and how I want to create my own Aztlán.