Hispanic American Culture

At my understanding, the term Hispanic is wrongly used when referring to a race. Being Hispanic is, of course, to belong to an ethnic group, but it is much more than that. It is not about the color of your skin or your hair, but about culture, tradition, and manners. All started with the Spanish and Portuguese colonization of South and Central America. From Europe came the adventurous men, full of ambitions and courage. These attributes blended with the strength and energy of African slaves and the Native Americans, and this mixture led to the born of this new culture that we called Hispanic.

Culture is the overall moral belief, customs, language, and attitudes a person is brought and raised into. Daily, we are exposed to diverse and different cultures everyday which allow us to learn the different values and traditions each culture possess. The importance of observing and learning different customs is beneficial because it can help us better adapt and prevent misunderstandings when we communicate and interact with others. Hispanics and Americans are two huge cultures that have been sharing the same living space for years but are an example of two different civilizations. While both, Hispanics and Americans, share many similarities they both differ in recognition of religion, language,

This has led many teenagers to switch over to marijuana and by legalizing it the switch to a safer drug would continue and it would also make it cheaper than other illicit drugs. This correlation can be seen with the statistics provided by the NIDA 2011 study. 25% of teens surveyed said they tried marijuana at least once last year and 6.6% of 12th graders admitted to smoking weed daily. Marijuana use has been the highest since 1981, but at the same time cigarette and alcohol usage have reached historic lows. 11.7% of U.S. teens reported having smoked a cigarette in the last 30 days, compared to 12.8 percent in 2010. Also alcohol usage has reduced, the proportion of 8th graders reporting any use of alcohol in the prior 30 days has fallen by about half (from 25% to 13%), among 10th graders by more than one third (from 43% to 27&, and among 12th graders by about one fourth (from 54% to 40%).

Imagine someone is lost, standing in a checkout line at a corner drugstore. They need directions to get back on the road. The couple in front of them is having a very engaging conversation, fluently, in Spanish. Most would not even give an effort to talk or ask where to go, but why not? Too often the assumption is made that people who speak Spanish are immigrants, and do not speak English well. Hispanics are, persons of Cuban, Mexican, Puerto Rican, South or Central American descent, other Spanish culture or origin regardless of race. Too often the assumption is made that Spanish-speakers are unamerican, lazy, receive low income, or are uneducated in any way. Hispanics are also demonized in the media as people who are stealing American jobs. That is the belief that some Americans associate with Hispanics.

The hispanic culture has many diverse, interesting, and unique views when it comes to the topic of death, dying, ghosts, and funeral arrangements. Because hispanic culture has many influences from not only modern day religious beliefs like the dominant religion of Roman Catholicism but also from ancient religions and culture such as the Maya and Aztec there is often times a mixed view on death. Similarly, because of the diversity in the history of hispanic culture there are many different cultural influences such as holidays like El dia de los muertos and long held folklore that makes the topic of death and dying in the hispanic culture very interesting.

The Hispanic/Latin American population of the U.S. has been growing steadily over the last four decades (Casas, Vasquez, & Ruiz de Esparza, 2002 retrieved from Alvarez) and recent census statistics indicate that 42.7 million Americans identify themselves as Hispanic (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 2006 retrieved from Alvarez). The Hispanic population is expected to continue to grow and expand. Hispanic living in the United States face many challenges and social injustice. When facing challenges and social injustices people tend to handle those stressors in different ways. For some people partaking in substance and alcohol abuse has become a coping trend in America. “Substance abuse prevalence rates for Latinos/as generally mirror those of the

Immigrants who have moved from their origin of birth have changes their set of cultural norms and values. This is seen in Hispanics who have moved to the United States. Most of the women who are sensitive to changes are Cuban American, Puerto Rican, and Mexican American women. They state their drinking behavior has increased because of the dominant society. Washington State conducted a study that showed an accelerated abuse of alcohol and use of illegal drugs within the Hispanic culture. The increase was 7.2%, which was compared with less than 1% of others and 6.4% of whites (Abbott, 2008).

Asian Americans are always shown to have a relatively low rate of substance abuse among all the ethnic groups in the US (Kim, Ziedonis, & Chen, 2007). In fact, studies suggest that Asian American youth are more vulnerable for emotional and social difficulties than youth of other races or ethnicities (Wong et al. 1998). As a group of immigrants, Asian American youth often face acculturation stressors like low self-esteem, high depression and anxiety and social isolation, and more and more studies have reported various behavior problems among Asian American youth, like gang activities (Zhang, 2002), a rapid increase in juvenile crime (Le, 2002) and a significant increase in violence.

