Angela Valenzuela’s (1999) Subtractive Schooling
In Subtractive Schooling: U.S.-Mexican Youth and the Politics of Caring, Angela Valenzuela interviews different “clicks” of students who have formed their group based on the similarities of their backgrounds and upbringings. What is a situation in which you met someone or a group of people simply based on your similar qualities or abilities? In contrast, have you ever been a part of a group or team where you possess a friendship relationship, yet do not share similar backgrounds? One of the main barriers that the students within Valenzuela’s ethnography was the difference of language. Do you feel that there would be a similar high school hierarchy if the immigrants, 1st and 2nd generations were from Canada instead of Mexico? Or is the language dispute too close to the heart of the issue to be ignored? Do you feel that the varying levels of respect that Mexican and American teachers receive from their respective countries contributes to the educational status of youth?
- by Pilar/Jess S./Karen/Laura
This article was very interesting to me because it was quite similar to the environment where I grew up. My friends and I whose parents came from Haiti were clearly divided from the African Americans in my middle school. We would do things like speak Creole or talk about our culture in a way that no one else in the school would understand. One reason we did this was because it made us unique among our classmates and it gave us power over them. The African Americans especially had no way of secretly communicating to each other so we thought of ourselves as superior to them.
This mindset also stemmed from our parents whose work ethic and idea of the opportunities in America made them want to separate from African Americans. We saw ourselves as being more successful and driven than they were, as well as more respectful and appreciative. This is similar to the Mexican immigrants from Monterey who believed that the other Mexican immigrants did not respect their schools or opportunities.
Thinking about my own experience, I do not think that the lack of a language barrier would have changed anything in the dynamic between the two groups. The Monterey Mexicans, much like Haitian students, put themselves on a pedestal due to their parents abilities and because of their drive to succeed. Though the language is an add-on to this dichotomy, I do not think it is a necessary part of it since the mindsets of the two groups are so different. The language gives a physical manifestation to these differences but the real divide comes from how each group looks at each other in the context of schooling and social potential.
Language was definitely one of the barriers dividing the students, but I think the point of Valenzuela’s piece was that it was not just language but a number of factors separating the groups of students. Members of each group formed judgments about the other groups based on their work ethic, their upbringing, and even the values of their society.
When the students from Monterrey discussed the value of empeno, they were quick to acknowledge that that sense of dedication was instilled in them by their parents. When they criticized U.S. born students for taking their education for granted, though, they seemed less ready to attribute the ‘”spoiledness” of their American classmates to parental upbringing, or any other societal factors. By aligning their personal values with the values of their society and their parents, the students from Monterrey seemed to deemphasize the role their social circles played in determining their values.
At the high school level, though, it is almost impossible to extract oneself from the effects of one’s social circle. Valenzuela did a great job of showing that the biggest difference between the two groups was not so much whether their social circles affected their identity formation, but in what way. Through Valenzuela’s conversations with each of the groups, it became evident that the Monterrey students naturally supported each other, and that this support network was central to their desire to do well in school. While the U.S. born students also possessed this sense of “collective ethos,” they directed it towards non-school ventures rather than pro-school ones.
The lack of understanding between groups is reminiscent of that in Lee’s article. When the U.S. born students deride Monterrey students by calling Mexico dirty and poor, they demonstrate cultural ignorance not just about Mexico, but about themselves. At the same time, the Monterrey students fail to understand that the U.S. born students – with a highly Eurocentric education – are poorly equipped (and rarely encouraged) to understand their own culture, or even stay connected to the Spanish language. Though nuanced, I think the situation Valenzuela describes rings true for many students – including myself – who wish they had learned more about the world outside America in high school. Once again, U.S. education is being called upon to improve its curriculum to increase cultural awareness and empathy.
