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SECTION THREE

Perspectives on the Immigrant Experience and Nativism

We are all wanderers on this earth. Our hearts are full of “ wonder, and our souls are deep with dreams. ”Gypsy Proverb

s the Gypsy proverb notes, human beings of immigrants intended to stay permanently, and have always wandered from place to place historically, most of them settled in urban areas. Alooking to find new homes and achieve Two major changes in recent immigration trends new dreams. Because of its ongoing history of are that the majority of immigrants are people of immigration, the United States has been called a color and that they are more likely to be located “nation of immigrants,” but this term is inaccu- in small cities and towns where people of color rate since it neglects millions of indigenous peo- have had little or no presence in the past. Such ple who had probably made their journey communities now find themselves changed not centuries earlier and were well established on the just because of the new ethnic diversity but also North American continent at the time the first by linguistic diversity in schools and religious European immigrants arrived. (Estimates of na- diversity in churches. The presence of these new tive populations at that time range from a total of immigrants has renewed the ongoing, often bitter over two million to eighteen million.) Yet it is fair debate among American citizens about how to say that immigration has been a driving force many immigrants should be permitted to settle not only for our nation’s growth and prosperity here. It is a curious debate whose dynamics John but also for its ever expanding diversity. Steinbeck described in America and Americans, a Some immigration has been temporary or book written and published almost 50 years ago: cyclic as certain immigrants returned to their To all these (immigrants) we gave disparaging native country after achieving some economic names: Micks, Sheenies, Krauts, Dagos, Wops, Ragheads, Yellowbellies, and so forth. The turn success, and there were migrants (primarily from against each group continued until it became Mexico) who came for seasonal work and went sound, solvent, self-defensive, and economically home when the work was done. Yet the majority anonymous – whereupon each group joined the

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older boys and charged down on the newest who take menial jobs for minimal compensation. ones. . . . Having suffered, one would have All of them contribute to the American economy, thought they might have pity on the newer come, but they did not.1 (p. 15) to their families, and to their communities. For the many laborers who immigrate here, the issue Despite the hostility, there is ample evidence that ought to receive more attention is not sim- that the United States, historically and currently, ply their contributions to our society but whether has enjoyed enormous benefits from the talents they are exploited and inadequately compen- that immigrants have brought to this nation. For sated for what they do. Yet many Americans example, in the late 1800s Charles Steinmetz insist that we are letting too many immigrants immigrated to America and became an excep- into the United States and that these immigrants tional electrical engineer, working mainly for aren’t contributing to the country, thus perpetu- General Electric. After he retired, he got a call ating myths and misperceptions of immigrants from G.E. managers, who begged him to come to and strengthening anti-immigrant attitudes. a factory where their best experts could not lo- The selections for this section begin with a cate the cause of a breakdown among some com- well-established pattern of migration–that of plicated machinery. Steinmetz walked around Mexicans and Mexican Americans who join the the equipment, testing one part and then an- migrant stream primarily into the Midwest to other. At last, he took some chalk from his harvest crops such as tomatoes or beets. Elva pocket and marked an “X” on one of the ma- Treviño Hart was a small child that summer chines. After the machine was disassembled the when she first went with her family to experts examined parts from behind the place Minnesota and Wisconsin, and she provides a that Steinmetz had marked and discovered the detailed portrait of the migrant experience from a defect that had eluded them. Later, when Stein- child’s point of view. Much has been written metz asked for $10,000 compensation for his about this ongoing migration pattern and many work, G.E. insisted that he submit an itemized statistics have been gathered and reported, but bill justifying such a large amount. Steinmetz Hart’s essay offers a very personal and human sent a note that said: “Making one chalk mark = perspective describing the experiences of one 2 $1.00. Knowing where to place it = $9,999.” migrant family. Like Steinmetz, many immigrants today come Immigrants have always had different reasons with professional training and degrees, or they for coming to the United States. For some it was receive their education here and go on to distin- to seek their dreams; for others it was to escape guish themselves in an array of occupations. On from a nightmare. After the Vietnam War when the other end of the spectrum are the laborers

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the communists took over South Vietnam, thou- in the United States requires the refugees to sands of Southeast Asians immigrated to Amer- adapt to a reality that is quite different from what ica, not only Vietnamese but also Laotians and they expected. Despite the difficulties, refugees the Hmong. These refugees have encountered work hard, learn what they must, and usually significant cultural and linguistic challenges, and embrace the traditional vision of the American Sonia Nieto captures some of their difficulty in Dream, a Dream that that they believe is possible this excerpt from her “Case Study: Hoang Vinh.” for them to achieve. What they want from Amer- After a brief introduction to her subject, Nieto ica is what every American wants. lets Hoang Vinh tell his own story. He describes The most emotional immigration issue today the enormous amount of information he has to concerns undocumented workers, typically re- master. Developing English skills and a vocabu- ferred to as “illegal aliens,” mostly Latinos and lary adequate to function in everyday life is diffi- primarily from Mexico. Although Americans cult enough, but Hoang must achieve enough seem to tolerate refugees, the condemnation of fluency in the language to be able to attend col- undocumented or illegal immigrants has caused lege because a college education is required to many Americans to insist that we secure the gain access to economic opportunity. In addition, Mexican border to keep undocumented workers Hoang must understand the nuances of the dom- out of the United States. In response, Congress inant culture while also learning about the di- approved funds for a proposal from George W. verse racial and ethnic groups that he interacts Bush’s administration to erect a fence along a with in his urban community. Hoang’s story re- portion of the Mexican border, but as Michael flects the experience of many refugees, but espe- Scherer reports in “Scrimmage on the Border,” cially those from Southeast Asia. this issue is far too complicated to be resolved by Refugees are a unique category of immigrants such simplistic solutions. Scherer describes the because the injustice they have faced has caused efforts of the Border Patrol and the so-called them to flee from violence, persecution, or sim- “Minuteman” groups of volunteers patrolling the ply chaos in their native lands. In the past, border. In interviews with these volunteers, refugees were usually placed in large urban areas Scherer discovers the racism and prejudice that on the east or west coasts, but in recent years fuels their efforts to prevent undocumented they have been sent to smaller cities and commu- Mexicans (and other Latinos) from coming to the nities across the nation. In “Arrival Stories and United States. Although he presents the anti- Acculturation,” Mary Pipher describes the lives of immigrant perspective of Tom Tancredo, the Con- refugees who have settled in Lincoln, Nebraska. gressman from Colorado who was a candidate for Unlike other immigrants, refugees do not tend to President in the 2008 Republican primaries, be fluent in English when they arrive, so they Scherer also interviewed Americans who under- must immediately enroll in English classes as stand how the United States is benefiting from they look for employment. Pipher describes some the cheap labor of undocumented workers. Al- misconceptions Americans have of the refugees, though the battle of the border is likely to con- but also some misconceptions that refugees have tinue, Scherer’s essay provides us with the about America. Part of their adjustment to living context in which it is being fought. Section_03_5500.qxd 12/9/09 3:38 PM Page 57

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After exploring the concerns facing refugees, never experienced in Haiti, but these experiences migrants, and undocumented workers, Section are well understood by African Americans. Al- Three appropriately concludes with a literary though they share a similar skin color, the black memoir written by a Haitian immigrant. In families in her neighborhood do not share the “Dyaspora,” Joanne Hyppolite describes the im- same heritage as the Haitian immigrants, so the migrant experience of leaving her native land to diaspora child is largely on her own to sort out live in another culture. As she was growing up, the complexities of her situation: to understand her Haitian family maintained their language, who she is, where she fits in, and to find a voice their favorite foods and music, and even furni- that will allow her to tell her story. ture that reminded them of “home.” But since she was a child, she had to go to school and try to understand the new culture outside their Notes home. Because of ongoing racial segregation, the 1Steinbeck, John, E Pluribus Unum, America and neighborhood where the Haitian family lives is Americans, New York, The Viking Press, p. 15. populated by African American families. Hyppo- 2Anecdote adapted from: Clifton Fadiman, Party of lite’s childhood memories include encounters One: The selected writings of Clifton Fadiman, (Cleveland: with prejudicial attitudes that her family had World Publishing, 1955). Section_03_5500.qxd 12/9/09 3:38 PM Page 58

ELVA TREVIÑO HART

Barefoot Heart: Stories of a Migrant Child

The author grew up in Texas, and in this excerpt, an experienced migrant worker has offered her family a chance to come with him to the Midwest to work on farms there. Although the family experiences economic gains, the author describes the hardships of migrant life, especially for the children. Today, many of the migrants working in the fields travel illegally from Mexico, which makes their lives even more difficult.

hen my father (Apá) had told us we were to work in the fields. She knew their responses going to Minnesota with El Indio to work in would be cruel. She decided to face the problem at Wthe beet fields, all the kids had different re- the end of the summer. So she told no one – just sponses – all silent and internal – we never said walked out of school at the end of the day with a anything. He was taking a bunch of children to fake smile and said, “See you tomorrow!” and didn’t Minnesota, but he didn’t see it that way. My father return until September. knew nothing about children. He treated us all like Luis, in the sixth grade, was not so mortified. So adults, expecting adult responses from us. We were he bragged to his friends that he would be doing a a team going to work. man’s job that summer. But in his heart of hearts he Delia was in her first year of high school. It was was afraid. He had worked in the peanut fields for the first of May. She would have to leave the new years, but he suspected the beet fields would be boy who smiled at her in a secret way in the hall. much crueler and Apá a harder taskmaster. Her friend Chayo liked him, too. Would the new Diamantina, in the fifth grade, was terrified. She boy remember Delia when she came back in Sep- worried about everything anyway, and she wanted tember or would Chayo have prevailed? to do well. Would they make her work all day? Delmira looked around her eighth-grade class, Would they make her go to a new school? Would full of adolescent juices. She would miss her eighth- there be gringos there? Or would it be a Mexican grade graduation. She didn’t know how she could school for the migrants? She hoped so. She didn’t ever tell them that she was being taken out of like the gringos – they made her feel ashamed to school to go in the back of a canvas-covered truck wear her hand-me-down clothes. She bit her nails until they bled, and then she bit the inside of her lip. At night, she couldn’t go to sleep for the pain at From Barefoot Heart: Stories of a Migrant Child (Tempe, AZ: the ends of her fingers. Bilingual Press/Editorial Bilingüe). Copyright © 1999 by Rudy, in the fourth grade, didn’t care about any- Elva Treviño Hart. Reprinted by permission of Bilingual thing. He didn’t care to tell anyone, but he didn’t Press/Editorial Bilingüe at Arizona State University. consider it an ugly secret either – he would just do

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what was needed. He was the one who responded They offered to take the littlest ones with them best to my father’s need to have all of us be adults, for the summer. It would cost only what we could albeit short ones. afford – a dollar a week, they said. It was a charity The gringo who owned the farm and the mayor- the church offered for the migrants. domo came to see Apá the day after we got there to My mother felt she had no choice but to send me talk about the kids’ schooling. All the school-age there. Leaving me at the edge of the field while they children at the migrant camp had to attend school worked was dangerous since the rows of beets were until the end of the school year or the gringo would half a mile long and I was only three. My eleven- get in trouble. year-old sister, Diamantina, was too young to work. This was a new development my father hadn’t The child labor laws said you had to be twelve to expected. But actually, he was glad. His dream was work in the fields. So Diamantina would go with for all of us to finish high school and to have better me and be schooled there. . . . lives than he had. So he told my mother to get They took the two of us on Sunday. Apá bor- everyone ready for school. rowed a car and everyone went. Amá cried quietly Amá, already overwhelmed with the new chal- and sighed despairingly all the way. Everyone else lenges, exploded, “I didn’t know they would have was silent. . . . When we got there, Apá gave us to go to school! You told me to pack light! We each a little money. He said they would come to brought mostly work clothes! The girls only brought visit us the next time it rained and the fields were a couple of dresses to wear in case there was an oc- unworkable, if he could borrow a car. casional day off! How can you expect me to dress The school was huge, with an asphalt play- five children for a month in a gringo school when ground and a tall, wrought-iron fence surrounding we didn’t bring anything! I’ll have to wash clothes everything. When it was time, Diamantina and I daily after being in the fields all day! ¡Esto es el colmo!” clutched the bars of the fence and pushed our faces My father looked distressed as he always did through to say goodbye. We were overwhelmed when my mother yelled at him with a legitimate with abandonment and sadness. And it was still point. He mumbled something about having to daytime. make do and went outside to sharpen the hoes. When nighttime came, then I really knew what When he left, my mother started to cry. We it was to feel abandoned. They took us to a really watched, helpless. Delia said, “Amá, Delmira and I big room, a gymnasium, with a long row of cots. will wash the clothes when we get home from This was where all the children lay down together. school – for everyone. It’s only for a month. We can Thanks to God, they gave me a cot next to my sis- do it, Amá. You won’t have to wash clothes at ter. I covered myself with the sheet while the tears all.”. . . leaked out. I didn’t want to cry. I wanted to be The next morning, everyone except me prepared strong, as my father liked for me to be, but the tears to go to school. . . . Rudy was the first one to see wouldn’t obey me . . . and they kept wetting the the bus, a yellow speck on the featureless hori- small pillow. zon. . . . I stood there watching the bus drive away. “Diamantina,” I said to my sister very quietly, My brothers and sisters would do what they had to “would you hold my hand? I’m afraid and I feel very do; they always did. I felt forlorn and abandoned. sad. I want my mother . . . I don’t want to be here.” We had been together, all of us, for days. When I “Shhh, be quiet. Don’t be afraid. Give me your turned around to go back to my parents, I saw a hand. I’ll take care of you. Don’t be afraid.” black Ford pull up next to the migrant camp. Three The nuns walked up and down the rows of cots. nuns in black habits got out. . . . I didn’t want them to see me cry. I didn’t want them I burst through the door and told my mother we even to see me. I closed my eyes very hard to keep had company. When she came out, the nuns asked the tears in and to make my heart hard. But the her how the children would be cared for while the lump in my throat wouldn’t go away and I felt parents worked in the fields. It was the first time my more alone and sad. mother had been on the migrant circuit with six I squeezed my sister’s hand tightly . . . it was my children. She said she didn’t know. only link to the life that I had known up until that Section_03_5500.qxd 12/9/09 3:38 PM Page 60

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time. She squeezed it back. Then I felt less alone. with our hearts in our throats. Every car that drove And the lump in my throat got smaller. The tears by took our full attention. dried on my cheeks. . . . After dinner, neither of us spoke. Words would- The next morning, the nuns made us bow our n’t help, anyway. Our heads were swimming with heads and pray to thank God for breakfast. I prayed disappointment. We were becoming older too fast. for rain. A part of our childhood was dying. During recess a vendor sold popsicles through In bed, I stared at the high gymnasium ceiling. the bars of the fence. My sister took our money out My eyes would fill and empty as the sad thoughts of her sock and bought us each one. They were yel- came in waves. Diamantina was crying too. low and deliciously cool in the summer heat of the The next morning, I was in the playroom, feeling asphalt playground. The next day we only got one terribly lonely. . . . I looked at the nuns and ran out and shared, to conserve our money. of the room, down the hall, out of the building, “Do you think they’re coming back to get us?” I and across the asphalt school yard, the nuns asked Diamantina as we took turns with the popsi- screaming and chasing me. cle. I was determined and hell-bent to be with my “Of course they are, silly!” she said. But then her sister since I couldn’t be with my family. I struggled eyes got a sad, faraway look. with the big church door and ran down the aisle, I imagined them hoeing the beets and wondered headlong into Diamantina, who was practicing for if they were thinking about us as they hoed. Maybe her first communion. I wrapped myself around her Apá wished he had given us more money in case it legs, sobbing now, and screaming. The nuns came didn’t rain for a while. Maybe Amá missed my lay- up to us out of breath. “She ran out. Not supposed ing my head on her lap after dinner when all the to be here,” they gasped. They tried to take my work was done. I missed it too. Her apron was soft hand, but it just dug deeper into my sister’s leg. Em- from being washed a thousand times. It smelled like barrassed, she tried to talk sense into me. Senseless, tortillas and dinner and soap. She rubbed my head I couldn’t listen. I just screamed louder, my little with her fingers. soul feeling as if it were going to fly apart. Pande- Maybe Amá felt like crying as she hoed, as I did monium in front of the altar now, the priest coming at the school. out of the sacristy to see. When Amá wrote a letter, I made Diamantina I couldn’t tell them what was going on inside of read it over and over. Especially the part that said me. How could I? Maybe if I screamed louder they “Your amá, who loves and appreciates you.” She let would know. My wild screams would tell them. me sleep with it under my pillow. I put it in my Diamantina could see. She saw into my eyes and sock during the day. The sweat of the playground knew. made it get wet and the letters blurred, but it didn’t And the conflict started for her. All these adults matter. I couldn’t read, anyway. wanting us to make nice. And my screams and im- One night, a clap of thunder woke me from a ploring eyes saying that I couldn’t leave her, beg- dead sleep. My eyes were round by the next flash of ging her to help me. She couldn’t do it. She was too lightning. small and only eleven and my father had taught her I looked over and Diamantina was awake too. too well to mind. The thunder had awakened some of the little ones “What happened?” she asked. I just screamed and they were crying. I had never been afraid of and shook my head wildly. I couldn’t say the words, weather. I loved the wildness of thunder, lightning, not here, in front of all these people. . . . and driving rain. My wild nature reveled in it. “Shhh, ya. You have to go back with them,” she “Do you think they’ll be here tomorrow? I asked said quietly. her.” “NOOOO! NOOO!” I begged, but I knew I couldn’t “It may not be raining where they are. It might fight this crowd. They would do what they wanted only be raining here,” she answered. to with me. When it continued to rain all night and into the They peeled me off her, still screaming, but only morning, we started to feel hopeful. The rain hopeless screams now, knowing that there was no stopped around mid-morning. We waited all day help for me. Section_03_5500.qxd 12/9/09 3:38 PM Page 61

ELVA TREVIÑO HART Barefoot Heart: Stories of a Migrant Child 61

She watched them carry me off, but I forgave no contracts with the migrants, so people went to her. She couldn’t do more; I knew that. different farms every year. Later, we found out that my father hadn’t been The farm we went to that first year had plenty of able to borrow a car. Naturally, on the first rainy day work, but no place for us to stay right away. The off, all the migrants wanted to use their cars to go to house where we could stay was rented and the oc- town – to grocery shop, to buy supplies that they cupants wouldn’t be out for several days. The had forgotten to bring with them. . . . farmer really wanted his fields picked, though, so The whole family had wanted to visit us, but he he said we could stay in the barn until the house couldn’t make it work. His powerless feeling had became vacant. made my father crazy. So he had talked to the may- The barn? Everyone looked at Apá, alarmed. The ordomo about helping him get a used car. It had barn was for pigs and cows. become obvious to the mayordomo and to the “Sí, bueno,” he said. The barn was fine with him gringo that our family was hard working and reli- as long as there was work. The accommodations able. Together, Apá and the mayordomo went to didn’t matter; we were there to work and make the gringo and he agreed to advance my father the money. No one could argue. But everyone, even money for a used car if he promised to come back to Rudy this time, seemed upset and ashamed. The this farm next year. Half the amount would be due barn was no longer used to house animals, but it this year and half the next. The money would be was full of rusty old equipment that we had to taken out of his paycheck at the end of the season. move out of the way before we had room to live The next time it rained, they arrived bright and there for a few days. early in a gray and white Chevy. It felt like Christ- The work in Wisconsin was to pick green beans, mas. I could love the rain again even though it had cucumbers, and occasionally tomatoes. . . . The disappointed me so badly last time. My brothers and rows were short, so our car was nearby. I kept sisters were glad to see us, thrilled to have a holiday, watching for nuns, but none came. In Wisconsin, and ecstatic about our car. My father proudly drove even Diamantina worked, as it didn’t require much us around town. skill just to get the fruit off the plant. All the kids We stopped at a grocery store and got snacks for were used to this kind of work. . . . Being used to it a picnic. We ate at a picnic table in the park with the didn’t mean they liked it, though. In fact, they grass glistening all around in the sunlight after the hated it more than the beet fields. rain. I had never been happier. In Minnesota, they worked standing up, touch- When they left us later in the afternoon, it was ing only the hoe. Except for the days after a rain, not so sad. We would miss them. But now we knew they could stay fairly clean. Not so in Wisconsin. To they had missed us too. We had a car, whereas be- pick the green beans and cucumbers, you had to fore we had nothing. Things were looking up. . . . put your hands right into the plant, soaked with After leaving us with the nuns for three months, dew early in the morning. In half an hour your the whole family came to get us at the end of July. work gloves and shirt were soaked up to the elbow. The beet thinning and weeding season was over. After they dried in the sun, the prickles from the Beet topping and harvest season wouldn’t start plants started to make your skin itch. At first, peo- until mid-September. All the migrants packed up ple couldn’t decide whether it was better to work and went elsewhere to work for a month and a half. bent over at the waist, and have the lower back Apá said we would follow El Indio’s truck to Wis- hurt, or to squat down, and have the knees hurt. consin. . . . Most people started bent over at the waist, but after We were heading to the farm where El Indio’s the first day or two they would go for knee pain in- family had gone the previous year. He had warned stead. At least knee pain stayed localized. The back us that Wisconsin was not like Minnesota in that pain made you feel bad all over. . . . nothing was certain there. If the fields were ready, That year the crops were plentiful and work then there would be work. If there were no fields was continuous, seven days a week for several ready to be picked, then either you went on to the weeks. . . . By early September, we could feel a next farm or you went to the lake and fished. Also, chill in the air and smell the coming of winter. The in Wisconsin, the season was short and there were sycamores were already dropping their leaves. Section_03_5500.qxd 12/9/09 3:38 PM Page 62

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There came a day, finally, when there were no come back, but Apa insisted on getting his children fields that were ready to be picked. The farmer back into their regular school. His dream was for all wanted to wait two more days, and then do the of us to graduate from high school. The kids final picking of the season. . . . wouldn’t quite make the beginning of the school Four days later we left for Texas. Many of the mi- year, but they wouldn’t miss by much. So he de- grants, including El Indio’s family, went back to cided to forego the money that he could have made Minnesota to work on “el tapeo,” the beet topping by staying another month. and harvest. The Minnesota farmer wanted us to Section_03_5500.qxd 12/9/09 3:38 PM Page 63

CHAPTER 1 Understanding Ourselves and Others 63 SONIA NIETO

Case Study: Hoang Vinh

Although Hoang Vinh’s parents couldn’t leave Vietnam, they sent him and his four sib- lings to the United States in the hope that they would have a better future than they could have in their communist-controlled nation. He was a high school senior at the time of this interview, and in this story he describes many of the difficulties that other immigrants, especially refugees, encounter after arriving in America.

