Educated Latina Quotes

We aren’t encouraged to think for ourselves and ask questions. We are expected to accept what they teach us as infallible truths.

I have no doubt that we will one day abolish the death penalty in America. It will come sooner if people like me who know the truth about executions do our work well and educate the public. It will come slowly if we do not. Because, finally, I know that it is not a question of malice or ill will or meanness of spirit that prompts our citizens to support executions. It is, quite simply, that people don't know the truth of what is going on. That is not by accident. The secrecy surrounding executions makes it possible for executions to continue. I am convinced that if executions were made public, the torture and violence would be unmasked, and we would be shamed into abolishing executions. We would be embarrassed at the brutalization of the crowds that would gather to watch a man or woman be killed. And we would be humiliated to know that visitors from other countries - Japan, Russia, Latina America, Europe - were watching us kill our own citizens - we, who take pride in being the flagship of democracy in the world. (p. 197)

For me, for Chicanaos, this is a battle between the power of the colonizer and the colonized peoples and land.

However, many of our ancestors were both the colonizers and the colonized. We embody immensely conflicting cultures.

right" way to be Chicana/o also could be a hegemonic discourse and exclusionary of those who do not fit. They recognized the possibility of multiple hegemonic structures and the danger of policing claims to identity.

I begin with the test tube labeled, with a red Sharpie marker, "Assimilation." The smell alone can make anyone lose some, if not all, sense of consciousness. The smell takes me back to a time in my vida when assimilation led to many bewildering, aching experiences that seemed to dis-member me through the infiltration of my veins with poison and marginalization, inducing me to vomit my cultura and lead my life as a vendida.

Cultivating an atmosphere of respect through caring relationships is particularly significant for Latino and Latina students (Garza 2008) as it is a critical source of motivation for Latino and Latina students who may feel marginalized by the schooling process (Perez 2000). Ladson-Billings (2009) found that the ability to form positive relationships between students and teacher was one of the most important criteria for identifying exemplary CRP educators. Gay (2000) emphasizes that the actual sites for determining successful learning resides in the interactions between learners—and between learners and their teacher. The fact that this positive student-teacher relationship was missing adds another dimension to the explanation of student nonperformance.

Nothing shakes a microaggressor more than an educated Latina.

Among them were Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, the first Muslim women ever elected to the House. Rashida’s and Ilhan’s victories were more than symbolic for me, as I counted both women as dear friends. Not only had I witnessed their trials and watched them triumph, but the fact that Ilhan wore a hijab while Rashida did not was, for me, a beautiful expression of the independence and diversity of Muslim women. African American women, Latina women, and Native American women also won big on election night, most of them running on progressive platforms calling for health care for all, tuition-free college education, environmental protections, gun law reforms, and a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants and refugees.