#ISCORE2013

Just last Friday I had the opportunity to attend the Iowa State Conference on Race and Ethnicity (ISCORE). Although I wasn’t able to attend the morning address, I heard wonderful things about the speaker. Throughout the day I attended a variety of sessions.

The first session I attended, “The Changing Faces of Iowa”, educated us on the history and impact of immigration in Iowa. I found the presenter to be very personable but was not very impressed with the presentation overall. He presented accurate and informative data about the trends of immigration in Iowa and addressed a few common misconceptions. Although I agreed with most of his presentation, I couldn’t help but notice the gaps in information. I would agree that the Latino community is an important part of Iowa, but in my opinion, he failed to show the whole picture. Immigrants in Iowa are stimulating the economy and are doing a lot of goods things. The situation overall isn’t all sunshine and rainbows. I want to see the good with the bad. I want to see how much money our government is wasting on successful programs or how see how this is changing our public school systems.

At one point during his presentation he posed the question, “Who thinks farming is Iowa biggest industry?”, and then corrected the audience by informing us that manufacturing was in fact the largest industry. He did this in an attempt to dispel the stereotype of immigrant workers on farms. I am curious as to what his definition of “farming” is, and how much of modern agriculture in actually encompasses. Does his definition of “farming” include crop and milk producers? Does this include the men and women working on these “farms” providing other services than what he sees as “farming”? A man that grows crops and raises livestock is a farmer, but what about the man he pays to milk his cows or repairs the equipment? I would be curious to know the scope of his statistics. Immigrants of all types play a role in American and Iowa agriculture and to brush it off as insignificant is a mistake. (I promise I’m finished with my ranting.)

Next I attended “Nine Digits of Freedom: Analyzing Inherent Privileges that Come From Being a U.S. Citizen”. It was eye opening to see how difficult things like attending college can be for undocumented students. It was especially surprising to find out that the states of Alabama and Georgia do not all undocumented students to attend any of their public university.

I cannot finish a blog about ISCORE without a shout out to Cassie Glidden, a fellow Hixson, for her great job co-presenting a session. Their session, “What Are You?”, challenged its participants to evaluate how they view identity. It was definitely on of my favorite sessions of the day.