“For Vietnamese people, [culture] is very impor- by the statues of Jesus and the Virgin Mary in the tant. . . . If we want to get something, we have to living room. Everyone in the family has chores and get it. Vietnamese culture is like that. . . . We work contributes to keeping the house clean and making hard, and we get something we want.” the meals. In addition, the older members make sure that the younger children keep in touch with oang Vinh’s1 hands move in quick gestures as their Vietnamese language and culture. They have he tries to illustrate what he has to say, almost weekly sessions in which they write to their par- Has if wishing that they would speak for him. ents; they allow only Vietnamese to be spoken at Vinh2 is very conscious of not knowing English well home and they cook Vietnamese food, something enough to express himself how he would like and that even the youngest is learning to do. When they he keeps apologizing, “My English is not good.” received letters from their parents, they sit down to Nevertheless, his English skills are quite advanced read them together. Their uncle reinforces their na- for someone who has been in the United States for tive literacy by telling them many stories. Vinh also just a short time. plays what he calls “music from my Vietnam,” to Vinh is 18 years old. He was born in the Xuan which they all listen. Loc province of Dong Nai, about 80 kilometers from Because Vinh’s father was in the military before Saigon. At the time he was interviewed, he had 1975 and worked for the U.S. government, he was been in the United States for three years and lived considered an American sympathizer and educa- with his uncle, two sisters, and two brothers in a tional opportunities for his family were limited after midsize New England town. They first lived in Vir- the war. Vinh and his brothers and sisters were sent ginia, but moved here after a year and a half. Vinh to the United States by their parents, who could not and his family live in a modest house in a residen- leave Vietnam, but wanted their children to have tial neighborhood of a pleasant, mostly middle-class the opportunity for a better education and a more college town. The family’s Catholicism is evidenced secure future. Vinh and his family came in what has been called the “second wave” of immigration 3 From Nieto, Sonia. Affirming Diversity: The Sociopolitical Context from Indochina, that is, they came after the huge of Multicultural Education, 4e. Published by Allyn and Bacon/ exodus in 1975. Although Vinh and his family came Merrill Education, Boston, MA. Copyright 2004 by Pearson directly from Vietnam, most of the second-wave Education. Reprinted by permission of the publisher. immigrants came from refugee camps in Thailand,

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Malaysia, and elsewhere. This second wave has in the “mainstream program” for college-bound generally been characterized by greater heterogene- students: physics, calculus, French, music, and law. ity in social class and ethnicity, less formal educa- Vinh’s favorite subject is history because he says he tion, fewer marketable skills, and poorer health wants to learn about this country. He is also inter- than previous immigrants. During the 1980s, when ested in psychology. Vinh and his family came to the United States, the Homework and studying take up many hours of school-age Asian and Pacific Islander population be- Vinh’s time. He places great value on what he calls tween the ages of 5 and 19 grew by an astounding “becoming educated people.” His parents and uncle 90 percent. About half of the 800,000 Asian constantly stress the importance of an education refugees who arrived between 1975 and 1990 were and place great demands on Vinh and his brothers under 18 years of age.4 The Asian population has and sisters. He also enjoys playing volleyball and grown dramatically since that time. The 2000 cen- badminton and being with his friends in the gym. sus reported that there are currently 10.2 million Because he loves school, Vinh does not enjoy stay- Asian and Asian Americans in the United States; of ing home. He is a good student and wants desper- these, 1.1 million are Vietnamese.5 ately to go to college, but, even at this late date, he Vinh’s uncle works in town and supports all the had not received any help or information about dif- children. He takes his role of surrogate father very ferent colleges, how to apply, how to get financial seriously and tries to help the children in whatever aid, and admission requirements. He says he does way he can. He discusses many things with them; not want to bother anyone to ask for this informa- Vinh speaks with gratitude of the lengthy conversa- tion. Added to his reluctance to ask for assistance is tions they have. Mostly, he wants to make sure that the economic barrier he sees to getting a college ed- all the children benefit from their education. He ucation. Because he wants to make certain that his constantly motivates them to do better. brothers and sisters are well cared for, housed, and Vinh’s older brother makes dried flower arrange- fed, he may have to work full time after graduating ments in the basement and sells them in town. Dur- from high school. . . . ing the summers, Vinh works to contribute to his family here and in Vietnam, but during the school On Becoming “Educated People” year he is not allowed to work because he needs to In Vietnam, we go to school because we want to focus on his studies (“I just go to school, and, after become educated people. But in the United States, school, I go home to study,” he explains). He uses most people, they say, “Oh, we go to school because the money he makes in the summer to support his we want to get a good job.” But my idea, I don’t family because, he says, “We are very poor.” They think so. I say, if we go to school, we want a good rarely go to the movies, and they spend little on job also, but we want to become a good person. themselves. [In Vietnam] we go to school, we have to re- Vinh will be starting his senior year in high member every single word. ...We don’t have school. Because the number of Vietnamese speakers textbooks, so my teacher write on the blackboard. in the schools he has attended has never been high, So we have to copy and go home. . . . So, they say, Vinh has not been in a bilingual program. He does “You have to remember all the things, like all the quite well in school, but he also enjoys the opportu- words. . . .” But in the United States, they don’t nity to speak his native language and would no need for you to remember all the words. They just doubt have profited from a bilingual education. He need you to understand. . . . But two different is currently in an ESL class at the high school with school systems. They have different things. I think a small number of other Vietnamese students and in my Vietnamese school, they are good. But I also other students whose first language is not English. think the United States school system is good. Some teachers encourage Vinh and his Vietnamese They’re not the same. . . . They are good, but good classmates to speak Vietnamese during the ESL class in different ways. to improve their understanding of the curriculum When I go to school [in Vietnam], sometimes I content, but other teachers discourage the use of don’t know how to do something, so I ask my their native language. All of Vinh’s other classes are teachers. She can spend all the time to help me, Section_03_5500.qxd 12/9/09 3:38 PM Page 65

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anything I want. So, they are very nice. ...My to do better. . . .” So, sometimes when I do some- teacher, she was very nice. When I asked her every- thing not good, and my teachers say, “Oh, you did thing, she would answer me, teach me something. great!” I don’t like it. ...I want the truth better. That’s why I remember. . . . But some of my teach- Some teachers, they never concerned to the ers, they always punished me. students. So, they just do something that they have [Grades] are not important to me. Important to to do. But they don’t really do something to help me is education. ...I [am] not concerned about the people, the students. Some teachers, they just [test scores] very much. I just need enough for me go inside and go to the blackboard. . . . They don’t to go to college. . . . Sometimes, I never care about care. So that I don’t like. [grades]. I just know I do my exam very good. But I I have a good teacher, Ms. Brown. She’s very don’t need to know I got A or B. I have to learn sensitive. She understands the students, year to more and more. year, year after year. . . . She understands a lot. So Sometimes, I got C but I learned very much. I when I had her class, we discussed some things learned a lot, and I feel very sorry, “Why I got only very interesting about America. And sometimes she C?” But sometimes, if I got B, that’s enough, I don’t tells us about something very interesting about need A. another culture. But Ms. Mitchell, she just knows Some people, they got a good education. They how to teach for the children, like 10 years old or go to school, they got master’s, they got doctorate, younger. So some people don’t like her. Like me, I but they’re just helping themselves. So that’s not don’t like her. I like to discuss something. Not just good. . . . If I got a good education, I get a good job, how to write “A,” “you have to write like this.” So I not helping only myself. I like to help other don’t like that. . . . She wants me to write perfectly. people. ...I want to help other people who don’t So that is not a good way because we learn another have money, who don’t have a house. . . . The first language. Because when we learn another language, thing is money. If people live without money, they we learn to discuss, we learn to understand the cannot do nothing. So even if I want to help other word’s meaning, not about how to write the word. people, I have to get a good job. I have the money, I want to go to college, of course. Right now, I so that way I can help them. don’t know what will happen for the future. ...If I In class, sometimes [students] speak Vietnamese think of my future, I have to learn more about because we don’t know the words in English. . . . psychology. If I have a family, I want a perfect fam- Our English is not good, so that’s why we have to ily, not really perfect, but I want a very good family. speak Vietnamese. So that’s why I go to school, I have good education In school, if we get good and better and better, to teach them. So, Vietnamese want their children we have to work in groups, like four people. And to grow up and be polite and go to school, just like I we discuss some projects, like that. And different am right now. ...I just want they will be a good people have different ideas, so after that we choose person. some best idea. I like work in groups. I don’t care much about money. So, I just want Sometimes, the English teacher, they don’t un- to have a normal job that I can take care of myself derstand about us. Because something we not do and my family. So that’s enough. I don’t want to good, like my English is not good. And she say, climb up compared to other people, because, you “Oh, your English is great!” But that’s the way the know, different people have different ideas about American culture is. But my culture is not like how to live. So I don’t think money is important to that. . . . If my English is not good, she has to say, me. I just need enough money for my life. “Your English is not good. So you have to go home and study.” And she tell me what to study and how Demanding Standards to study to get better. But some Americans, you I’m not really good, but I’m trying. know, they don’t understand about myself. So they In Vietnam, I am a good student. But at the just say, “Oh! You’re doing a good job! You’re doing United States, my English is not good sometimes. I great! Everything is great!” Teachers talk like that, cannot say very nice things to some Americans, but my culture is different. . . . They say, “You have because my English is not perfect. Section_03_5500.qxd 12/9/09 3:38 PM Page 66

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Sometimes the people, they don’t think I’m I may need my counselor’s help. When I go to polite because they don’t understand my English college, I have to understand the college system and exactly. ...I always say my English is not good, how to go get into college. . . . The first thing I have because all the people, they can speak better than to know is the college system, and what’s the differ- me. So, I say, “Why some people, they came here ence between this school and other schools, and the same year with me, but they can learn better?” how they compare. ...I already know how to So I have to try. make applications and how to meet counselors, and When I lived in Vietnam, so I go to school and I how to take a test also. got very good credit [grades], but right now because Sometimes I do better than other people, but I my English is not good, sometimes I feel very sorry still think it’s not good. Because if you learn, you for myself. can be more than that. So that’s why I keep learn- [My uncle] never told me, ‘Oh, you do good,’ or ing. Because I think, everything you can do, you “Oh, you do bad.” Because every time I go home, I learn. If you don’t learn, you can’t do nothing. give him my report card, like from C to A, he don’t Right now, I cannot say [anything good] about say nothing. He say, “Next time, you should do myself because if I talk about myself, it’s not right. better.” If I got A, okay, he just say, “Oh, next time, Another person who lives with me, like my brother, do better than A! . . .” He doesn’t need anything he can say something about me better than what I from me. But he wants me to be a good person, and say about myself. . . . Nobody can understand helpful. . . . So he wants me to go to school, so themselves better than other people. someday I have a good job and so I don’t need from I don’t know [if I’m successful] because that him anymore. belongs to the future. ...I mean successful for He encourages me. He talks about why you have myself [means] that I have a good family; I have a to learn and what important things you will do in good job; I have respect from other people. the future if you learn. ...I like him to be involved about my school. ...I like him to be concerned Trying to Understand Other Cultures about my credits. Some [Black] people very good. . . . Most Black Some people need help, but some people don’t. people in [this town], they talk very nice. . . . Like Like me, sometimes I need help. I want to know in my country, some people very good and some how to . . . apply for college and what will I do to people very bad. get into college. So that is my problem. I am very different from other people who are I have a counselor, but I never talk to him. Be- the same age. Some people who are the same age, cause I don’t want them to be concerned about they like to go dancing, they like to smoke, they myself because they have a lot of people to talk want to have more fun. But not me. . . . Because with. So, sometimes, I just go home and I talk with right now, all the girls, they like more fun [things] my brother and my uncle. than sit down and think about psychology, think If I need my counselor every time I got trouble, about family. ...I think it’s very difficult to find [a I’m not going to solve that problem. . . . So, I girlfriend] right now. . . . If I find a girlfriend who want to do it by myself. I have to sit down and not agree with any of my ideas, it would not be a think, “Why did the trouble start? And how can good girlfriend. ...I don’t need [her to be] very we solve the problem? . . .” Sometimes, I say, I much like me, but some . . . we would have a little don’t want them to [be] concerned with my prob- in common. . . . It is not about their color or their lem. language, but their character. I like their character Most American people are very helpful. But better. because I don’t want them to spend time about I think it’s an important point, because if you myself, to help me, so that’s why I don’t come to understand another language or another culture, them. One other time, I talked with my uncle. He it’s very good for you. So I keep learning, other can tell me whatever I want. But my English is not cultures, other languages, other customs. good, so that’s why I don’t want to talk with Ameri- I have Chinese, I have Japanese, I have Ameri- can people. can, I have Cambodian [friends]. Every kind of Section_03_5500.qxd 12/9/09 3:38 PM Page 67

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people. Because I care about character, not about For Vietnamese, [culture] is very important. . . . color. I think my country is a great country. The people is very courageous. They never scared to do Strength from Culture and Family anything. . . . If we want to get something, we have Sometimes I think about [marrying] a Vietnamese to get it. Vietnamese culture is like that. ...We girl, because my son or my daughter, in the future, work hard, and we get something we want. they will speak Vietnamese. So, if I have an Ameri- If I have children, I have to teach them from can girlfriend, my children cannot speak [when] they grow up to when they get older. So, Vietnamese. Because I saw other families who have when they get older, I don’t have to teach them, an American wife or an American husband, their but they listen to me. Because that’s education, not children cannot speak Vietnamese. It is very hard to only myself, but all Vietnamese, from a long time learn a language. . . . In the United States, they ago to now. That’s the custom. So that’s why I like have TV, they have radio, every kind of thing, we my customs and my culture. have to do English. So, that why I don’t think my Every culture . . . they have good things and children can learn Vietnamese. they have bad things. And my culture is the same. When I sleep, I like to think a little bit about my But sometimes they’re different because they come country. And I feel very good. I always think from different countries. . . . America is so different. about . . . my family . . . what gifts they get me [My teachers] understand some things, just not before, how they were with me when I was all Vietnamese culture. Like they just understand young. ...Those are very good things to some things outside. . . . But they cannot under- remember . . . stand something inside our hearts. I’ve been here for three years, but the first two [Teachers should] understand the students. Like years I didn’t learn anything. I got sick, mental. I Ms. Mitchell, she just say, “Oh, you have to do it got mental. Because when I came to the United this way.” “You have to do that way.” But some States, I missed my father, my family, and my people, they came from different countries. They friends, and my Vietnam. have different ideas, so they might think about So, every time I go to sleep, I cannot sleep, I school in different ways. So maybe she has to know don’t want to eat anything. So I become sick. why they think in that way. . . . Because different I am a very sad person. Sometimes, I just want cultures, they have different meanings about educa- to be alone to think about myself. I feel sorry about tion. So she has to learn about that culture. what I do wrong with someone. Whatever I do I think they just think that they understand our wrong in the past, I just think and I feel sorry for culture. . . . But it is very hard to tell them, because myself. that’s our feelings. I never have a good time. I go to the mall, but I When I came to United States, I heard English so don’t feel good. ...I just sit there. I don’t know I say, “Oh, very funny sound.” Very strange to me. what to do. But I think they feel the same like when we speak Before I got mental, okay, I feel very good about Vietnamese. So they hear and they say, “What a myself, like I am smart, I learn a lot of things. . . . strange language.” Some people like to listen. But But after I got mental, I don’t get any some people don’t like to listen. So, if I talk with enjoyment. . . . I’m not smart anymore. Americans, I never talk Vietnamese. After I got mental, I don’t enjoy anything. Be- Some teachers don’t understand about the lan- fore that, I enjoy lots. Like I listen to music, I go to guage. So sometimes, my language, they say it school and talk to my friends. . . . But now I don’t sounds funny. And sometimes, all the languages feel I enjoy anything. Just talk with my friends, sound funny. Sometimes, [the teacher] doesn’t let that’s enough, that’s my enjoyment. us speak Vietnamese, or some people speak Cambo- My culture is my country. We love my country; dian. Sometimes, she already knows some Spanish, we love our people; we love the way the so she lets Spanish speak. But because she doesn’t Vietnamese, like they talk very nice and they are know about Vietnamese language, so she doesn’t let very polite to all the people. Vietnamese speak. Section_03_5500.qxd 12/9/09 3:38 PM Page 68

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[Teachers] have to know about our culture. And hostility needs to be confronted directly through they have to help the people learn whatever they changes in curriculum and other school policies and want. From the second language, it is very difficult practices. Students such as Vinh clearly need this for me and for other people. kind of leadership to help them make sense of their I want to learn something good from my culture new world. and something good from American culture. And I Hoang Vinh is obviously on a long and difficult want to take both cultures and select something road to adaptation, not only in cultural and linguis- good. . . . If we live in the United States, we have to tic terms, but also, and probably not coincidentally, learn something about new people. in terms of his mental health. Many of his issues are [To keep reading and writing Vietnamese] is very based on the traumas he has endured as an immi- important. . . . So, I like to learn English, but I like grant. Whether or not his school is able to help him to learn my language too. Because different lan- solve these problems is certain to have an impact on guages, they have different things, special. [My his future. younger sisters] are very good. They don’t need my help. They already know. They write to my parents and they keep reading Vietnamese books. . . . Notes Sometimes they forget to pronounce the words, but 1I am grateful to Haydée Font for the interviews and I help them. transcripts for this case study. When she did these in- At home, we eat Vietnamese food. ...The terviews, Haydée was a graduate student in multicul- important thing is rice. Everybody eats rice, and tural education at the University of Massachusetts. vegetables, and meat. They make different kinds of 2 food. . . . The way I grew up, I had to learn, I had The Vietnamese use family names first, given names to know it. By looking at other people – when my second. The given name is used for identification. In mother cooked, and I just see it, and so I know it. this case, Vinh is the given name and Hoang is the Right now, I like to listen to my music, and I like family name. According to A Manual for Indochinese to listen to American music. . . . And I like to listen Refugee Education, 1976-1977 (Arlington, VA: National to other music from other countries. Indochinese Clearinghouse, Center for Applied Lin- We tell [our parents] about what we do at school guistics, 1976), whereas in the U.S. society John and what we do at home and how nice the people Jones would be known formally as Mr. Jones and in- around us, and what we will do better in the future formally as John, in Vietnam, Hoang Vinh would be to make them happy. Something not good, we known both formally and informally as Mr. Vinh or don’t write. Vinh. They miss us and they want ourselves to live 3See Ronald Takaki, Strangers from a different shore: A together. . . . They teach me how to live without history of Asian Americans (New York: Penguin Books, them. 1989); “The biculturalism of the Vietnamese stu- dent.” Digest (Newsletter of the ERIC Clearinghouse [Note: After discussing the goals and difficulties on Urban Education), no.152 (March 2000). just described by Hoang Vinh in this interview, the 4 author concludes this case study with the following Peter N. Kiang and Vivian Wai-Fun Lee, “Exclusion comments.] or Contribution? Education K-12 Policy.” In The state Schools are expected to take the major responsi- of Asian Pacific America: Policy issues to the year 2020 (Los bility for helping children confront these difficult is- Angeles: LEAP Asian Pacific American Public Policy sues, but often they do not. Given the changing U.S. Institute and the UCLA Asian American studies Cen- demographics and the large influx of new immi- ter, 1993): 25-48; Digest, 1990. grants, the rivalry and negative relationships among 5U.S. Bureau of the Census, Profile of selected social different groups of immigrants and native-born characteristics: 2000 (Washington, DC: U.S. Govern- students will likely be felt even more. Interethnic ment Printing Office, 2000). Section_03_5500.qxd 12/9/09 3:38 PM Page 69

CHAPTER 1 Understanding Ourselves and Others 69 MARY PIPHER

Arrival Stories and Acculturation

Although immigrants to America have to satisfy certain criteria that demonstrate their readiness to be self-sustaining when they arrive, refugees are those immigrants who face persecution in their home countries and are admitted even though they may not have job skills or speak English. The author worked with refugees who were placed in the Midwest and describes the difficulties they encountered.

Arrival Stories way to sort out whether people are kind and help- ful or psychopaths. All of us look alike to them. Most of the refugees who arrive in Lincoln (Ne- They fear robbers, harassment, getting lost, or being braska) didn’t choose to come to our city. They hit by a car. were handed a plane ticket to Lincoln by INS offi- Here in Lincoln, most refugees are met at the air- cials when they got off a plane in New York or Los port by people from their homeland and by some- Angeles. They may know nothing about the Mid- one from church services. An interesting thing west and they may have been separated from their happens at the airports. When the newcomers and closest friends by the assignment process. They may their hosts meet, they all burst into tears. The mo- have bodies adapted to tropical climates or skills ment of arrival has an intensity and poignancy that such as deep-sea fishing that they cannot use in the sweeps everyone away. From the airport, refugees Midwest. They may be moving into a town where are driven to a furnished apartment stocked with no one speaks their language or even knows where food and used furniture. Their first day in town their country is. they get their social security cards and their immu- Most newcomers arrive broke. In fact, I have nizations. They enroll their kids in school, and, if never met a rich refugee. All arrive worried about needed, they receive emergency doctors’ appoint- jobs and housing, as well as about their legal status ments. Sometimes refugees get off the plane with in the United States. Especially if they have been life-threatening illnesses and go directly to a hospi- tortured or lost family members, they are not at tal. peak mental efficiency. In many cases, refugees Each adult is given fifty dollars per week, plus don’t speak English and have never lived in a devel- food, rent, and temporary medical insurance. They oped country. They have been warned not to trust go through an orientation that explains everything strangers, yet everyone is a stranger. They have no from how to use the city bus and library to marriage laws and taxes. Adults are encouraged to get jobs quickly. The goal of our resettlement agencies is self-sufficiency in four months. In fact, within a few From The middle of everywhere (New York: Harcourt, Inc.), weeks, refugees are often working. In addition to copyright © 2002 by Mary Pipher, reprinted by permission their other financial burdens, all refugees must of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Co. repay their airfares from the country they fled.

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A woman from Kazakhstan arrived in Lincoln to hug American women and say, “Hug your hus- with her father. She waited three hours at the air- band for me.” port for her sponsor who was at a party and had When I was in college, I remember reading about forgotten her. Later that night her father had a a tribe in Central America who thought that Amer- heart attack from the stress of the journey. From icans never got sick or died. All the Americans television, she knew she could call 911. Yet even they’d seen were healthy anthropologists, tall and when the translation service finally kicked in, she well-nourished. They’d never seen Americans die. could give no address. Amazingly, her father lived Modern refugees often come here equally naïve through this attack. about us. Some have Nebraska and Alaska confused Zainab arrived at JFK Airport in New York City. and expect mountains, ice, and grizzlies. Some Before arriving she and her husband had spent think of Nebraska as a western state with cowboys, years in a camp in the Saudi Arabian desert. They and they are ill-prepared for our factories, suburbs, had two children in the camp and Zainab was again and shopping malls. Many newcomers have never pregnant. She walked off the plane, looked at all seen ...escalators or elevators. Inventions such as the electric lights and the people who were walking duct tape, clothes hangers, aluminum foil, or mi- fast and talking loudly, and she said to her husband, crowaves often befuddle new arrivals. “Let’s go back to the camp. At least there we had Someone once said, “Every day in a foreign friends and family.” He said, “I don’t own the plane. country is like final exam week.” It’s a good meta- I don’t own anything.” phor. Everything is a test, whether of one’s knowl- Telling me this later, Zainab laughed. She said, edge of the language, the culture, or of the layout of “All he had was money for a Pepsi, so he bought me the city. Politics, laws, and personal boundaries are one. Drinking that cheered me up.” different. Relations between parents and children, Zainab and her husband had hoped they would the genders, and the social classes are structured be assigned Lincoln, where they knew a few fami- differently here. The simplest task – buying a bottle lies, but an official sent them to Fargo, North of orange juice or finding medicine for a headache – Dakota. They boarded another plane and arrived in can take hours and require every conceivable skill. Fargo late at night. They were picked up and taken Some refugees believe they will be given a new to a hotel room. Too tired to clean up or eat, they car and a house when they arrive. Some people ask fell into deep sleep. In the morning they awoke and government workers, “Where is my color TV? My looked out the window. They saw green trees, grass, free computer?” Others have seen Dallas or Who a squirrel, and two dogs. Zainab said, “We had spent Wants to Marry a Millionaire? and think they will years in a place with no plants or animals. My hus- soon get rich. band asked me if we were in heaven.” This belief that it’s easy to get rich in America is They had never seen people in shorts or with exploited by con artists. An Azerbaijani man re- dyed green hair. They didn’t know how to use a ceived a Reader’s Digest Sweepstakes notice inform- phone. A homeless guy gave them thirty-five cents ing him he was a millionaire. He fell to his knees and dialed for them. and thanked Allah for his riches. A Vietnamese Soon they managed to move to Lincoln. Zainab family called relatives in Ho Chi Minh City to tell had troubles with our foods. In Iraq there were not them the great news that they had won the Pub- many kinds of vegetables, mostly just tomatoes and lisher’s Clearinghouse sweepstakes. A Siberian cou- cucumbers, but they were fresh and delicious. ple laughed and danced around their kitchen, Zainab said Nebraskans had a huge variety, but already spending their expected pickle card win- nothing tasted flavorful. nings on a new car, a dishwasher, and a swimming Zainab came from an area where men and pool for the kids. Later, when it became clear they women did not touch each other except in families. hadn’t won, they weren’t so happy. The American handshake was a problem. When a Some newcomers don’t know the number of man held out his hand to her, she had to explain weeks in a year or what the seasons are. Others are that Iraqi women do not shake hands. She learned well-educated but have gaps. Once when I was Section_03_5500.qxd 12/9/09 3:38 PM Page 71

MARY PIPHER Arrival Stories and Acculturation 71

talking to a well-educated Croatian woman about When I ask refugees what America means to our history, I brought up the sixties. I said, “It was a them, many say, “Freedom.” This may mean many hard time with war and so many assassinations, things. To the Kurdish sisters (Nasreen and Zeenat) those of John and Bobby Kennedy and Martin it is the freedom to wear stylish American clothes Luther King.” She asked in amazement, “You mean and walk about freely. It’s the freedom to go swim- Martin Luther King is dead?” When I said yes, she ming and shopping and make a living. To many of began to cry. the poor and disenfranchised, it is the radical mes- Our casual ways of dealing with the opposite sex sage that everyone has rights, even though at first are without precedent in some cultures. Our re- many refugees do not know what their rights are. laxed interactions between men and women can be America means a system of laws, a house, a job, alarming to some people from the Middle East. and a school for every child. In America people can Some traditional women are suspicious of Ameri- strive for happiness, not even a concept in some can women; it seems to them as if the American parts of the world. They are free to become who- women are trying to steal their husbands because ever they want to become. Refugees learn they can they speak to them at work or in stores. speak their minds, write, and travel. They shed the An Iraqi high school student told of arriving in constraints of more traditional cultures. As one Bul- this country on a summer day. As she and her fa- garian woman put it to me, “In America, the wives ther drove through Lincoln, there were many do not have to get up and make the husbands’ women on the streets in shorts and tank tops. Her breakfasts.” father kept saying to her, “Cover your eyes; cover People from all over the world want to come your eyes.” Neither of them had ever seen women here. They want a chance at the American dream. in public without a head covering. They come because they want to survive and be There are two common refugee beliefs about safe and anywhere is better than where they were. America – one is that it is sin city; the other is that However, the process of adjusting is incredibly trau- it is paradise. I met a Cuban mother whose sixteen- matic. The Kurdish sisters were in culture shock for year-old daughter got pregnant in Nebraska. She about six months. After a year, they are still deeply blamed herself for bringing the girl to our sinful in debt, lonely, haunted by the past, and struggling town, weeping as she told me the story. And she to master our language and our culture. They are showed me a picture of the daughter, all dressed in overwhelmed every time their bills arrive. Nasreen white. A Mexican father told me that his oldest son and Zeenat still dream nightly of their homeland. was now in a gang. He talked about American It is difficult to describe or even imagine the chal- movies and the violent television, music, and video lenges of getting started in a new country. Imagine games. He said, “My son wears a black T-shirt he yourself dropped in downtown Rio de Janeiro or bought at a concert. It has dripping red letters that Khartoum with no money, no friends, and no un- read, ‘More Fucking Blood.”’ He looked at me derstanding of how that culture works. Imagine quizzically. “America is the best country in the you have six months to learn the language and world, the richest and the freest. Why do you make everything you need to know to support your fam- things like this for children?” ily. Of course, that isn’t a fair comparison because On the other hand, some refugees idealize our you know . . . what a bank is, and how to drive a country. They talk endlessly of the mountains of car. And you have most likely not been tortured or food in buffets, the endless supply of clean water, seen family members killed within the last few the shining cars, and the electricity. Flying into a months. city such as New York or Seattle, many refugees ex- Picture yourself dropped in the Sudanese grass- perience their first vision of America and are over- lands with no tools or knowledge about how to sur- whelmed by the shining stars of light on the vive and no ways to communicate with the locals or ground, more light than they had ever seen. One ask for advice. Imagine yourself wondering where refugee from Romania captured both ideas when the clean water is, where and what food is, and he said, “America is the beauty and the beast.” what you should do about the bites on your feet, Section_03_5500.qxd 12/9/09 3:38 PM Page 72

