At this point you are almost finishing with the course homework!
For this task I want you to give your personal opinion in a small paragraph. So, read the article from the link below and then post your comment.
http://www.ticotimes.net/2015/08/28/un-committee-asks-costa-rica-to-remove-cocori-from-grade-school-classrooms-citing-the-books-racist-connotations
My opinion about this topic, it is that in general around the world, there still a lot of racist in our culture. Besides the effort of some organization to eliminate this situation, still needs a lot of work to do in this materia. For example in Costa Rica Limon providence is one of the least developed. We can see that the government don’t like to invest in this part of the country, there a lot of social problems like insecurity, poverty, education, criminality and others. Some of the politics of the government is to threat the afro-Caribbean people like the others and take off their culture, for example in the schools children have to know the history of Cristobal Colon and the independence of America, but they don’t have the right to know his own history and where all this afro-Caribbean people come from and where all this amazing culture started. For me that is racist, we can see in the street if some afro-Caribbean past away every one turn around to see them with a not good face, we can notice that still exist a lot of insults in the media, in the schools, in the sports in the works, everywhere. So the question is how can we change this situation, we have to see each other like common people, with a human body and feeling and without the color skin, we all are the same just humans, we can start to treat each other like equals and don’t see the physical appearances.
ResponderBorrarI think the article shows that most of Costarican journalist do not perform a proper research when they wrote their articles. I assume the journalist never read the book, because Cocori is not just a book "about a young black boy who falls in love with a blonde girld", is more than that. For me is unfortunate that Joaquin Guitierrez is dead, because he could explain his book to all this "double moral" analists. Cocori is a strong critic againts racial prejudices, yes, the book sometimes use expressions wich are denigrative againts black people, but that is the way white people refers to black people! Joaquin Guitierrez evidently wants to point that. For example, in one part of the book when Cocori meets the blonde girl (by the way she was the daughter of a banana company manager) she said: "look at that monkey"; this reaction of the blonde girl to Cocori is the reaction wealthy white people, or, persons who never be in contact with people with different skin tone react. It is racits, yes, but no because the book is racits, because the world is racits! Joaquin Guitierrez wants to point this in several parts of this book and other bokks he wrote it. He is from Limón, he wrote several book about the banana plantations and the injustices againts black people, if someone does not know this or never read his books, should not critizes beacuase is made a judgment about something you do not understand. I think Cocori should be read in schools, and teachers could make a proper analysis with students and take advantange of this book to have a conversation about racial equality and racial problems at the time Cocori was written, and how several of this problems remain in our time. But asking to remove the book without create a discussion about it, shows the ignorance of UN committee and congresswomen.
ResponderBorrar“Cocori” and its racist connotations:
ResponderBorrarCosta Rican culture has a very particular behavior, where nicknames that denote the ethnical origin of a person or how they look like are commonly used. Words like “Chinese”, “Nigger”, “Germany”, “Gringo” and “Nica” are very familiar expressions of Costa Rican speakers, and in most of the cases they doesn’t represent a kind of discrimination.
This fact states a very thin line between discrimination and accepted cultural expressions. When an external committee, arranged of foreigners different than Costa Rican people tries to control the tendency of the education based on their own principles, the result could lead to erroneous decisions.
“Cocori” represents a traditional book that is contextualized into a period of the country where ethnical differences had a strong meaning. The book is not a problem if it has been explained properly to students.
Much more dangerous things have been currently adapted and approved in the society and can be easily reached by the children, as soup operas and music songs where drug dealers are considered as a model to follow in order to accomplish a life plenty of success.
Marco Vinicio Gomez Gutierrez
ResponderBorrarFrom my point of view, the book cocori is not racist, but is the birth of a story if
The book Cocorí written by Joaquín Gutiérrez has given much to talk about in the last decade. There is a lot of controversy and much discussion about whether it is racist or not. So much so that the book was withdrawn by the MEP as mandatory reading for primary education several years ago and is in the hands of each school whether the story is read or not.
The central theme of the story is the question that our little character asks: Why do beautiful and beautiful things last so little on earth (La Rosa) and destructive so many years? From this premise, the trip of our friend along with his little monkey and the turtle to enter the jungle in search of an answer.
A beautiful subject, a rewarding teaching, a high morality. How is it possible that children are deprived of such a beautiful story?
The people who qualify Cocorí as racist are based on a series of elements among the most relevant:
- Cocori considers the white girl very beautiful, like a water lily, but she considers it strange.
- The word negrito repeated 28 times in the text
- The black features of Cocorí are emphasized, the dark hands, the puckered trompita ..
- Cocorí is amazed to see his reflection in the water and see a black man, but he lived in a community of blacks, he would have been surprised if he discovered white.