Sacred Ground Session 5: Whose Land? More Layers: Exploring Latino History
Key Resources for participants to view/read prior to Session 5.
1) Session themes & overview from the author (see below)
2) PBS Documentary “Latino Americans, Episode 1: Foreigners in Their Own Land” 53 minuteshttps://episcopalchurch.org/sacred-ground/session-five
3) Selected article: Ripe Fields: The Promise and Challenge of Latino Ministry by Juan Oliver https://episcopalchurch.org/sacred-ground/session-five
4) Op-ed: Moving Beyond the Black-White Binary by Roberto Lovato
https://episcopalchurch.org/sacred-ground/session-five
5) Core book: Waking up White Chapter 13.
6) Core book: Jesus & the Disinherited, Chapter 1 (p 17-25 of 1996 paperback edition)
7) Password: ThisIsSacredGround
Session themes & overview from the author By now, you have walked through stories of deep harms perpetrated by Europeans against Native peoples in the Americas and against people of African descent. In this session, you will see how Latinos often live in an in-between space, as many are descendants of the Spanish and the Portuguese, of the many diverse Indigenous peoples in what we now call South and Central America and the Spanish Caribbean, and of Africans who were enslaved in these regions in even greater numbers than in North America. It is important to qualify and say that, while historic forces did lead to mixed-race populations in North America as well, many Latin American countries had different attitudes toward “race mixing.” To this day, there are whole nomenclatures for the many variations of skin color that resulted (less of a black/white frame), and this is often a source of pride. It is also true that skin color-based racism still pervades many Latin American cultures, and Indigenous rights continue to be a major issue.
Latinos in the United States span from descendants of Spanish colonists of North America from the 1600s and onward (as we learn about in the first film), to recent immigrants, and everyone in between. Many bring family histories and memories from various Latin countries (again, often from multiple sides of race-based harms). In the United States, for much of the country’s history, regardless of how long they’ve been here, Latinos often have been cast as “other,” “foreign,” and “less than” relative to non-Hispanic whites and, thus, have had to deal with the realities of racism and discrimination.
Juan Oliver’s book chapter “Who Is Latino?” will help outline these demographic histories and diversities more fully and, in particular, in relation to Latinos in The Episcopal Church. While the book’s statistics are dated, the trend lines are still true and relevant.
What insights might Latinos have about issues of race – from the vantage point of Mestizo, Mulatez, Latinidad – that can contribute to national progress and healing today? What emerges – for anyone –when one is conscious of having members of one’s family who were the “conquering peoples” and members who were the “conquered people”?
There is a tension built into the very title of this session’s documentary episode, “Foreigners in Their Own Land.” The title seeks to make the point that vis-à-vis the “contest” between Mexico and the United States, the U.S. took over formerly Mexican lands, forcing people to become foreigners” in what had been their home. But the episode also correctly highlights that Mexico itself was the product of Spanish conquest of Indigenous communities.
Fast-forward, and we can also ask: What emerges from the experience that some immigrants have of being in the dominant culture in their native countries and then being a minority or labeled as “racialized other” in the U.S.? Oliver invites us to think about the theological gifts that Latinos bring to the practice of multicultural ministry given their “wide and rich cultural matrix.”
An important subject is how Latinos are seen, and see themselves, relative to fraught racial constructs in the United States. In the second reading, Robert Lovato helps name the way in which Latinos can get lost in the over-focus in the U.S. on the black/white divide – what is referred to as the “black-white binary.” He asks us to be more conscious of stereotypes, invisibility, and gentrification, and more aware of how Latinos have been and are now subject to racial violence.
This session also can be a time to name and notice that an increasing number of Americans identify as mixed race and arguably have much to teach the rest of us, since the experience of identifying and being identified as mixed race in our society can provide a unique perspective on these issues.
Questions to Ponder as we watch and read…
- Any thoughts/feelings we’d like to share since our last session? (i.e.) Any new thoughts about traditional white Americans Thanksgiving celebrations in light of what we learned about Native American & European contact during Session 3? About African Americans in Session 4 vis a vis the legacy of slavery and its manifestations in Jim Crow, mass incarceration & violence against black/brown bodies?
- What did we learn from watching the PBS Documentary Latino Americans: Episode 1: Foreigners in Their Own Land? (i.e. history? Family connections?) What emotions do we feel watching this documentary? What connections are we able to make to the BBC Labyrinth?
- How do we respond to the stereotypes of Latinos and Anglos as presented in Juan Oliver’s Ripe Fields? P10
- Do we see similarities/differences between Oliver’s description of Latinos’ learning the ins and outs of another culture (dominant white culture in US) and the experiences of the Native American and African American peoples we have studied? “
- What new information did we learn about the experiences of Latino people in the US from Roberto Lovato’s “Moving Beyond the Black-White Binary”?
