I thought this an interesting bit of thinking. So, I am posting it in the knowledge that I can very well be the only person who reads this blog as it is so rarely updated...
What does your accent say about you?
I attended one of the nights of the Justice preaching series. The preacher for that night was Hector Cortez. I cannot do justice to the sermon here but I'll just paraphrase the beginnning of the sermon, which I then quoted during one of mine. I should also add that this could be one of my own conversations when meeting new people.
When I meet people the conversation often moves to, so where are you from?
when I answer, Chicago there's a puzzled face and they then say, where are you REALLY from?
my accent, in spite of my best efforts, betrays my Latino origin.
This particular sermon has tremendous relevance to what our country is going through with regards to the immigration issue. This past Sat. I was at an immigration information session. It was supposed to be an informational session but in the back there were two women who always go to any immigration forum around this area and heckle panelists with gross generalizations about the "illegal immigrants" who are ruining our country. I mention this here because it is related to the issue of one's accent. To these women the majority of the evils in our society are because of these illegal immigrants. Now, these people do not have the means to check on the indentification of those they are accusing. So, how do they know who these "illegal immigrants" are then? "my accent, in spite of my best efforts, betrays my Latino origin".
1 comment:
It is very interesting that the movement to be multicultural in a way that is "engaging" rather than merely "recognizing" or being "aware" is occurring not only from one side - it's "multisided".
In approaching the question of multiculturalism in the ministry of the Church in the United States, I think we need to consider that the approach is not from a center out, but from the outskirts in. If I'm not mistaken, this is what Justo González would call the "metamodern" movement (but we can always check).
Central Baptist, a Latino church in New Jersey will begin soon a similar question...
Post a Comment