Well here we are, at the end of the blog. It doesn’t seem like its been 10 weeks, but I guess it has been! I really hope that my readers have learned a little about Azorean Portuguese people living in the Bay Area and their history. I have to admit, when I started this blog I did have ulterior motives (see the next paragraph), but for the most part I looked at this blog as a way to better understand a part of my cultural identity that I have often looked down upon (because my grandparents were so uneducated and superstitious) and viewed as a nuisance a lot of the time. Now, I can really appreciate how the struggles of my grandparents were all in an effort to improve their lives, and by extension my life, and I can appreciate and see Portuguese contributions and connections to Bay Area history. They may not have been the biggest names in the Bay Area, but they certainly had a hand in a lot of aspects of the Bay Area culture.
Living in California, and especially the Bay Area, we have a wonderful fusion of hundreds of different cultures, which makes for a great amount of diversity in every possible way. On any given day in bigger cities like San Francisco, Oakland, San Jose, Daly City, Fremont, etc., the average person can hear several different languages being spoken. Despite this great diversity, I have always felt an attitude that comes along with it. Many times in my life, I have been talking with people about ethnic heritage. When it gets to my turn, I always respond, “oh I’m half Portuguese, a quarter Italian, and the rest is Irish and English”, and I usually get the response “oh, so you mean white.” Now more than ever, this reaction really makes me mad. In trying to boil down my ethnicity into one race, people basically devalue not only my cultural background, but every cultural background that can be classified as white. Why should being white make me some how culturally inferior and not worthy of historical exploration? If anything, I hope that my blog has made people at least think about this stereotype and how racist it actually is. Could you imagine if someone told me they were half Chinese and half Japanese and my response was “oh, so you mean Asian?” I would definitely get death stares and be labeled racist or politically incorrect or culturally insensitive. One last thought on this rant, and then I’ll be done—When you fill out forms like job applications, the census, college applications, and so on, they ask for ethnicity, but not in an equal way. For example, the major site for teaching applications in California asks your race as white, black, Asian Indian, Native American, and then 13 other options for Asian and Pacific Islander ethnicities and one specific area to check if you are Hispanic/Latino. Why? Why should the Asian ethnicities or Hispanic/Latino ethnicities count above white or black, and why is it more important to state your specific origin? Why is there no option for European American, or Atlantic Islander? Some days, when I get annoyed with these questions, I will check other and write either “European American” or “Atlantic Islander” because that’s what I am and it shouldn’t matter any less or any more than anyone else.
Ok rant over. Like I said, hopefully my blog has made the reader think about culture in a way that’s different from the traditional teachings of culture. For the future of history, I would really hope that the experiences of immigrant children can be given more credence and attention, because I think their experiences are valid and very relatable. I would also like to see more access to histories. For example, I was unable to access a lot of newspaper archives without paying fees to get in. I can see the point of the company, needing to make money and everything, but it still isn’t very fair to the reader. I also had about 6 books I wanted to look into and possibly use in my blog, but half were out of print and the other half weren’t in any libraries and could only be purchased (sometimes, they come in and out of stock) on a Portuguese publications website. I’d also like to know what’s up with not being able to access legislation, like the Azorean Refugee Acts in 1958 and 1960. All I could access on the subject was secondary sources and some newspaper articles from 2008 about legislation to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the act. I hope that in the future, legislation could be digitized and more accessible on a greater scale to help future historians. Finally, for future historians of Azoreans, I would like to see histories written for the average reader, not just for Azoreans or just for historians, but for anyone who might want to know more about Azoreans. A lot of the histories I read were very dry or very long and focusing on details only Azoreans from the Azores would really want to know about (On a side note, I found that the focus on genealogy and storytelling, even if your audience has no idea who/what you are talking about, is a part of Portuguese culture, and not just annoying people like my dad’s cousins and uncles!). Stories Grandma Never Told did a really good job of personalizing history with personal narratives, which also helped make the history more relatable and accessible to non-historians and non-Portuguese who might just want an insight into a cultural identity so prevalent across the state.
Now I’d like to say thank you and goodnight to my audience, whoever you may be. Hopefully you learned a little something, even something as minute as there are a lot of Portuguese people in California and the Bay Area!