- How do we respond to the concept of White Privilege as described in the “Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack” in Ch 13 of “Waking Up White”? p 71
- Does the “financial reliability privilege” in the “Knapsack” correlate with Juan Oliver’s contention that the church doesn’t respect poor people & that remnants of Calvinism cause poor people to feel that their poverty displeases God?
- Where is Jesus in all of this? How does Howard Thurman’s description of Jesus’ status in the Roman Empire parallel the status of undocumented persons living in theUS today?How can we relate to such insecurity? What can we do as church to help alleviate it?
- (On-going questions: What stereotypes about people of another race do we recall hearing and believing as a child? Were we ever encouraged to question stereotypes in school, at home or in church? For whom do we feel empathy? Judgement? Why?)
Sacred Ground Session 5: Whose Land? More Layers: Exploring Latino History Agenda
7:00 Opening Prayer & acknowledgement of the Indigenous people on whose land we live
7:05 CHECK-IN & Reflection w/Large Group: Any thoughts/feelings we’d like to share at the midpoint of our Sacred Ground series? (i.e.) Any new thoughts about traditional white Americans Thanksgiving celebrations in light of what we learned about Native American & European contact during Session 3? About African Americans in Session 4 vis a vis the legacy of slavery and its manifestations in Jim Crow, mass incarceration & violence against black/brown bodies?
7:15 Re: Session 5: What did we learn from watching the PBS Documentary Latino Americans: Episode 1: Foreigners in Their Own Land? (i.e. history? Family connections?) What connections do we make between this film and the documentaries from Sessions 3 (Native Americans) & Session 4 (African Americans)? What emotional connection might we feel to our own ancestors who may have been driven from the common lands of Europe? What connections are we able to make to the BBC Labyrinth?
7:25 SHOW: “Latino or Hispanic? What’s the Difference?” 2:17 min youtube.com/results?search_query=latino+or+hispanic+what%27s+the+difference
SHOW: Key Facts about US Latinos for National Hispanic Heritage Month, Sept 2020 LINK: HERE – By focusing on Latinos only in the context of. immigration (though most Latinos are US born) the media reinforce the deeply held notion that Latinos are foreign and hostile, Lovato
SHOW: Multicultural Ministries Diocese of Olympia (Second Page of this LINK)
7:35 BREAK-OUT ROOMS: Dialogue Circles
Topic: The Essential Nature of Being Named and Being Visible (discussion based on readings of Ripe Fields, Moving Beyond the Black-White Binary & Waking Up White, Ch 13)
- How do we respond to the stereotypes of Latinos and Anglos as presented in Juan Oliver’s Ripe Fields? P10
- Do we see similarities/differences between Oliver’s description of Latinos’ learning the ins and outs of another culture (dominant white culture in US) and the experiences of the Native American and African American peoples we have studied? “
- What new information did we learn about the experiences of Latino people in the US from Roberto Lovato’s “Moving Beyond the Black-White Binary”?
- How do we respond to the concept of White Privilege as described in the “Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack” in Ch 1 of “Waking Up White”? p 71
- Does the “financial reliability privilege” in the “Knapsack” correlate with Juan Oliver’s contention that the church doesn’t respect poor people & that remnants of Calvinism cause poor people to feel that their poverty displeases God?
(On-going questions: What stereotypes about people of another race do we recall hearing and believing as a child? Were we ever encouraged to question stereotypes in school, at home or in church? For whom do we feel empathy? Judgement? Why?)
8:05 Whole Group Share-Out from Dialogue Circles
8:15 SHOW: Presiding Bishop’s Statement on the Crisis at the US Border 4:49 minutes
https://episcopalchurch.org/library/video/presiding-bishops-statement-crisis-us-border
8:20 Whole Group Share-Out: Where is Jesus in all of this? How does Howard Thurman’s description of Jesus’ status in the Roman Empire parallel the status of undocumented persons living in theUS today?How can we relate to such insecurity? What can we do as church to help alleviate it? (Heather)
8:27 Housekeeping & what’s next
8:30 Closing Prayer
SHOW: Prayer from The Diocesan Commission to End Racism, of West Virginia (Susan)
“O God of all nations and peoples: We live in a nation of immigrants and one in which the diverse gifts of many peoples have contributed to our energy and strength. Yet it is one in which some immigrants are discriminated against because of the color of their skin, their language, or the country of their origin. Help us, by your grace, to offer hospitality to all strangers, as our Father Abraham did in the desert. Grant us the wisdom and skill to enact just and merciful immigration reforms so that the hospitality and access to this great land may be offered equally to people of all colors and races and nations. Amen.
