01.03.2016
In the four years that Dominican has been attending this immersion trip, you can tell that the personal relations already run deep. Our host for the majority of the week is Sonia, who greeted us with bright eyes and a warm smile. The delegation leader, who so graciously got us from the airport, connected with us all instantly and made it feel like she was a distant relative ready to take us into her arms.
We left at 5:55 a.m. from SFO and arrived in La Paz, San Salvador at about 1:30 p.m. The travel was exhausting for all of us, some didn't go to bed the night before (like me) so our combined energy was fair low. Francisco, the director of CRISPAZ, was quick to remind us of those less fortunate than us. "Were you carrying heavy luggage, water jugs? Did you have security the whole way and have a greeter to guide you to safety?" he asked us. These were some of the questions raised. A huge factor of this trip is to stand in solidarity for those who were, and still are, killed, tortured, or disappeared during migration to North America. 9 out of 10 women and children are sexually abused during their migration North. This is a statistic that Francisco listed off in our initial meeting. This raises so many mixed emotions inside of me. How can it be possible for these women and children to start anew with such physical and emotional distress? Especially when they are fleeing their home country and all that they know.
The Context of Our Trip
CRISPAZ was founded in 1984, and their mission has been rooted in the efforts to humanize the issues that so many civilians were subjected to during the massacres and disappearances of the Civil War Era. As I've mentioned before, the notion for U.S. solidarity began in an attempt to stop the disappearances.
There is so much damage that occurs in choosing to be neutral. I'm exhausted from exhibiting greys and beiges when I should be displaying a kaleidoscope of color--all that goes unnoticed by the distracting noise of pop-culture media or when we chose to censor our analytical side because we strive to be "politically correct." Francisco mentioned the concern with being politically correct to our group. In order to understand this, you have to look at and dissect the concept in a non-linear perspective.
Relevant Application
People are so quick to jump to a conclusion of a person's ulterior motive when discussing issues of diversity, inequality, etc. Similarly, people are afraid to be targeted in a negatory fashion for expressing their concerns or beliefs that aren't considered a 'norm' by societal standard. BJ Ghallagher of The Huffington Post explains, "While the original intent of political correctness may have been good (to encourage tact and sensitivity to others' feelings around issues of gender, race, religion, sexual orientation, physical abilities, and such), the effect of political correctness has been to make everyone avoid these topics altogether -- thereby hindering our ability to get comfortable in living and working with those who are different from us. It's gone so far that political correctness has become a bigger problem than the problem it was intended to address!"
I'm going to challenge myself as I enter the next stage of my life to worry less about offending and appeasing others in situations where adding my opinion can create a more dynamic and thought-provoking discussion. Usually I am very reserved and tend to shy away from controversial topics, but I came to the realization that bringing attention to matters that at other times go unrecognized can help bring justice or reform. I have also been thinking a lot about "white privilege" since returning to the U.S. and DeRay Mckesson, a leader in the Black Lives Matter Movement and now a frontrunner in Campaign Zero, recently appeared on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, to dismantle white privilege. It's worth viewing and delving further into the layers of our social, economic, political, and environmental structures.