Self-Determination In The Chicano Community

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Self-Determination in the Chicano Community As laid out clearly in El Plan de Santa Barbara, the racist structure of society has oppressed, marginalized, and attempted to divide minority communities in this country, particularly the Chicano community. The Chicano community has steadily over time pushed back against the racist structure of society, and El Plan de Santa Barbara represented a clear and authoritative rebuff to this unfortunate status quo. The Chicano Movement has worked to alleviate these racist pressures on the Chicano community in both ideological and practical ways, but the racist structure is still dominant in society today. This racist structure has manifested itself in countless ways in recent and generations-old history, …show more content…
As Paulo Freire writes, “The interests of the oppressors lie in ‘changing the consciousness of the oppressed, not the situation which oppresses them’” (Freire 74). In essence, the racist structure has furthered the narrative for both Chicano people and people of other ethnicities that the Chicano community and Chicano Movement are inferior or out of the mainstream. This ideology can manifest itself in blatant ways as with under-funded schools in predominantly Chicano communities or in more subtle ways as with an under-representation of Chicano faces and points of view in the entertainment world. If the racist structure can convince members of the Chicano community that the racist status quo is acceptable through this kind of messaging, the predominant white community will have more power and agency in …show more content…
As noted in Rafael Perez-Torres’ discussion of the mythic Chicano homeland of Aztlan, it is important to “move toward a conceptual framework with which to explore the connections between land, identity, and experience” (Perez-Torres 150). Doing so bonds the Chicano people to their native ancestry in a way that outside groups cannot destroy or water down. At the same time, identifying with prominent elements of Chicano culture can unify the Chicano Movement and proactively fight back against cultural corruption. Again, because so much of the power in the racist structure is harnessed by mentally degrading members of the Chicano community, pinpointing clear ideals of Chicano culture as representations of what it means to be Chicano has been wildly effective at keeping those efforts at
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