[PrinceLightfoot]

Let me provide a bit of background so everyone who is curious can better understand my experience, ethnicity, and point of view.

I am the second son of Mexican immigrants, a first generation American, and I grew up in the border town of El Paso, Texas. The Spanish language in public during the 70s, 80s, and 90s was oddly not as dominant as some would suspect given El Paso's demographic. There was a sense of pride being American and the need to assimilate into America's predominant culture where speaking English was considered a must in order to fully participate. That doesn't mean Spanish wasn't spoken but it wasn't uncommon to see one person speaking in Spanish and the other responding in English. My mother sat us down at around age 3 and instructed us to only speak English, watch only American TV shows, and read books written in English (even if we couldn't really read yet). This proved critical to the success my brothers and I have experienced in this country but that is a different topic altogether...

That acculturation by no means denied my Mexican heritage. For example, by the age of 14 I became a professional Mariachi musician and continued to do so until I was 28. I founded the Stanford Mariachi group in 1994 and it really blossomed with the arrival of another professional mariachi musician the following year.

Most of you have only been exposed to Californian Mexican-Americans which proudly call themselves Chicanos and their ideas. They were quite vocal on campus back in the early 90s. I was completely unaware of groups like MeCHa or United Farm Workers Union...unaware of people like Dolores Huerta and Cesar Chavez who just happened to die during my ProFro weekend....unaware of the concept of Aztlan or La Raza. The sense of activism and the correction of injustices they experienced was alive and well on campus. I agreed with some of their views but not the activist methods and never warmed up to the label "Chicano".

In El Paso, the word "Chicano" was derogatory and basically meant low-life Mexican-American. This was a view that was held by most non-Californian Mexican-Americans while living my first year on campus in Casa Zapata. We understood that Chicanos adopted the term in California and changed the meaning back in the 1960s during the civil rights movement. Somehow that name adoption made its way into academia but to those who were born before its meaning was changed taught their children "Don't say that word! It is disrespectful." If the NAACP or African-American studies professors decided one day to embrace the word "nigger" and claim it as a label of pride, does that suddenly just change the impact of that word for everyone who knew what that word meant before?

Redrum suspected correctly. This is a case of the cultural/historical revision wheel turning.

With all that said while I am still offended by that word at some level, I honestly do not care how people label me...heck, I am called a lot of things  ;) I'll respond to those that are done so respectfully and spend my time on more worthwhile things than being offended. 

[PrinceLightfoot]

Let me provide a bit of background so everyone who is curious can better understand my experience, ethnicity, and point of view.

I am the second son of Mexican immigrants, a first generation American, and I grew up in the border town of El Paso, Texas. The Spanish language in public during the 70s, 80s, and 90s was oddly not as dominant as some would suspect given El Paso's demographic. There was a sense of pride being American and the need to assimilate into America's predominant culture where speaking English was considered a must in order to fully participate. That doesn't mean Spanish wasn't spoken but it wasn't uncommon to see one person speaking in Spanish and the other responding in English. My mother sat us down at around age 3 and instructed us to only speak English, watch only American TV shows, and read books written in English (even if we couldn't really read yet). This proved critical to the success my brothers and I have experienced in this country but that is a different topic altogether...

That acculturation by no means denied my Mexican heritage. For example, by the age of 14 I became a professional Mariachi musician and continued to do so until I was 28. I founded the Stanford Mariachi group in 1994 and it really blossomed with the arrival of another professional mariachi musician the following year.

Most of you have only been exposed to Californian Mexican-Americans which proudly call themselves Chicanos and their ideas. They were quite vocal on campus back in the early 90s. I was completely unaware of groups like MeCHa or United Farm Workers Union...unaware of people like Dolores Huerta and Cesar Chavez who just happened to die during my ProFro weekend....unaware of the concept of Aztlan or La Raza. The sense of activism and the correction of injustices they experienced was alive and well on campus. I agreed with some of their views but not the activist methods and never warmed up to the label "Chicano".

In El Paso, the word "Chicano" was derogatory and basically meant low-life Mexican-American. This was a view that was held by most non-Californian Mexican-Americans while living my first year on campus in Casa Zapata. We understood that Chicanos adopted the term in California and changed the meaning back in the 1960s during the civil rights movement. Somehow that name adoption made its way into academia but to those who were born before its meaning was changed taught their children "Don't say that word! It is disrespectful." If the NAACP or African-American studies professors decided one day to embrace the word "nigger" and claim it as a label of pride, does that suddenly just change the impact of that word for everyone who knew what that word meant before?

Redrum suspected correctly. This is a case of the cultural/historical revision wheel turning.

With all that said while I am still offended by that word at some level, I honestly do not care how people label me...heck, I am called a lot of things  ;) I'll respond to those that are done so respectfully and spend my time on more worthwhile things than being offended.