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and your sunburn. ...Unless a kind and generous In Legacies, Portes and Rumbaut report that most Sudanese takes you in and helps you adjust, you immigrants move into the middle-class mainstream would be a goner. in one or two generations. That is the good news. The bad news is that if they don’t make it quickly into the middle class, they won’t make it at all. With the passage of time, drive diminishes, and by the Acculturation third generation, assimilation stops. If two genera- tions fail to make it into the middle class, the fol- In their first stage after arrival newcomers briefly lowing generations are likely to be stuck at the experience relief and euphoria. They are here and bottom. they are safe. Failure to succeed will drive refugee families In the second stage reality sets in. Refugees have away from mainstream culture into what Portes lost their routines, their institutions, their language, calls “reactive ethnicity.” Newcomers will revert to their families and friends, their homes, their work enclaves and see failure as inevitable, thus, in many and incomes. They have lost their traditions, their cases, dooming their children to fail. clothes, pictures, heirlooms, and pets. They are Portes’s research obviously has implications for without props in a new and alien environment. social policy. We need to help refugees and immi- They experience cultural bereavement. The old grants early with job training, education, language, country may have been a terrible place, but it was and business loans. It’s hard to study physics when home. It was the repository of all their stories, one is sick and hungry, or to attend GED classes memories, and meanings. Many times newcomers’ when one has worked all night at a factory. If we bodies are in America, but their hearts remain in miss our chance to help them, we miss our chance their homeland. to create well-adjusted, well-educated citizens. Ideally, the third stage is the beginning of recov- ...I want to tell another archetypal success ery. Newcomers begin to grasp how America works. story. The family arrived here badly traumatized In the fourth stage, also ideally, newcomers are bi- after wandering across many countries looking for cultural and bilingual. They can choose to partici- a home. But they were a strong family with many pate in many aspects of the culture. attributes of resilience. In Nebraska, their com- In general, there are four reactions refugees’ munity helped them survive and their hard work families have to the new culture – fight it because it enabled them to build a life for themselves. Thirty- is threatening; avoid it because it’s overwhelming; seven million people watched the last episode of assimilate as fast as possible by making all American the (original) TV show Survivor. This family’s story choices; or tolerate discomfort and confusion while and the stories of most refugees are much more slowly making intentional choices about what to compelling than any contrived reality-television accept and reject. Alejandro Portes and Rubén program could ever show. Rumbaut published the results of long-term studies I interviewed Kareem and Mirzana at their high on newcomer adaptation in a book called Legacies.1 school. Mirzana was small and blond. Kareem was They found that this last reaction, which they called heartbreakingly handsome, with thick eyebrows “selective acculturation,” was best for refugees. and black hair. But he was shy and let his older sis- They described two other less-adaptive ways of ter do most of the talking. adjusting. Dissonant acculturation is when the kids The family had lived in a village in northern in the family outstrip the parents. This can undercut Bosnia. Their father was an engineer, and their parental authority and put the kids at risk. Conso- mother worked in a store. They were a hardwork- nant acculturation is when members of the family ing middle-class family. Mirzana said she and Ka- all move together toward being American. At one reem had an easy life, consisting mainly of school time this rapid acceptance of American ways was and play. Their grandparents lived nearby. Kareem considered ideal, but now it appears that this makes said, “We had everything we wanted. We were families too vulnerable to the downside of America. never lonely.” Section_03_5500.qxd 12/9/09 3:38 PM Page 73

MARY PIPHER Arrival Stories and Acculturation 73

Nearby there was a war in Croatia, but their par- days they moved into their own apartment and ents didn’t think the war would come to Bosnia. they discovered next door a family that the father One day the Serbs came and put their father and all had known as a child. The two families cried with the men in their village into a concentration camp. joy to be reunited. Now the family knows all of the The siblings and their mother fled to Croatia. Bosnian community. Bosnians in Lincoln share Mirzana told me about her father’s camp. She meals and throw parties. The men help each other said, “Many men were in a small, empty room. find jobs and the women help each other learn Eng- They had nothing to eat, no papers, and no money.” lish and shop for bargains. Their father developed a lung infection. Still, he When I met them, Kareem and Mirzana had was lucky – he was only there for a month and not been here only three months, but already they were too badly beaten. He suffered most hearing the pain speaking pretty good English, their fourth language. of others when the soldiers took them out and beat They laughed as they talked about early experiences them. He listened to men scream for hours. in Nebraska. A neighbor gave them bananas, but Their father saw many bad things, most of which they thought they tasted like soap and threw them he didn’t tell them. He did tell of a drunken soldier away. They missed European bakeries. In America who came into their cell and shouted, “Run to the everything supposed to be sweet was salty and vice corner. The last one there will be shot.” One man versa. Here herring was sweet and butter was salty. didn’t run and was killed by this soldier. Mirzana Kareem and Mirzana like it here. Mirzana is shook her head sadly as she said, “This man was making A’s and, after school, she is a stocker at a su- deaf.” permarket. Mirzana laughed as she explained. “The Eventually their father was released. Before he staff teaches me a new word each day.” Kareem is could escape the country, he was ordered to fight too young to work, so he cleans the house, does the Serbs. He didn’t even have a weapon and, as laundry, and studies after school. Both Kareem and Mirzana put it, “He was there to be shot.” After a Mirzana want to go to college and get good jobs. while, he managed to run away and find his family They want to care for their parents. in Croatia. When he came to their door, none of Their parents are ambitious, too. They have dif- them recognized him. In the two months he had ficult factory jobs because their English is still poor. been away, he’d aged ten years. They work from two until ten. But in the morning The family lived in Croatia for two years. Even- they study English. Mirzana said, “In a year or two tually a friend helped them get into Germany. They they will have better jobs.” spoke no German and lived in one small room, This family is lucky. They have each other and a which Kareem didn’t like. He said no one could supportive community. Everyone has many of the ever be alone and there were fights about space and attributes of resilience. The family carries with them sharing. a great deal of human capital. The external environ- Mirzana and Kareem learned German, but their ment has been pretty harsh, but most likely, they family couldn’t become German citizens and they will eventually transcend it. had no hope of improving their situation. In 1998 Sometimes Mirzana wishes that her life these the Germans kicked them out and they came to the last few years were just a dream and she would United States. wake up in Bosnia in their old house. Her grand- They were optimistic on the plane here, but mother would be calling her to come work in the when they arrived in Lincoln they were taken to a garden. There would be no war. Kareem disagrees. small dirty apartment. They were exhausted from He is filled with newcomer zest. He said, “I could the thirty-hour flight, but they couldn’t sleep. Their smell freedom in America.” mother was in shock. She cried, “I want to go back.” The father said, “You forget, we have no choices. Notes We have no country to return to.” They had no car and they didn’t know anyone. 1Alejandro Portes and Rubén Rumbaut, Legacies No one in the family spoke English. But after five (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001). Section_03_5500.qxd 12/9/09 3:38 PM Page 74

MICHAEL SCHERER

Scrimmage on the Border

The author addresses the hotly debated issue of “illegal immigration.” Unlike many politicians pandering to get votes, his essay demonstrates why there are no simple solu- tions to this complex problem.

t its southern border, where the United States On the first Sunday in April, five migrant men of America ends in a tangle of barbed wire and huddled in the shade under a cement culvert that Amanzanita bushes, the red dirt desert fills each passed beneath Arizona’s Route 92 in the border night with thousands of men and women trudging town of Hereford. Though it was the middle of the north from Mexico. This is the new Ellis Island, the day, with temperatures approaching 80 degrees, port of entry for more than a million people every they were dressed like New England schoolkids in year. They come because immigration helps drive heavy jackets and wool caps, clothing that had kept our prosperity, and because, as George W. Bush them warm as they hiked through the Huachuca says, there are jobs that U.S. citizens won’t do, and Mountains and down into the San Pedro River val- because the president of Mexico, Vicente Fox, has ley. ...They were heading north, and might have made their migration – and gainful employment in made it to Phoenix, to a new job and another life, El Norte – a linchpin of his nation’s economy. They but for a group of citizen soldiers, a ragtag bunch of come because American companies have an un- men and women armed with walkie-talkies, binoc- quenchable desire for more strawberry pickers and ulars, and not a few pistols, who were lying in wait. meatpackers and dishwashers, and because few will These self-described patriots had chosen this Sun- check to see if their Social Security cards are real. day to do what their president and Congress would They come alone or as families, cradling babies in not ...to stop what they called the “illegal inva- their arms, braving freezing nights and sweltering sion of America.” days, border bandits and mesquite trees with thorns “We found them and called Border Patrol,” said like knives. They pay guides thousands of dollars Marc Johannes, a 40-year-old auto mechanic from for the privilege of walking 5 or 10 or 20 miles to Tucson, who had been manning a post along the hide by the side of a desolate road, hoping their ride road. The five migrants solemnly lowered their to Phoenix or Las Vegas or Los Angeles shows up. heads as they climbed into the back of the patrol Every year, hundreds die along the way. Those who truck, saying not a word. “I’m fed up,” Johannes do make it are greeted as criminals. In the broken said. “This whole country is being over-run.” logic of the nation’s current immigration policy, Johannes stands well over 6 feet tall ... wore they are enticed and needed, but illegal. desert camouflage pants, and in his bag he had a Russian-made, first-generation infrared scope, the better to see immigrants at night. He didn’t want to be mistaken for a racist. “I consider myself a scien- From Mother Jones, July/August, 2005, 30(4). Copyright © tist,” he continued. “And I know that all people on 2005, Foundation for National Progress. the planet are the same. If I were living in a Third

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MICHAEL SCHERER Scrimmage on the Border 75

World cesspool, I would probably look for another wells or trimming trees. Now they felt their country job too. But the entire Third World is moving north was changing around them. The government was on a global scale.” One of Johannes’ friends’ vehi- allowing a trampling of the law, a dilution of Amer- cles had been stolen and recovered in Mexico. A ican culture, and a burgeoning of the welfare state. neighbor had recently moved away so his daughter It was turning a blind eye to a gateway for terrorists. would not have to attend a largely Latino school. America was being lost. And nobody was stopping “I’ve been denied jobs because I don’t speak Span- it, not the U.S. Border Patrol, not Congress, not the ish,” he said. “I’m more affected by this than any- president. body else.” Weeks earlier, appearing at a press conference A few days earlier, Johannes had traveled to with Mexico’s President Fox, President Bush had Tombstone, Arizona, for the first day of what was said, “I’m against vigilantes in the United States of billed as “The Minuteman Project,” a month-long America.” He was dismissing not just the citizen sol- protest against illegal immigration. The idea, to re- diers in the desert but a growing movement within cruit American citizens for border patrols, was not his own Republican Party, for the backlash against new. In recent years, a half-dozen groups, including immigration in America involves more than the fully armed paramilitary militias and local ranch- fringe right. Even as the Minutemen gathered, poll- ers, have walked the desert searching for migrants, sters for NBC News and the Wall Street Journal found defying federal officials who warn against civilian that 48 percent of Americans believed that immi- bravado. But those groups have largely worked in gration “detracts from our character and weakens the shadows. The Minuteman Project was designed the United States.” In a nation of immigrants, only as a national coming-out party, less an effort to cap- 41 percent said immigration betters the repub- ture Mexicans crossing the border than to capture lic. ... California Governor Arnold Schwarzeneg- airtime on the cable news channels. ger declared in an April speech that the United “We are done writing letters and sending emails States needs to “close the borders.” Though the and showing up at town hall meetings,” said one of governor apologized for the remarks, a week later the project’s organizers, Chris Simcox, before a he praised the Minutemen on a Southern Califor- bank of television cameras at Tombstone’s Masonic nia radio show. Hall. He stood next to Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.), Outside the Minutemen’s Tombstone headquar- the House’s leading opponent of illegal immigra- ters, Don Wooley, a retired pawnbroker with a chis- tion. ...Tancredo wore black cowboy boots and a eled jaw and bright eyes, was making his stand. pin that read “Undocumented Border Patrol Wooley was proud to have fought in Vietnam be- Agent.” In his shirt pocket he kept a fresh cigar. cause “I don’t think it’s ever dishonorable to go kill “For the first time in seven years,” he told the communists.” He’d driven down from Lawton, press, “I can actually tell our friends and supporters Oklahoma, in December to make sure the Minute- that we are on the offensive.” man organizers were not racists or hucksters. Now Tombstone is a tourist town, a place of reenact- he was back to do his part. “If you and your kids are ment, simulation. Acting troupes stage Old West going to speak English and live the lifestyle you live gunfights every hour or two, and the stores sell pe- today, somebody is going to have to pay the price,” riod costumes and posters of Doc Holliday. It is, in he told me. He didn’t live near many Spanish- many ways, the perfect backdrop for a televised speaking people, but he had heard of the problems. passion play. Minutemen with handlebar mus- “There are government offices where all the clerks taches and minutewomen in hip holsters and Wran- don’t speak English,” he said. “I wouldn’t speak gler shirts posed before satellite relay trucks. They’d Spanish on a bet. I speak English.” He certainly arrived by the hundreds from every corner of the spoke with determination. “Nothing happens in country, with a common sense of outrage and Washington unless there is a crowd with pitchforks similar sets of talking points – working people and and torches.” retired people, many of whose parents or grandpar- Representative Tancredo’s press secretary, Carlos ents had come from Europe. They’d spent their life- Espinosa, has one of the toughest jobs in Washing- times framing houses or driving trucks or digging ton. “Damage control,” he called it – constantly Section_03_5500.qxd 12/9/09 3:38 PM Page 76

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parrying and rebutting charges that his boss is a or Jewish or black or white or Hungarian by ances- bigot. But if media exposure is the measure of a try? Is there something we can all hang on to? Are press secretary’s success, Espinosa ranked among there things that will bind us together as Ameri- the best. In early April, Tancredo was booking at cans?” He continued into a monologue about the least 30 radio, newspaper, and television interviews identity crisis in America, the “cult of multicultur- a week. “We were sitting in the office yesterday,” alism,” schoolkids ashamed to love their country, Tancredo told me, once we settled at a corner table and textbooks that say Christopher Columbus “de- in a deserted cafeteria. “. . . Think about where we stroyed paradise.” Tancredo believes that many im- were just a few short years ago. And how amazing migrants today, unlike his grandparents, who came it is to now be on the cusp of a major shift in pub- over from Italy, no longer feel the need to assimi- lic policy.”’ late. “You have, at least, divided loyalties,” he When Tancredo arrived in Congress in 1999, no said. ... one seemed to care about Mexican migration. The Tancredo led a coterie of insurgent Republicans Immigration Reform Caucus he founded attracted in a revolt against the White House. They delayed only 16 members, all Republicans, and just about passage of the intelligence reform bill because it the only Americans who ever heard him speak failed to include a provision called Real ID, which were late-night C-SPAN viewers. “I really didn’t would make it far more difficult for illegal immi- know what else to do,” he said. “Then 9/11 hap- grants to get state driver’s licenses. In February, pened and everything changed. We got 60 members nearly two-thirds of the House, including 42 overnight.” Democrats, voted for the Real ID measure, which Tancredo turned illegal immigration into a na- was later endorsed by the Senate and signed by the tional-security issue. He spread word that Islamic president. This is only the beginning of what Tan- prayer rugs and a diary written in Arabic had been credo hopes will be a series of legislative victories found in the border scrubland. “Can anybody ex- this year. He plans to derail a bipartisan effort, sup- plain to me why we shouldn’t be paranoid?” he ported by the president, that would allow illegal im- asked a reporter for Fox News. He began appearing migrants to find legal employment in the U.S. He’s regularly on conservative talk radio, and with Lou reintroducing a bill that would suspend legal work Dobbs on CNN. He complained about open borders visas, increase fines for employers who hire illegal to the Washington Times editorial board, and said that immigrants, and deploy the military to protect the “the blood of the people killed” by a second terror- borders. He is also helping groups in seven states ist attack would be on the hands of President Bush push new initiatives or laws that would deny gov- and Congress. That prompted a phone call from ernment services to illegal immigrants. Last fall Ari- Bush adviser Karl Rove, one so rife with vulgarity zona voters approved Proposition 200, a ballot and vitriol that Tancredo, who was driving to work initiative nicknamed “Protect Arizona Now,” which at the time, had to pull his car to the side of the requires government workers to report undocu- road. Rove called him a “traitor to the president” mented residents who seek out government aid. and told him never to “darken the doorstep of this The law garnered 56 percent of the vote, including, White House.” Unbowed, Tancredo went on to raise according to one exit poll, more than 40 percent of money last year to defeat several House Republi- the state’s Latino voters. ... cans he considered soft on immigration, earning the The minutemen set up their operational head- ire of House Majority Leader Tom DeLay. “I will quarters in the run-down dormitories of the Mira- never be a chairman of any committee around cle Valley Bible College, a faded compound near here,” Tancredo said, cracking a smile. “I will never Hereford built in the late 1950s by the Reverend be in the ‘in’ crowd.” Asa Alonzo Allen, a faith healer famous for exorcis- But Tancredo did not come to Washington to ing demons before tent crowds of 20,000 until he climb the rungs of power. He came to draw the bat- died of alcoholism at the age of 59. At the front tle lines in a clash of cultures. “You have to under- gate, an armed guard screened cars. Inside was a stand there is a bigger issue here. ...Who are we? communications center, equipped with ham radios Do we have an understanding of what it means to and topographic maps of well-known immigration be an American, even if we are Hispanic or Italian trails. For security, all registered Minutemen wore Section_03_5500.qxd 12/9/09 3:38 PM Page 77

MICHAEL SCHERER Scrimmage on the Border 77

orange badges. The men slept four to a room. A sur- try saying, Your laws mean nothing, your citizen- plus of American flags festooned the front lawn. ship means nothing.” Around the same time, for- Minuteman founder Jim Gilchrist, a retired ac- mer Southern California resident Glenn Spencer, a countant, seemed thrilled by the layout and its trap- former radio talk show host, founded American pings. He’d served as a Marine outside of Khe Sanh Border Patrol at the base of the Huachuca Moun- during Vietnam, and took easily to the role of com- tains, where he launched regular patrols, some of manding general, always talking up the enemy and which he broadcast in infrared video on the Inter- warning of possible ambushes. He leaked rumors to net. Another Los Angeles native, Casey Nethercott, the conservative press, claiming that a Latin Amer- recently bought a ranch that abuts the border and ican gang called Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13, was founded the Arizona Guard, a militia that he says is planning to attack his volunteers. During a desert prepared to fight the Mexican army if the U.S. gov- patrol one day, he received a tip from an informant ernment is not. They came to Arizona because it he would not identify suggesting an imminent has all the action. ... armed assault from across the wire. “Do whatever Many locals take the torrent in stride. They sleep you want with that,” he told a skeptical Los Angeles with their screen doors locked and their front doors Times reporter between drags of a cigarette. “I didn’t open, and if someone comes knocking late at night, personally gather this info. ...” He wore a crum- searching for food, water, or a telephone, they try to pled straw cowboy hat, and what appeared to be a help out. “I got to the point where I was buying brand-new military equipment belt, to which he extra bread and peanut butter for those people,” affixed his cellular phone and water bottles. When said Eric Nelson. Crime against locals is extremely volunteers came to him with concerns that their rare, though in January 2004, three illegal immi- walkie-talkies were being intentionally jammed by grants attacked Hereford resident Sandy Graham as human smugglers across the border, he an- she warmed up her Chevy Suburban to drive her nounced, with some elation, “This has been like a 14-year-old daughter to school. The men, who had real war.” been hiding in the mesquite, stabbed Sandy with a Like many Minuteman volunteers, Gilchrist hails pen, kicked her daughter, and sped away in the car. from Southern California, a land adrift in a demo- They were promptly caught and arrested, but at graphic sea change. Between 2000 and 2020, the least one resident, Cindy Kolb, began strapping a number of Latino residents there is set to increase .38 to her ankle before driving her seven-year-old by nearly two-thirds, and the number of Asian res- to the bus stop. idents will increase by 40 percent. Once-lily-white Local newspaper columnist Jim Dwyer calls the suburbs in Orange County, where Gilchrist lives, anti-immigrant activists “crusading carpetbaggers,” will soon count whites as a minority. He says he and the governments of Douglas, Tombstone, and doesn’t mind the diversity of races, but he cannot Cochise County have passed resolutions condemn- tolerate the diversity of cultures. “I saw the country ing civilian patrols. Undaunted, Simcox worked change literally overnight into a foreign country,” without sleep for much of the first week of the Min- he told me over a hamburger at the Trading Post uteman Project, cautioning his volunteers to act re- Diner on Route 92. “The Fourth of July was not sponsibly on the border, to phone Border Patrol, being celebrated, but Cinco de Mayo was. All the and to not engage the migrants. He wore a bullet- billboards would be in foreign languages. It’s not proof vest and kept an armed guard at his side. Be- just Spanish. It’s Korean. I saw the nation being seg- cause he was on probation for carrying a pistol into regated.” a nearby national park, he can no longer pack his Gilchrist’s co-organizer, Chris Simcox, worked as own weapon. “My family is very concerned with an elementary school teacher in Los Angeles until me taking on a multimillion-dollar crime syndi- 2001, when he moved to Tombstone and founded cate,” Simcox said after finishing breakfast one an armed border patrol called Civil Homeland De- morning. ...“It’s the government of Mexico in bed fense. “Where are all these gangs coming from, who with the government of the United States that has don’t speak English?” he remembered thinking created a subculture of human smuggling and drug after he took a job teaching in South Central in the smuggling and gangsters, and it’s a mess. This bor- late 1990s. “We have people that came to this coun- der is worth a billion dollars of business at least.” Section_03_5500.qxd 12/9/09 3:38 PM Page 78

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Since he began his work, he said, his group has “No, it’s just a bush. I’ve been looking at this land- alerted Border Patrol to nearly 5,000 illegal mi- scape so long that every bush looks like a person grants in the desert, and rescued 158 people in and every person looks like a bush.” The Minute- need of food or water. Later that day, he had an in- men had spaced themselves out over two miles on terview scheduled on The O’Reilly Factor, which a stretch of dust called Border Road. ...Their task would be broadcast from a relay truck parked on was mercilessly boring. They sat on chairs or in the border. their trucks, gazing over a wide desert plain that Locals like Herb Linn would just as soon Simcox passed five or six miles into Mexico to a distant stay in Los Angeles. At Johnny Ringo’s, a biker bar highway where the migrants would, on a normal named after the gunfighter who shot a man in 1879 day, be dropped off for the long walk to the United for refusing a shot of whiskey, Linn stopped pouring States. No one was coming now. The Mexican gov- drinks when I mentioned Simcox. “He’s a self- ernment, wary of gun-toting vigilantes, had serving son of a bitch who wants his 15 minutes of mounted its own patrols. Every few hours, on the fame,” said the barkeep, a former city councilor. “If other side of the short barbed-wire fence, you the Minutemen succeed in sealing the border, are could see another group of migrants get rousted they going to spend as much time picking the from the bush, loaded into the back of a Mexican crops? I don’t want to pay five bucks for a can of government truck, and driven back into the coun- string beans.” try’s interior. James “Butch” Peri, owner of one of the largest In the absence of action, the Minutemen bided onion farms in Nevada, knows all about the costs their time with the steady stream of international and benefits of migrant labor. He pays legal immi- media who showed up to interview them. Behind grants around $8 an hour to shovel onions into 90- them, up on a hill, sat a group of volunteers from pound burlap bags, a job for which he says there are the ACLU and the American Friends Service Com- no U.S.-born applicants. At a meeting of Tancredo’s mittee, mostly students from Stanford Law School Immigration Reform Caucus on Capitol Hill, Peri and Prescott College. ... They wore T-shirts that stood before congressional staffers making the case read “observadores legales.” They videotaped the that U.S. agriculture depends on Mexico. Ameri- Minutemen, and the Minutemen videotaped them. cans, he said, have become spoiled. “It belittles Mexican television stations came to shoot pictures them to pull weeds in a lawn. Kids don’t wash cars of the spectacle, only to find elderly men and anymore. They don’t mow lawns.”... women sitting in lawn chairs aiming their own Immigration as an issue, it turns out, can be great camcorders. It wasn’t exactly the sort of border for radio ratings, creating all the impassioned bina- standoff most participants had expected. ... ries that keep listeners from turning the dial. It pits A few miles down the road, Casey Nethercott, the working man against the lawbreaker, the com- the militant leader of the Arizona Guard, kept mon voter against the elite politician, the radio host watch over his border property, a place he calls against the mainstream media. “Our language is “Warrior Ranch.” It holds about 100 acres of dirt being destroyed by George Bush and Bill Clinton to and tumbleweed, a few buildings, and a windmill pay off their buddies who put them in power,” with no blades. He keeps a 120-pound rottweiler ranted nationally syndicated Michael Savage over a trained to tackle grown men, and two black sport southern Arizona station broadcast one day during utility vehicles reinforced with steel plates to stop the Minuteman protest. “Our culture is being de- bullets when his militia patrols the desert. stroyed to the point where there is no culture. We “Migration from Mexico is the catalyst that is have no common culture. They want us to become starting the demise of America,” he told me, sitting a culture of the international. That’s why I tell you in his cramped office, which was decorated with di- that civil upheaval in this country might also not be agrams of military attack formations. “It’s being more than a few years off, sparked by this flood of flooded with illegals, people that are substandard illegal aliens that both the Democrats and Republi- humans. They don’t educate themselves. They cans are foisting upon this nation.” don’t care about themselves. And if you think that’s John Stone thought he saw something move in racist, I’m sorry, you’re wrong. If a black man with the brambles. ...He held binoculars up to his face. a white wife and two adopted Mexican and Section_03_5500.qxd 12/9/09 3:38 PM Page 79

