For this project I “interviewed” nine different individuals regarding the topic question, how colonialism and capitalism affect your environment and nature surrounding you? Every individual had different experiences, but I related their experiences to topics and readings discussed throughout the course, GEO 5990 Special Topics: Environment & Development instructed by Dr. Lisa Kelley. The discussions ranged from 25 minutes to almost an hour long. The main points that I’ve taken from this project is that we all experience different outcomes in life and how we view it makes all the difference.
The gist of the conversations consisted of explaining cultural erasure, white supremacy, and how big corporations have always used their power to put the working class into an endless cycle of not being able to even meet our basic survival needs, much less what we need to thrive; how America seems to be this almighty country with endless opportunities but only for those in the 1%, the rest of us are left with the crumbs. All these different topics and experiences relate to how diversified minds go through life, how other people make us feel, how we feel in a country that most of the people don’t accept us, don’t want us here, how were not doing things “right”. This video series has made me appreciate the people that make up the community that I surround myself with because although we are all struggling with our own battles, we have each other to lean on.
These topics relate back to indigenous practices, community, not solving problems by the root but instead by the stem, carbon offset, economics, society, and environment, research culture; Underflows (diversified minds bring in different perspectives), and controversial conversations.
I will break down the videos down by order of date and present a transcript of some of the video. Due to the long length of each video, the transcripts will present the very first minutes to demonstrate who the person is, and then I will transcribe the question that I posed to people and what they said. Majority of the transcripts will be the first 5 minutes of the video, and/or the key portions of what we talked about in the video.
Video 1: April 29, 2022
Patrick
Carolina: Hi everyone, today we have my friend slash coworker. Do you want to state your name, what you do, your occupation.
Patrick: Word. Ya. Ya.Ya. Uh, my name is Patrick Peterson. Um, I’m a creative operator here at Meow Wolf Denver, uh, basically acting and playing all the time. Uh, I’m also a glassblower.
[Minute 2:00] Carolina: So, how has capitalism and colonization affected your environment and nature surrounding you?
Patrick: Let’s see, uhh, I feel like a big amount of it, um, uh, man, like, it definitely had shaped how I view everything politically in the world, uh, specifically with the U.S. too. Um, because that’s, that’s how the US started was because of colonialization and, and that whole manifest destiny thing, and, which is all bullshit and terrible things. And we should of learned to, you know, learn from each other instead of killing of an entire nation of people just to occupy their space like we should of be able, we could of, uh, collabed- collaborated together a lot better, um, instead of just, like, us trying to take over them. Uh, ridiculous and, um, that’s that’s still very much felt to this day. Uh I feel like all of the damage that colonization and everything started at the very beginning. Like, with that being, like, our cornerstone of the United States of America. Like, everything was just built off of that and those moments and even to this day like, um, like, one thing that I uh, I try to make sure that certain businesses, if they’ve been around for a very long time, I do not do business with them. Uh, one of the biggest ones is Chase Bank. Uh, I don’t mess with Chase bank because back in the slave trade, um, they, they were they would give people loans for their slaves and stuff like that. They made a lot of money off of slave trade.
Carolina: Whaaat?
Patrick: Oh ya, oh ya. Uh, same with some of the older insurance companies. Uh, because slaves were “property,” so you would have to insure your property. So, like, they also got a bunch of money that way. I’m like, uhh, ya, unless you’re going to give some of that for reparations, I’m not going to mess with you. Cause you literally held an entire group of people down, multiple groups of people down for financial gain. Which I can also wash your attention what what is money why do we even need it like.
Carolina: And that literally goes hand in hand with, like, how capitalism affects you, so it’s, like, can you expand a little bit more on, like, how capitalism would affect you?
