Puerto Rican Culture Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words - 1

Puerto Rican Culture - Essay Example In my naivety, I had thought that Americans were very sophisticated people who lived harmoniously with one another. I never, not for a single second, thought that I would experience some of the worst discriminations in my life. I never thought that I would have to work several times harder to prove myself than other American kids had to. The realization that life in the U.S was not as rosy as I had been made to believe came as a shocker to me. In Colombia I had been grown used to the closeness of the people. Everyone was each other’s keeper, so to speak. I had very many companions back in Colombia because the sociability of the people makes it easy to make new friends almost every day (Waters and Ueda 216). However in America, the situation was quite different. First of all, I did know much English when I fast landed in the US, so communication was a big problem. I did not have to wait for long before I realized what it meant to be a Colombian American living in New York. Discrimination followed me almost everywhere I went. My ethnicity made me a subject of resentment from both white and African Americans (Olson and Olson 116). I did not consider speaking Spanish to be wrong, but to Americans, it was objectionable. Many regarded American Colombians to be illegal immigrants which was sometimes true. However, my mother had ensured that she had all the right papers before coming here. This of course did not stop other people from lumping us together with illegal immigrants. As such it was very hard for us since my mother, who also knew very limited English, could not get a good job. Colombian immigrants could only get casual jobs, and these did not pay well enough (118). It is a well documented fact that America is a highly fragmented society (Flores 19). This identity fragmentation affected me greatly when I was new in the country. I started very slowly in school since I could not communicate very well. In my school everyone was grouped