Media Matters, in America
Summary: It was MSNB’C Tucker, Host of the Tucker Carlson said to the guest of the day Jesse Diaz, the president of the League of United Latin American Citizens, “you may be counting Hispanic immigrants from Puerto Rico," after Diaz said that "only 55 percent of illegal’s are of Mexican descent." How can this be though, how can somebody so influential in the4 media get that wrong. If he would know better he should have known that all Puerto Ricans are Citizens of the United States. The Jones-Shafroth Act of 1917 granted U.S. citizenship to all residents of Puerto Rico. This shows that there is still a huge disconnect between Puerto Rico and the American Citizens. I wanted to pose this question to several of my friends in class on what they knew about Puerto Rico and Most importantly asked them if they where automatically citizens if they where a territory of the United States. Sad to say none of the ten people that I asked knew very much about the Puerto Rican Culture, food music anything like that and out of the ten only one said that they were automatic citizens of the U.S. As we read the book by Jose Sanchez we talk about Puerto Ricans not having much Cultural Power in the United States. Often when Latinos are mentioned in the Media most people predominately think of Mexican decent just due to the sheer size of the population. Puerto Ricans have always been in the back drop in music, theater, and the media. As Jose stated in this book, “Puerto Ricans experienced an exclusion and rejection in the film industry. Hollywood showed no interest in putting them on the silver screen” We can see the effects of this today, still today there are not many Puerto Ricans that are being represented. That is why we As Americans are oblivious to the Puerto Rican Situations and it clearly shows when a MSNB’C host Tucker somebody who is respected on MSNBC cant get his info right than what does that show.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
I think this misconception of Puerto Ricans as immigrants is a problem that has a history. I am suprised at how many Americans consider them as immigrants. As our book talks about migration to New York City from Puerto Rico, one can obviously see that it is a commonwealth that is part of the United States. This misunderstanding is in part due to earlier revolutionany tactics used by Puerto Ricans as a fight for equal rights. This could be resolved in it is made a state. This relates to the movie that we watched in regards to revolutionary tactics. Hopefully more people look at the history such as the Jones-Shafroth Act of 1917 and take is easier of Puerto Ricans.
As a white student I must say that i have NEVER learned about Puerto Ricans in Highschool, it wasn't until college that i found out they were in fact citizens. How sad is that? History seems to clump all Latinos together because of what was mentioned, "due to their sheer size of population." The 1917 act seems to be excluded from the textbooks and if it isnt then their are only a few lines mentioning it. Latinos in American education seem to get the backburner. I hope and pray that education leaders will reconsider their agenda because quite frankly, Latinos are going to be half of our population eventually and it would be great for all students to learn about eachothers culture more than we do now.
Post a Comment