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Chinese children moved in next door to me, first prepare for another radio interview. ...Outside on thing I’d do is take over a bottle of wine and say the front lawn, Mike Bird, a 22-year-old volunteer welcome to the damned neighborhood. And if he from Georgia, was pacing around, awaiting instruc- was in the Army I would hit him up to join the or- tions for his night patrol up along Route 92. ganization. But these are illegals. They are illegal.” Bird ... planned to spend the full month in Ari- Nethercott ...had just been released after serv- zona. “You’ll never hear it from any of these guys,” ing six months in prison, the result of a dispute he confided between drags of a Dunhill, “but I have with the local Border Patrol. Federal officers had too big a gun.” A .44 Magnum, the sort of cannot tried to pull him over, but he drove onto his ranch made famous by Dirty Harry, stretched down his and shut the gate ...and a standoff ensued until right thigh. Bird was unemployed, but he hoped to local sheriffs arrived. A few weeks later, the FBI get a job back home sampling air quality at the tried to serve Nethercott and his fellow militia local coal plant. ... member, Kalen Riddle, a warrant for threatening Word had filtered down from Gilchrist about the federal officers. The FBI said Riddle refused an success that the Minutemen were having, about the order to stop moving in a Safeway parking lot, and waiting migrants backed up like cars in a traffic jam an agent shot and injured him. Nethercott was ac- on the other side of the border. Mike was ready. quitted of all charges, but he still faces a 2003 ag- “Tonight is the night,” he told me, imagining them gravated assault charge in Texas (that he) in the wilderness. “Think about it. They are hungry. pistol-whipped an illegal Salvadoran migrant he They have been waiting two days. They are going to found sneaking into the country during a patrol in rush the line.” 2003, a charge Nethercott denies. ... Back at the Bible College in Miracle Valley, Gilchrist arrived at the communications center to Section_03_5500.qxd 12/9/09 3:38 PM Page 80

JOANNE HYPPOLITE

Dyaspora

This first-person narrative describes the life of immigrants from Haiti living in Boston. It also captures the feelings shared by many immigrant children and youth as they try to maintain their native culture, but struggle to be accepted by their peers, even those peers who are from the same racial group.

hen you are in Haiti they call you Dyaspora. perfume head-rush as you swoop in. You are grate- This word, which connotes both connection ful for every smooth, dry cheek you encounter. In Wand disconnection, accurately describes your house, the dreaded matinèt which your parents your condition as a Haitian American. Disconnected imported from Haiti just to keep you, your brother, from the physical landscape of the homeland, you and your sister in line sits threateningly on top of don’t grow up with a mango tree in your yard, you the wardrobe. It is where your mother’s andeyò don’t suck kenèps in the summer, or sit in the dark Kreyòl accent and your father’s lavil French accent listening to stories of Konpè Bouki and Malis. The make sometimes beautiful, sometimes terrible bleat of vaksins or the beating of a Yanvalou on Rada music together. drums are neither in the background or the fore- On Sundays in your house, “Dominika-anik-anik” ground of your life. Your French is non-existent. floats from the speakers of the record player early in Haiti is not where you live. the morning and you are made to put on one of Your house in Boston is your island. As the only your frilly dresses, your matching lace-edged socks, Haitian family on the hillside street you grow up on, and black shoes. Your mother ties long ribbons into it represents Haiti to you. It was where your granmè a bow at the root of each braid. She warns you, refused to learn English, where goods like ripe your brother and your sister to “respect; your mangoes, plantains, djondjon, and hard white blobs heads” as you drive to St. Angela’s, never missing a of mints come to you in boxes through the mail. At Sunday service in fourteen years. In your island your communion and birthday parties, all of Boston house, everyone has two names. The name they Haiti seems together in your house to eat griyo and were given and the nickname they have been sip kremas. It takes forever for you to kiss every granted so that your mother is Gisou, your father is cheek, some of them heavy with face powder, some Popo, your brother is Claudy, your sister is Tinou, of them damp with perspiration, some of them with you are Jojo, and your grandmother is Manchoun. scratchy face hair, and some of them giving you a Every day your mother serves rice and beans and you methodically pick out all the beans because you don’t like pwa. You think they are ugly and why does all the rice have to have beans anyway? Even From E. Danticat (Ed.) The butterfly’s way: Voices from the with the white rice or the mayi moulen, your mother Haitian dyaspora in the United States, (New York: Soho Press, makes sòs pwa – bean sauce. You develop the idea 2001). Reprinted by permission of the author. that Haitians are obsessed with beans. In your

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JOANNE HYPPOLITE Dyaspora 81

house there is a mortar and a pestle as well as five not familiar with these waters. They say things to pictures of Jesus, your parents drink Café Bustelo you like, “In Haiti we never treated white people every morning, your father wears gwayabèl shirts badly.” They don’t know about racism. They don’t and smokes cigarettes, and you are beaten when know about the latest styles and fashions and give you don’t get good grades at school. You learn your brother hell every time he sneaks out to a about the infidelities of husbands from conversa- friend’s house and gets his hair cut into a shag, a tions your aunts have. You are dragged to Haitian high-top, a fade. They don’t know that the ribbons plays, Haitian bals, and Haitian concerts where in in your hair, the gold loops in your ears, and the spite of yourself konpa rhythms make you sway. lace that edges your socks alert other children to You know the names of Haitian presidents and mil- your difference. So you wait until you get to school itary leaders because political discussions inevitably before taking them all off and out and you put them erupt whenever there are more than three Haitian back on at the end of your street where the bus men together in the same place. drops you off. Outside your house, things are black Every time you are sick, your mother rubs you and white. You are black and white. Especially in down with a foul-smelling liquid that she keeps in your school where neither you nor any of the few an old Barbancourt rum bottle under her bed. You other Haitian girls in your class are invited to the splash yourself with Bien-être after every bath. birthday parties of the white kids in your class. You Your parents speak to you in Kreyòl, you respond in cleave to these other Haitian girls out of something English, and somehow this works and feels natural. that begins as solidarity but becomes a lifetime of But when your mother speaks English, things seem friendship. You make green hats in art class every to go wrong. She makes no distinction between he St. Patrick’s Day and watch Irish step-dancing and she, and you become the pronoun police. shows year after year after year. You discover books Every day you get a visit from some matant or and reading and this is what you do when you take monnonk or kouzen who is also a marenn or parenn of the bus home, just you and your white school- someone in the house. In your house, your grand- mates. You lose your accent. You study about the mother has a porcelain kivèt she keeps under her Indians in social studies but you do not study about bed to relieve herself at night. You pore over photo- Black Americans except in music class where you graph albums where there are pictures of you going are forced to sing Negro spirituals as a concession to to school in Haiti, in the yard in Haiti, under the your presence. They don’t know anything about white Christmas tree in Haiti, and you marvel be- Toussaint Louverture or Jean-Jacques Dessalines. cause you do not remember anything that you see. In your neighborhood when you tell people you You do not remember Haiti because you left there are from Haiti, they ask politely, “Where’s that?” too young but it does not matter because it is as if You explain and because you seem okay to them, Haiti has lassoed your house with an invisible rope. Haiti is okay to them. They shout, “Hi, Grunny!” Outside of your house, you are forced to sink or whenever they see your grandmother on the stoop swim in American waters. For you this means an and sometimes you translate a sentence or two be- Irish-Catholic school and a Black-American neigh- tween them. In their houses, you eat sweet potato borhood. The school is a choice made by your par- pie and nod because you have that too, it’s made a ents who strongly believe in a private Catholic little different and you call it pen patat but it’s the education anyway, not paying any mind to the bus- same taste after all. From the girls on the street you ing crisis that is raging in the city. The choice of learn to jump double-dutch, you learn to dance the neighborhood is a condition of the reality of living puppet and the white boy. You see a woman here in this city with its racially segregated neigh- preacher for the first time in your life at their borhoods. Before you lived here, white people church. You wonder where down South is because owned this hillside street. After you and others who that is where most of the boys and girls on your looked like you came, they gradually disappeared to block go for vacations. You learn about boys and other places, leaving you this place and calling it sex through these girls because these two subjects bad because you and others like you live there now. are not allowed in your island/house. You keep As any dyaspora child knows, Haitian parents are your street friends separate from your school Section_03_5500.qxd 12/9/09 3:38 PM Page 82

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friends and this is how it works and you are used to too, and what does that do to their perceptions? it. You get so you can jump between worlds with You have the choice of passing but you don’t. You the same ease that you slide on your nightgown in claim your dyaspora status hoping it will force them the evening. to expand their image of what Haiti is but it doesn’t. Then when you get to high school, things Your sister who is younger and very sensitive begins change. People in your high school and your neigh- to deny that she is Haitian. She is American, she borhood look at you and say, “You are Haitian?” says. American. and from the surprise in their voice you realize that You turn to books to lose yourself. You read sto- they know where Haiti is now. They think they ries about people from other places. You read stories know what Haiti is now. Haiti is the boat people on about people from here. You read stories about peo- the news every night. Haiti is where people have ple from other places who now live here. You de- tuberculosis. Haiti is where people eat cats. You do cide you will become a writer. Through your not represent Haiti at all to them anymore. You are writing they will see you, dyaspora child, the con- an aberration because you look like them and you nections and disconnections that have made the talk like them. They do not see you. They do not see mosaic that you are. They will see where you are the worlds that have made you. You want to say to from and the worlds that have made you. They will them that you are Haiti, too. Your house is Haiti, see you. Section_04_5500.qxd 12/9/09 3:39 PM Page 83

CHAPTER 1 Understanding Ourselves and Others 83 SECTION FOUR

Challenges for Linguistically and Culturally Diverse People

True (education), unlike assimilation, is a two-way street. “ It involves cultural sharing, a genuine respect and interest in difference, not cultural submergence by one party to please another.

”Clarence Page (1947– )

nfortunately, American schools have been know an answer, and then called upon a more more likely to provide examples that con- academically gifted student to get the right an- Utradict journalist Clarence Page’s insight swer so they could proceed with the lesson. And rather than illustrate it. One of the most dramatic often, before the student could answer, his or her examples is the historic experience of American peers would make comments in Lakota such as: Indian children who have attended schools that Go ahead, show the teacher how smart you are. Make emphasize competition and individual achieve- the rest of us look bad. The teachers did not under- ment. Culturally, children from most American stand Lakota, so they did not understand why Indian communities would only want to excel if the bright student would suddenly appear con- their achievement would enhance the regard fused and unable to respond. Frustrated teachers given to their peers or their community. If an just assumed that the other students were having individual student’s achievements in school could a bad influence on the bright students.1 be viewed as creating a derogatory perception of Most native cultures emphasize a concern for his or her peers or community, the student might collaboration and for the collective good. Yet feel an obligation to conceal his or her talent. even when these cultural beliefs could have been In the early 1960s, anthropologists who were used to help Indian students succeed in schools, fluent in the Lakota language were engaged in teachers did not respond appropriately. As part of research observing Indian children and white his doctoral research, Harry Wolcott taught in a teachers in schools on the Pine Ridge Reserva- one-room Indian school. Wolcott lived in the tion. The researchers saw numerous instances community for a year and became well where teachers called on a student who did not acquainted with the children and the adults, but

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he felt uncertain about how much his pupils comes too late (if ever), which leads to an early were learning because no matter what sort of an exit – a reference to the high Latino drop out assignment he gave them, the children would rate. Shorris discusses programs such as submer- always work with others. Nothing he could say sion, immersion, teaching English as a second or do would persuade them to do their home- language, and bilingual education, and he pro- work individually.2 Times have changed, and vides examples of outcomes from some specific such stories from the past have motivated multi- school programs. Although Shorris does not ad- cultural educators today to advocate for creating vocate for any particular approach, he does af- culturally responsive classrooms, especially with firm the value of people being both bilingual and the evolving yet continuous cultural and linguis- bicultural, and argues that U.S. schools have a tic diversity of students in America’s schools. special responsibility to promote diversity. Shorris In the first essay, Dennis Baron provides the would applaud this comment by the American history of linguistic diversity in the United States. educator Rosa Guerrero about the diversity of the Immigrants came speaking German, Italian, Pol- American people: ish, Spanish, Dutch, and other languages. Most We are all Americans who, because of our cultural of them lost their language in two or three gen- heritage, contribute something unique to the fabric erations, but the efforts of German immigrants of American life. We are like the notes in a chord of to maintain their native tongue led to the first music – if all the notes were the same, there would be no harmony, no real beauty, because harmony is English-Only legislation. Today Spanish-speaking based on differences, not similarities. immigrants are trying to preserve their first lan- guage, and once again there is opposition from In “Maintaining Bilingualism and Cultural Americans who insist that English is the only Awareness,” Irene Villanueva reinforces Shorris’s acceptable language. Baron describes the historic perspective by describing the actions of seven and current activities of English-Only proponents Latino families who want their children to be in schools and society, and concludes that the both bilingual and bicultural. She incorporates history of this movement has more to do with interviews with the parents (in a bilingual for- nativist animosity toward immigrants than with a mat) from her research that explain why these sincere desire for immigrants to achieve linguistic parents place so much importance on their chil- competence in English. dren maintaining fluency in Spanish, from sim- How best to attain competence in English is ply being able to communicate with grandparents the focus of Earl Shorris’s essay, but “Late Entry, (and other family members) to the positive influ- Early Exit” also describes some dilemmas stem- ence it can have on their children’s sense of iden- ming from inadequate responses in U.S. schools tity. Villanueva’s research with these families to the needs of bilingual children. For too many reveals the difficulties of finding good bilingual children, entry into programs that could help programs in U.S. schools, forcing one family to them be successful in school and in their careers stay temporarily in Mexico so the children could Section_04_5500.qxd 12/9/09 3:39 PM Page 85

SECTION 4 Challenges for Linguistically and Culturally Diverse People 85

attend Mexican schools to strengthen their sons for Latino immigration to the United States, Spanish-speaking skills before returning to the and the contributions Latinos/as have made to United States. All of these parents believe that American society. Cedillo reinforces Shorris’s their children do not have to reject their native concern about Latinos leaving school by noting language and culture in order to become fluent that children of Latino immigrants as well as first speakers of English. and second generation Latino youth are the two Shirley Brice Heath discusses language fluency main groups responsible for producing one of the in the context of race and class in her essay on highest dropout rates among all ethnic groups. “Oral Traditions.” Based on many years of ethno- Because cultural differences can result in educa- graphic research in the Piedmont Plateau region tors misinterpreting Latino students’ behaviors, of South Carolina, Heath and her research team Cedillo describes some specific instructional recorded how black and white children from two strategies to use and explains why they have segregated low-income communities in the rural been successful for her. South developed different types of language skills Sometimes viewing diversity experiences in and different communication styles. In compar- other cultures may help us to understand diver- ing their language development with that of the sity issues in our own country. The final selection black and white children of middle class profes- is an excerpt from the short story “Human Math- sionals, Heath and her researchers provide some ematics” by Ghanian author Mamle Kabu, about disturbing but compelling insights on the impact a British boarding school where cultural and that differences in learning how to communicate linguistic diversity were not accommodated. The have on the children’s performance and acade- narrator is Claudia, a Ghanian student who has mic success in school. Even though the differ- attended this boarding school for several years ences in language development can create and has assimilated to British culture. With the problems for children, there are many teachers arrival of a new Ghanian student named Folake, who have been able to work effectively with Claudia is reminded of her own struggle to be linguistically diverse students. accepted when she first came to the school, espe- Aurora Cedillo is a gifted teacher who cially the difficulties she encountered during her describes some of the reasons for her success in first year, which primarily stemmed from linguis- the interview entitled “Working with Latino and tic differences. In talking with Folake, Claudia Latina Students.” As a bilingual educator, Cedillo finds herself switching in and out of her Ghanian knows the value of having fluency in two lan- accent, which reminds her of what she has given guages. Knowing certain cultural characteristics up in order to be accepted by others. When a shared by many Latinos has enabled her to work cultural misunderstanding leads to physical con- effectively with Latino/a students. She discusses frontation between Folake and a British girl, the need for teachers of Latino/a students to Claudia is forced to make a choice between address the history of Latino countries, the rea- being neutral or supporting Folake. It is a choice Section_04_5500.qxd 12/9/09 3:39 PM Page 86

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without enough options, but the lack of options Notes in the past has been a problem not only in Great 1Murray L. Wax & Rosalie H. Wax, Great Tradition, Britain but also in the United States. As Andrew little tradition, and formal education. In Anthropo- Young has said, accepting and promoting diver- logical Perspectives on Education, M.L. Wax, S. Dia- sity must be one of the options being offered to mond, & F.O. Gearing, (Eds.). (New York: Basic children and adults living in a diverse society: Books, 1971) 2Harry, F. Wolcott, Handle with care: Necessary pre- We can embrace our diversity, find strength in it, cautions in the anthropology of schools. In Anthro- and prosper together, or we can focus on our differ- ences and try to restrict access to resources by pological Perspectives on Education, M.L. Wax, S. members of ethnic and racial groups different from Diamond, & F.O. Gearing, (Eds.). (New York: Basic ours and limit prosperity for all. Books, 1971) Section_04_5500.qxd 12/9/09 3:39 PM Page 87

CHAPTER 1 Understanding Ourselves and Others 87 DENNIS BARON

English in a Multicultural America

The author explains the linguistic history of the United States and its implications for the current linguistic concerns of people in the English-Only Movement or those demanding a Constitutional Amendment making English the official language of the United States.

The protection of the Constitution extends to all, – English speakers – as quickly as their German, Jew- to those who speak other languages as well as to ish, Irish, or Italian predecessors did in the past. those born with English on the tongue. Perhaps it Assimilated immigrants, those who after several would be highly advantageous if all had ready generations no longer consider themselves “hy- understanding of our ordinary speech, but this phenated Americans,” look upon more recent cannot be coerced by methods which conflict with waves of newcomers with suspicion. Similarly, each the Constitution, – a desirable end cannot be pro- generation tends to see the language crisis as new in moted by prohibited means. its time. But reactions to language and ethnicity are cyclical, and the new immigrants from Asia and Associate Supreme Court Justice Latin America have had essentially the same expe- James Clark McReynolds rience as their European predecessors, with similar Meyer v. Nebraska, 1923 results. As early as the 18th century, British colonists in Pennsylvania, remarking that as many as one-third n the United States today there is a growing fear of the area’s residents spoke German, attacked Ger- that the English language may be on its way out mans in terms strikingly familiar to those heard Ias the American lingua franca, that English is nowadays against newer immigrants. Benjamin losing ground to Spanish, Chinese, Vietnamese, Franklin considered the Pennsylvania Germans to Korean, and the other languages used by newcom- be a “swarthy” racial group distinct from the Eng- ers to our shores. lish majority in the colony. In 1751 he complained, However, while the United States has always been a multilingual as well as a multicultural na- Why should (Germans) be suffered to swarm into tion, English has always been its unofficial official our Settlements, and by herding together establish language. Today, a greater percentage of Americans their Language and manners to the exclusion of speak English than ever before, and the descen- ours? Why should Pennsylvania, founded by the dants of nonanglophones or bilingual speakers still English, become a Colony of Aliens, who will tend to learn English – and become monolingual shortly be so numerous as to Germanize us instead of our Anglifying them, and will never adopt our Language or Customs, any more than they can From Social Policy Magazine, 1991, spring. acquire our Complexion?

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The Germans were accused by other 18th- The US Supreme Court reversed Meyer’s convic- century Anglos of laziness, illiteracy, clannishness, a tion in a landmark decision in 1923. But the deci- reluctance to assimilate, excessive fertility, and sion in Meyer v. Nebraska was to some extent an Catholicism (although a significant number of them empty victory for language teachers: while their were Protestant). In some instances they were even calling could no longer be restricted, the ranks of blamed for the severe Pennsylvania winters. German classes had been devastated by the instant Resistance to German, long the major minority linguistic assimilation that World War I forced on language in the country, continued throughout the German Americans. In 1915 close to 25 percent of 19th century, although it was long since clear that, the student population studied German in Ameri- despite community efforts to preserve their lan- can high schools. Seven years later only 0.6 percent guage, young Germans were adopting English and – fewer than 14,000 high school students – were abandoning German at a rate that should have im- taking German. pressed the rest of the English-speaking population. Like German in the Midwest, Spanish was the After the US entered World War I, most states object of vilification in the American Southwest. quickly banned German – and, in some extreme This negative attitude toward Spanish delayed cases, all foreign languages – from school curricula statehood for New Mexico for over 60 years. In in a wave of jingoistic patriotism. In 1918, for ex- 1902, in one of New Mexico’s many tries for state- ample, Iowa Governor William Harding forbade the hood, a congressional subcommittee held hearings use of foreign languages in schools, on trains, in in the territory, led by Indiana Senator Albert Jere- public places, and over the telephone (a more pub- miah Beveridge, a “progressive” Republican who lic instrument then than it is now), even going so believed in “America first! Not only America first, far as to recommend that those who insisted on but America only.” Witness after witness before the conducting religious services in a language other Beveridge subcommittee was forced to admit that in than English do so not in churches or synagogues New Mexico, ballots and political speeches were but in the privacy of their own homes. either bilingual or entirely in Spanish; that census Similarly, in 1919 the state of Nebraska passed a takers conducted their surveys in Spanish; that jus- broad English-only law prohibiting the use of for- tices of the peace kept records in Spanish; that the eign languages at public meetings and proscribing courts required translators so that judges and the teaching of foreign languages to any student lawyers could understand the many Hispanic wit- below the ninth grade. Robert T. Meyer, a teacher in nesses; that juries deliberated in Spanish as much as the Lutheran-run Zion Parochial School, was fined in English; and that children, who might or might twenty-five dollars because, as the complaint read, not learn English in schools, as required by law, “between the hour of 1 and 1:30 on May 25, 1920,” “relapsed” into Spanish on the playground, at he taught German to ten-year-old Raymond Papart, home, and after graduation. who had not yet passed the eighth grade. One committee witness suggested that the mi- Upholding Meyer’s conviction, the Nebraska nority language situation in New Mexico resembled Supreme Court found that most parents “have that in Senator Beveridge’s home state of Indiana: never deemed it of importance to teach their chil- “Spanish is taught as a side issue, as German would dren foreign languages.” It agreed as well that the be in any State in the Union. . . . This younger gen- teaching of a foreign language was harmful to the eration understands English as well as I do.” And a health of the young child, whose “daily capacity for sympathetic senator reminded his audience, “These learning is comparatively small.” Such an argument people who speak the Spanish language are not was consistent with the educational theory of the foreigners; they are natives, are they not?” day, which held as late as the 1950s that bilingual- As Franklin did the Germans in Pennsylvania, ism led to confusion and academic failure, and was Senator Beveridge categorized the “Mexicans” of harmful to the psychological well-being of the child. the American Southwest as non-natives, “Unlike us Indeed, one psychologist claimed in 1926 that the in race, language, and social customs,” and con- use of a foreign language in the home was a leading cluded that statehood must be contingent on assim- cause of mental retardation. . . . ilation. He recommended that admission to the Section_04_5500.qxd 12/9/09 3:39 PM Page 89

