Names-Part 2

One revealing aspect of the movie A Day Without a Mexican that came as a surprise to me was how agriculture is California’s number one industry.  When I think of California, the first images that come to my mind are places I have traveled to in the state:  Hollywood, in and around Los Angeles, the Pacific Ocean, national parks such as Yosemite and the Sequoias, and touristy areas such as Chinatown in San Francisco.  None of these stereotypes have anything to do with farming and how much California’s economy revolves around the labor of undocumented workers, labeled as “Mexicans.”  Because of this, A Day Without a Mexican was very eye-opening for me in how it overturned many stereotypes about a place that I have experienced differently from the people who actually live there, although I have some experience with the stereotypical term.

I lived in a small town of about 360 people in rural Nebraska for the first 18 years of my life.  Despite its lack of population, Shickley, Nebraska population consists of relatively rich farmers who make a good living off the profit that comes from raising corn and soybeans on thousands of acres of rich, Nebraska soil.  My peers growing up, then, reflected relatively very little diversity, except for the Latino family that moved to town when I was in fourth grade.  José was in my brother’s class and he became one of my brother’s best friends as they grew up together.  Even though José’s family was from California, he and his brothers and sisters were still labeled the “Mexicans” of Shickley, even though he and his younger siblings couldn’t really speak Spanish and had never been to Mexico. 

How does racial stereotyping of people and places happen so instantaneously, especially in a town the size of Shickley?  I believe it all goes back to the significance that a “name” or a “label” has in our society today.  A Day Without a Mexican was a good representation of this idea (even though it was a little below the benchmark of a high quality film) and showed how we citizens of the United States do not realize where we would be without the undocumented population. 

What’s in a name?  We all responded to the meaning our names have to us in our initial blog posts, addressing those given to us at birth.  But what about our cultural names?  I am citizen of the United States or an American, but Americans populate Central and South America as well.  Why do we citizens of the United States use such a lax term to label ourselves?  Even the Spanish word Estadounidense is more precise than our own word for us!  In using the term American, then, we already (though unknowingly?) use the definition of the word to include those from the south who we also mark as undocumented.