Analyzing the population of Northfield
Introduction
We want to address how the sense of security is impacted by race in Northfield and whether or not Hispanic individuals in Northfield feel discriminated against because of their language. A scholarly article titled “I Will Never Forget That”: Lasting Effects of Language Discrimination on Language-Minority Children in Colombia and on the U.S.-Mexico Border” provides a wonderful example of why these questions should be answered. “I Will Never Forget That” looks into the importance of language and how it plays a larger role in one’s identity and culture and how the discrimination of a language, or linguicism, is closely related and often influences discrimination often seen involving race and ethnicity. They conclude that there is considerable evidence suggesting that linguicism coincides with racism and that it can have lasting effects on one’s sense of security and belonging.
Methods
The data we use to reach our conclusion is collected from a survey released by the Northfield Racial & Ethnic Equity Cooperative (NREEC). This survey is an attempt at measuring equity in the Northfield area and is targeted towards the entirety of the town. It addresses personal experiences and feelings/views regarding Northfield itself and separates those responses by their associated demographic variables. The survey was introduced to several Northfield outlets including both St. Olaf and Carleton Colleges, Community Action Center, and FiftyNorth. The outlets provided the survey for their employees and clients. The City of Northfield also allowed posters to be put up around town to allow residents who might not work in the area access to the survey. The city also utilized social media to promote awareness of the survey.
The null hypothesis for our first research question is: “Race has no impact on one’s sense of security.” Respectively, our alternative hypothesis is: “Race impacts one’s sense of security.” To form a reasonable response to this question, we compared the information from the question “What is your race and/or ethnicity?” with the responses to “I feel safe in Northfield.” We transferred these responses into numerical values so that we could easily identify a negative or positive relation between the two. The second question is outlined with the null hypothesis of “The Hispanic community in Northfield does not feel discriminated against because of their language.” and an alternative hypothesis of “The Hispanic community in Northfield feels discriminated against because of their language.” The research data used for this question is from the race and ethnicity question that was previously used above “Have you experienced discrimination based on your language or country of origin in Northfield in the past 12 months?” We filtered out any data that was not associated with a Hispanic individual to ensure the use of only relevant information.
Results
Research Question 1
How is the sense of security impacted by race in Northfield?
| White | Non-White | |
| Agree | 635 | 151 |
| Disagree | 39 | 47 |
The data suggested that most people who are non-white find that Northfield is not safe according to their safety standards. More than 75% of people who are white agree that Northfield is a safe place for them.
The table above shows the mean and standard deviation of people who are white and whether they agree if they feel safe in Northfield or not, suggesting a standard deviation of 0.39 for the people who agree that they feel safe in Northfield and 0.5 standard deviations for people who disagree that Northfield is safe for them.
The data showed a p-value of 0.19 which is more than 0.05, suggesting that the data doesn’t have significance for us to reject the null hypothesis.
Research Question 2
Do Hispanics feel discriminated against because of their language?
Survey respondents were asked: “Have you experienced discrimination based on your language or country of origin in Northfield in the past 12 months?”.
Discussion
Northfield, overall, seems to be a welcoming city to different ethnic groups. Our analysis focused on the feeling of safety by non-white residents and the perception of discrimination against language by Hispanic and Latino residents, therefore our results can only lead to conclusions regarding these two groups and these two variables.
The results looked way more promising for the group of Hispanics and Latinos with regards to language, because when we looked at non-white residents and their feeling of safeness we could observe in our bar chart (figure 1) that non-white residents responded to agree way less than white residents, indicating that they do not feel as safe as the others. This is a significant issue across the entire country since it is known that there are higher levels of aggression and imprisonment among black residents of the United States than white residents.
Regarding our second research question, our results showed that most of the Hispanic and Latino communities in Northfield do not feel discriminated against by language. However, it is important to not use this result to invalidate individual experiences: there are many cases of discrimination against the Hispanic language happening throughout the country, especially due to the influence of Donald Trump’s public statements, which have many times been xenophobic against this ethnic group. There is also a socioeconomic variable to be considered, as explored by Ignacio Olmos, director of the Cervantes Institute in the United States: “Twenty to 25 years ago, Spanish was the language your gardener, domestic worker or cashier spoke. Today it is the language that your son learns in college” (Laborde, 2018).
References
Laborde, A. (2018, May 30). Abused for speaking Spanish: “My classmates say my language is ugly”. EL PAÍS English Edition.
https://english.elpais.com/elpais/2018/05/30/inenglish/1527671538_960209.html
The color of justice: Racial and ethnic disparity in state prisons. (2019, January 10). The Sentencing Project.
Murillo, L. A., & Smith, P. H. (2011). “I will never forget that”: Lasting effects of language discrimination on language-minority children in colombia and on the U.S.-mexico border. Childhood Education, 87(3), 147-153. Retrieved from https://www.proquest.com/scholarly- journals/i-will-never-forget-that-lasting-effects-language/docview/854503701/se-2?accountid=351