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Union be delayed until a time “when the mass of in 1926 sought to disenfranchise its Native Ameri- the people, or even a majority of them, shall, in the cans. Wyoming’s (1897) was anti-Finn and Wash- usages and employment of their daily life, have be- ington state’s (1889) was anti-Chinese. come identical in language and customs with the The literacy law proposed for New York State in great body of the American people; when the immi- 1915, whose surface aim was to ensure a well- gration of English-speaking people who have been informed electorate, targeted a number of the citizens of other States does its modifying work with state’s minorities. It was seen both as a calculated the ‘Mexican’ element.” Although New Mexico fi- attempt to prevent New York’s one million Yiddish nally achieved its goal of statehood, and managed to speakers from voting and as a means of stopping write protection of Spanish into its constitution, the state’s German Americans from furthering their schools throughout the Southwest forbade the use nefarious war aims. When it was finally enacted in of Spanish among students. Well into the present 1921, supporters of the literacy test saw it as a tool century, children were routinely ridiculed and pun- to enforce Americanization, while opponents ished for using Spanish both in class and on the charged the test would keep large numbers of the playground. state’s newly enfranchised immigrant women from As the New Mexican experience suggests, the in- voting. Later, the law, which was not repealed until sistence on English has never been benign. The no- the Voting Rights Act of 1965, effectively disenfran- tion of a national language sometimes wears the chised New York’s Puerto Rican community. guise of inclusion: we must all speak English to par- Although many Americans simply assume Eng- ticipate meaningfully in the democratic process. lish is the official language of the United States, it is Sometimes it argues unity: we must speak one lan- not. Nowhere in the US Constitution is English guage to understand one another and share both privileged over other languages, and while a few culture and country. Those who insist on English subsequent federal laws require the use of English often equate bilingualism with lack of patriotism. for special, limited purposes – air traffic control, Their intention to legislate official English often product labels, service on federal juries – no law es- masks racism and certainly fails to appreciate cul- tablishes English as the language of the land. tural difference: it is a thinly-veiled measure to dis- In the xenophobic period following World War I, enfranchise anyone not like “us” (with notions of several moves were made to establish English at the “us,” the real Americans, changing over the years federal level, but none succeeded. On the other from those of English ancestry to northwestern Eu- hand, many states at that time adopted some form ropean to “white” monolingual English speakers). of English-only legislation. This included regula- American culture assumes monolingual compe- tions designating English as the language of state tence in English. The ability to speak another lan- legislatures, courts, and schools, making English a guage is more generally regarded as a liability than requirement for entrance into such professions as a refinement, a curse of ethnicity and a bar to ad- attorney, barber, physician, private detective, or un- vancement rather than an economic or educational dertaker, and in some states even preventing advantage. nonanglophones from obtaining hunting and fish- In another response to non-English speaking ing licenses. American citizens, during the nineteenth century, More recently, official language questions have states began instituting English literacy require- been the subject of state and local debate once ments for voting to replace older property require- again. An English Language Amendment to the US ments. These literacy laws generally pretended to Constitution (the ELA) has been before the Con- democratize the voting process, though their hid- gress every year since 1981. In 1987, the year in den goal was often to prevent specific groups from which more than 74 percent of California’s voters voting. The first such statutes in Connecticut and indicated their support for English as the state’s Massachusetts were aimed at the Irish population of official language, thirty-seven states discussed the those states. Southern literacy tests instituted after official English issue. The next year, official lan- the Civil War were anti-Black. California’s test guage laws were passed in Colorado, Florida, and (1892) was aimed at Hispanics and Asians. Alaska’s Arizona. New Mexico and Michigan have taken a Section_04_5500.qxd 12/9/09 3:39 PM Page 90

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stand in favor of English Plus, recommending that bilingual education was common in the Midwest – everyone have a knowledge of English plus another St. Louis and a number of Ohio cities had active language. . . . English-German public schools – as well as in Official American policy has swung wildly be- parochial schools in other areas with large nonan- tween toleration of languages other than English glophone populations. More commonly, though, and their complete eradication. But neither legal the schools ignored non-English speaking children protection nor community-based efforts has been altogether, making no curricular or pedagogical able to prevent the decline of minority languages or concessions to their presence in class. Indeed, newly to slow the adoption of English, particularly among instituted classroom speech requirements in the the young. Conversely, neither legislation making early part of this century ensured that anglophone English the official language of a state nor the ef- students with foreign accents would be sent to forts of the schools has done much to enforce the pathologists for corrective action. And professional use of English: Americans exhibit a high degree of licensing requirements that included speech certifi- linguistic anxiety but continue to resist interference cation tests were used to keep Chinese in California with their language use on the part of legislators or and Jews in New York out of the teaching corps. teachers. The great American school myth has us believe A number of states have adopted official English. that the schools Americanized generations of immi- Illinois, for example, in the rush of post-war isola- grants, giving them English and, in consequence, tionism and anti-British sentiment, made American the ability to succeed. In fact, in allowing nonanglo- its official language in 1923; this was quietly phone children to sink or swim, the schools ensured changed to English in 1969. Official English in Illi- that most of them would fail: dropout rates for non- nois has been purely symbolic; it is a statute with no English speakers were extraordinarily high and teeth and no discernible range or effect. In contrast, English was more commonly acquired on the street Arizona’s law . . . required all government officials and playgrounds or on the job than in the class- and employees – from the governor down to the room. municipal dog catcher – to use English and only We tend to think past generations of immigrants English during the performance of government succeeded at assimilation while the present genera- business. tion has (for reasons liberals are willing to explain Arizona’s law was challenged by Maria-Kelley away) failed. In fact, today’s Hispanics are acquiring Yniguez, a state insurance claims administrator flu- English and assimilating in much the same way and ent in Spanish and English, who had often used at the same pace as Germans or Jews or Italians of Spanish with clients. Yniguez feared that, since she earlier generations did. was sworn to uphold the state constitution, speak- California presented an extreme model for ex- ing Spanish to clients of her agency who knew no cluding children with no English: it segregated Chi- other language might put her in legal jeopardy. [In nese students into separate “oriental” English-only 1990] Arizona’s law was ruled unconstitutional by schools until well into the 20th century. The ending the US District Court for the District of Arizona. of segregation did little to improve the linguistic for- Judge Paul G. Rosenblatt, of the US District tunes of California’s Chinese-speakers, who contin- Court for the District of Arizona, found that the ued to be ignored by the schools. They were English-only article 28 of the Arizona constitution eventually forced to appeal to the Supreme Court to violated the First Amendment of the US Constitu- force state authorities to provide for their educa- tion protecting free speech. The ruling voiding the tional needs. The decision that resulted in the land- Arizona law will not affect the status of other state mark case of Lau v. Nichols (1974) did not, however, official English laws. However, it is clear that other guarantee minority-language rights, nor did it re- courts may take the Arizona decision into consider- quire bilingual education, as many opponents of ation. bilingual education commonly argue. Instead the Perhaps the most sensitive area of minority- Supreme Court ordered schools to provide educa- language use in the US has been in the schools. Mi- tion for all students whether or not they spoke Eng- nority-language schools have existed in North lish, a task our schools are still struggling to carry America since the 18th century. In the 19th century out. Section_04_5500.qxd 12/9/09 3:39 PM Page 91

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Confusion over language in the schools seems a same way that speakers of German, Italian, Yiddish, major factor behind official language concerns. Russian, Polish, Chinese or Japanese have done in Bilingual education is a prime target of English-only the past. However, as the experience of Hispanics in lobbying groups, who fear it is a device for minority southern California suggests, simply acquiring Eng- language maintenance rather than for an orderly lish is not bringing the educational and economic transition to English. Troubling to teachers as well is successes promised by the melting-pot myth. Lin- the fact that bilingual programs are often poorly de- guistic assimilation may simply not be enough to fined, underfunded, and inadequately staffed, while overcome more deep-seated prejudices against parents and students frequently regard bilingual as Hispanics. a euphemism for remedial. In its defense, we can Nonetheless, there are many minority-language say that second language education did not come speakers in the US, and with continued immigra- into its own in this country until after World War II. tion they will continue to make their presence Bilingual education, along with other programs de- felt. . . . Even if the courts do not strike down signed to teach English as a second language, are English-only laws, it would be difficult to legislate really the first attempts by American schools in minority languages out of existence because we more than two centuries to deal directly with the simply have no mechanisms in this country to problem of non-English speaking children. They carry out language policy of any kind (schools, represent the first attempts to revise language edu- which are under local and state control, have been cation in an effort to keep children in school; to remarkably erratic in the area of language educa- keep them from repeating the depressing and tion). On the other hand, even in the absence of wasteful pattern of failure experienced by earlier restrictive language legislation, American society generations of immigrants and nonanglophone na- enforces its own irresistible pressure to keep the tives; to get them to respect rather than revile both United States an English-speaking nation. The English (frequently perceived as the language of op- Census also reports that 97 percent of Americans pression) and their native tongue (all too often re- identify themselves as speaking English well or jected as the language of poverty and failure). very well. English may not be official, but it is def- Despite resistance to bilingual education and initely here to stay. problems with its implementation, the theory be- . . . English-only legislation, past and present, hind it remains sound. Children who learn reading, no matter how idealistic or patriotic its claims, is arithmetic, and other subjects in their native lan- supported by a long history of nativism, racism, guage while they are being taught English will not and religious bigotry. While an English Language be as likely to fall behind their anglophone peers, Amendment to the US Constitution might ulti- and will have little difficulty transferring their sub- mately prove no more symbolic than the selection ject-matter knowledge to English as their English of an official bird or flower or fossil, it is possible proficiency increases. On the other hand, when that the ELA could become a tool for linguistic re- nonanglophone children or those with very limited pression. Those who point to Canada or Belgium or English are immersed in English-only classrooms India or the Soviet Union as instances where mul- and left to sink or swim, as they were for genera- tilingualism produces civil strife would do well to tions, they will continue to fail at unacceptable rates. remember that such strife invariably occurs when Those Americans who fear that unless English is minority-language rights are suppressed. In any made the official language of the United States by case, such examples have little in common with means of federal and state constitutional amend- the situation in the United States. ments they are about to be swamped by new waves The main danger of an ELA, as I see it, would be of non-English speakers should realize that even to alienate minority-language speakers, sabotaging without restrictive legislation, minority languages their chances for education and distancing them in the US have always been marginal. Research further from the American mainstream, at the same shows that Hispanics, who now constitute the na- time hindering rather than facilitating the linguistic tion’s largest minority-language group, are adopting assimilation that has occurred so efficiently up to English in the second and third generation in the now in the absence of legal prodding. Section_04_5500.qxd 12/9/09 3:39 PM Page 92

EARL SHORRIS

Late Entry, Early Exit

The author supports the idea of enabling people to be bilingual and bicultural, but he is not certain that bilingual education has proven to be the best way to achieve that goal. He discusses some issues related to how we determine bilingual competence, and concludes with an example of a school that succeeded in achieving this goal.

“ hen I went to the first grade,” Awilda struction is entirely in English, but in the immersion Orta said, “I had a vision that the room method all of the children come to class speaking Wwas split. There were no lights on my side only a foreign language. of the room. I sat in darkness. Many years later, I Immersion uses the coercive value of the peer went back to visit the nuns, and I saw the room group; submersion depends on shame. In the sub- again. On the side where I sat, there were floor-to- mersion method children learn to devalue their cul- ceiling windows; the room was bathed in light. I re- ture as well as their language. Sylvia wanted only to alize then that I felt myself in darkness, because I be named O’Brien or Goldberg or Perini, like the spoke no English.” other children in her class. Awilda Orta prayed to be Sylvia Sasson (Shorris), who entered school in the light. Richard Rodriguez, whose autobiogra- speaking some English, was the only child with a phy, Hunger of Memory, can be read as the experi- Spanish surname in her class. “I remember the ence of submersion writ large, wished to shed the sound of the other children’s names,” she said. “I “private” language of his home and family for a was so different. The lunches my grandmother “public” language and the life that accompanied fixed for me were an embarrassment. I never got it. . . . peanut butter and jelly like the other kids. For a How to learn a new language and adopt a new while, I wanted to be anything but Spanish; at one culture would seem to be a thoroughly understood time I thought of telling people I was Eston- process in a country often described as a nation of ian.”. . . Every morning, before going to school, immigrants. It is not. On the contrary, as observers she was sick. from Tocqueville to the present have noted, a state Submersion, the method of learning a language lacking in some of the qualities of a nation over- endured by Sylvia, has generally been the Ameri- compensates for its youth and diversity by requiring can experience. At various times during the history the highest degree of conformity from all of its citi- of immigration, the submersion method has been zens. During its relatively brief history the United replaced by a less traumatic variant known as the States has shown varying degrees of acceptance of immersion method. In both methods classroom in- foreign-language speakers. Until the last decade of the nineteenth century most states permitted pri- vate “nationality” schools, which carried out what From: Latinos: A biography of the people by Earl Shorris. are now know as maintenance programs in lan- Copyright © 1992 by Earl Shorris. Used by permission of guages other than English. Ten years later, most W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. states had outlawed such schools. During World

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War I, nationalistic and patriotic feeling led to legal dard culture. Economics have almost always been xenophobia: A town in Ohio fined people twenty- the determining factor. The Depression years, when five dollars for speaking German in public. Not until as many as a million people of Mexican descent 1923 did the Supreme Court strike down laws pro- were deported, had a devastating effect on bicultur- hibiting private schools from teaching in languages alism in the United States. Spanish-language the- other than English. Even so, children were forbid- aters, newspapers, and publishing houses closed. den to speak Spanish in the classroom or the Hard times produced xenophobia and exacerbated schoolyard in the Southwest for most of the twen- racism; Latinos, being both racially and culturally tieth century. different, were easy targets. The desire then among The Bilingual Education Act was passed in 1968 Latinos for racial, cultural, and linguistic assimila- and strengthened and clarified by amendments in tion was overwhelming. Everyone wanted to be re- 1974 and 1978. Its survival was assured by the Lau born in the melting pot; in a troubled democracy, it v. Nichols decision of the Supreme Court in 1974, was the only safe response to xenophobia. . . . which held that under the provisions of the Civil In retrospect, the melting pot theory was coer- Rights Act of 1964 children who could not under- cive, illiberal in the extreme, but probably a neces- stand the language in which they were being taught sary part of creating a nation in the unique were not offered equal education. Yet by the end of circumstances of the United States. Whether a sta- 1980, the law that made Spanish, as well as English, ble political and economic union could have been an official language of Dade County, Florida, was made of a population Balkanized by language and voted out, and in the realm of commerce, the fed- culture is an academic question; one theory serves eral courts had upheld a ruling that an employer as well as the next. . . . could prohibit the use of a foreign language in the No educational method so perfectly mirrors the workplace. As the Latino population increased and experience of the melting pot as submersion; it is bilingual instruction became more widespread, the the street of strangers brought into the school. After Reagan administration cut funding for bilingual two weeks in the barrio, an eleven-year-old girl programs and English-only laws were passed in six- from Ecuador described New York as frío y teen states, including Florida and California. corrumpido, and she made it clear that the cold and For most of its history the United States has corruption did not end when she entered the feared bilingualism and biculturalism as impedi- schoolroom. Merely to survive physically the sub- ments to the forging of a nation. Assimilation or de- merged student must learn to communicate; other- struction have generally been the choices offered to wise, she may never find the lunchroom or the those who differed from the majority. The brutality bathroom. But elemental communication is one inherent in democracy made it so. And the Consti- thing, education by submersion another; the stu- tution, which has served well in mitigating the dan- dent can get through the educational system with- gers of raw democracy in most areas, has few out learning and can even succeed by manipulating explicit views on culture. On such matters as an of- the definition of success. ficial language, for example, the intentions of the The choice of how to respond to the new envi- framers must be discerned from their omissions. ronment must be made quickly. In the first days and With interpretation left to the Congress and the months of school the submerged student is faced courts, the effect of the Constitution on pluralism with making or accepting a series of definitions and has been less consistent and less salutary than one then making decisions about them. The pressure is might have hoped for. Only during brief peaks of terrible, for it is mostly negative, a demand to rebel liberal toleration have the pluralistic implications of against the newly imposed culture, yet the children the Constitution been allowed to moderate the na- know that they cannot do well in the world either tion’s politics. by maintaining their old culture or by adopting the As a rule, the educational arguments for and culture of rebellion. The conflict leaves some of against bilingualism have been less important than them paralyzed, mute in the classroom, raging in the general willingness in the nation to tolerate the the schoolyard. I have heard many teachers de- eccentricity of a second language and a nonstan- scribe these children as “the dead.” Section_04_5500.qxd 12/9/09 3:39 PM Page 94

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Although submersion seems a murderous sys- Jews, Poles, Russians, and Scandinavians of earlier tem, examples of survival and success run into the times knew enough to save their children with millions. The economic and intellectual prowess of schools and newspapers in their own languages, the United States, it could be argued, is a direct re- ethnic clubs, religious clubs, anything they could do sult of the effectiveness of the submersion method to mitigate the Darwinian cruelty of the submer- of education. Of the three children described at the sion system. Since the passage of the Bilingual Ed- beginning, all of whom had difficult submersion ex- ucation Act, public schools in the United States periences, none failed. Sylvia Sasson, who fared have been attempting to help children with limited badly in the early grades, won the English prize by English proficiency (LEP) learn to listen, speak, the time she graduated from a prestigious high read, and write in a new language in the most effi- school and became a published writer in English. cient way. But so far, bilingual education has not, of Awilda Orta, who sat in the emotional dark, became itself, solved the educational problems of Latino a brilliant teacher and educational administrator. children. If submersion caused them to fail, bilin- Richard Rodriguez went on to earn a Ph.D. in Re- gual education has not caused them to succeed. naissance literature and to write an autobiography Meanwhile, more Latino children enter kinder- so preciously English it used single quote marks in garten and fewer finish high school. And the coun- the British style. try, which once embraced men and women who One factor common to all three is their facility could work with their hands and arms, wants peo- for language. They are astonishingly verbal people ple who can use their minds; (the) immigration law and almost equally at home speaking or writing. passed in 1990 makes provision for people with Sasson and Orta are bilingual; only Rodriguez does skills to enter the country on a priority basis. The not speak Spanish. Perhaps their natural ability en- immigrants of the early part of the twentieth cen- abled them to overcome the trauma of abruptly tury, who could grunt or nod while they attached converting to a new language. Perhaps it was the themselves to machines, levers, tools, whatever schools they attended that brought them through. needed the strength of an arm and a human reflex Orta and Rodriguez both went to Catholic schools; to operate it, lived to enjoy union wages without Sasson attended a girls’ high school noted for its rig- adopting much of the new language or culture. It is orous academic program. Perhaps they are merely not so easy now. The Latino population is burgeon- anomalies. ing at a difficult time. Too many Latinos have no On the other hand, if the sampling were done at English when a little English is not enough. a prison in New York or Texas or California, the So far, no one has produced the one study that conclusions would be very different. Most pintos proves now and forever whether bilingual educa- (prisoners) did not have successful school ca- tion works. The studies are inconclusive, in part, reers. . . . The curious thing about ex-pintos is that because they do not adequately define the goal of they are not comfortable either in English or stan- bilingual education. . . . dard Spanish; they speak Caló, which has a vocab- The minimum definition of bilingualism is to be ulary of between a thousand and fifteen hundred able to listen to someone speaking another lan- words and is used in conjunction with standard guage and understand what the speaker is saying. and non-standard English and Spanish. . . . Such a definition, however, might mean that un- In the end, submersion performs a kind of social derstanding kitchen Spanish makes one bilingual. triage. Enough succeed to keep the method from Maybe speaking is a better skill to use as a mini- being thrown out, but most fail, enabling the mum, but speaking about what? lunch? love? loga- majority, who control the educational system, to rithms? literature? The quality and complexity of maintain their social and economic advantages. the conversation will have to be considered. Or Submersion functions like a sieve, which can be should one be required to read and write two lan- made coarse or fine by adding or subtracting such guages in order to be considered bilingual? And if things as ESL classes, counseling programs, and ori- so, how well? As well as Conrad? And didn’t Con- entation classes. rad speak with a heavy Polish accent? Submersion, which is a spur to the few, is too The most demanding definition insists that one cruel for the many. The Chinese, French, Germans, be accepted as a native in speaking, listening, read- Section_04_5500.qxd 12/9/09 3:39 PM Page 95

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ing, and writing two languages. The Oxford English write in English. The survival of English is not at Dictionary, in the supplement published in 1987, issue, only the death of Spanish. With the question states that bilingualism is the “ability to speak two unresolved, the monolingual Spanish-speaking stu- languages; the habitual use of two languages collo- dent entering school in the United States partici- quially.” Assuming that either of the two definitions pates in a linguistic lottery: Depending on which in the OED is acceptable and that the failure even to public school, even which class, the child attends, hint at standards of literacy betrays carelessness and he or she may encounter a method ranging from not despair, is bilingualism the goal of bilingual ed- instruction entirely in Spanish to one in which the ucation? Or is the goal to convert children to mono- teachers and students do not use any language but lingual English speakers? English. Before addressing the social and political goals of The tragic aspect of this lottery is that the num- bilingual education, the question of how people ber of losers far exceeds the number of winners; for learn two languages and how they think after they Latinos, especially those who enter school speaking have learned a second language needs to be consid- no English, the educational system is not a good ered. If educating people to have the ability to speak bet. Optimists put the dropout rate for all Latino two languages is relatively easy and not harmful to children in the U.S. at 35.8 percent. Realists think their thinking in either language, that goal would the national rate is over 40 percent. . . . appear to be a good one. There is no standard by which the education of But what if speaking, listening, reading and writ- Latino children in the United States can be consid- ing two languages fluently leads people to think ered adequate, fair, or morally acceptable. If one of more slowly, to have just a little bit less facility than the goals of the Bilingual Education Act was to ed- they might have had with only one language? Re- ucate Spanish-speaking children as well as English- search can be found to prove the “jack of all trades, speaking white or black children, the act has failed. master of none” theory of language acquisition. If the goal was to improve the education of Latino And there is an enormous amount of research prov- and other language-minority children, there is still ing that bilingual education lowers performance not much evidence to support its success. . . . (test scores) in English. The issue of who is an educated adult has been Unfortunately, every statement about bilingual- discussed widely in the United States, but when it ism and bilingual education requires an “on the comes to children, a few standardized tests are other hand.” For every paper proving the “jack of thought to be enough. Rarely, if ever, is the moral all trades” theory, there is another defending the character of the child considered part of his educa- notion that whoever doesn’t know two languages tion. Rarely does anyone ask what happens to the doesn’t know one. When the two sides meet, . . . values of one culture when that culture is deni- most of the argument focuses on statistics, and the grated by the teaching of a new one. A superbly ed- best anyone seems to be able to say about the sta- ucated Latino professional man said to me about his tistics is that they “suggest” something or other. parents, “They speak broken English,” but it did not Nobody is quite sure what. As Jim Cummins wrote occur to him to add that they speak beautiful Span- in Bilingualism in Education, “It is clear, then that ish. In America, the old culture dies easily; the there is little consensus as to the exact meaning of tragedy . . . is that it is replaced with drugs, vio- the term bilingualism, and that it has been used to lence and rock and roll. refer to a wide variety of phenomena. Research The late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century associated with bilingualism reflects this semantic schools set up by the Germans, Italians, Jews, Nor- confusion. It is essential, therefore, in recon- wegians, Poles, and Swedes and the more recent ciling contradictory results associated with bilin- schools run by the Chinese and Japanese have en- gualism . . .” deavored to help their students retain the old cul- Meanwhile, the question of the goal of bilingual ture as much or more than the language. The education remains unresolved. All Latino parents founders of those schools, many of whom were tied want their children to learn English, and all propo- to the religious center of the community, feared the nents of bilingual education agree that in the end new or different or modern morality, which they the children must be able to speak, listen, read, and understood as no morality at all. In many instances Section_04_5500.qxd 12/9/09 3:39 PM Page 96

