How does race re-shape our collective understanding of the home?
To be blunt, our country would not have been founded without the collective use of slavery. The roles Africans played in the early development of the country in the 17th and 18th centuries can still be seen through the behaviors some families function today. Like the example used in class today, Aunt Jamima, the African nanny who was the caretaker of both the house and the children can in part be associated with the heavy use of daycares or baby sitters families across the country use. Race has re-shaped the understanding of the home in subtle but noticeable ways. In the video about Kunta Kinte and tracing his heritage back to Africa, the tribe were his ancestors live can be described as having very family centric oral based traditions focused around story telling as a historic dialogue. This kind of tradition was brought over through the slave trade, and can be argued as being a major ingredient in the melting pot we call America. Many ideologies, traditions, and values we see and in this country are a collective product of the combination race relations.
Through the lessons I've learned that shaping a home has been more difficult for certain racial groups than others. The cookie cutter mold people have been taught to accept is racially ambiguous, culturally insipid and a blueprint rather than a true sustainable model. Human beings are different not only in their personality but also in the color of their skin and sadly, these colors tend to dictate parts of our history as a racial group. Being from Latin America, I have seen the disenfranchisement of ethnic communities. As much of a big deal as race is in the U.S thanks to the legacy of slavery, it is even bigger over there where we have not only Afro-Americans but also natives. Race is a social construction as is the idea of owning a home. Sadly, many of these constructions do not mesh so as a result reaching certain ideals becomes more difficult for some groups. But it is this difficulty that brings them together and causes them to guard their history and tradition more zealously. When translated to home ownership, this zealousness only increases and we saw this at Hannibal square. We see this in the interaction of minority families. To this day I still feel American minority families are more united than those of white Americans who don't even sit down to dinner as a group nowadays.
Race redefines our view of the home due to the fact that some communities are made up of certain groups more than others. I think families of all backgrounds dream of owning a single family home in the suburbs but certain groups have higher expectations than others. I think the affluent expect and want to have a larger house than the middle and lower classes. I think east Winter Park has different ideas about what defines a nice house than what west Winter Park would look for in a house. Race plays a role into housing expectations because people expectations of house niceness and style may be reflected by a person’s race. This is not the way it should be though. Race should not play a factor into what type of house a person should design or live in. Recently we have seen that, unfortunately, lenders have based interest rates on mortgages based off of people’s races as opposed to their ability to pay and this practice has to stop.
This is a subject many try and avoid when talking about American culture today, especially in terms of the home. The African mama is an iconic figure in many households and in many senses they were the true mothers to my grandmothers generation. I have had many talks with my grandmother about race when she was a young girl. She had a nanny that took care of her. This sense of home and warmth of a family I experienced greatly in my homestays abroad this past semester. I can not talk for all African cultures, but I can say of the families I stayed with in East Africa, there is a sense of belonging in every home. There was a warmth and inviting feeling even in the homes of those I had not known for long. I think that a lot of American "home" ideals come from this heritage. In America especially, there is not just black and white there is a melting pot of different cultures and ideologies that have created this unique sense of place.
The racial disparity that has evolved over the years in the United States can been examined through the varying rates of home ownership among cultures and through their distinct settings. Historical trends show that the home and home ownership can be associated with race. Yet I have noticed that Hispanics particularly seem to have a wide range of housing patterns. Mexican Americans living in the California are known to be live in the urban slums and have houses that represent a poor status. This has much to do with the fact that they are illegal immigrants whose low income stems from the fact that they work below minimum wage. Whereas, many Cubans in Miami represent their wealthy prominence in the city by having huge mansions near the ocean. Cubans that legally came to the United States from their native island have had given themselves a more affluent lifestyle than other Hispanic ethnicities. They are able to buy and own more houses than their counterparts. So I would say that the types of races, especially among minority groups, do play a part in re-shaping our understanding of the home.