As part of a multi-institutional study funded by the American Legacy Foundation (ALF), 743 undergraduates self-identifying as Mexican-American were recruited from college campuses in California, Florida, New York, and Texas. The primary aim of the overall study was to compare smoking-related behaviors and attitudes across Hispanic subgroups (see American Legacy Foundation, 2014; Hale, Perrotte, Baumann, & Garza, in press). Participants completed an online survey requiring up to fifty minutes to complete. Questions included items pertaining to tobacco, alcohol, and drug usage, as well as numerous trait and attitudinal measures. For Study 1, the sample was composed of bicultural Mexican-American college students, operationalized as those who scored 2.5 or higher on both domains of the BAS (Marín & Gamba, 1996). This resulted in a sample of 335 individuals, which was further reduced to 309 when cases with missing data and outliers were removed.

Marijuana use among high school seniors in the United States has been on the rise causing greater concerns for addiction and health concerns among teenagers. According to the CDC, in 2010, marijuana use among high school seniors rose to 21.4%, with 25.2% being male users and 16.9% being female (Health, United States, 2011, 2011). This shows a steady increase every year starting in 2007 where 18.8% of high school seniors were using marijuana, with 22.3% were male and 15.0% were female. Ages as young as 12 years old also showed the same statistical trends, even in Middle Schools.

Rocky Mountain High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area reports that “marijuana use among the ages 12 to 17 years increased 6.6 percent.” Although recreational marijuana is only allowed to be purchased by people twenty-one and older, teenagers are still managing to getting ahold of it. A. Eden Evans, a director at the Center for Addiction Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital(MGH) has done a large amount of research on the effect of marijuana on adolescents. She found that some immediate physical risks of marijuana are “impaired coordination, slowed reaction time, slow processing on particularly unexpected or complex events”(Legalizing Marijuana: The Public Health Pros and Cons 14:44). Although they are unsure exactly how long these side effects last, they do have a negative effect on young children trying to learn and can reduce their quality of learning experience. Evans mentions a study done at MGH on the impact of marijuana to the body functions, that when testing kids early “[they] didn't find function difficulties [but] five years later those who had starting using marijuana had worsened executive function”(17:59). Drug Rehab, a website that offers ways to overcoming addictions, explains in further detail some of the specific risks and statistics to help show marijuana's high health risk. One of the risks they cite on the website is marijuana's addictive nature, where they state that “10% of users will develop dependence over time.” Addiction to marijuana can lead to many other drug addictions. On the same website they take a look into another medical study on males, that reports “that teenage boys who abused alcohol, cigarettes, and marijuana were 2 to 3 times more likely to abuse prescription drugs during young adulthood” (Drugrehab.us).

In 2011, 36.4% of high school seniors in the United States reported using marijuana within the past year, 22.6% within the past month and 6.6% on a daily basis. By comparison, daily use of tobacco was reported to be 10.3% of 12th graders (Tashkin, 2013, p.

Stephen Kulis, Flavio Francisco Marsiglia, and Donna Hurdle (February 25, 2011) Gender Identity, Ethnicity, Acculturation, and Drug Use: Exploring Differences among Adolescents in the Southwest. Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3045088/

The concept of culture is something that defines many aspects of one’s life. From physical objects to different ways of thinking, culture adds significance to human life and makes groups of people distinct from one another. Culture is essentially a group of people who come together with similar interests and points of view. According to the Center for Advanced Language Acquisition of the University of Minnesota, “culture is defined as the shared patterns of behaviors and interactions, cognitive constructs, and affective understanding that are learned through a process of socialization.” From a more sociological perspective, culture is a way in which people come together in order to fulfill their needs. These shared patterns and ideas identify the members of a culture group while also distinguishing those of another group.” Culture is one of the things that sets the United States apart from the rest of the world. Not that the rest of the world is not cultural, but the circumstance here is different. Many people of different cultural backroads come to this country in search of a better life. As a consequence, the United States has become a place where many cultures merge together like a colossal pot soup.

The next growing issue that seems to be occurring all over the U.S. is teenagers and smoking weed, chewing tobacco, smoking cigarettes, and participating in other harmful drug use. Teenagers can start using drugs for multiple reasons. Many try drugs out of curiosity, to party and have a good time, pressure put on by their friends, to relieve stress, anxiety, and depression. The use doesn’t typically lead to an addiction and there is no way to tell the amount of uses it takes for a person to get addicted to a substance. That varies from person to person. The use of any drug can become problematic. The most popular drug that is used by teenagers today is marijuana. According to NIDA's 2012 monitoring the Future study; about 6.5 percent of 8th graders, 17.0 percent of 10th graders, and 22.9 percent of 12th graders had used marijuana in the month before the survey ("Marijuana"). The use of marijuana daily is also becoming an increasing problem. In 2012, 6.5 percent of 12th graders reported using marijuana daily, compared to 5.1 percent in 2007. Marijuana affects