Share your thoughts on the talk by Wes Moore. Were there any themes in the talk that intersect with the themes that we have explored in the course in relation to Latino communities in the United States?
Diversity, Intersectionality, Otherness
First-Year Seminar in Critical Inquiry
The author Wes Moore talked a lot about police brutality, victims of abuse and gun violence whether from police or other discriminatory measures that connect to what we’ve been talking about with Latinos, but it also talked a lot about “the other” which is a term that treats people who are different as outsiders without anyone trying to get to know them at all. Latinos and African Americans are a lot of the time seemingly cast out of society because they are different, because they aren’t the majority and therefore they are classified as an “other”, making them sound like they are the enemy. People remain ignorant about these labels that people put on people of race, and keep them as outsiders instead of trying to know their struggles and try and help them. Wes Moore talked a lot about the “fight” for these sorts of people. He said that we won’t remember much about what we’ve learned in college over time, but that we will learn about and remember the fight for “the other” people and learn how to help those of our community feeling like they are the “other” and not worth helping. We will learn about the people who need our help to fight for them as we stay informed about their fight and try to help in their fight, whether that fight is about racism, police brutality or something else that oppresses those involved. He said that the fight will remain with us and those we have helped through tough times along the way will stick with us for many years to come.
The talk by Wes Moore was very inspiring for the Wooster community. He talked about how Wooster students should to be more involved and concerned with current affairs. He mentioned many problems United States citizens are facing today. For example, police brutality, chiefly involving blacks living in the U.S. today. He talks about the environments many minorities are raised in, and how this creates more criminals in society and unfair lives for them. He explains that getting involved in military school was a total environmental shift for him and changed his life. He was engulfed by new surroundings and he was involved with entirely different people. This was a major contrast compared to his Baltimore lifestyle. This is the critical move that helped him grow into an altered person. This is a unknown world for the other Wes Moore, he never had any chance to grow or leave his Baltimore livelihood. During the talk, Moore states that “they both lived up to their expectations.” The other Moore, growing in a poor and uneducated environment, eventually lived up to what society expected him to do. This case relates to the Latino communities we have been learning about in class. Some people in minority groups grow up in poor conditions and don’t have much of a chance to change this situation. A child growing in this situation may be more willing to commit crimes in his adult life based on his overall environment. He may be desperate to make money for his family and he may be poorly educated, so it would naturally be harder for him to receive a decent job. Moore stated that people are policed differently depending on the area they live in. This is absolutely true for Latinos living in different communities compared to anglos. In “Diario de un viaje a California”, many of the police abused the Latino communities without receiving any disciplining for the biased crimes they have committed. It’s common for people in poorer income communities to be disciplined harshly and unjustly. The talk by Wes Moore touches on the hard subjects of racisms and poverty, and this asks the community of Wooster to become more involved.
The talk by Wes Moore touches on the hard subjects of racism and poverty, and he asks the community of Wooster to become more involved with changing the current unjust state of affairs. (Editing)
The thing that stood out to me that Wes Moore talked about was the environmental expectations. This stood out to me because it relates to some of the material learned about Latinos in California, specifically. Wes Moore said how himself and the other Wes lived up the expectations of where they grew up and how they grew up. The author Wes became a successful writer along with serving in the US Army among other things “because” he had more privilege and his neighborhood wasn’t like the other Wes’s. The other Wes fulfilled his expectations by ending up in jail which was something common for his neighborhood. This relates to material learned because the children of workers were more susceptible to end up like their parents in the field.
The talk by author of “The other Wes Moore”, Wes Moore was nothing less than I expected. Moore emphasized that our take-away from the novel should be more than that of two men who led completely different lives and continued distinct paths, but to show the effects of poverty and racism and prove how environmental and social influences can sometimes define us. He mentions police brutality at one point which connects to the recent passage, “Real Life Border Thriller” by Guillermo Gomez Pena that brought to light the extent that racism and racial profiling can have on our society, in particular people of color. He emphasized how both Wes Moore’s “lived up to their expectations”, and how their societal pressures and mentalities had a lot to do with them living such different lives. He mentions the environments many minorities grow up in aren’t always the best and can have an effect on their upbringing. Much like the stories of the farm workers we read about, for the children of these farm workers it’s harder to lead better lives when exposed to the conditions they face on an everyday basis. It reminded me of watching the documentary on Salinas California and how it said that education was the only way out for these farm worker’s children to live better lives and to get out of farm labor and the often continuing cycle of poverty. Overall, I found it interesting how he saw us as a diverse campus and took into thought when he advised us students to come together to discuss current affairs and become more involved in general.
Something that resonated with what we just talked about in class is the fact that people shouldn’t discriminate based on how well off people are. The Wes talked about how he wanted the reader to be impressed by the fact that both Wes’s lived up to their expectations. One Wes was supposed to grow into an established adult because of his background and up-bringing whereas the other Wes was not supposed to grow into a successful adult. The effect that privilege had on the two individuals is what ended up determining choices in their early life, carving out their futures good and bad. This reminds me of what we just read in the Real Life Thriller because as there was still complications because Guillermo had his press card and could present privilege the situation was different. Wes had the same effect, his mother had connections to the military school so his life was better. The other Wes is an example of what would have happened if Guillermo didn’t have his press card.