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the conservation of values undoubtedly led to seri- world, where the only middle-class Latinos they ous emotional conflict. The literature of the early have contact with are shopkeepers or the grim offi- part of the twentieth century is filled with such cials who try to keep order among the crowds at the cases. Writers from Dreiser to Fitzgerald to Roth told bottom of the social scale. To depend on continuing stories of the clash of cultures. waves or newcomers, many of whom speak un- Now the clash is different, no longer between grammatically, using the tiniest vocabulary, is to en- opposing sets of values but between values and the sure the death of the language. Third or fourth violent vacuum. The substitute for culture pre- generation Latinos who live in suburbs of Min- sented to newcomers was invented at the conjunc- neapolis or Atlanta have no more reason to know tion of entertainment and advertising; it may still be Spanish than Polish-Americans need to know Pol- called culture, but neither Rambo nor Madonna has ish or German-Americans to know German. the character required to get a troubled child Spanish probably would go the way of French, through the night. If submersion, which sets out to German, and Italian in the United States, unless one destroy every vestige of the old language and cul- thinks of it rather than English as the lingua franca ture, is to be supplanted, bilingual education will of the hemisphere. And that is where the practical, have to offer something beyond words, or it will be political, and economic difference lies. Miami was no more than a mask to hide the old method. the first city to make a business decision to maintain The nature of the beginning, Spanish or English, Spanish. So much of the city, its banking and export bilingualism or submersion, early exit (transition) sectors, is concerned with Latin America that Span- or late exit (maintenance), will determine how chil- ish has become the preferred language of business. dren understand school. If it is a place of failure and Everyone speaks English, of course, but it lacks the ridicule rather than comfort and hope, the child comfort of Spanish; it is not at home in Panama or may choose to play dead. . . . Peru. Latino businessmen in Texas, New York, Califor- . . . When the home language is different from the nia, and Illinois make the same argument. And if school language and the home language tends to the hemisphere is declared a free trade zone . . . the be denigrated by others ..., it would appear practical value of Spanish will increase tenfold or a appropriate to begin initial instruction in the child’s hundredfold or more. first language, switching at a later stage to instruc- In the battle between maintenance and transi- tion in the school language. tion, late and early exit from bilingual programs, . ..Where the home language is a majority the emotional issues of nationalism and the argu- language valued by the community . . . then the ments for cultural enrichment may eventually give most efficient means of promoting an additive form way to the business proposition expressed at Coral of bilingualism is to provide initial instruction in Way Elementary: People who know two languages the second language. have a better chance of getting ahead in life. If that Jim Cummins, Bilingualism in Education is so, however, why should Anglos be denied the opportunity to succeed? Shouldn’t bilingual educa- The Bilingual Education Act, even with a tuck tion at the maintenance level be available to every- taken here and there to make it fit the politics of the one who wants it? Wouldn’t that begin to overcome interested, does not deal with the problem of the some of the deficiencies in U.S. culture? Wouldn’t death of the Spanish language. This death hides be- that make the United States a more formidable hind the myth of the Promethean immigrant who competitor in the world? bears his language in a basket, another treasure hid- Children in Latino neighborhoods could all learn den among his few belongings. It is only a myth, no Spanish as well as English. Where the Chinese lan- more than that, yet it has sustained the faith of guage is strong, they could learn both Chinese and those who love the sound and soul of Spanish. In English, and so on. In larger cities, with several eth- reality, many Latinos now speak Spanish only to nic populations, children or their parents might be their parents or grandparents, if at all. Most new- permitted to choose between many languages. comers live in the worst of the social and economic Cummins explains exactly where to begin for both Section_04_5500.qxd 12/9/09 3:39 PM Page 97

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Anglo and Latino children. His method is not radi- their methods have not changed. They still believe cal, but practical, the homely logic of a man hoping that the maintenance of two languages is the proper to avoid the wars of chauvinism. form of bilingual education. It is still the culture of Coral Way Elementary School in Miami put the school that accommodates the child, rather than Cummins’s notions into practice. In bilingual attempting to force the child to learn in an alien en- schools the Anglos learn Spanish as a second lan- vironment. Only the students are different. Some of guage, attending special immersion classes from the them come to school not knowing how to hold a earliest grades, just as their Latino counterparts at- pencil, never having touched a book, speaking only tend immersion ESL classes. Before long, all the rudimentary Spanish, emotionally wounded by the children are fluent in both English and Spanish. To experiences of war or drug addiction. This new co- continue the process after the elementary grades, hort stands in terrible contrast to its predecessor, as high school students may take courses in Spanish if in one famous bilingual public school a test of the after school for extra credit. If they do well in both relative importance of school and home had been their English and Spanish studies, those who take devised and the lives of the children had been com- the extra courses are awarded a second diploma mitted to it. from a high school in Spain. Unfortunately, many of the children who do not It is not a sentimental system; Dade County learn Spanish well do not become proficient in Eng- doesn’t operate that way. Nor is it racist or ethno- lish either. The failure of schools to teach English to centric. The method grew out of a sense of the Latino children by any method – submersion, im- equality of languages, cultures, and economic capa- mersion, transition, or maintenance – is so common bilities. It worked. Whether it will continue to work in the United States that almost every successful will be the test. When the federal government first Latino in business or the professions attributes part provided money for a bilingual program at Coral of his or her success to the ability to read, write, Way Elementary in Little Havana in 1963, the stu- and speak English, a set of skills that second- dents were the children of middle- and upper mid- generation European-Americans took for granted. dle-class Cuban exiles. They arrived with great Their view of the basis for success emphasizes the facility in Spanish, most of which was easily trans- true horror of the education of Latinos in the ferable to English. Many of the Cubans have moved United States: The system destroys one language, away now. The newest immigrants are poor people but does not replace it with another, creating a great who fled the war in Nicaragua or the death squads class of mutes, victims who cannot even speak of in Guatemala and El Salvador. . . . their pain. The Spanish-speaking teachers and the adminis- trators at Coral Way Elementary are still Cuban, and Section_04_5500.qxd 12/9/09 3:39 PM Page 98

IRENE VILLANUEVA

Maintaining Bilingualism and Cultural Awareness

When Carlos Cortez went to school as a child, he was told to speak only in English, so he lost the ability to speak Spanish. Later he enrolled in college, where he was told that he should learn another language because it was good to be bilingual. He wondered why his teachers did not recognize this in elementary school. This author describes the efforts of several families who understand that it is valuable to be both bilingual and bicultural, and relates how they are helping their children achieve both goals.

uch research has been conducted on lan- after residing for a number of years in the United guage attrition, the diminution of bilingual- States, with each successive generation shifting Mism across time, and the fact that within more and more in that direction.2 In this monolin- three generations of migrating to the United States gual context, institutionalized efforts toward main- the native language is eliminated.1 A conflicting taining a dual language facility among youth are view of this reality is often cited by English Only often actually nothing more than programs which advocates who are concerned about cultural help to make the transition to English.3 assimilation. For this study, I focused on a small group of US English, an offshoot of the Federation for highly educated Chicano parents and their attempts American Immigration Reform, promotes tighter re- to secure bilingualism for their children. . . . Six of strictions on immigration, organized around the the seven Chicano families in Southern California supposed need to establish English as the official lan- that participated in this study indicated that Span- guage in the United States. Their efforts are based on ish was the native language of the children. . . . the misconception that recent immigrants are indif- These parents made a conscious effort to create a ferent toward learning English and that the use of bilingual environment during their children’s early English is threatened by the sheer numbers of childhood years. For example, if the mother speakers of other languages. In fact, nothing could worked outside the home, the parents provided be farther from the truth. Spanish speaking immi- either a Spanish-speaking nanny, grandmother, or grants, for instance, are known to convert to English another member of the extended family to care for the children during the day. Thus, thirteen of the seventeen children were native Spanish speakers Reprinted by permission from Beyond Black and White: New and all of them had contact with grandparents and faces and voices in U.S. schools edited by Maxine S. Seller and extended family. These children also had exposure Lois Weis, the State University of New York Press © 1997, to English through formal preschool experience as State University of New York. All rights reserved. well as informal experiences and interaction with

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bilingual members of the extended family, friends, F: Entre ellos mismos, inglés. in the neighborhood, television and so on. . . . [Between themselves, English.] In the Sánchez family, mother and father ac- knowledged that at family functions, the children’s A: Y con Uds? interactions were limited to Spanish with grandpar- [And with your parents?] ents and other adults, and English with their peers. F: Si los acordamos que tiene que ser español, hablan español, si no, haablan . . . Q: ¿Con quién hablan inglés? Pero al niño, al bebe le hablan español, [With whom do they speak English?] los dos. T: Con los amigos de la escuela. [If we remind them that it has to be Spanish, [With their friends from school.] they speak Spanish, if not, they speak . . . But to the baby, to the baby they speak in F: En la escuela, con nosotros, con sus primos. Spanish, both of them.] [In school, with us, with their cousins.] Thus, while Spanish was spoken in the home and T: Sí con sus primos, puro inglés. appeared to be the native language of the children, [Yes, with their cousins, only in English.] it was used through the children’s infancy and early F: Mis sobrinos no hablan español. childhood years by all members of the family. [My nieces and nephews do not speak According to six of the seven sets of parents, the Spanish.] intrusion of English began at the preschool age. As the children began their formal schooling, the em- As the children began to acquire a second lan- phasis on English presented a dilemma for these guage, it became apparent that the forces outside of parents who were struggling to provide a bilingual the home were strong. Even for three-year-old atmosphere and maintain Spanish in the home. . . . Analisa, who had no formal preschool experience Two parents spoke of their children’s inclination of English instruction, both parents had become to speak more English and less Spanish. Bertha and aware of her preference for English and were con- Francisca said their children were native Spanish sciously striving to maintain Spanish as a means of speakers until they began school. By the time they communication in the home. reached ages eight and ten, English had become their dominant language. This shift was attributed Q: Y la niña, ¿siempre habla español o inglés? to the fact that Spanish has predominantly informal [And the child, does she always speak and oral functions while English has formal and Spanish or English?] academic functions. . . . Early in this study, two families (Reyes/Fuentes J: Ahora, el inglés es el idioma preferido de and Sánchez) with preschool age children stated ella. Sí puede hablar español. Sí entiende that they were seeking bilingual preschools, while todo, pero . . . the Carrera family decided to move to a more [Now, English is her preferred language. “bilingual” neighborhood in order for their children She can speak Spanish. She understands to hear Spanish in their environment. These fami- everything, but . . .] . . . lies researched the availability of bilingual preschool programs and found that the emphasis was on As the children got older the tendency to speak teaching English as a second language rather than English was stronger. Yet the Sánchez children, development of the native language in a bilingual Maya and Jojo, spoke only Spanish to the baby, but environment. the parents had to remind the children to respond in Spanish when they spoke to them. H: Esas, estamos buscando uno. Per todavía no hallamos un lugar que podemos decir que va Q: Los ninos hablan español o inglés? ir allí. Sí queremos un programa que enseña [Do the children speak Spanish or English?] inglés y español. Section_04_5500.qxd 12/9/09 3:39 PM Page 100

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[Those, we’re looking for one. But we still phasized transition to English rather than the devel- haven’t found a place that we can say that opment of true bilingualism. she’s going to. We do want a program that The importance of bilingualism and biliteracy is a teaches English and Spanish.] dilemma for parents who seek to maintain and develop the native language of their children with J: No hay programa bilingüe aquí, programas little support from society and educational institu- bilingües aquí. Sí hay, pues no, no son. tions. Thus, the learning and development of Span- Como Head Start, esos no son bilingües. Son ish as well as English, and becoming biliterate, are para que ellos aprenden inglés. considered important goals of these families. . . . [There isn’t a bilingual program here. There None of the parents stated that they believe that are, but no, they’re not. Like Head Start, their children must reject their native language and they’re not bilingual. They’re for them to culture in order to succeed. On the contrary, they learn English.] emphasized the belief that their children need to become bilingual, biliterate, and bicultural in order Although her parents continued to search for a to succeed in the United States. All of the parents bilingual program until Analisa was four years old, declared their rationale for maintaining bilingual- they didn’t consider those available to be true bilin- ism as instrumental and utilitarian, in that it was gualism, rather they were to transition to English. necessary in order to converse with the grandpar- While the Reyes/Fuentes family contemplated ents and other monolingual Spanish-speaking rela- the possibility of living in a Spanish-speaking coun- tives. As Javier put it: try in order for Analisa to develop her bilingualism and become biliterate, and the Sanchez family con- J: ... por la razón de que vivimos en una area sidered enrolling the children in a Mexican school predominantemente bilingüe y a parte de in order to develop literacy skills in Spanish, the eso también por la cuestión de que muchos Carrera family had in fact lived in Mexico for two de nuestros familiares todavía hablan years. As Carla was beginning kindergarten, Jorge español primeramente. was entering second grade, and Tino was approach- ing junior high school, the family decided to enroll [. . . because we live in a predominantly the children in Mexican schools to read in Spanish bilingual area and besides that also because before returning to the United States and continu- many of our relatives are still native Spanish ing their education. . . . speakers.] When they returned to the United States at mid- year, Carla was placed in an “English-only” first- Although they use Spanish in the home and in grade class because there was no bilingual program their work, these parents found that it is difficult to in the neighborhood school. In second and third maintain bilingualism in their children. Those who grades, however, she was placed in a bilingual pro- sought bilingual preschools for their children were gram and transitioned to English in fourth grade. unsuccessful. In fact, the parents discovered that Jorge, who had been in bilingual kindergarten and rather than working to develop and strengthen the first grade in the United States, continued his Span- children’s native language, most of the preschools, ish instruction in Mexico for grades two and three, like the elementary schools, emphasize ESL instruc- and was placed in an “English only” fourth grade on tion and treat the bilingual child as requiring reme- his return. Although Tino had also been enrolled in dial education. Thus, these parents found it the Mexican schools, he had never been in a bilin- necessary to prepare their children for preschool by gual program in the United States and continued either keeping their children at home in a predom- his high school education in the regular English inantly Spanish environment until about age four, program. Thus, both Carla and Jorge were trans- while gradually increasing the use of English at ferred to all English classes by fourth grade. This home and providing a familiar bilingual environ- placement corresponded to the transitional type of ment until the child could accommodate to an all- bilingual programs in the United States which em- English setting. Those parents who sent their first Section_04_5500.qxd 12/9/09 3:39 PM Page 101

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child to preschool or Head Start were discouraged such as soccer, San Diego/Tijuana children’s choir by the emphasis on English. and folkloric dance. . . . In retrospect, the parents consider problems the In addition to these organized activities, . . . the children had in school a result of not having fully families also participated in social functions and developed their linguistic and academic foundation cultural traditions such as weddings, baptisms, in the native language. Other parents provided birthday parties, and family gatherings which pro- what they felt was a strong foundation in Spanish, vided much of their children’s social and cultural preparing their children with “readiness” concepts experiences. . . . The children were also involved and an awareness that instruction would be con- in numerous cultural and social activities in the ducted in English. In addition, five of the seven Chicano community such as Hispanic Future families had researched the preschool and elemen- Leaders workshops and summer programs for tary schools before enrolling their children, so that teens; community cultural celebrations of Mexi- while they may not have been able to fulfill a bilin- can holidays; music appreciation and familiarity of gual need, they also sought schools which would Mexican music; as well as daily preparation of tra- provide a positive, creative, affective, and nurturing ditional foods. learning environment. . . . Recognizing the realities of schooling in the While the schools emphasize transition to Eng- United States, the children have become English- lish, these parents have sought other means of dominant in order to succeed in school. Yet they encouraging and developing their children’s bilin- have also been able to maintain and use Span- gualism. In addition to encouraging academic suc- ish. . . . Like their parents who consider themselves cess in English, the parents have also provided bicultural, the children are developing a cultural interaction in Spanish at home, as well as with awareness and identity as Mexican or Chicano in grandparents and other Spanish-speaking adults. contrast to some members of their extended fami- These parents and their associates also serve as lies who not only lose Spanish language skills, but models of educated and bilingual professionals. also desire to assimilate into the mainstream soci- They work in occupations in which knowledge of ety. . . . Spanish is regarded as an asset, for example, the For example, fifteen-year old Florencia related a legal profession, education, and in community or story about an incident with a high school coun- social service agencies. Thus, the children are in selor in which she and a cousin were counseled to contact with positive role models who acknowledge take an “easy class” rather than a college prepara- their bilingualism and culture as resources and tory course. Florencia decided for herself which qualities of which they are proud. course she needed in order to satisfy college admis- In addition to the home environment and ex- sion requirements and proceeded to counsel her tended family, the parents also provided extracur- cousin. However, the counselor directed her to ricular activities for the children which promote leave the office and her cousin was made to stay and encourage the use of Spanish for cultural ac- alone with the advisor. Florencia interpreted the tivities – music, dance, arts, and sports. These or- “guidance” of the counselor as discriminatory based ganized activities provide opportunities for the on their surnames rather than academic achieve- children to participate and interact in Spanish with ment or potential. other bilingual children and families. Another example of the children’s awareness of All parents and children are involved in the cultural identity was that of Jose Antonio. When he teaching and learning of culture. These children, was twelve years old, a number of children at his because of their interaction with their parents, ex- school were interviewed to participate in the film- tended families, friends, and classmates, were also ing of an educational program on early California becoming bicultural. Their parents consciously se- history. Jose correctly determined that the inter- lected various cultural experiences, some of which viewer was looking for someone to play the part of were more mainstream, others more Chicano or the child/narrator. Thus, he offered information Mexican, and all of which the parents believe are about his family, his knowledge of Spanish and important for the child, for example, . . . activities English, and demonstrated pride in his Mexican Section_04_5500.qxd 12/9/09 3:39 PM Page 102

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heritage. He was selected as the narrator of the pro- they began to voice their cultural awareness and gram. identify with the community in a positive way. The Most of these children had experienced discrim- children had a positive attitude about their cultural ination and prejudice, and they were able to iden- identity. Their cultural pride and self-esteem was tify social injustice as institutional and not only evident by the way in which they identified others affecting themselves as individuals but all others as lacking “the culture,” the way in which they vol- with whom they identified. For example, in sev- unteered to demonstrate their knowledge of their enth grade, Jorge wrote an autobiography in which heritage to strangers, and their awareness of social he discussed his personal struggle to maintain a issues, such as discrimination and inequality, which high academic standing as it conflicted with peer affect the community as a whole as well as them- pressure and his personal need for group member- selves as students. . . . ship. . . . Because these children have been able to main- The parents in this study are clearly extraordi- tain Spanish, develop a cultural awareness and nary in their goals of maintaining bilingualism and identity, while at the same time developing an cultural identity. In a society where one language, awareness of larger social issues, they have also set English, has more prestige than another, and where goals for themselves. Their parents, as the first gen- “success” is judged in terms of attaining proficiency eration to attend college, did not consider them- in that language as a means of assimilating to the selves prepared for college. However, these children mainstream culture, these parents have taken ex- have been prepared by their parents to expect to at- treme steps in their efforts to maintain their lan- tend college, to carry on the legacy of a committed guage and culture. . . . When one considers the fact and concerned Chicano with a goal to create social that, in general, the native language is eliminated change. . . . Their goals and efforts toward main- within three generations of migrating to the United taining bilingualism illustrate a consciousness of States, these second-and third-generation parents identity, one that is successful in two languages and are working against all odds to provide a bilingual two cultural environments. environment for their children. . . . In spite of these efforts to make Spanish the Notes native language of the children, and creating an en- vironment in which the children would be encour- 1Irene Villanueva, The voices of Chicano families: aged to become bilingual, all of these children were Life stories, maintaining bilingualism, and cultural sensitive to the outside forces which emphasize the awareness. In M. Seller and L. Weis (Eds.) Beyond dominance of English in the society. Thus, once black and white: New faces and voices in U.S. schools. (Al- they became enrolled in school . . . they quickly bany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1997), became English-dominant. Although most of the pp. 61–79. children have not developed Spanish academically, 2C. Veltman, The future of the Spanish language in the that is, literacy in Spanish, they have maintained United States (Washington D.C.: Hispanic Policy De- oral proficiency in Spanish. . . . velopment Project, 1988); R. Sánchez, Chicano dis- The children’s early exposure to Mexican and course: Socio-historic perspectives. (Rowley, MA: Chicano practices and activities provided positive Newbury House, 1983). experiences in the Chicano community and en- 3K. Hakuta, Mirror of language: The debate on bilingual- abled the children to identify themselves as mem- ism. (New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1982). bers of the community. Thus, as the children grew, Section_04_5500.qxd 12/9/09 3:39 PM Page 103

CHAPTER 1 Understanding Ourselves and Others 103 SHIRLEY BRICE HEATH

Oral Traditions

Although people may share the same language, learning to communicate is not always the same process with the same outcome. A team of ethnographic researchers studied two rural communities in the Piedmont area of the Carolinas. “Roadville” was populated by low-income white families; “Trackton” had low-income black families. Both relied on a local mill for employment. In the following excerpts, the author describes differences be- tween how children in these communities learned to communicate, and the implications of this learning when the children entered elementary school.

Roadville: A piece of truth or previously told in the presence of others and de- clared by them “a good story.” Roadville residents Roadville residents worry about many things. Yet recognize the purpose of the stories is to make peo- no Roadville home is a somber place where folks ple laugh by making fun of either the story-teller or spend all their time worrying about money, their a close friend in sharing an event and the particular children’s futures, and their fate at the hands of the actions of individuals within that event. However, mill. They create numerous occasions for celebra- stories “told on” someone other than the story- tion, most often with family members and church teller are never told unless the central character or friends. On these occasions, they regale each other someone who is clearly designated his representa- with “stories.” To an outsider, these stories seem as tive is present. The Dee children sometimes tell sto- though they should be embarrassing, even insulting ries on their father who died shortly after the family to people present. It is difficult for the outsider to moved to Roadville, but they do so only in Mrs. learn when to laugh, for Roadville people seem to Dee’s presence with numerous positive adjectives laugh at the story’s central character, usually the describing their father’s gruff nature. Rob Macken, story-teller or someone else who is present. on occasion, is the dominant character in stories A “story” in Roadville is: “something you tell on which make fun of his ever-present willingness to yourself, or on your buddy, you know, it’s all in point out where other folks are wrong. But Rob is good fun, and a li’l something to laugh about.” always present on these occasions and he is clearly Though this definition was given by a male, women included in the telling (“Ain’t that right, Rob?” define their stories in similar ways, stressing they “Now you know that’s the truth, hain’t it?”), as are “good fun,” and “don’t mean no harm.” Stories story-tellers cautiously move through their talk recount an actual event either witnessed by others about him, gauging how far to go by his response to the story. Outside close family groups, stories are told only From Ways With Words: Language, Life, and Work in Communi- in sex-segregated groups. Women invite stories of ties and Classrooms, Copyright © 1983 by Cambridge Univer- other women, men regale each other with tales of sity Press. Reprinted with the permission of Cambridge their escapades on hunting and fishing trips, or University Press. 103 Section_04_5500.qxd 12/9/09 3:39 PM Page 104

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their run-ins (quarrels) with their wives and chil- the young folks, yet they have benefited from the dren. Topics for women’s stories are exploits in lessons and values these experiences enabled their cooking, shopping, adventures at the beauty shop, parents to pass on to them. bingo games, the local amusement park, their gar- In any social gathering, either the story-teller dens, and sometimes events in their children’s lives. who himself announces he has a story or the indi- Topics for men are big-fishing expeditions, es- vidual who invites another to tell a story is, for the capades of their hunting dogs, times they have moment, in control of the entire group. He manages made fools of themselves, and exploits in particular the flow of talk, the staging of the story, and dictates areas of their expertise (gardening and raising a the topic to which all will adhere in at least those 90-lb pumpkin, a 30-lb cabbage, etc.). If a story is portions of their discourse which immediately fol- told to an initial audience and declared a good story low the story-telling. . . . on that occasion, this audience (or others who hear Perhaps the most obligatory convention . . . is about the story) can then invite the story-teller to that which requires a Roadville story to have a retell the story to yet other audiences. Thus, an in- moral or summary message which highlights the vitation to tell a story is usually necessary. Stories weakness admitted in the talk. “Stories” in these are often requested with a question: “Has Betty settings are similar to testimonials given at revival burned any biscuits lately?” “Brought any possums meetings and prayer sessions. On these occasions, home lately?” Marked behavior – transgressions individuals are invited to give a testimonial or to from the behavioral norm generally expected of a “tell your story.” These narratives are characterized “good hunter,” “good cook,” “good handyman,” or by a factual detailing of temporal and spatial de- a “good Christian” – is the usual focus of the story. scriptions and recounting on conversations by di- The foolishness in the tale is a piece of truth about rect quotation (“Then the Lord said to me:”). Such everyone present and all join in a mutual laugh at testimonials frequently have to do with “bringing a not only the story’s central character, but at them- young man to his senses” and having received an- selves as well. One story triggers another, as person swers to specific prayers. The detailing of the actual after person reaffirms a familiarity with the kind of event is often finished off with Scriptural quota- experience just recounted. Such stories test publicly tion, making it clear that the story bears out the the strength of relationships and openly declare promise of “the Word.” . . . bonds of kinship and friendship, with no “hard feel- ings.” Only rarely, and then generally under the in- fluence of alcohol or the strain of a test in the relationship from another source (job competition, In Trackton: Talkin’ junk an unpaid load), does a story-telling become the oc- casion for an open expression of hostility. Trackton folks see truth and the facts in stories in Common experience in events similar to those of ways which differ greatly from those of Roadville. the story becomes an expression of social unity, a Good story-tellers in Trackton may base their stories commitment to maintenance of the norms of the on an actual event, but they creatively fictionalize church and of the roles within the mill commu- the details surrounding the real event, and the out- nity’s life. In telling a story, an individual shows that come of the story may not even resemble what in- he belongs to the group: he knows about either deed happened. The best stories are “junk,” and himself or the subject of the story, and he under- anyone who can “talk junk” is a good story-teller. stands the norms which were broken by the story’s Talkin’ junk includes laying on highly exaggerated central character. Oldtimers, especially those who compliments and making wildly exaggerated com- came to Roadville in the 1930s, frequently assert parisons as well as telling narratives. Straightfor- their long familiarity with certain norms as they tell ward factual accounts are relatively rare in Trackton stories on the young folks and on those members of and are usually told only on serious occasions: to their own family who moved away. There is always give a specific piece of information to someone who an unspoken understanding that some experiences has requested it, to provide an account of the trou- common to the oldtimers can never be known by bles of a highly respected individual, or to exchange Section_04_5500.qxd 12/9/09 3:39 PM Page 105