Patrick: yeah, yeah, so, and with capitalism, that kind of also framed how I view our government, um, and in a very strong way, especially when looking back on, um, shoot, on like, the, the, the criminalization of cannabis back in the day, um, the, it was fully legal, not fully, but, like, there wasn’t any, like, laws against it. Um, um, uhh, wasn’t like, William Randolph Hurst, I believe was his name, he owned a, inherited a, like, a paper company, like, so, making newspapers, all that stuff, like, that was his bag, but hemp was a huge competitor with the paper company because you can make almost anything out of hemp, including paper, and William Randolph Hurst put together this huge smear campaign, uh, basically, like, making cannabis seem like, you know, it’s like the devil’s drug, and all this stuff, and like, also strongly tied it with like jazz musicians and just black people in general, and made it seem like they’re lazy. This said the other thing and yeah, like, that was all just to put groups of people down for financial gain, uh, the there’s been a lot of things done just for financial gain in this country that like had made me absolutely sick. Even not tying everything to racism because I don’t need to talk about that all the time but, like, McDonald’s is like a really good example of what kind of they’re they’re they’re stepping stone in me becoming like vegetarian and then eventually vegan because I did not want to deal with big companies that had such an influence on what laws can get made and not just for their own financial gain, and the big thing with McDonald’s was when they, like, blew up and became nationwide any farm that wanted to do business with them they made them, like, raise all their cattle and everything, and they’re very strict way and they wanted to make sure that every single farm across the US raise their cattle all the same, even if not all their meat was going to McDonald’s and still had to be raised so that all the McDonald’s hamburgers would taste the same, and meats, umm, getting other parts of the cow, you know, that’s, that’s a steak going to a different restaurant and stuff like that, but all basically just McDonald’s meat, they’re just my mind
Carolina: and all just like it feels like one giant cycle of like how we’re trying to just you know get out of that cycle and like the terms that we do on like a daily basis like the I’m quoting like this this author Kats “the fleshy messy like everyday life cycles” that we do it’s a part of, like, social reproduction and how social reproduction is kind of entwined with capitalism because you know those big powerhouses they don’t want us to succeed because you get it gives them more profit and the more that they benefit from us the more resources they’re gonna use in regards to like, the environment and like, with us ourselves too they’re gonna keep gaining profit and it sucks, like.
Video 2: May 1, 2022
Simra
Carolina: Okay, Uh, hi everyone we have my friend Simran who I am going to be interviewing not a formal interview but more of like just the conversation the whole topic about capitalism and colonization and how the environment and how it affects your nature surrounding you Simran you wanna state your name your occupation and like what do you do.
Simran: Hello my name is Simran Jaswani I currently work as a medical assistant but I’m also in nursing school I work full time and then I also go to school full time for nursing.
Carolina: So I came here to ask the question of how does capitalism and colonization affect the environment in nature surrounding you so canyou tell me a little bit more about like your experiences of like how this affects you.
Simran: yeah, so I think when I think of symbolism, I also think of, like, my job for example. If the first thing I think of and I feel like it’s had an impact because I’m not originally from America, so I think coming into like the culture of America, capitalism is huge and I think, in a way, it’s kind of unfair I guess because, like, it’s like, the thing is like, the rich get richer, poor get poorer kind of thing and not work, like, if you’re, like, poor, middle class, it’s so hard to, like, work up to get to where you want to be, but the rich, like I said, get richer because I work, like, you have a fixed pay. You have to, like, work to get all the way up, not the easiest thing to do and it’s just like, such like, a hierarchy system that like, you have to follow like, and it’s just like, certain ways you have to be in a capitalist world like, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s hard. I don’t think, I think people just, like, have accepted it as their norm to the point that they don’t realize they’re just doing it based on what, like, society has made normal, and I know a good point is that like, it really does affect our mental health a lot, because, like, you’re working day in and day out with something that is the normal and it’s like, it really is the cause of like, a lot of people’s, like, anxiety and depression as far as, like, making those working nonstop trying to make bills to, like, get like, raises and stuff like that. Like, it’s like, you’re constantly going and like a capitalist is society.
Carolina: It’s like one endless cycle that like just doesn’t stop because yeah, we need a roof over our head, we need to feed ourselves and it’s like if we don’t do these certain things we’re we’re not going to be able to do those things actually to survive
Simran: yeah and I think people don’t realize how much like a lot of it in America is like it’s just heightened so much more here because things are like I can make life is more affordable somewhere else when America like it’s just you just take it as like the norm of like trying to like pay these bills and do all that stuff like and it’s not as affordable as you think it is, so.
