I am a Broken Mirror of the Society-one part of my soc of education take home exam narrative

I hope you do not mess this up this time! I did not say it to myself loudly, but I thought it in my inner world deeply. Out of lockdown, so what is next? In the past, I was get used to stay away from all people in a cell, insecure and at the same time too sterile from the real life. I was comforting myself by telling that yes I cannot go out, but no one can get in, too. I did not have a private room or personal one before, until I was incarcerated. That’s something! Right now, I have many letters in a huge box that tells me a lot of things about life and people. These letters remind me that I am not forgotten and alone.

I walked a long way and it was not easy like people tell you while they look down to you. They are proud because they have never imprisoned and always chose the right thing, but they are lying. They are lying, because no one is a saint just because they have not done something bad, yet. They always throw me some stones made by words, but did not Jesus say that who is without sin cast the first stone at the “guilty” one. No way, I have never seen a person that follows his advice. They love to label someone as a evil and cast all their hate stones to him or her to feel less sinner. Actually, sin is not the point here. I learned to use these kinds of notion from the prison father. I always wanted to ask him, why we have to call him father, but the female ones as sisters. If we call some of them father, why not we call the others mother instead of sister. Yes, I know there are some mothers like Mother Theresa, but not very common. I did not have any brother. It could be good, if I could call a priest brother, bro! I do not like formal calls, so by this label, I might be more comfortable to talk with priests. Also, how many of us can speak their regrets with their real fathers without any trouble. This label makes my confessions harder. I always have these kinds of questions, so I never could find a place in any religion. I have a lot of questions for Judaism or Islam, too. Once, I was working for a Jewish Rabbi as a nanny and cleaner. I saw that they have two king size beds in their bedrooms and I was confused. After a while, I realized that they were separating the wife’s bed when she has her periods. This made me mad same as Muslim’s praying locations in the mosques by gender. All of these shape not only man's mind, but also females mind to internalize the gender hierarchy. These symbolic structures produce real problems same as hidden curriculums at school system. That’s why I had always some problem at schools, too. Seeing many hidden things always create troubles for me, but if you see something once how can I pretend blind.

Did I tell you that when I was in prison and the gourds were calling our name, we always supposed to say “Glad to be here?” What a lie! How come a system can force you to tell a lie every day when you hear your name in a place where supposed to alter your mistakes and learn some good things to make you prepare for outside life. Actually, maybe this was the decent way to prepare us, because free people build their life on many lies and violence and they are just not caught by the law.

Anyway, I have learned a lot from my mistakes. I owe a lot to my mistakes. I would not give my mistakes to another people even if it was possible. Opposite to many people, I really like the religious devil figure in any religion or culture. I think we can learn many things from the devil metaphor. I insist, we can even learn more things from devil than prophets sometimes. I also think, society can learn a lot of things and educate themselves by listening or at least observing and understanding people that they labeled as devil, evil or “others” such as me. We are also sometimes like educators. You laugh, ha?! Take your time friend, I will laugh last.

Several days ago after I got out from the jail I started to work with my friend. Thankfully, he helped me otherwise what could I do with my record. My record file is the only thing that I have a photo on it. Anyway, my friend has a cart in a mall and selling winter scarves. He asked me to get a table top mirror for the stand. First I went to several stores in the mall, but I wanted to compare the prices so I decided to go Macy’s, too. I went to store and asked one of the worker if they have any tabletop mirror or not, same as I did in other stores. He was white, Anglo, in his 60’s and looking to my face like irritated. He said directly, “What!?,” and I repeated my question. He did not say, sorry what did you say, or can you repeat it or etc. He said “WHAT?” and continuously said many words with exaggerated hand moves like I was deaf; “you mean something to weigh something? Table what?” And I felt like my face were burning. I said table top mirrors like people use for make up or see their face on its surface. He looked at me with empty eyes first without any effort of understanding. And then, he examine my face, I guess he realized my changing color. Then I asked him where the bath section with a big exhale was? He started to explain me some corners with a robotic voice, but I could not hear anything and just tried to walk fast to open my distance from him. I found that the section was at down stairs and I asked many employees about the location of the tabletop mirror and they understand me very well. The problem was not that they cannot understand my accent, but I have been experiencing many rude responses when people do not understand my pronunciations or I think sometimes they just pretend to not understand my speaking. This is not a conspiracy theory, I know it! They love to see you while you are struggling to explain them again and again. Not always, but I know this happens, because their response does not carry any effort for understanding, but a rude body language.