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information about daily rounds of activities when not lend itself to a bedtime schedule of reading a neither party wishes to intensify the interaction or story. The homes provide barely enough space for draw it out. Trackton’s “stories,” on the other hand, the necessary activities of family living, and there is are intended to intensify social interactions and to no separate room, book corner, or even outdoor give all parties an opportunity to share in not only seat where a child and parent can read together out the unity of the common experience on which the of the constant flow of human interactions. The story may be based, but also in the humor of the stage of the plaza almost always offers live action wide-ranging language play and imagination which and is tough competition for book-reading. Stories embellish the narrative. exchanged among adults do not carry moral sum- From a very early age, Trackton children learn to maries or admonitions about behavior; instead they appreciate the value of a good story for capturing an focus on detailing of events and personalities, and audience’s attention or winning favors. Boys, espe- they stress conflict and resolution or attempts at res- cially on those occasions when they are teased or olution. Thus adults see no reason to direct these challenged in the plaza, hear their antics become stories to children for teaching purposes. the basis of exaggerated tales told by adults and When stories are told among adults, young chil- older children to those not present at the time of the dren are not excluded from the audience, even if challenge. Children hear themselves made into the content refers to adult affairs, sexual exploits, characters in stories told again and again. They hear crooked politicians, drunk ministers, or wayward adults use stories from the Bible or from their youth choirleaders. If children respond to such stories to scold or warn against misbehavior. The mayor with laughter or verbal comments, they are simply captures the boys’ conflict in the story of King warned to “keep it to yo’self.” Some adult stories are Solomon which features a chain of events and res- told only in sex-segregated situations. Men recount olutions of a conflict similar to that in which they to their buddies stories they would not want their are currently engaged. Children’s misdeeds provoke wives or the womenfolk to know about; women the punchline or summing up of a story which they share with each other stories of quarrels with their are not told, but are left to imagine: “Dat pólice- menfolk or other women. Many men know about man’ll come ‘n git you, like he did Frog.” The story formulaic toasts (long, epic-like accounts of either behind this summary is never told, but is held out individual exploits or struggles of black people) as something to be recreated anew in the imagina- from visitors from up-North or men returned from tion of every child who hears this threat. the armed services, but these are clearly external to Trackton children can create and tell stories the Trackton man’s repertoire, and they do not about themselves, but they must be clever if they come up in their social gatherings. Instead, Trackton are to hold the audience’s attention and to maintain men and their friends focus on recent adventures of any extended conversational space in an ongoing particular personalities known to all present. All of discourse with a story, but if they do not succeed in these are highly self-assertive or extol the strength relating the first few lines of their story to the ongo- and cleverness of specific individuals. ing topic or otherwise exciting the listeners’ inter- Women choose similar topics for their stories: ests, they are ignored. An adult’s accusation, on the events which have happened to them, things they other hand, gives children an open stage for creat- have seen, or events they have heard about. Con- ing a story, but this one must also be “good,” i.e. siderable license is taken with these stories, how- highly exaggerated, skillful in language play, and ever, and each individual is expected to tell the full of satisfactory comparisons to redirect the story, not as she has heard it, but with her own par- adult’s attention from the infraction provoking the ticular style. Women tell stories of their exploits at accusation. the employment office, adventures at work in the Adults and older siblings do not make up sus- mill, or episodes in the lives of friends, husbands, or tained chronological narratives specially for young mutual acquaintances. Laced through with evalua- children, and adults do not read to young children. tive comments (“Didja ever hear of such a thing?” The flow of time in Trackton, which admits few “You know how he ak [act] when he drunk.” “You scheduled blocks of time for routine activities, does been like dat.”), the stories invite participation from Section_04_5500.qxd 12/9/09 3:39 PM Page 106

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listeners. In fact, such participation is necessary re- tional evaluations add humor and draw out the in- inforcement for the story-teller. . . . teraction of the story-teller and audience. Though both communities use their stories to entertain, Roadville adults see their stories as didactic: the pur- pose of a story is to make a point – a point about the The traditions of story-telling conventions of behavior. Audience and story-teller are drawn together in a common bond through ac- Roadville members reaffirm their commitment to ceptance of the merits of the story’s point for all. In community and church values by giving factual ac- Trackton, stories often have no point; they may go counts of their own weaknesses and the lessons on as long as the audience enjoys the story-teller’s learned in overcoming these. Trackton members entertainment. Thus a story-teller may intend on announce boldly their individual strength in having his first entry into a stream of discourse to tell only been creative, persistent, and undaunted in the face one story, but he may find the audience reception of conflict. In Roadville, the sources of stories are such that he can move from the first story into an- personal experience and a familiarity with Biblical other, and yet another. Trackton audiences are uni- parables, church-related stories of Christian life, and fied by the story only in that they recognize the testimonials given in church and home lesson- entertainment value of the story, and they approve circles. Their stories are tales of transgressions stories which extol the virtues of an individual. Sto- which make the point of reiterating the expected ries do not teach lessons about proper behavior; norms of behavior of man, woman, hunter, fisher- they tell of individuals who excel by outwitting the man, worker, and Christian. The stories of Road- rules of conventional behavior. ville are true to the facts of an event; they qualify Children’s stories and their story-telling opportu- exaggeration and hedge if they might seem to be nities are radically different in the two communi- veering from an accurate reporting of events. ties. Roadville parents provide their children with The content of Trackton’s stories, on the other books; they read to them and ask questions about hand, ranges widely, and there is “truth” only in the books’ contents. They choose books which em- the universals of human strength and persistence phasize nursery rhymes, alphabet learning, ani- praised and illustrated in the tale. Fact is often hard mals, and simplified Bible stories, and they require to find, though it is usually the seed of the story. their children to repeat from these books, and to Playsongs, ritual insults, cheers, and stories are as- answer formulaic questions about their contents. sertions of the strong over the weak, of the power Roadville adults similarly ask questions about oral of the person featured in the story. Anyone other stories which have a point relevant to some marked than the story-teller/main character may be sub- behavior of a child. They use proverbs and sum- jected to mockery, ridicule, and challenges to show mary statements to remind their children of stories he is not weak, poor, or ugly. and to call on them for comparisons of the stories’ In both communities, stories entertain; they pro- contents to their own situations. Roadville parents vide fun, laughter, and frames for other speech coach children in their telling of stories, forcing events which provide a lesson or a witty display of them to tell a story of an incident as it has been pre- verbal skill. In Roadville, a proverb, witty saying or composed in the head of the adult. Scriptural quotation inserted into a story adds to Trackton children tell story-poems from the age both the entertainment value of the story and to its of two, and they embellish these with gestures, unifying role. Group knowledge of a proverb or say- inclusios, questions asked of their audience, and rep- ing, or approval of Scriptural quotation reinforces etitions with variations. They only gradually learn the communal experience which forms the basis of to work their way into any ongoing discourse with Roadville’s stories. their stories, and when they do, they are not asked In Trackton, various types of language play, imi- questions about their stories, nor are they asked to tations of other community members or TV person- repeat them. They must, however, be highly cre- alities, dramatic gestures and shifts of voice quality, ative and entertaining to win a way into an ongoing and rhetorical questions and expressions of emo- conversation. They practice the skills which they Section_04_5500.qxd 12/9/09 3:39 PM Page 107

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must learn in order to do so through ritualized in- ually engaged. Following their home model, Road- sults, playsongs, and of course, continued attempts ville children might conceive of such a story as at telling stories to their peers. “telling on” a policeman or recounting his failure to In Roadville, children come to know a story as follow certain rules. Trackton children would ex- either a retold account from a book, or a factual ac- pect stories of a policeman to exaggerate the facts count of a real event in which some type of marked and to entertain with witticisms and verbal play. behavior occurred, and there is a lesson to be During rest time after lunch, the primary teacher learned. There are Bible stories, testimonials, ser- may read to the student the “story ” of “Curious mons, and accounts of hunting, fishing, cooking, George,” a monkey who talks, gets involved in a working, or other daily events. Any fictionalized ac- wide range of antics, and always comes out the vic- count of a real event is viewed as a lie; reality is bet- tor. Roadville children have had little experience ter than fiction. Roadville’s church and community with such wild fantasy stories, and Trackton chil- life admit no story other than that which meets the dren have not heard stories about such animals definition internal to the group. read to them from books. Neither group has had The one kind of story Trackton prides itself on is the experience of helping negotiate with an adult the “true story,” one in which the basis of the plot is the meaning of the story: “Isn’t he crazy?” “Do you a real event, but the details and even the outcome think they’ll catch him?” “What would have hap- are exaggerated to such an extent that the story is pened if . . .?” ultimately anything but true to the facts. Boys excel For Roadville children, their community’s ways in telling these stories and use them to establish and of learning and talking about what one knows both maintain status relations once they reach school parallel and contradict the school’s approach to sto- age, and particularly during the preadolescent ries. In the classroom, occasions for story-telling be- years. To Trackton people, the “true story” is the tween adults and children are established by adult only narrative they term a “story,” and the purpose request, just as they are in Roadville at home. of such stories is to entertain and to establish the Teachers sometimes politely listen to very young story-teller’s intimate knowledge of truths about life children’s spontaneous stories (for example, those larger than the factual details of real events. . . . volunteered during a reading lesson), but these are not valued as highly as those specifically requested by adults as digressions. When teachers ask children to “make up” a story or to put themselves “in the The story in school shoes of a character” in a story from their reading book, they prefer fanciful, creative, and imaginative When Trackton and Roadville children go to school, accounts. In Roadville, such stories told by children they meet very different notions of truth, style, and would bring punishment or a charge of lying. The language appropriate to a “story” from those they summary of one story can be related to the sum- have known at home. They must learn a different mary of another, and the moral of one story can be taxonomy and new definitions of stories. They must linked with another, but extension of the facts of a come to recognize when a story is expected to be story by hyperbole without qualification, and the true, when to stick to the facts, and when to use transfer of characters, times, and places would be their imaginations. In the primary grades, the term unacceptable features of stories in Roadville. “story ” is used to refer to several types of written For Trackton children entering school, the prob- and oral discourse. When the first-grade teacher lems presented by the school’s conventions and ex- says in introducing a social studies unit on commu- pectations for story-telling are somewhat different. nity helpers, “Now we all know some story about Questions which ask for a strict recounting of facts the job of the policeman,” she conjures up for the based on a lesson and formulated in the teacher’s children different images of policemen and stories mind which simply recounts facts accurately has no about them, but the concept of story which holds in parallel in their community. Their fictive stories in this school context is one which refers to factual response to assignments which ask them to make narratives of events in which policemen are habit- up a story often fail to set the scene or introduce Section_04_5500.qxd 12/9/09 3:39 PM Page 108

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characters, and often the point of their stories is not than any other social scientist. However, our exam- clear to either teachers or other students. Inside the ination here of the maintenance of patterns of lan- classroom, their language play, incorporation of guage use and their mutually reinforcing cultural commercial characters, and many of their themes patterns leaves us with ample possibilities for spec- are unacceptable. The close personal network ulation. Through the numerous geographic and which gives Trackton stories their context and their economic moves of (the 20th) century, both Road- meaning at home has no counterpart in the school. ville’s and Trackton’s forefathers maintained habits For each community, the story whose features are which were forged in the social, regional, and eco- marked here are only those produced and recog- nomic milieus of preceding centuries. In the 1920s, nized as “a story” by community residents – modi- the schools of the Piedmont began to articulate fied nonfictive for Trackton and nonfictive for their mission as preachers of culture to the mill peo- Roadville. “Story” in the school being the type most ple, the poor whites, and the mountain folks who often used in language arts contexts (reading and had come to the mill villages. Through the decades, writing lessons) and the nonfictive (being) that the schools maintained this goal while mill people most frequently used in social studies and science kept their faith in the power of the schools to help lessons. . . . them get ahead. When blacks came to school with The significance of these different patterns of whites in the late 1960s, most people saw no need language socialization for success in school soon be- for a change of mission or methods. . . . comes clear. After initial years of success, Roadville Will the road ahead be altered for the students children fall behind, and by junior high, most are from Trackton and Roadville who have, through simply waiting out school’s end or their sixteenth the efforts of some of their teachers, learned to add birthday, the legal age for leaving school. They want to their ways of using language learned at home? to get on with family life and count on getting a Will their school-acquired habits of talking about high school diploma when and if they need it in the ways of knowing, reporting on uses of language, future. Trackton students fall quickly into a pattern and reading and writing for a variety of functions of failure, yet all about them they hear that they and audiences be transmitted to their chances of the can never get ahead without a high school diploma. next generation? Internalization and extension of Some begin their families and their work in the these habits depend on opportunities for practice as mills while they are in school. But their mood is well as on a consciousness that these ways may that of those who have accepted responsibilities in have some relevance to future vocational goals. life outside the classroom, and that mood is easily Maintenance of these habits depends on both sus- interpreted negatively by school authorities who tained motivation for entrance into some vocation still measure students’ abilities by their scores on in which they are seen as relevant, and exposure as standardized tests. Trackton students often drift adults to multiple situations in which the habits can through the school, hoping to escape with the val- be repeatedly practiced. . . . In short, the orienta- ued piece of paper which they know will add much tion toward uses of language must include not only to their parents’ and grandparents’ pride, although the interactions of the present, but also the needs little to their paychecks. . . . of the future. An ethnographer of communication has no more talent for accurately predicting the future Section_04_5500.qxd 12/9/09 3:39 PM Page 109

CHAPTER 1 Understanding Ourselves and Others 109 AURORA CEDILLO

Working with Latino and Latina Students

“Hispanic” is a term created by the U.S. Census Bureau to identify people who are Spanish-speakers; Latinos/as is an alternative term preferred by many. Chicano is a term chosen by Mexican-Americans who strongly identify with their indigenous cultural heritage. The author has worked successfully with many Latino/a students, and she shares some of the reasons for and the strategies behind that success.

s the 21st century begins, it is apparent that this population continues to increase, so will their Latinos have influenced U.S. society in a vari- influence and their purchasing power – estimated Aety of areas such as music, entertainment, and to exceed $1 trillion by 2010. even the English language. Mexican cuisine can be Aurora Cedillo was born in south Texas, but found almost everywhere from fine restaurants to when she was 12 years old she came with her fam- fast food; salsa recently surpassed ketchup as the ily to harvest crops in Idaho and Montana. Her most popular American condiment. Latinos have family decided to stay in Oregon where she gradu- also made significant contributions to the American ated from North Salem high school. She attended economy. Although anti-immigrant critics claim college with assistance from a federally funded ca- that Mexican immigrants in particular contribute reer ladder teacher-preparation program. Upon primarily to the Mexican economy by sending graduating, Salem-Keizer schools hired her as their much of their money to families and relatives in the first bilingual-bicultural teacher. Twenty years Mexico, yet Ramos (2002) cites a National Acad- later she earned a Masters degree in Bilingual Edu- emy of Science study reporting that both legal and cation Administration from the University of Ore- illegal Mexican immigrants spend more than $10 gon. She has currently completed her doctoral billion each year in the United States.1 From 2001 studies at Oregon State University and will be to 2003, Latinos’ disposable income increased by awarded her doctoral degree upon completion of about 30% to total $652 billion (Grow, 2004).2 As her dissertation. Aurora describes herself as “a holistic bilingual and multicultural educator, consultant, interpreter, and conference presenter,” but she is more than Originally appeared in Cultural competence: A primer for edu- that. Although her parents had eighteen children, cators by Jerry V. Diller and Jean Moule (Belmont, CA: she is the oldest female of her ten surviving sib- Wadsworth, 2005). Reprinted by permission of author. lings. She is also a single mother and grandmother.

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She has always enjoyed telling family and cultural What characteristics do stories, and has written about her beliefs and expe- riences. She believes that “the words I speak today Latinos/Latinas share were at one time spoken by my grandmothers in as a group? the past. Therefore, I am the words my grandmoth- ers and my mother spoke.” The following is an . . . A characteristic Latinos share is a belief in des- interview conducted by Jerry V. Diller and Jean tiny. The belief is that we are not in complete con- Moule (2005) with Aurora Cedillo.3 trol of everything that happens in our lives. “Si Dios Quiere” (God willing) is a typical yet simple state- ment of such belief. A higher being, God, has a pur- pose and a plan destined for each of us. . . . To Could you talk about your own Latinos destiny is being. No plan, no objective, no ethnic background and how it road map, no timeline. I never planned to be in this interview. I never planned to attend Oregon State has impacted your work? University as a student participating in a doctoral program. I never planned to be a teacher, to travel I’m caught between ethnicities. As I’ve grown nationally and internationally to share my teaching older, I realize I have a multiple identity. I describe experience. Terms like goal setting and objectives and myself as Chicana, of Mexican-American heritage plans are words I learned in the mainstream world. (but) as I look deeper, I realize that Mexican means I learned to use them; however, I can tell you that mixed race. My mom is French. My dad is more the plans I have made have very rarely been indigenous, though his last name was Cedillo, a achieved. Our beliefs on destiny are based in our in- very Spanish name. Therefore, I am French and digenous experience of European conquest, of Spanish and indigenous. My father’s father, my genocide, of never having choice in our lives. I can’t grandfather, lived with my mom at the begin- choose my place of employment. I can’t choose ning of her marriage, so she learned a lot from where to live my life; I can’t choose my doctor. I him about his indigenous culture. Many of his can’t even tell you I will see you tomorrow, because ideas, belief, and practices were taught to us. even that depends on someone else. Therefore, I would describe my ethnic background Another fundamental belief that guides Latinos as Mexican American, Chicana, and all of my re- is the belief that we are born into a family and that sponses in this interview derive from my lived the family becomes the most important element in experience. . . . life in this world and beyond. The family is the cen- As a bilingual of diverse language, culture, and terpiece, the glue that bonds one to nature. Family color, my work involves balancing the cultural, is plural and multifaceted. It is elastic and fluid-like. linguistic, and socioeconomic scale for students, To Latinos, family is much more than the biological staff, and parents. Opening means of communi- members one is born into. Family is broad and cation, increasing awareness and acceptance be- deep. It is inclusive of several generations, social re- tween the groups is a continuous daily task. I lationships, and local community members. Family confirm the efforts of the groups and value their includes mother, father, sister, and brother. It in- input, but progress is slow in coming. Success cludes sister cousins, political sisters, and growth comes one grain of sand at a time; teachers are sisters; also . . . aunts, uncles, grandparents, and overwhelmed with students that don’t understand great-grandparents. It includes children, grandchil- the language and culture of the school, parents that dren, and great-grandchildren. . . . seem to not care about the education of their chil- The community family includes members of a dren, and administrators that can’t support the rural community meeting in faraway places and teachers’ efforts. Institutional historical practices of uniting to assist one another in surviving in the new silencing and promoting invisibility are alive and place. Individuals share housing, food, medicine, vital constantly in every element of the educational and money. They provide guidance in survival in the experience for teachers, students, and parents of community, employment, and resources. Once able color.... to sustain themselves, they leave and set up another Section_04_5500.qxd 12/9/09 3:39 PM Page 111

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place to assist the newcomers. Everyone from your away in the daily tasks of teaching. Once I asked birth farm, community, or state is a brother and sis- third-grade students to tell me about Cesar Chavez. ter. The term paisano relates to the brotherhood. Eager and enthused students discussed a boxer also So, we are community centered in the family, named Cesar Chavez. In less than ten years, Cesar defined by destiny, and our connections extend so- Chavez had been lost to a new generation of teach- cially, religiously, and politically. We are one. This ers and students! belief, if misunderstood, creates problems on the job Teachers must celebrate the sixteenth of Septem- and in relations in mainstream culture. Something ber, Mexico’s day of independence, as well as many as simple as a statement in an invitation to an event other Central American countries that celebrate can be misunderstood. For example, the statement their independence day in September. As teachers, “no children please” to some Latinos may mean we must know what event happened on the fifth of that he/she wasn’t really welcomed because if one May and why we celebrate that day. For Mexican is invited, all are invited. Americans and Chicanos, Cinco de Mayo is espe- Another characteristic of Latino culture is collab- cially important. The battle in Puebla, Mexico, on oration and cooperation. “One” does not know “it” the fifth of May is a day to remember – that regard- all. However, everyone knows something. So col- less of poverty, training, or language, positive change lectively, as a family or as a community, we Latinos can happen if we fight a battle as a united people. are able to solve the immediate concerns. All mem- Teachers must be inclusive when discussing his- bers are responsible for something. Some are good torical events. Many of our teachers were not ex- at speaking and negotiating; others are good at posed to the history of Latino countries and are not thinking; others are good at math; others are more informed. I would suggest that teachers invite com- spiritually inclined; others are better caregivers. munity members, parents, or minority staff within Everyone in the family is an expert in something. the school to come and share with the students. . . . Depending on the task . . . different leaders arise. Also important is the discussion of the contribu- When we came to Oregon, my father did not tions made by members of these communities in speak, read, or write English. He could not read a the development of this powerful nation. . . . map, a road sign, or was unable to ask for direc- tions. My sixteen-year-old brother took the map, read it, and another brother asked directions. The rest of us participated by cleaning and feeding the Are there any subpopulations crew in the cabin. . . . in the Latino/a community you feel deserve additional attention in the classroom? What historical experiences The two groups that I think deserve additional at- should educators be aware of tention are the newly arrived to our communities in relationship to the Latino/a from indigenous backgrounds and the locally born community and Latino/a and grown Latino children. Our indigenous Indian populations intermixed racially with Latino/as as students? they come from Mexico, Central America, and Guatemala. We know very little about their back- Historical events that include the histories of the ground, how they learn, where their historical students in the classroom are very important. places are, or their lifestyles in their countries of ori- Teachers must be inclusive of the countries repre- gin. We are unfamiliar with their social practices sented in the classroom. For Latino students, a and do not speak their language if it is not Spanish. teacher must look to include members of communi- Frankly we are at a loss. Right now in our schools, ties represented in her class. For Mexican Ameri- we are looking for representatives from these indige- cans, . . . a teacher must include Cesar Chavez. . . . nous communities who will come and share with us It’s amazing how quickly Heroes of Color fade information on how we can reach their students and Section_04_5500.qxd 12/9/09 3:39 PM Page 112

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families. They tend to be even harder to reach than Research shows that if you teach children in the Chicano students, fall through the cracks, drop out, language they understand, they will be successful. and underachieve at even higher levels. But there are political pressures coming from the A second group, particularly at high risk, are the educational establishment that allow non-English first- and second-generation Latinos, both immi- students three years in special programs and then grant and U.S.-born. These students grow up in two push them out. Research, however, says that it worlds. They learn two languages at one time. They takes five to seven years for a child to develop the live between worlds and have not developed a academic proficiency of an English speaker. But strong foundation in either one. The minute they new educators want to keep their jobs and want to are born, they’re listening to English as well as to the make sure they are doing what the system tells Spanish of their parents. So they must learn two lan- them to do. Older educators who have seen the re- guages. Educators in charge of instructing these stu- search and know from firsthand experience are dents have little knowledge about bilingualism. In more likely to challenge the political pressures and desperation, Spanish-language experts from Mexico push for teaching (students) in their native lan- and other Central Americans are hired to work with guage. But basically, educators are caught between these students. These teachers know Spanish but do these forces, and what are you going to do? not know how to work with bilingual students. Just Another great controversy is the misalignment in because you speak two languages does not make bilingual education. So-called programs are planted you a teacher of bilingual students. on hard soil. Allocated funding is misused; programs Inappropriate or no assessment of these students’ are left to the discretion of unqualified staff; and re- academic skills leads to inappropriate placements sources are either lacking or inappropriate. and instruction. Many of these students attend high- Higher education institutions provide very little risk schools where the least experienced teachers in bilingual education courses. Bilingual teachers tend to teach. Since they require a bilingual place- have to figure it out on their own. Due to the lack ment, they are taught by teachers who are just of bilingual staff, multicultural education, language learning Spanish as their second language. They acquisition, and foreign language are somehow have not yet developed the depth or the breadth of supposed to prepare bilingual educators. Bilingual the language in order to provide students with rich education is very political. It involves learning the embedded language required in academics. rights and the Constitution. It involves moving stu- Students from these two Latino subgroups tend dent, parents, and staff to question the system. This to be the ones who drop out of school the most. is very scary, and few teachers feel strong enough to They are also the fastest growing population in battle. penal institutions. They also tend to be discon- All of these misalignments take a toll on teachers nected from the cultural practices and linguistic who are on the front lines. She is the one who sees foundation that strengthen the first generation. the failure, the student dropout rate . . . (yet) she is blamed for the lack of support given to non-English speakers at such a crucial time in their develop- Could you talk a little more ment. . . . about the controversy among bilingual educators, their How do different cultural approaches and what needs to styles, values, and worldviews be done for bilingual affect education of students? Latino/Latina students?