Carolina: In the beginning you stated that, like, you weren’t from here and it was kind of, like, a shock on to see the whole culture of capitalism. Could you kind of describe the culture before you moved to America?
Simran: yeah, so I’m I’m originally from Jamaica, the culture there, I mean, obviously it’s still the same bills that they’re use to work and stuff like that, but in a sense things are a little bit more affordable. I guess you could say there is, I wouldsay, less opportunity there but the societies are so much more, or say like, it’s more like a community, like, we all kind of work together for the same goal versus America, it’s very, very individualistic, which was kind of a culture shock to me unlike in Jamaica. Like, you work it’s almost, like, you work with your boss to kind of figure out solutions here just like a hierarchy system where like your bosses on top of you then it’s you and you have to like follow orders but I feel like in Jamaica like it’s more so like you work together to kind of figure out a goal.
Carolina: That reminds me a lot of like indigenous practices like you know you build your communi- ty we’re not building you are born into this com- munity that has already been established for like certain periods of time before you and then you know you work together to like get your resources get your food and be sustainable versus.
Simran: yeah and I feel like yeah like we’ve said it makes more sense to do that way because you get a lot more done would like more hands on deck kind of thing like you’re building it together.
Video 3: May 1, 2022
Kayla Rose
Carolina: Hi everyone! And today we are doing another informal interview slash conversation with my friend and coworker Kayla rose do you wanna introduce yourself and your occupation and like what do you do and what you do for fun.
Kayla Rose: OK so to survive capitalize capitalism I work at meow wolf I like love my cats they’re two cats called Susan and Kevin um I do a lot of improv and stand up and musical theater hang out with my friends it’s like the only ways that I can survive it I guess, yeah. Yeah.
Carolina: so I ask people to come and participate if they’re willing to talk about how capitalism and colonization has affected your environment and your nature surrounding you so do you wanna talk a little bit about that.
Kayla Rose: yeah I grew up super hardcover, uh, conservative Christian and, um, a lot it and I was socialized to be very feminine and like like follow a pure abstinent, like, only like, lifestyle in the Christian Church and that actually ended up like really traumatizing me and like because there was just this constant need to be good we need to be better and always to be fixing myself which is like hardcore capitalism like capitalism continually like makes us go we’re not good enough we have to do better we’re not perfect but I think the biggest thing that has been is realizing that I’m autistic I got burnt out working jobs and trying to keep up with the grind culture very very early paying rent and like, finding food and shit like that like, just realizing how how many of my basic needs I have to like, literally like, push myself to the past of exhaustion and being autistic how I don’t I really don’t fit in the mold of capitalism and that bright culture like I was made to do one thing at a time and I can’t do that because I have to work in order to live in order to work in order to not die in order to not be homeless and I don’t really have that support like, that’s the other thing the capital capitalism does to us they think is creates this like, um, individualized mentality so instead of like, living with communities and like, living in that like, sense of like, support systems it creates individuals that can’t keep up with the system so yeah that’s kind of like the biggest things for me but just like, my observations of capitalism like, white supremacy and colonization is just depressing. Yeah, I guess just like, constant cycle of like, never having enough never being enough especially if you’re not like, cis white and straight and the epitome of being perfect yeah exactly so like being nonbinary fat queer polyamorous person is just like, luckily I’m white I guess I don’t know yeah one thing going 40 seconds oh but yeah so it’s just and tired right I just want to lay in bed with my cat like we literally OK this is the biggest thing about the cake we literally could have been like laying next to the river naked as Spock eating food that we found doing nothing and we were like no no you need to system we need to go to work from 9:00 to 5:00 everyday and like we need to you know like that’s actually
Carolina: that’s actually ironic that you bring up the whole like river being like naked in a river and it was like like that book that I was telling about “underflows” but it’s also like queer and trans like ecology and approaches yeah I was trying to read it yeah I was trying to find it earlier and he he yes he literally starts saying that you know queer and trans bodies are more accepted near a river because you know they could be free and flow and flow like the river and like the river so it’s like it’s interesting that you bring that up because it’s like it’s true like we don’t realize it but these approaches are like very close to like people that actually care about things and I feel like we need to care more like how you were saying earlier before colonization happened the indigenous people were living their lives and just doing their thing and making resources out of anything because they didn’t need to have money they didn’t need to have like these systems in place and then we just came in and destroyed everything and we’re like we need money to survive like that whole mentality of like I deserve more than you that will forever be like.