Anyway, I was so upset for a while. I was even regretful to not leave the store right after this “conversation.” After I bought the mirror and came back to chart, I told all these to my friend. He said why you didn’t get his name and ask the manager. I did these kinds of staff in the past, too, but this time I did not feel comfortable because I still carry many invisible sandbags that I brought from the prison which put limitations on my actions and dreams. Not only this, but also if you do some aggressive reactions to someone, you are hurting your psychology, too. However, my friend told me that you need to find out some ways to relieve the pressure. So, I found myself murmuring that “you will see man; I will talk about you in my story.” Yes, I learned a peaceful way in prison to take revenge from people; writing. For instance, I wrote this for a while ago:

O you who cut my lips roughly with a rusty knife while I am talking,
Silence this tongue as much as you can,
Try and get tired as you wish and receive greed,
Sacrifice me to your prejudice which you are scared to lose,
Drain some poisonous hate words into my throat,
Get tired!
Hopefully, lose the strength to reach another lip...
But know that the truth does not have a tongue that you can cut and silence it.
Your cruel hands cannot reach to the neck of hope to break it,
That is a breath flow in the veins of life,
There is no need a voice to call it...
Your hands can not go beyond shutting its ears,
And you cannot stop me or my walk towards to hope either,
Because the path that I am pacing is far away from your dream reach.
No one can know its satisfaction until they walk on it.
O you who cut my lips roughly with a rusty knife while I am talking,
Silence this tongue as much as you can,
Try and get tired as you wish and receive greed,
Get tired!
Hopefully, lose the strength to reach another lip...

Moreover, I thought one more option to feel good. I decided to go that store every day when I work in the mall and ask to the same guy if they have any tabletop mirror until he feel suffocated from my questions. He will probably think that I am crazy, but he will soon realize that I am not! At the end of several days of psychological pressure, I will tell him I will come every day until he learn to respond to people, especially minorities politely when he does not understand their pronunciation. How is that? I love this idea. I remember this tactic from my boarding school time. When we were so bored in the boarding school where people try to shape our bind to a specific way that fit well into dominant power’s template, I was collecting some of my best friends from the school and telling them my plan to create some fun time. We were deciding some specific silly questions to ask “lucky” students from around one after another. We were deploying to different locations and one of us was starting the game. She was asking like, what time is it and then after the answer was given, she was like why it is 5 pm, but not 9 pm or using other silly options. And then, when the person was really pissed off and confused, she was leaving and the other member of our group was going to ask same or similar questions. This was a unique tactics from my poisonous school times.

I had to climb every inch of my way on the life path with my scratch. For instance, when I was in 5th grade, I drew and paint a wonderful picture for one of my art class assignment. When I showed my picture to the teacher, she was like who did this for you?! I told her, I did it by myself. And she responded back to me that “You are lying!” I told her, I did not lie and none of my family member likes to draw or paint. She insisted and told me that “You are lying and I will not love you, either!” I went back to my desk and started to draw a very similar piece while I was crying really badly and silently. I was wiping my eyes intently to see clearer to draw better. It was impossible to finish all the drawing, but I chose some samples from the main picture. After I created my proof carefully, I took it and went back near by the teacher desk and handed it to her. She did not lift her head while she said wait until the break bell and then she saw the paper and with a surprised voice, she said “Oh, you! So, you drew a new one! Hmm.” I said yes and started to cry again and left the class. I do not remember any apologize for this incident after this class. I have experienced many similar reactions from many teachers for my little talents. Once, just because of similar reaction for an extra credit take home math equation question, one of my teacher did not believe me for doing it all by myself and did not give me the promised extra credit. In response to this degrading behavior, I decided to give one of my exams empty to protest. At first, some of my friend realized this and take my paper and fill it with answers to help me. While they were writing I was erasing their answers on my paper, but then they took my paper away and filled it and handed to the teacher. You can imagine how the class atmosphere was. I took 100 from that exam, but then I decided to repeat my plan, but this time more secretly and managed to do that. After a while, the Math teacher asked me to talk privately and I told her why I did that action. After my explanation, she apologized to me.

As you can see, my all life including education was surrounded with individual and structural handicaps which I cannot explain detailed in several pages. I learned to use various ways to see people themselves by my unique actions. I might say, maybe I am not a tabletop mirror or cannot pronounce this object’s English name perfectly, but surely I am a humble mirror for people even though they are not always willingly to look at. They broke this mirror once by seeing bad things on it. They blame me for this without adding their parts to it, but now I started fresh. I decided to reflect only goods on my mirror by changing my position.