Controversy among bilingual educators centers on The biggest thing I see... is that the teacher tends to pressures from the mainstream society dictating come from an “I” perspective and is in charge of that English is the only language to be taught. teaching students who are from a culture with a Section_04_5500.qxd 12/9/09 3:39 PM Page 113

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“we” perspective. Not being aware of this cultural is shared, especially food. Nothing is thrown away, difference can result in confusion and arrogance on and you share your food rather than throw it away. the part of the teacher who desires to control every- You don’t play with it. At home one gets scolded or thing. The “I” perspective is an egocentric attitude spanked for wasting or throwing away food. In the that predominates in Anglo culture. I need to plan, I classroom, when food like rice or salt or macaroni need to do, or I need to fix. For the mainstream cul- or beans are used in learning activities, that is play- ture, the idea is that you fail because (you) failed to ing with it; the child is put in a difficult bind. He plan. This “I” perspective creates misunderstanding doesn’t participate. He refuses to play with it. He toward people that have a “we” perspective. In order may be graded down. But if the teacher is aware of for “I” to do something, “we” needs to happen. In these cultural things, they can use rocks or popsicle order for “I” to attend, “we” need to have a car, pay sticks, anything but food. the insurance, get a license, learn to read English, and learn to drive. “I” is dependent on how many resources “we” can gather. . . . The element of time heavily impacts the class. What are some of the factors In situations where the relationship is more impor- important in assessing the tant than the event, measuring time can be prob- lematic. For mainstream culture the clock runs the learning style of Latino/Latina show. In Latino culture, the relationship runs students and what classroom the show. So it is more important to save the rela- factors could be manipulated tionship than is to save time. In Latino culture, the concept of time is different; luego, despues, al rato, al to match these styles? ratito, ya all have a different time value. If a teacher does not know that, it could cause disruptions in Learning styles are basically the different ways transitioning times. humankind learns. We learn by seeing. We learn by Another issue is the concept of collective owner- doing. We learn by acting out. We learn by observ- ship. In Spanish the word la, el is used instead of my ing others and modeling their behavior. We teach or mine. In English we say “my car,” “my house,” or children by modeling the things we expect from “my pencil.” . . . In Spanish we say el carro, la casa, them. It’s a continual process in the classroom. You el lapiz. Even your personal parts don’t belong to reach out to the kids, you model, you show, you do, you. So it’s los manos, the hands, . . . Not wash your you explain. You have other people explain. Look hands; wash the hands, wash the face, clean the at Jose; he did it really well. Could you tell us how ears. But in Anglo culture, it’s I washed my hands, you did that, could you show us? I do much of my I washed my face. teaching in the context of small cooperative learn- So this little boy or girl comes to school. He or ing groups. You give them tasks to practice, prob- she needs a pencil, so they pick one up off a desk. lems to solve, explain your expectations step by Not my pencil or her pencil, but the pencil. Another step. Put things on the wall that reinforce the child yells out, “He stole my pencil. She took my lessons, always giving them references to what they pencil!” The Latino child says, “I did not take your need to do. Reviews for when they are absent from pencil.” “You have the pencil right there!” The the classroom. All of these little efforts or bricks of teacher intercedes: “Is that her pencil? Give her support provide scaffolding for learning and suc- back her pencil!” “But why?” Now he goes home ceeding. Especially where language is an issue . . . and he takes a dinner plate. He had that plate yes- In working in small groups, it is important to find terday, now his sister has it today. “That’s my plate!” a student leader who understands the lesson and is he says, and his mother disciplines him, feeling the able to tell what he learned. I always tell my bilin- need to remind him about sharing. “This is not your gual teachers, when you set up your cooperative plate; it belongs to the family; it belongs to whoever groups, you want to find someone to lead who is gets it first.” . . . fluent in English as well as someone who is fluent There is also the high respect given to food in in Spanish (and) a balance of gender, girls and boys. Latino culture. It is a community where everything In classes for bilingual children, everyone must be a Section_04_5500.qxd 12/9/09 3:39 PM Page 114

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teacher to each other. English speakers are going to the classroom: abandonment, abuse, neglect, to learn Spanish; the Spanish speaker is going to just being poor, not having the right foods, medical learn English. The bilingual children are going care, attention. We can’t expect them to read and to learn everyday. write when their teeth are falling out or they have Also look to language ability when you’re form- an ear infection that has never been corrected. . . . ing groups. With different levels of ability, you’re Our schools witness families who have experi- not the only teacher. You cannot teach such a enced death, drownings, and fires. We tend to be classroom alone. You need your environment to quicker to help them if they are English speaking. help you. You need your students and their peers The school gets together, brings boxes of food and to help you. You need the materials to support you, clothes, making sure that the family gets the sup- and above all you need the cultural awareness of port its needs. When Latino kids get hurt or their where those kids are coming from and their home families have problems, there is a tendency to ex- experience. Finally, learn by doing. Create the ex- pect other agencies to take care of things. Some- perience for and with students. Learning involves body else will take care of it. We need the kind of all the senses. Use them. If you do all of these things system that will respond equally to all students who and make all of these connections, kids will be more are hurting. And in a language and style they can successful. understand. I have spoken of many strategies throughout the interview. Of all the ones I’ve spoken about, com- municating is the most important. . . . (If) you Notes leave parents out of the learning loop (or) the 1Jorge Ramos, The Other Face of America. (New York: aunts or the grandmothers, you are only using half Rayo, 2002) of your resources. You need to bring the families 2 into the learning environment. . . . They know Brian Grow, Is America Ready? Business Week, 2004, their children the most. They know if their chil- Issue 3874, pp. 58–70. dren are morning people or afternoon people, their 3Jerry V. Diller and Jean Moule, Cultural competence: A abilities and capabilities, their individual histories. primer for educators. (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 2005, We have a lot of kids who bring trauma with them interview excerpts from pp. 194–206). Section_04_5500.qxd 12/9/09 3:39 PM Page 115

CHAPTER 1 Understanding Ourselves and Others 115 MAMLE KABU

Human Mathematics

Folake is a new arrival at Ridgefield, a boarding school in England. Although the narra- tor is also from West Africa, she has been at the school for two years and has adapted to her surroundings. This excerpt from the short story begins after Folake has been at the school for a year and has begun the process of adaptation; it ends following a conflict that stems from cultural and linguistic differences.

olake and I were often compared with each almost exclusively British girls. The two circles sim- other because we had several things in com- ply did not intersect. Once we both understood Fmon beyond our West African blood. that, we maintained a neutral distance from each There were other Nigerian girls in the school, but other. none were both in Folake’s year and in her board- In these divergent social constellations there was ing house, as I was. There were also a few girls from another important difference between us, which, other West African countries and a handful from incidentally, also distinguished Folake from me. Eastern and Southern Africa. In addition, there was Strictly speaking and certainly in biological terms, I a strong representation from Asia. In fact, although was only half African. My other half was German, not officially international, Ridgefield had a strong European, Caucasian – white. This distinction, foreign contingent. There were different degrees of which in purely racial terms might have bracketed foreignness, however. There were the fresh arrivals Folake and Stella together and placed me outside from abroad, and then there were the ones who their subset, did not, in reality, constitute any com- looked foreign but had spent much, most, or all of mon ground for the two of them. In fact, the dis- their lives in England. tance between them was even greater than that The one other Ghanaian girl in the school, Stella between Stella and me. On a line with three Amissah-Smith, fell into this latter category. She equidistant points, I would have been the midpoint had been in the school since the earliest level and with the two of them at either extreme. Midpoint had spent all of her life in England. I had been quite was the natural position for me. excited to meet her at first, but somehow we had The subtle complexities of this situation demon- never formed a real friendship. My social circle was strated the inefficiency of color as a lowest common a veritable league of nations, while hers comprised denominator for human mathematics. Fortunately for me, I had realized early in life that the ability of color labels to seem hopelessly superficial at best and ridiculously inaccurate at worst, was, like the tip of the proverbial iceberg, the very indication that From Mixed: An anthology of short fiction on the multiracial ex- a dense, hulking mass lurked beneath. perience edited by C. Prasad, © 2006 by Mamle Kabu. Strangely enough, growing up in Ghana as a vis- Reprinted by permission of the author. ibly brown child, I had been labeled “white.” Yet I

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had metamorphosed into a “black” the first time next to each other in our classroom preceding as- I traveled to a white country. However, like sembly every morning. the chameleon, another creature of distinct in- In the fourth form we were in the same dormi- betweens, I had already learned that it was I who tory together with four other girls. We were not had to make the adjustment, not my surroundings. close in the way best friends were, but we liked In my years at Ridgefield Girls’ the ease with each other and had an easy familiarity that came which I moved between the colors of my spectrum from being thrown together in several settings was as involuntary as the changes in my accent. within the school environment. She sometimes When I spoke to Folake, her Nigerian accent teased teased me good naturedly by calling me “Ee-raser.” out and propped up my languishing Ghanaian one. My interactions with her, as with the other white When I spoke to the teachers and the British girls, girls, generally featured the more Caucasian me. their clipped tones braced and nurtured my bur- My Caucasian identity, thus far in my life, had geoning British accent. consisted of looking different, being “white” in a Some of my classmates had teased me about my black home country, knowing European foods, Ghanaian English in my first year at the school. having an ear for my mother’s favorite classical What seemed to stand out most was intonation. composers. It was being dropped at parties long be- This had caused some embarrassment in my first fore they began and collected long before they week when Sarah, a girl who sat next to me in ended because we were operating by European class, had been unable to understand my request to time in Africa. It was calling my grandparents, even borrow an eraser. The problem was that I pro- the Ghanaian ones, “Oma” and “Opa.” nounced the word with a heavy stress on the first Thus it was that I was more easily accepted, rather than the second syllable. Sarah had obvi- warmed up to by the white girls, safer territory for ously never been asked for an “ee-raser” before and them than the pure African girls from Africa. The wasn’t sure what to make of my request. After a same situation pertained in reverse. In Folake’s first few efforts to make myself understood, I realized year at Ridgefield I could sense that she was grate- we were drawing attention to ourselves and tried to ful to me for stopping at her downstairs dormitory put her off, but it was too late. on the way to breakfast. She had an amicable but “What’s the matter over there?” asked the still slightly stiff relationship with her dormitory teacher. mates and was more at ease with me. She probably “Oh, nothing,” we chorused. I was anxious for sensed that she could be more herself in the few the fuss to die down, and Sarah was sensitive to minutes of our walk than for the rest of the day. that. But the teacher genuinely wanted to help be- This was despite the presence of my best friend, cause I was the new girl. Mira. Perhaps Mira’s being Indian and strongly ac- “Did you need something, Claudia?” she per- cented made Folake comfortable too. sisted gently. In the fifth form we outgrew large dormitories “Well, I was just trying to borrow an ee-raser,” I and earned the privilege of double rooms. Although mumbled, hot with shame and cold with dread. we were not given a choice of roommates, there “Oh, you mean an eraser,” she said straight was some effort to pair well-known sets of friends away. Apparently it was not the first time she had and I was happy to discover that I was placed with heard it pronounced that way. Her correction had Mira. Next door were Stella Amissah-Smith and her been completely involuntary and was not mocking best friend, Jenny James. Those who were not part or patronizing. I was grateful for that but still had to of an obvious friendship were randomly paired. endure the snickers of my classmates. And that was how Folake and Sarah became room- Although embarrassing for me, the incident had mates. been a genuine misunderstanding on Sarah’s part. There seemed no immediate problem with this She was not one of the girls who made fun of my pairing. The two had known each other for a year accent. In fact, she later became one of my closest and had often been in my company at the same British friends. In my first year at Ridgefield, which time in the common areas. However, we had not I had entered at the third form level, we had sat advanced very far into the term when undercur- Section_04_5500.qxd 12/9/09 3:39 PM Page 117

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rents of tension began to hum. Although I had ini- One had complained that the other was being too tially been pleased that I could see two friends at the noisy, but neither was prepared to compromise. In same time, I quickly discovered that I did not feel the end, both radio and telephone were forgotten comfortable when they were both present. while they screamed at each other in the corridor. It For the first time I became conscious of the was never firmly established which of them had switches in my accent. What was normally an auto- first brought color into it, but the myriad versions of matic, involuntarily transition became a linguistic “you white girls don’t respect anybody” and “go quandary. As often happens when switching rapidly back to your country if you don’t like the way we between languages, elements from one linguistic set are” that later flew around the school clearly indi- soon started to jump into the other like nerve im- cated the direction the quarrel had taken. pulses firing out of control. The result was not the What disturbed me most was the divisive after- smooth, natural blend of the two that I effortlessly math of the conflict. There was a tacit need for used with Mira. It was a jarring, clumsy combina- everyone to take a stance. I feigned a senior’s indif- tion that made me feel awkward like a tuneful ference to the immature carryings-on of the juniors, songbird that had unexpectedly produced a but Mira was not fooled. At lunchtime Stella and squawk. Under these tensions conversations dwin- Jenny joined our table. I longed to hear Stella’s dled to pleasantries and flat jokes until I found my- opinion on the topic but did not want to ask her. So self looking for an exit. I almost dropped my fork when I heard Mira say in I started to question myself – my very being and a bantering tone: “Hey, so you two are flouting the my genuineness. I did not like feeling awkward and new rule of segregation, are you?” fake, and did not understand why I should feel that “Nothing to do with me,” said Stella with a dis- way in their room when I never did otherwise. Was missive shrug. it false and deceitful to be black with a black friend “Pathetic,” said Jenny as she passed the ketchup. and white with a white one? And to be yet a third, “I wish they’d grow up.” perhaps “brown,” person with friends who were Stella squirted the ketchup all over her chips and neither black nor white? Did it make me two- or dug into them with gusto. I could see that the topic even three-faced? If it did, could I help it? had already vacated her mind, and I envied her de- For a while I avoided Sarah and Folake, trying to tachment. I was quiet on the way back to classes, make the echoes go away. Deep down, I knew they and when Mira said, “You don’t have to take sides were with me to stay, but at least I could quiet them you know, Claudia,” I pretended to be brooding by staying in as neutral territory as possible. In a over my upcoming mathematics lesson. school like Ridgefield, however, this was not easy But Folake would not allow me to forget the in- and my concerns returned with renewed vigor on cident. She knew Yinka and her family from Nige- the day of the row. ria and was outraged on their behalf. I was always grateful to have missed the main “Do you know what that small girl said to her?” action of that fight. In theory, it had little to do with she fumed when she came to our room that me anyway. Yinka and Alison were not even in my evening. “She told her that she couldn’t even speak year. They were younger, and at that stage of our English properly and then she and her white friends lives and in our highly structured school environ- imitated her accent and laughed. Ah! How I wish I ment, a year’s age difference was worth as much as could take a lot of them to Nigeria, just for one day. a decade’s in later life. However, both girls were in They would smell pepper!”’ my house. It was natural for quarrels to break out My African blood boiled up. “Couldn’t speak once in a while in that populous, hormone-charged English properly?” I shouted, “Can she speak atmosphere. They usually affected only the two Yoruba? Why didn’t they ask her how many lan- girls involved and perhaps their closest friends. But guages she can speak? Someone who can speak this one was different. This one became a fight be- only one language, insulting a person who can tween black and white. speak three or four! Chia! They feel so superior, but One of the girls had been talking on the phone they don’t know that in Africa even the children while the other was listening to a radio program. speak two or three languages.” Section_04_5500.qxd 12/9/09 3:39 PM Page 118

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With every sentence my voice grew louder, faster, Folake heartily agreed and as we marveled over and more Ghanaian. Mira shot me a look of mingled this gastronomic puzzle, the door opened and Sarah awe and amusement. As the conversation heated up walked in. she kept up with us by waggling her head from side Astonishment registered on her face as she saw to side in that uniquely Indian way, that blend of a me seated cross-legged on Folake’s bed, plate bal- nod and a shake which looks like no but means yes. anced in my lap, oily orange fingers halfway to my Folake invited us back to her room to share some mouth. I could tell at once that the greatest shock Nigerian food her aunt had brought on the week- had been to discover that the loud African voice end. Mira was tactful enough to know that Folake chatting and laughing with Folake did not belong to really wanted to be alone with me, to bathe in the one of her Nigerian friends, but to me. surging African tide. And indeed, it seemed like an “Hi, Sarah!” I said too quickly and too brightly. appropriate moment to do such a thing, almost like “Hello, Claudia,” she said in a voice which could drinking a toast to the renaissance of our African easily have continued, “pleased to meet you.” The unity, our enlistment in the war against the inso- shock had been so great that she could not hide her lence of spoiled white girls. discomfort. She had entered her own room to find I watched Folake mix the gari and water with herself in alien territory. that deft grace with which Africans handle food. I “You’re invited,” I said, unable to think of any- was already being transported back to Ghana, even thing else to say. before I caught the pungent, mouthwatering aroma “Invited?” she echoed, shaking her head in irri- of the salt fish stew. She had warmed it on the little tated confusion. “Invited to what?” I pointed at the stove in the upstairs kitchen and beamed with pride food. as she brought it in. “No thanks,” she said. She was polite enough not “It’s my favorite,” she said, spooning it over the to put into words what her eyes said, which was, moist mounds of gari in the two plates. With eager “How can you eat something that smells like that?” anticipation I watched the steaming orange rivulets Instead she said, “I was just coming to get my of palm oil trickle over the white sides of the gari like glasses.” She grabbed them from her night table lava from a volcano. We settled on her bed, plate in and, without further ado, fled the smell of salt fish our laps, relishing the saltines and the added plea- and the two aliens sitting in the African den that sure that eating with one’s fingers always seems to had once been her room. There was an uncomfort- impart to a meal. The unique flavor of the palm oil, able silence that Folake broke with, “My friend, as the coarsely chopped slivers of onion so characteris- for dis one she no fit chop am!” tic of a West African stew, and the fiery tang of the “No, you’re right of course. She doesn’t know chili pepper were like old friends found again. how to eat it,” I replied, using a Ghanaian expres- “Ah! Ah! Ah! Tell your auntie I said her stew is sion that had always infuriated my mother. “What toooooo sweet!” I sniffed, sinuses streaming and do you mean you don’t know how to eat it?” she eyes watering from the pepper. Folake smiled at my would say. “Just put it in your mouth, chew it, and African turn of phrase, understanding the compli- swallow it!” But Africans knew what it meant. ment. She asked if my mother ever prepared food Sarah could no more have eaten that food than per- like that.“ Not anymore,” I said. “She made the ef- formed a Yoruba dance on the spot. fort when we were in Ghana. But as for the salt I giggled at the expression because the memory fish . . .” I laughed and she nodded knowingly. of my mother’s indignation always made it amusing “Yes, the smell! As for that one, the oyibos can’t to me. Folake giggled at her own use of broken Eng- stand it.” lish. Some tension was released, and I started to feel “Hmm, you know already! How she hated it! sorry for Sarah and a little disloyal. She didn’t want that fish in the house at all! I used “I hope we didn’t offend her,” I said. to ask her how she could complain about it when “Ah-ah! Why should she be offended?” asked she loved eating those moldy, stinking cheeses. Kai! Folake. “We didn’t do anything wrong. This is also I could never bring that stuff close to my mouth.” my room.” Section_04_5500.qxd 12/9/09 3:39 PM Page 119

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“Yes, of course, I know,” I said hastily. “But I After that incident I renewed my resolve to stay think we made her uncomfortable. She’s such a in neutral territory. However, as if the cosmos itself nice girl,” I added lamely. had determined to make me face up to my own du- “Well, you may find her nice but you don’t have ality, things came to a head a mere fortnight later. It to live with her.” is amazing how an event of barely a minute’s dura- “I just don’t know why two people as nice as you tion can generate hours, even days of discussion, and her can’t get on,” I said with some exaspera- then years of reflection. Yet a minute was probably tion, finally giving voice and life to that delicate all it took from the moment Sarah placed the topic. wastepaper bin on Folake’s bed until we burst into “Claudia, please! That girl looks down on me be- their room to find a handprint emblazoned on her cause I’m a Nigerian. She doesn’t like my music be- cheek. Five fingers, long and graceful, stamped cause it’s too ‘noisy,’ she doesn’t like the smell of beautifully in scarlet on a background white with my food – you saw her just now, didn’t you, turn- shock. I had always envied Folake’s elegant fingers. ing up her nose at it. She doesn’t like my African They were locked in a thrashing embrace, claw- friends coming to the room. She thinks she’s better ing, tearing, swaying dangerously. As Mira and I than me just because she’s oyibo. And she always pried them apart, Stella and Jenny came running wants the window open when it’s freezing cold. I down the corridor from their room. can’t even feel comfortable in my own room be- “What the – oh my God!” gasped Jenny. cause of her. Ah-ah!” “She hit me, she hit me!” Sarah screamed, as if it “Folake, Sarah is not like that. Honestly. She’s weren’t evident. Folake stood there with a face like not one of those girls who looks down on people thunder, looking as if she would like to slap her just because they’re black. I’ve known her longer again. I looked from one to the other, lost for words. than you, you know. I mean, she’s always been per- Mira pulled Sarah away, sat her down on her own fectly nice to me.” bed, and put her arms around her. Sarah collapsed “Yes, but you aren’t really black are you? I mean, into sobs, ruining the perfect contrast as the red of you can also be an oyibo when you want to. She outrage and humiliation spread all over her face doesn’t see you as a black. That’s why she’s so nice to and neck. you. As far as she’s concerned, you’re one of them.” The doorway was crowded now as more girls ar- I was not happy with the turn the conversation rived to see what all the noise was about. In her was taking. I felt somehow offended without being fury Folake addressed us all as one. sure exactly which part of what she had said had “That bitch put the dustbin on my bed!” upset me. I was not even sure if the offensive part Where Sarah’s feelings seemed to be composed had been explicitly stated or implied. Or whether it of equal parts anger, fear, and humiliation, Folake’s just hung there between the lines, with or without consisted of pure, unadulterated rage. the intent of the speaker. I also felt that familiar “How dare you?” she spat in Sarah’s direction, sense of unease that always pervaded me when the making the word “dare” sound like an explosion. issue of taking sides, of being “one of them or one of As all eyes turned to Sarah, she wailed: “I didn’t us” was so bluntly articulated. What I was sure even realize what I was doing, I was just trying to about was that I was no longer comfortable in that sweep the floor.” room. “Oh please!” snorted Folake. “You knew exactly I finished my food a little too quickly and told what you were doing, you wanted to insult me. To Folake I was sleepy. She had already sensed that tell me I am no better than rubbish.” The more im- the mood was spoiled and did not make it any more passioned she became, the more Nigerian she awkward for me. That was one of the reasons I sounded. liked her: she was sensitive and intuitive. I knew Realizing the futility of talking to her, Sarah ad- she would not have said what she had if I had not dressed herself to the rest of us. “I always lift up the brought up a delicate topic. I had only myself to bin when I’m sweeping – sometimes I put it on the blame. table, sometimes on my own bed, it doesn’t really Section_04_5500.qxd 12/9/09 3:39 PM Page 120

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matter. I just wasn’t thinking when I put it on her however it did mean that it was Folake’s last day of bed. I wasn’t trying to insult her. I don’t know why school until the new year. she has to be so touchy.” And she started crying Sarah was punished with a detention for engag- again. ing in a fight. She was furious as she felt she had At that moment the housemistress arrived at the only been defending herself, but as she later re- scene. She took in Sarah’s weeping distress and counted, the headmistress said she should have Folake’s icy fury in a glance. Aware that she might walked away and reported the situation immedi- not obtain a clear picture of events from either of ately. Both girls were reminded in the crispest terms them, she allowed Jenny and Stella to acquaint her that fighting was unseemly, unladylike, and utterly with the basic facts before ordering all of us back to forbidden at Ridgefield. our rooms. Before we left I went up to each of them I had little chance to discuss events with Folake briefly. before she left that day or indeed to do much be- “Sorry, Sweetheart,” I said patting Sarah’s shoul- yond saying good-bye and wishing her a Merry der awkwardly. “You’ll be fine. Can I get you any- Christmas. Although I spent some time with her thing in town?” It was harder to look at Folake, her while she packed her things, we could not talk unrepentant rage more daunting to face than tear- properly in front of her aunt. Only when her aunt ful misery. So I just said, “Let’s talk about it later, carried the bags downstairs did she hug me. OK?” Perhaps she read in my eyes that I felt let down, Out of the corner of my eye I saw Stella watch- that I wanted to ask her why she had done it – why ing me with an amused expression and as we had she lived up to their stereotypes? – for she said walked down the corridor, she said with a smirk, in a rush: “Claudia, I’m not usually a violent per- “Poor old Claudia, always trying to be everyone’s son, you know that. But she really offended me and friend.” The sting of that well-timed remark lasted it was the last straw. I can’t put up with that sort of for years, but over time, my resentment mellowed thing anymore. I have my dignity too. I know she’s into something bordering on pity for her. your friend too, and I’m sorry you’re . . . caught in After speaking to the two girls, the housemistress the middle, but it’s OK, you don’t have to take telephoned their homes and asked for them to be sides.” collected from school. They returned on Monday, Folake was put in a different boarding house the Sarah with her mother and Folake with her aunt following term. Several of her Nigerian friends were who served as her guardian in England. After a long there so she fit in easily and became even more a meeting in the headmistress’s office it was decided part of their set than she had been before. These that Folake, as the primary aggressor, should be sus- changes, combined with our increased workload as pended for the rest of the term. This would also we prepared for our examinations, facilitated a nat- neatly postpone the need to solve the accommoda- ural loosening of our relationship. Mira and I chat- tion problem for the two of them until the next ted with her whenever we sat together in the term. Since Christmas holidays were little more dining hall, but things were never quite the same as than a week away, it was not such a long sentence, they had been before the fight. . . .