Kayla Rose: I was talking to a friend the other day and we were talking about somebody that we had both had conflict with that we kind of like we had both been from we’d all been friends at some point but then she had conflict with this person then I had conflict with this person and we were complaining about them the other day we were like what the Frick is it like why like why is the conflict that was so hard and we both go well I didn’t but she goes well the difference is is like you and I want everybody to win like she just wants to protect herself and like it’s that trauma response of being taken advantage of being like like completely like consent right like capitalism perpetuates a nonconsensual environment right because you’re born into the world and you have no consent over like the regardless of you like wanting to live so you have to like work to have a house work to have like like food on the table like how would that consensual like stop like
Carolina: yeah all these things should be like of there was another article actually for another course that I was reading and saying how it was the Black Panther Party that brought up the the the free breakfast for kids program and in the article it literally said like food should not be a commodity it should not be sold for a price you know cause if it’s sold for a price there’s a price on your head and you die and that was literally like a quote by Elaine Brown the former chairman of the Black Panther Party if I remember correctly pretty sure it was and that’s true because it’s like you have all of these prices within like within just living and breathing ourselves and it’s like it’s not fair and it’s not just.
Video 4: May 3, 2022
Isaac
Carolina: Hi everyone and thank you for joining me again today. Today we have my friend Isaac. Do you want to introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about yourself.
Isaac: Ya, sure hello my name is Isaac Hawkins. I’m, a, I was going to go into my college spiel, sure, why not. I am a graduate from the University of South Florida, my degree is in Health Sciences. I personally just care a lot about social issues and I feel like I have a generally unique perspective when it comes to talking about them. I’m 26 years old and that matters so yeah looking forward to the conversation.
Carolina: I love how you brought up social issues because that’s what we’re going to bring out about today, so I asked you to join me today to pose the question of how is capitalism and colonialism af- fecting the environment and the nature surround- ing you.
Isaac: That’s a really deep and broad question. The first things that come to mind is it’s not as evil as it seems and it’s not as great as it seems I feel like when we talk about the concept or the OR the topic of capitalism a lot of people view it very negative we know which I kind of feel like is a little disingenuous one for the sense that a lot of the people that complain about capitalism and the things that is brought upon do it from their cell phones which was provided to them through capi- talism and our constant consumers and capitalism so it’s a little bit hypocritical in my eyes to shame the machine that you perpetuate so to speak, but getting into more like concrete of an answer and the ways that the thing is positive, I think capitalism breeds competition and competition is one of the most important things in terms of progressing as society so without capitalism a lot of our technological advances would not have been made at the speed that they were without that sense of competition as raised from capitalism, I would also say on the negative end is that capitalism ran rampant, can lead to a lot of people’s detriment. So, like, when monopolies get, you know, built and put into place it’s a lot of people that end up suffering at the bottom half of that like everything that’s pros and cons, yeah.
Carolina: so, it’s actually interesting of all the interviews that I’ve done thus far you actually were the first to give me like both pros and cons a lot of them have been cons.
Isaac: I mean, ya, it’s cool to hate America right now. Yeah.
Carolina: I mean, for me, personally, I think capitalism as like you said it’s like a system. I think the system does need a lot of improvement and I see it as a way to exploit resources and exploit the workers that go into that system because like if you think about it and if you look around you everything is based off those and colonization is the root cause of capitalism back in the day when the indigenous were doing their thing and basically gathering up their resources the white man came in and said no this is how you’re actually supposed to do it and then years later they developed a system which today capitalism to make one make profit and development.
