U.S./Mexico Border

Talk surrounding the U.S./Mexico border has continued to become heated and create tension amongst citizens, especially with the Trump administration and issues such as DACA and border reform that he wants to implement. I realized through this class that this administration has been the first one that I've actually paid serious attention to, and because of this class I have become more careful with choosing news sources and seeking out information as so much of what is out there is fake or not including the whole truth. While in high school, none of my teachers really educated me about the Obama administration, especially not about his immigration policy, and I was not receiving any of that information from home, either. Once in college, I felt like I had a learning curve with all of the issues that the U.S. is involved in globally, especially in the case of its shared border with Mexico. Now, with friends who are undocumented students and at least a slightly better grip on international relations and U.S. involvement, I feel like I am more well-educated about how to respond to backlash against immigration and how I claim my political identity and speak up for my fellow students/people in other social spheres.

Haiti/Dominican Republic Border

Over this winter break, I will be attending an ABI that I previously talked about in the transnational religious connections section. This trip with 10 other student and faculty members will be traveling to the Dominican Republic and connecting with a host organization where the focus will be learning about these people's lives and the inequalities that they are up against. One major issue that I was not even remotely aware of and still am not fully educated on is the border issue of Haiti and the Dominican Republic. If there's anything that I've realized through SOCL 252, it's how ethnocentric/Americentric our media is. While on our ABI, we will be getting the chance to learn about the Haitian/DR border and how DR citizens of Haitian descent, even if they were born in the DR, are being picked up and driven across the border to a country that they often have never been to but are told "they belong to". Even if they have citizenship papers from the DR, Haitian-Dominicans are facing major injustices in the country right now and have been for a very long time. I am not yet astutely aware of all of the consequences of this issue or how the population is already dealing with these injustices, but I am excited for the opportunity to learn and hopefully continue to seek out other global issues that are being completely glossed over by American media because of our ethnocentric behavior.