Race brings a whole new idea to the home. People of different cultures show different customs and design their homes differently based of these ideals. A typical Hispanic home has a lot of color and a strong tie to family and have rather large families. Whereas most Americans I know, know about half their families. As in I have hardly interacted with anyone of my mother's side while my dad's side is in contact constantly. This lack of family ties in white families gives the smaller homes. From experience with many people you can see this underlying reliance on family ties and racial ties. It’s not uncommon to find Cubans living closer together, Irish, German, or Chinese there is a sense of belonging when you live near people of the same race in larger cities. Giving us little Italy and China town in New York City. But there is also this identity we share as Americans to fall back on a pride as being someone who has freedoms that are not always allowed in other countries of the world. But even with these little groups we interact and share home environments and are neighbors.
With regard to African American and white American families in general, race re-shapes our understanding of the home only slightly, since similar values were promoted for white American families as were created later for “freed” African Americans families. The ads targeting African American families promoted an orderly, clean, yet cozy and inviting home with the intent to motivate African Americans to aspire to the same level of material wealth and “happiness” as a perfect middle class white family. Race re-shaped the collective understanding of the home in the sense that African American families were essentially no different than the average white middle class family. Consumerism and material wealth lay at the center of the new collective understanding of the ideal home for black families. The same pressures developed for African Americans families that existed for white families when it came to creating the perfect home. In general, it was as if the Africans American families were in a race to catch up to levels of consumerism that white families had reached. In a more specific context, race completely re-shapes our collective understanding of the home, since every culture promotes different values for the ideal home. For instance, an American home looks and feels different than a Swiss home, since there is a greater emphasis on material in U.S. homes. An ideal Swiss house has a less ostentatious focus on material wealth, with modest and more traditional decor, similar to the simplicity of interior Swedish house designs.
Race shouldn’t matter when attempting to form a collective understanding of the home. A home is a place of love and security and shouldn’t need to be understood and identified by the color of the family living in the home. But throughout history we have seen that certain events have made race in the home matter and something that should be taken into account. The end of slavery in the United States was supposed to bring peace and equality to the home –regardless of what color the family living in the home was. But this did not happen. In class we saw one image that really struck my attention. It was a work done to show the home and the land around it during slavery and then after. Instead of showing a huge and important difference in the living environment, it was virtually the same image just moved around a bit. This illustrates that the perfect family home that we are all built to strive for is not just hard to attain in general, but even harder for different racial groups to attain. It is something that is not fair, but something that indeed does exist.
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How does race re-shape our collective understanding of the home?
To be blunt, our country would not have been founded without the collective use of slavery. The roles Africans played in the early development of the country in the 17th and 18th centuries can still be seen through the behaviors some families function today. Like the example used in class today, Aunt Jamima, the African nanny who was the caretaker of both the house and the children can in part be associated with the heavy use of daycares or baby sitters families across the country use. Race has re-shaped the understanding of the home in subtle but noticeable ways. In the video about Kunta Kinte and tracing his heritage back to Africa, the tribe were his ancestors live can be described as having very family centric oral based traditions focused around story telling as a historic dialogue. This kind of tradition was brought over through the slave trade, and can be argued as being a major ingredient in the melting pot we call America. Many ideologies, traditions, and values we see and in this country are a collective product of the combination race relations.
Through the lessons I've learned that shaping a home has been more difficult for certain racial groups than others. The cookie cutter mold people have been taught to accept is racially ambiguous, culturally insipid and a blueprint rather than a true sustainable model. Human beings are different not only in their personality but also in the color of their skin and sadly, these colors tend to dictate parts of our history as a racial group. Being from Latin America, I have seen the disenfranchisement of ethnic communities. As much of a big deal as race is in the U.S thanks to the legacy of slavery, it is even bigger over there where we have not only Afro-Americans but also natives. Race is a social construction as is the idea of owning a home. Sadly, many of these constructions do not mesh so as a result reaching certain ideals becomes more difficult for some groups. But it is this difficulty that brings them together and causes them to guard their history and tradition more zealously. When translated to home ownership, this zealousness only increases and we saw this at Hannibal square. We see this in the interaction of minority families. To this day I still feel American minority families are more united than those of white Americans who don't even sit down to dinner as a group nowadays.
Race redefines our view of the home due to the fact that some communities are made up of certain groups more than others. I think families of all backgrounds dream of owning a single family home in the suburbs but certain groups have higher expectations than others. I think the affluent expect and want to have a larger house than the middle and lower classes. I think east Winter Park has different ideas about what defines a nice house than what west Winter Park would look for in a house. Race plays a role into housing expectations because people expectations of house niceness and style may be reflected by a person’s race. This is not the way it should be though. Race should not play a factor into what type of house a person should design or live in. Recently we have seen that, unfortunately, lenders have based interest rates on mortgages based off of people’s races as opposed to their ability to pay and this practice has to stop.
