Monday, February 24, 2020

Response to Esposito


I loved Jennifer Esposito’s article on Ugly Betty and the text’s discussion of the topic of “postracism/postracial” or it’s synonym “color blind.” I thought that Esposito made an appealing connection to how the politics of broadcast TV play into the presidential election, i.e. Obama winning the executive branch seat.

The most intriguing thing about the article to me is that Esposito cites the few Latin American scholars that are in the media studies discipline in the U.S. Mary Beltrán and Charles Berg from Texas (I believe that Beltrán was at Wisconsin, Madison, at the time this article was written (2009)) and Chon Noriega from UCLA. All three are a part of the Latino/a SCMS Caucus. Berg and Noriega are the founders of the caucus. I am a part of the caucus as a member. Obviously I am not a caucus officer. Here is the list of officers: https://www.cmstudies.org/members/group_content_view.asp?group=66723&id=512857
 Here is a video about the forming of the caucus: https://vimeo.com/135666194

The article spoke to me on questions about affirmative action. It has to be in place for the difficulties that other minorities have had earning a place in the academy. My Abuelo moved here in the late 50s after being a fisherman in Chile for several years. He worked at LAX during the day. Loading and unloading and baggage. He attended night classes. The professor at one of the night classes told him that he would do everything in his power to make sure that my Abuelo did not pass his class. He did not complete the course, nor did he graduate from the community college. My Abuelo was regularly called a “spic” in LA. Ironically, a lot of this happened in and around the academy.  

It is incumbent upon Latinos who have made it in the academy to help one another and that is why the SCMS caucus has been created. For mentorship. They are currently pairing up graduate students with other mentors. I know this post may seem like a tangent, but I found it interesting that as a whole there is not a lot of scholarship on American TV that is written by Latina/os or at least from a Hispanic perspective. I think that the citations may indicate this.

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