me, the academic side

I had a moment today as i was reading pages and pages of stuff. Really it was nothing more than stuff, but all that reading finally got me thinking. I feel like i have been having one giant brain fart the past few months trying to get my academic mojo back and constantly asking myself "what was it i wrote my personal statement on? where is my passion? where is my flair? what is my big idea?" And then after watching a very touching episode of oprah today (as though all of her episodes aren't touching) where she had this african band of refugees who made their own instruments and play as a way of expressing themselves i finally kind of got a vision. it was simple but deep. wanna hear it? no? ok i'll tell you anyways (this might only make sense to like 3 people who read this and know about psychology and know what i'm studying so apologies).

latinos are always put together with black as a "racial minority" but no one ever actually does reserach on latinos cuz everytime they do nothing pans out. but i was thinking maybe this is because they are always using black measures, looking at latinos from a racialized lense. then you take the fact that latinos are usually immigrants into account and you realize that if you take their homeland into account most of these people are the poorest of the poor from their countries (mexico, central america). These people are the equivalent of refugees but no one here gives a shit about them. they come here and they fill the lowest caste of society and they have dreams for their children and those dreams don't always mean getting phd's or becoming lawyers. And it's not because latinos some how devalue education. In fact lots of studies show that they really do value it, but i'ts less about learning and more about using school as a means of not "working as hard as i do someday.' But you are talking about a group of peopel who essentially has nothing beyond a 5th grade education, so to come here and have their kids graduate from college is a big deal. I'm not expressing myself well but what i'm trying to say is that maybe it's not a race issue at all. obvi it' sa race issue to americans and to latinos who have been here for a while but i'm talking about the FOB's. maybe to them it's a class issue and you can't expect a group of peopel who are the most oppressed in their country to come here and know what it means to be middle class and to take on middle class values. And some of them become financially middle class (ie my family) but that doesn't mean that they don't still carry with them their 3rd world culture of poverty. So waht i'm saying is perhaps we should stop comparing them to blacks and start talking about them relative to where they come from literally and psychologically.

ok that was kind of really broad and you all are like...whaaa happeeeeen, but point being my prof wants me to do a focus group on latino parents and how they socialize their kids to understand racial discrimination and i was like "um i don't think they do. i think they are more worried about their kids being poor than they are about their kids experiencing prejudice." and she was like...wow that was deep. and we had a moment where i enlightened her. and then i was talkign to ozan and he was like...really, the immigrants from latin america are super poor? i didn't realize that. and i was like...WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN! because seriously i ws shocked.

ok this soapbox is a bit to high for me right now so i'm gonna get off it and watch some gilmore girls. someday when i get published (and make a lot more sense) you can all say you were there at the formation of my theory.

PS, is it odd to see me have some sense of depth when i'm usually talking about drinking and jello shots and clothing and watching copious amounts of television?