This is a subject many try and avoid when talking about American culture today, especially in terms of the home. The African mama is an iconic figure in many households and in many senses they were the true mothers to my grandmothers generation. I have had many talks with my grandmother about race when she was a young girl. She had a nanny that took care of her. This sense of home and warmth of a family I experienced greatly in my homestays abroad this past semester. I can not talk for all African cultures, but I can say of the families I stayed with in East Africa, there is a sense of belonging in every home. There was a warmth and inviting feeling even in the homes of those I had not known for long. I think that a lot of American "home" ideals come from this heritage. In America especially, there is not just black and white there is a melting pot of different cultures and ideologies that have created this unique sense of place.
The racial disparity that has evolved over the years in the United States can been examined through the varying rates of home ownership among cultures and through their distinct settings. Historical trends show that the home and home ownership can be associated with race. Yet I have noticed that Hispanics particularly seem to have a wide range of housing patterns. Mexican Americans living in the California are known to be live in the urban slums and have houses that represent a poor status. This has much to do with the fact that they are illegal immigrants whose low income stems from the fact that they work below minimum wage. Whereas, many Cubans in Miami represent their wealthy prominence in the city by having huge mansions near the ocean. Cubans that legally came to the United States from their native island have had given themselves a more affluent lifestyle than other Hispanic ethnicities. They are able to buy and own more houses than their counterparts. So I would say that the types of races, especially among minority groups, do play a part in re-shaping our understanding of the home.
Race brings a whole new idea to the home. People of different cultures show different customs and design their homes differently based of these ideals. A typical Hispanic home has a lot of color and a strong tie to family and have rather large families. Whereas most Americans I know, know about half their families. As in I have hardly interacted with anyone of my mother's side while my dad's side is in contact constantly. This lack of family ties in white families gives the smaller homes. From experience with many people you can see this underlying reliance on family ties and racial ties. It’s not uncommon to find Cubans living closer together, Irish, German, or Chinese there is a sense of belonging when you live near people of the same race in larger cities. Giving us little Italy and China town in New York City. But there is also this identity we share as Americans to fall back on a pride as being someone who has freedoms that are not always allowed in other countries of the world. But even with these little groups we interact and share home environments and are neighbors.
With regard to African American and white American families in general, race re-shapes our understanding of the home only slightly, since similar values were promoted for white American families as were created later for “freed” African Americans families. The ads targeting African American families promoted an orderly, clean, yet cozy and inviting home with the intent to motivate African Americans to aspire to the same level of material wealth and “happiness” as a perfect middle class white family. Race re-shaped the collective understanding of the home in the sense that African American families were essentially no different than the average white middle class family. Consumerism and material wealth lay at the center of the new collective understanding of the ideal home for black families. The same pressures developed for African Americans families that existed for white families when it came to creating the perfect home. In general, it was as if the Africans American families were in a race to catch up to levels of consumerism that white families had reached. In a more specific context, race completely re-shapes our collective understanding of the home, since every culture promotes different values for the ideal home. For instance, an American home looks and feels different than a Swiss home, since there is a greater emphasis on material in U.S. homes. An ideal Swiss house has a less ostentatious focus on material wealth, with modest and more traditional decor, similar to the simplicity of interior Swedish house designs.
Race shouldn’t matter when attempting to form a collective understanding of the home. A home is a place of love and security and shouldn’t need to be understood and identified by the color of the family living in the home. But throughout history we have seen that certain events have made race in the home matter and something that should be taken into account. The end of slavery in the United States was supposed to bring peace and equality to the home –regardless of what color the family living in the home was. But this did not happen. In class we saw one image that really struck my attention. It was a work done to show the home and the land around it during slavery and then after. Instead of showing a huge and important difference in the living environment, it was virtually the same image just moved around a bit. This illustrates that the perfect family home that we are all built to strive for is not just hard to attain in general, but even harder for different racial groups to attain. It is something that is not fair, but something that indeed does exist.
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