Isaac: Part of me I wants to agree with that even given, I mean, obviously, like, I’m a black person, colonization, you know, all that in my relation to it is going to be pretty unique to most part of me feels like that’s not necessarily true and that capitalize, sorry, capitalism would have been a result even if colonization may not have happened it’s just colonization gave people a blank slate to like progressive further. So what I mean by that is like capitalism as a system is more just the sense of I don’t have to share that’s how I look at it like capitalism just means that whatever I make is mine I’m going to try to maximize my profits in the world and my efficiency so that I can make the most money that I can and that cash rules, which, in reality, is always kind of been the case I feel like it just takes different shapes and forms across different forms of like governing right so in other places where it’s like OK I don’t want to start naming like -isms because I’m not super well versed on every type of –ism, meaning like, communism, fascism, and all that kind of stuff right now, but a lot of those places, they’ll deal with the issue of corruption where the people who end up making the most money are still the ones in power. Anyway, which is like the major con that we have with capitalism. So even though it’s under a different name, it’s the same issue except now you have a governing party that may be able to enforce its will a little more heavy handedly then in a capitalist society where it has to be done in a little bit more of a soft matter.
Video 8, May 5, 2022
Phil
Carolina: Hi everyone, and thank you for joining me again with another interview on talking about the topics of capitalism and colonization. Today, we have my friend and coworker Phil. If you just want to introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about yourself.
Phil: My name is Philip, I moved to Colorado five years ago, 33, and security guard at Meow Wolf.
Carolina: So, I pose the question how does capitalism and colonization affect your environment and nature surrounding you. so you can start with either, or if you want to combine the two.
Phil: OK, yeah, at this point I feel like it is combined but think about that on the way over, it’s kind of like, it’s in everything at this point, and to the point where it affects my emotional emotional well-being daily just thinking about, I mean, if I start to really think about how much we’re screwing over people instead of helping them, and, you know, return for profits, and it really can start to get like super just super heavy, you know, and, but, it, I mean, it’s everywhere. It affects how we think about each other, it affects education, health, the planet, the people, yeah, all people care about is getting more money and not even to do anything good with it. You know, it’s just kind of this runaway train that’s just like, has a mind of its own and has like, education around it that,, you know is pushing everybody towards just making money for themselves, for other people, you know, for companies that don’t give a shit, or a crap, about you know about anything besides that you know, environmental waste and labor issues and all of that, so yeah. It just feels like we’re one endless cycle that doesn’t stop, like, the capitalist make more money, they make more profit, and they exploit us for these resources because we have the resource in general, and looking at it in that point we are being exploited, not only are we being exploited, but like the natural resources that you need to get these things running are being exploited as well. It’s like, it’s not sustainable. It’s all shortsighted greed, and which is like - and I have no actual issue with people making money and having a great idea making money off of it in some way, that’s fine. We keep screwing over people and destroying the planet, it’s not sustainable, and like, you can tell it’s not sustainable just by everybody’s emotional wellbeing. Everybody is on edge, it doesn’t matter what side or anything, that’s all I’ve been. The whole thing is just very overwhelming at this point, you know, and like, we were born into this, yeah, I mean, I’m 30 almost 33, and like it’s, I was decades behind being able to actually make systemic change you know, and it goes back way further that, you know, I mean, like, not even just talking about capitalism, but just the entire system is has been rigged against, I mean, not only minorities and everybody but pretty much anybody that’s not in this super rich club. This there is a club, you know, black or white, at some point there is like a ceiling. It’s like, screw all of you, you know what i mean, so like, yeah. Just born into this and we had to have to fight our way out to fight like ourselves and find,, like a purpose that we care about and jobs that we care about at all, you know, like just anything to kind of just get by in the system while we try to enjoy life and experience, you know, and like, yeah, it’s like fighting just to be alive at this point, you know, to be comfortable and enjoy what we have, you know, because capitalism itself, I don’t think it’s like, necessarily the issue because, like, what it is, it’s just making money, people, I mean, able to be entrepreneurs and do that kind of stuff, we skewed everything so much that it’s all favoring them now and it’s nothing’s being redistributed, nothing’s, you know, I think, being philanthropic it’s like pretty rare nowadays you know.