Meryem Rabia Tasbilek-Fiction 

Domestic Violence in Latino Community

For our group presentation, we chose Domestic violence and sexual assault in undocumented and documented Latina population in the U.S. We decided to analyze the reasons, different types of visa options and laws that help the victims of this violence. We talked about barriers and homicides that were currently going on in Ciudad Juarez as we learned with more details by the help of class materials. We talked about VAWA and how these laws protect victims of abuse who are undocumented. Abusive people such as partners, husbands were threatening the Latinas with deportations if they were trying to escape from them or planning to go police to seek some professional help to alter their violent environment. I shared some important notions in Latino culture that reproduce domestic violence.

In addition to this useful information that gives us wide perspective to understand the domestic violence issue, we shared some useful information about the impact of Economic Inequality and domestic violence. Females continue to earn less than men. It is a significant factor that maintains the cycle of domestic violence. I emphasized that not only earning less money than man, but also Latinas have some troubles to gain power and freedom that normally must be equal to their responsibilities and working effort. Moreover, the legal systems discriminate against victims and fail to protect women who seek protection and support. By the support of some laws and social movements, there are some improvements, but unfortunately they are not significant. So far, we learned that VAWA created special provisions in the United States immigration law to protect victims of abuse who are not citizens of the United States. Under the VAWA support, domestic violence victims can receive self-protection from the police without any fear of deportation and battered spouse or child waiver. If we share these kinds of information with our classmates and loved ones, we can improve people’s awareness about their options and rights so their partners cannot threaten them with unrealistic situations to abuse them more. In the class, we learned that knowledge is power, so if we increase ours and societies knowledge capacity, we can alter our today and future and decrease the violence in our lives.

In the Latino culture such as Marianismo as an aspect of the female gender role in the machismo of Latin American folk culture passivize the females to fight back against abuser family partner and silence them. It is the veneration for feminine virtues like purity and moral strength.” Moreover, Machismo as an assertive masculinity which is often characterized by aggressiveness and dominance over women, quality of being macho, exaggerated masculinity can be a trigger to make males more violent against women as a part of cultural ritual and to prove Latino’s manhood. In addition, Familismo; as a form of social structure in which the needs of the family as a group are more important than the needs of any individual family member make women nearly always postpone their desire and problems, but work for the good of their families. This makes all masculine bigotry more powerful in the society and silenced the female victims. Not only these kinds of cultural codes and norms, but also society’s social inequalities are very effective about the Latino’s violence against Latina women. When Latina men fell powerless in their social world because of systematic structural violence against them, they became more violent to their families especially to Latina women. As we can see the problem is very complicated and we cannot only blame the individual violent Latinos, because while they are practicing some violence at home, they are also victims of the cruel, unequal society.

During this semester we also learned that a theory of multiple worlds was explaining us about conflict in between two worlds and culture. This situation also can be trigger for some people to practice violence or victim of these double worlds’ pressure and stress by other oppressed Latinos in the society. Moreover, we learned that after the de-industrialization Braceros switched to the Braceras and this social change effect on both sides of Latino community. This economic and structural change can make Macho males more aggressive against females. When Latinos feel less powerful by losing their positions in arm-labor world, they became more violent against women. I believe that structural violence feed the individual violence, especially domestic violence. In addition to this, individual violence and violent mentality, language are also feeding and making possible the structural violence. If we want to alter all these violent existence, we need to worn on both of them. None of them is more important than the other.

In this semester we also learned that culture and the family also defines the acceptable gender roles and limitations based on the gender differences. In the bicultural reality, family is important to not get lost and find the balance, but it can turn out to a type of oppression. Latinas are giving money to survival of the entire family system, but rarely given the corresponding increase in power or self-determination. This must be change! In my opinion Familismo is good, but, the dose makes the poison a medicine.

As we learned from this presentations and during all the semester micro level violence is feeding the macro level violence. In addition to this, macro violence and violent language, structural changes in worker’s world are also helping us to reproduce violence and violent languages in the society. Both sides make the other side more possible. However, by the help of knowledge and other social helps like we shared in this presentation, we are as witnesses or today’s actual victims can be a part of the future’s inner and social revolution and hopefully create better conditions for new generation Latinas.

Meryem R. Tasbilek