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Stereotypes Of Being Cuban

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Being Latino has many different definitions depending on who you ask. If you ask a Cuban, you get one answer, a Honduran will give you another, and an American will likely give you completely different answer. In the United States, being Latino has been dwindled down to the Mexican stereotype because of ignorance. The lack of education about Latin culture and identity makes it so that these stereotypes are perpetuated and deems it socially acceptable to be unaware about these subjects. When people find out that I’m Cuban, they usually only know three things, if any, about Cuba: the Castro brothers, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the Bay of Pigs Invasion. The recent spotlight on lifting the Cuban embargo was the first time in years that …show more content…

I never felt out of place being Cuban because many of the faculty and students were and if not, they were either Latino of a different nationality or very familiar with the culture from being raised in Miami. Like the influx of Dominican immigration to New York City, as mentioned in the Lopez article, Miami has had a large immigration population coming from Cuba, since the 1960s. As a result, most schools have many first-generation Cubans, but not to the extent as seen in the Lopez article. In the Urban High School, she studied, 91% of the students were Dominican because they were zoned to coincide in the same school. My experience is different because I went to a magnet school which I applied to for the academic rigor of their curriculum. To attend a magnet school, it doesn’t matter where in the school district you live, you just apply and hope for acceptance. As such, my school was pretty diverse because there were students from all over Miami-Dade County and of various identities. I was able to speak Spanish with my friends in the hallways or even in class unlike in Urban High School because my school understood that it only opens up more …show more content…

Coming from a city where I heard more Spanish than English in public and where Cuban coffee trumped Dunkin any day, Boston is a massive change. When counting the days for move-in day, I didn’t realize how it would affect me not to have friends who were Cuban or at least Hispanic. I’ve found myself having to explain things that I never even thought of before. The fact that drinking coffee is a cultural requirement to Cubans and that my most familiar form of greeting is a kiss on the cheek, are some examples. Don’t get me wrong; I love my classes, and Simmons has been everything I wanted my college experience to be so far. However, feeling detached from my culture has been difficult, but Canada’s article gives me hope. Even though Canada felt isolated on a campus that had so few black students in comparison to where he had grown up, he looks back on his experience at Bowdoin with positivity. According to Canada, “It is the bringing together of the rich diversity of our nation in an intimate setting that makes colleges like Bowdoin so necessary to the continued struggle for democracy in our country.” This line strikes me as the most important because I

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