Final interview with myself
Hi everyone, and thanks for joining me again. This will be my very last interview so I decided to interview myself, or basically pose the questions to myself, umm, and answer them in a way to share my experiences and my thoughts about the whole topic of revolving around colonialism and capitalism. So how does colonialism and capitalism affect my environment and the nature surrounding me? So I’m going to start with colonialism and then kind of just like jump into capitalism, just cause they’re both very well rooted within each other and like they kind of bounce off one another in a way so, yeah. SA colonialism, my first thought when I think about colonialism is Europeans coming in to these different lands and just taking over the land and basically telling the indigenous that inhabited these lands that their way of life wasn’t good, it wasn’t progressive or it didn’t meet up to their expectations or standards that the Europeans brought, and so, and that brings up the whole, the whole concept of how erasure of culture started, so as the Europeans came in and take took over these land,s you know, they basically settled in these lands, hence the word settler colonialism, and basically took apart everything that the indigenous people were doing. They said that the resources or the materials that they were gathering or that the ways that they were doing this gathering was not right in the eyes of the European and they had to do it this way, and so when it came to a lot of basically settling these agreements in order to determine who was rightful of the land the Europeans were like, yeah, no, we are the ones that are rightful for this land because we’re doing it this way and this is how we are labeling it to be the rightful way of actually using up all the resources in a much better way, if, if that makes sense. So in a way, the indigenous people didn’t really have much to say, you know, they, they didn’t have these, these powerful forces in place in order to deteriorate a community because that’s not what they were about, they were about community, they’re about supporting each other, you know, just helping out their community that they lived with, making sure that their community had all the resources needed to be sustained and being sustainable while Europeans were just starting in a very early age, in a very early era to degrade the land, to use land in any way shape or form that they held that they weren’t held ac- countable for, so, yeah. That’s what I think of, what I think of colonialism, is the first thoughts of that in regards to social erase - not social - cultural erasure. I think of what’s happening now and more recently I think of very much about white supremacy and white privilege why I think about that is because so, so I could do, I could start with like, either of my examples I’m thinking about in my head. When I was, when I was smaller, when I was around in kindergarten I had a best friend her name was Paloma. She didn’t speak any English and I was basically the only one in the class who talked to her maybe because the other kids were embarrassed to talk Spanish, or they didn’t know Spanish, I don’t know, but, so I would explain like basically all the assignments that we had in the in the class and what we were doing and basically how to do it all in Spanish. Of course, the teacher had no idea of this, she had like, no clue that she didn’t speak any English up until around like the middle of, the middle of the year. Where she, the teacher, actually started to like, you know, walk around and like, talk to all of us and actually tried to get us to talk in conversation, and then she realized that like, when she tried to talk to Paloma, she wouldn’t say anything or she would just like, you know, just smile awkwardly, not understanding what the teacher is saying. So she picked up on that and then she asked me, because she always saw that I was talking to her and like having conversation, she was just like, she asked me, like, “Oh, is like, your friend shy? Like, what’s going on?” and I was like, “oh, she just doesn’t speak any English,” and the teacher is just like, oh, OK, so how has she been doing all this work and stuff? and she’s like, oh, and then, I’m like, ohh, well, I’ve been explaining it in Spanish to her and whatever, and then she tells me she was like, Oh, well I mean, I appreciate that but I would also appreciate if you didn’t communicate in Spanish because she should be she should know English. She should be speaking in English, this is, basically, in the terms of this is America, we speak English. She should be speaking English, that’s that. To me, that affected me a lot, because I was a kid, I was like, what, I was like, five or six years old, and to be told that I couldn’t speak a language of my culture because we’re in a different country when America doesn’t even have an official language - is absurd, like, now that I really think about it, like, that’s, that’s part of when you erase your culture, because I’m not the only person who has experience that and people have experienced it a lot worse. I remember growing up in high school, my, my high school district, the one that I was supposed to go to is, was, an earth school. My mom did not want me going there, so she sent me off to an all and a magnet school which was predominantly