LatinX event review

I attended the LatinX brown bag and was absolutely blown away! This was one of my very first brown bags and I was amazed at how crowded it was. In all honestly, I was expecting there to be only a group of 8-10 people and was blown away when I walked in and could barely find a place to sit. It was truly heartwarming to see parts of the Colgate community come together to listen to this brown bag.

The LatinX brown bag began with a panel of Colgate students being asked a serious of questions from the host then followed by questions from the audience. I found in fact that my favorite part was not the questions from the host, but questions from the audience. Before attending this brown bag, I did not really have any background on the Latin community and was educated on the lack of diversity here at Colgate. After this brown bag, I too began seeing the lack of representation of all minority groups here at Colgate. Everywhere I look, I can find people who look like me and come from similar backgrounds as me. During this brown bag, I learned this is not true for the Latin community, where one of the girls shared her struggle of finding a group of friends who shared a similar background to hers.

During this brown bag, I was struck by a lot of things that the panel said, and recognized my own naivety of and lack of knowledge about the Latin community. One of the girls, I believe her name was Christie, talked about how her step sister has blonde hair and blue eyes and her family members call her pretty. However, when they talk to Christie, they say that she is a very pretty black woman. Christie remarks at how hurtful this comment was. Why can’t they just tell her she is pretty too. Why do they have to make this distinction in the first place? Another girl talked about the pressure she feels in classrooms to prove her intelligence to others because she feels as if she is seen as not as intelligent because she is a Latina. Although I am not Latina and cannot speak to the same degree of the struggles to which this girl has experienced, I too feel pressure to prove myself to others, especially here at Colgate. I was a straight A student in high school and was never intimidated to talk in class, however, at Colgate, I find it very daunting and nerve-racking to talk in some classrooms.

In the Q & A part of this brown bag, a woman asked how she can be a better supporter and ally to the LatinX community. I thought this was a really great question, because I too wondered how I could advocate and be an ally to the LatinX and other communities. Christie answered this question by saying that it is about bringing different groups together and being advocates for each other. This idea reminded me a lot of Lorde’s ideas that we need to accept and embrace each other’s differences in order to see change. Another guy in the Q and A asked how he can approach telling his conservative catholic Latin American family that he is gay. Chelsea responded by saying that although she is not going through the same experience as the man, she too comes from a catholic family that doesn’t always understand or accept the deemed radical ideas that she brings from America back home to Mexico. That being said she says, it is her duty to just educate them and make them more aware. I thought this was a wonderful response to his question because everybody’s reactions will be different, but it is our duty as a society to educate others.

          I’m going to end with a quote that one of the girls said which I feel really resonates with the ideas we have been talking about. She said, “mi existencia es mi resistencia” which translates to “my existence is my resistance”.
- Jane B