Through iconic and awarding winning roles in West Side Story as Anita and on the Electric Company to historic accomplishments like being the first latina and Puerto-Rican to win the pinnacle of acting awards known as the EGOT, Rita Moreno’s impact spanning eight decades has indisputably paved the way for young latino filmmakers, actors, and directors.
As the first Gen Z and Afro - Cuban congressman, Representative Maxwell Alejandro Frost of “Florida 10th congressional district”, is a historic figure who has contributed to a new wave of grassroots activist policymakers who use social media and other spaces to advocate for a litany of issues especially gun control and abortion rights.
Black students only make up 8.65% of American University’s student population, coining the university as a Predominantly White Institution, also known as a PWI. As conveyed through anonymous testimonies, social media posts and scholarly journals, being a person of color at a PWI can pose a distinctive set of challenges. Students of color at PWIs tend to have lower retention rates, consistently face discriminatory behavior, and disproportionately struggle to assimilate to their environment. Many Black students have testified that institutionalized racism on college campuses causes emotional distance between them and their white faculty and peers.
From the McDonald’s Cardi B and Offset meals in February to the Pride logo temporarily replacing company logos in June, to even the corny commercials only displaying Mexican culture instead of all Hispanic culture, these marketing strategies are used to monetize off the public. Trinidad Aguirre noted that "it's honestly common in my experience. Major brands try to do these things without really attempting to understand our diverse culture, right, and they often miss the mark time and time again." And, he’s right, I think it’s great to have these months where music, food, clothes, history, and culture can be highlighted, celebrated, and revered but instead, major corporations and companies leverage capitalism as a ploy celebration.
TikTok has established itself as “the giant” of social media video-streaming platforms, as its users are relying on the app to view and participate in hundreds of thousands of trends that have been going viral on the platform. From dancing to cooking videos, Tiktok has become the go-to app for all things trendy.
“[Celia Cruz] no es una pasa de moda]” sings the legendary Celia Cruz, the iconic Queen of Salsa and arguably, one of the most synonymous singers with Cuban music. Born in Havana, Cuba, on October 21, 1925, Cruz was born of humble beginnings and would become a fixture in dance halls and clubs during her 20s. As an Afro-Latina woman, Cruz was raised believing in the diasporic religion of Santeria which fuses West-African folklore traditions and music orally preserved by African enslaved people in the Caribbean.
If you’ve spent some time on TikTok recently, you may have heard of the term “quiet quitting” from a variety of videos which began with a video by @zaidlepplin. If not, then the term can seem misleading for quiet quitting as a practice has nothing to do with quitting your job. Quiet quitting describes when employees set boundaries to work within their specified work hours and not exceed the expectations of their job description. The “quiet” in quiet quitting denotes that setting these employment boundaries is done without explicitly apprising your employers.
Recently with many questions of tolerance and ethics rising, people have asked for a change in the education system. With schools in progressive states, like my former high school in California, swapping its current education standards for courses that stray away from Eurocentric perspectives, teachers are forced to create new curriculum to adapt to the changing times.
Keeping the failed government response to Hurricane Maria in mind, ongoing crises of poor energy policy and crumbling infrastructure remains clear as Puerto Rico was ravaged by Hurricane Fiona, experiencing week-long power blackouts.
I never liked going to school on 9/11.
The seemingly simplistic words spray-painted on buildings and landmarks have such a rich history with complex racial politics surrounding it and provide accessibility to create art for artists of all backgrounds. These factors combined are why instead of brushing graffiti off as vandalism and a crime, it should be recognized as a valid art form.
My mother doesn’t consider herself Latina. Several shades lighter than myself with loose black curls, my mother is the pinnacle of mixed-race Haitian identity. She is the legacy of Code Noir, a racial caste system that worked to subjugate those who were not landowning whites, and the fact that she does not consider herself Latina is proof that four hundred years later, the system still works.
The onset of warm weather has brought us yet another opportunity to confront the conditions of women everywhere. This past Women’s History Month in March launched superficial Instagram story campaigns full of recycled infographics and meaningless platitudes calling for celebration and awareness but not much else. Though sardonic and skeptical, pessimism towards the feminist movement as a whole is not uncommon. Since its start in the 19th-century, the modern women’s movement has debatably failed to represent the interests of marginalized women and aided towards advocating for the rights of middle-class white women.
This week, Supreme Court Justice nominee, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, the first Black female nominee to the position, sat through hostile confirmation hearing proceedings where she was questioned by Senate Republicans.
Amidst bombings of the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv, foreign students attempting to flee the country have reported facing discrimination and racist violence at the border. These student refugees are claiming that they’re not being allowed onto buses and trains, turned away at the Polish border, or left stranded without food or shelter in unsafe areas.
When former Miami Dolphins coach Brian Flores filed a 58-page class-action lawsuit claiming racist hiring practices against the New York Giants, Miami Dolphins, Denver Broncos, and the NFL itself, all articles recalled one common denominator: the Rooney Rule
When COVID-19 first hit the news in the early days of January 2020 , I , along with most of the other people in the DMV, initially didn’t think that it was something I had to be afraid of. It seemed like a distant problem an entire ocean away, a problem that was limited to affecting people we didn’t know and places we had never been. For about two weeks, life in our schools, our businesses, and our neighborhoods ran exactly the same…until the first COVID cases started to appear stateside. Then, it all went downhill from there.
Being a teacher in America is difficult –– from having to set aside time to create detailed lesson plans, staying up late to grade piles of assignments, to receiving a low salary –– this job is definitely not for the weak.
TikTok has provided many of its users with influencer platforms, allowing them to express their talents through a variety of creative forms including dancing, makeup advice, and cooking tutorials, among other things. Since its rebrand from Musical.ly in 2017, the viral social media app has connected “TikTokers” with brand deals from a variety of companies seeking to gain more business exposure. However, with the structure of the app's algorithm, Black TikTokers receive less exposure on the app’s main “For You” page than their white counterparts, and are rarely given credit for the dances and trends that have undeniably contributed to the app’s success.
On Aug. 9, 2021, McDonald’s uploaded a brand new advertisement to their YouTube channel. This advertisement featured the extremely popular African-American rapper Saweetie announcing that she was partnering with McDonald’s to sell what she called “The Saweetie Meal.” She then showed off a variety of ways that she would customize the various items included in the meal, such as placing the meal’s fries on her Big Mac, or topping those fries with the meal’s Chicken McNuggets. The ad ends with her encouraging viewers to order ahead on the McDonald’s app, while sounds similar to her hip-hop music played well into the outro.
Solutions by The State News