white. I hated high school, like, to be honest, I hated high school just because like, you know, like, like, that whole the whole phrase of, like, umm, skin folk is kin folk, it’s very true in some aspects, like, you normally gravitate to people not gravitate towards, gravitate towards people that look like you, that talk like you, that have similar experiences as you and that was me, like, I like in middle school, like, elementary school are very much gravitated to, like, the Hispanic community. Again, Florida, being like a melting pot, there was a very big Hispanic community. A lot of us always spoke Spanish, like none of us none of us ever really cared about speaking Spanish in school and stuff like that, but then again, I was, I was someone very hesitant to at times because of the whole experience that I had in kindergarten where this teacher was like, you shouldn’t be speaking Spanish because you’re in America, and then, yeah, and then I went to high school, and then I was basically one of the four latin, one of the four Hispanic women in my class. That says a lot, my class was around, like, 380 people I think, around that, so yeah, it was, like, a smaller-ish school, but then again, like, the majority of the population was white, like, you had your typical rich white kids, your spoiled white kids, not only was this, like, a magnet school, but the majority of the people that went to the school were rich. They had, like, corvettes, chargers in the parking lot, you know, like, that was, like, your typical car that people own - like, your Mercedes - and it’s just, like, whoa! Felt very much out of place, and like, I very much clung to my four friends that were Hispanic, yeah, and very much, like, felt really weird, like, there was, like, up until one point that I was talking in Spanish, like, one of my friends, and like, one of these, like, one of these, like, little white people were like, “Why are you speaking in Spanish, why don’t you just go back to your country so you can speak Spanish there?” and we’re both like, wow, like, we, we obviously ignored it because the it’s a conflict of interest to start a fight at a school where, you know, you’re gonna be nitpicked as the one who started the fight, so we ignored it. Anyway, I guess that’s where, where I pick up where the whole cultural the erasure of culture is, you know? People of different backgrounds, a different diversified minds are always this nitpicked at, they’re always told, like, this is not right because it’s not this way, or you shouldn’t be doing this because it’s, it’s not the right way to do it, and, like, you know what is the right way to do something, there is no right way to do something unless it’s math or science or like straight facts, you know, and I’ve always believed that, like, diversified minds, like, people of color, black people, queer and trans, like, all these other, like, like, I wouldn’t, I I don’t like to label people, but all these diversified minds, they always bring something different to the table because their experiences in life different, their experiences in life were very much different, like, just with my own experienc- es, when, when I moved to, when I first moved to Colorado, I moved to Colorado Springs. So Colorado Springs to me was very much like what Tallahassee is to Florida. Tallahassee is, Tallahassee is, so one corner you have like, your college, you know, your college community, you have FAMU, you, which is like, a historically black university and college, and then you have, like, FSU, which is your very dominant White Party school, and then you crossed that line, either from FAMU or FSU, and it becomes very much redneck, very much. So very much dominantly white, and that’s kind of, like, what Colorado Springs was to me, yeah. I had the blessing of getting a cool job with people that were very much open, but I don’t know, I don’t know how to explain it, I just feel like sometimes, sometimes, like America is very much deeply embedded of like that erasure of cultures, like, you know, like, we’re American, we have to celebrate America even though we have a thousands and millions and millions of people that are not just American that make up this country. For me, I’m Colombian American, yeah, I was born here but my family raised me as Colombian, to be Colombian, to basically practice Colombian holidays, you know, and just have that mindset of, like, caring and helping out your community, which I’ve said it in previous videos how I feel that with an America, I feel like we’re very much standoffish when it comes to those terms. We you know, like, we don’t know our neighbors. We don’t even say hi to people when we walk across, like, when we’re on the street or like, if we’re walking our dog, or like, just out for a stroll. We don’t say hi, we don’t say, like, good morning or anything like that, and like, that’s very much not how it is in Hispanic cultures. We’re very much open to just saying hi, stirring up a conversation with anybody that walks by us, and I feel like me being born in America has very much overtime, I’m trying to get it back now but it’s very hard, you know, like, being told for, for 10+ years that, like, this is not the right way and you should have been doing it that way, you know? Like, those, those sort of things.
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