The last weekend in July of this year we celebrated the 18th Conde/ Silva family reunion in Dallas. It was an event everyone looked forward to with great anticipation.
Our last reunion was held in San Diego in 2018 and the participants expected to have the next one in Dallas in 2020. We normally have our family reunions every 2 years, but COVID 19 interrupted our plans and caused a 6-year hiatus.
As we looked at the extended time that went by, it became apparent that major changes in the family have taken place. Among them is the fact that a new generation has come forward to lead us into the future and the socioeconomic condition of the family has risen significantly since its initial reunion in 1985.
Our first reunion took place less than a generation since the family was part of the migrant farmworker community that toiled in the fields of the Midwest and the South. Educational advancement was just beginning to take hold and poverty was still a significant factor in its everyday life.
Thirty-nine years later the family reunion was hosted by our cousin who is also the Dean of the College of Education at Texas Christian University and the participants included doctors, attorneys, teachers, designers, business owners, active and retired military officers among others. The family history has caused me to take a second look at the assumptions featured in a theory called “the culture of poverty” that were so prevalent beginning in my college days.
“The culture of poverty is a social theory that suggests that people in poverty develop certain habits that can trap their families in poverty across generations. The theory was popularized by anthropologist Oscar Lewis in the 1960s after his studies of Mexican and Puerto Rican families.” The Children of Sanchez (1961) publish by Lewis became a favorite of those that saw little hope for the social and economic future especially of minorities that were by definition labeled as poor.
The Chicano Movement had to fight that mindset in order to open the doors of opportunity for political, economic and educational improvement. The Movement also originated a counter theory, that it was the oppressor that owned the mindset and used it to block minority access to these opportunities. It did this as Chicanos targeted the educational establishment in their quest for change.
High School blowouts, college sit-ins and demonstrations in cities around the country became a common occurrence during those turbulent days. Also, federally funded initiatives designed to help minorities, many times, found ways to bypass or co-opt local or state resistance to change. Among the programs founded to meet the needs of children with culturally distinct educational requirements were bilingual education, competency-based instruction, open classroom, performance-based schooling, dual language approaches and individually paced strategies that best relate to a child’s academic learning style. Programs like these and financial support to attend colleges and universities became the vehicles for success.
“Education is the light of world” is the motto of those that saw the monster of academic darkness attacked successfully at times by Chicanos and others for Latinos success. Those efforts have paid off in a big way.
The culture of poverty does not conform to the dynamics of change and opportunity in America. That is, given an environment that expands individual life possibilities, a part of the American character, there is little reason to apply the theory to our world view.
Being poor is not necessarily bad. What is bad is when poverty defines expectations.
The views expressed by David Conde are not necessarily the views of laVozColorado. Comments and responses may be directed to news@lavozcolorado.com.