From my experience in middle school, I felt that I needed to have more friendships with other Black people to authenticate my blackness. In elementary school, due to the track I was in, I had friends of different races that often left me to be the only black in various situations and become “the white-black girl” to many others. I felt the need to change this image in middle school so I sought out friendships with more people that looked like me. It wasn’t until high school that I realized my black identity was not authenticated by the perception of others, but was simply a part of who I am. I therefore began to analyze those in my life that had always been true friends, regardless of color, and graduated with a group of friends very diverse racially and economically.
I believe the perception given to children in terms of race is the more you are associated with those that look like you and participate in typical cultural practices (eating of certain foods, knowledge of certain music, obtainment of certain attire, etc), the more authentically black, asian, or latino, etc you are. I think this is why, as students grow up, form relationships based on color more than interest because the contemplation of race is developing in their minds. No one wants to be viewed of less than they are.
In high school, the group of friends that I hung out with the most did not necessarily have the similar ethnic background and linguistic/physical features as I did – I felt I hung out people who were similar to me personality wise and who shared similar goals and values. Not to say that I didn’t recognize the many the social “cliques” in our school – in fact, I think it was recognize these cliques that made me almost consciously avoid them, although there would definitely be that tinge of “wow, they are cool – I want to friends with X, Y, Z.” I felt I was always in an interesting place because of my immigrant background – I was as inundated with “American” culture as other US-born’s, but also didn’t connect with recently arrived immigrant students at my school. I think this has changed dramatically though as I’ve gotten older and learned more about my cultural heritage – now I think I do often meet or work with a people of more similar backgrounds and experiences because of the nature of my work in people of color communities; I guess I am drawn to people who have shared similar struggles and have come to similar consciousness about worldviews and such. With regards to language, I do definitely think that language is a factor in the development of these peer groups, definitely not the only reason, as Rachel mentioned, but still, I think tremendously complex, and for many communities, a very sensitive issue very “close to the heart.” The question of whether or not second/1.5 generation-er’s can speak their native tongue is dependent on the parents’ decision to speak to them at home in their native language, put them into X,Y, or Z school to learn the language, expose them to ethnic/international media, etc – gatekeepers if you will. Thus, in a way, language issues is a manifestation of the many other issues and determinants of group/racial and social identity formation, acculturation, etc, especially for minority populations whose languages have historically been a mark of being foreign and not the norm of White America.
Throughout elementary school and middle school, I was pretty much the only Asian in my classes. As a result, I primarily hung out with my predominantly white classmates, and I didn’t feel very different from them. We all wore clothing from similar stores; we all ate the same kinds of foods at lunch; we all were interested in the same new movies and music that had come out at the time. In this sense, I befriended individuals who possessed the same characteristics and interests as me. However, I knew that I came from a different background and had a different upbringing. At home, I spoke Chinese, primarily ate Chinese food, and practiced Chinese customs. But this didn’t affect my treatment in friendship circles in elementary and middle school. It wasn’t until I entered high school and began to be surrounded by a much greater population of Asian students that I realized my Asian background and upbringing brought me to feel closer to some of my Asian peers. We shared some common values and beliefs, we understood each other’s family life, and we knew the importance of being serious about school. However, this is not to say I was only friends with Asians in high school. Similar to what Ryann mentioned earlier, regardless of one’s ethnic background, I realized what true friends meant and I held onto those. I, too, graduated from high school with a very diverse group of friends. And with respect to Valenzuela’s piece, I think one’s upbringing (family life, language, customs, values, etc.) can definitely come to serve as barriers between students, but it can also NOT act as a barrier if one respects and understands the differences in the other’s background.
My high school experience was very different to the ones mentioned above. I went to school on the U.S.-Mexico border where 99.9% of the student body was Mexican. Naturally, we were split along generational and class lines and language had a lot to do with it. You could tell who crossed the border everyday to come to school (they spoke Spanish fluently), who lived in the United States but learned English as a second language (they spoke Spanglish), and who learned English as a first language (they rarely spoke Spanish). There were plenty of insults hurled in every direction. The Mexicans thought the Mexican Americans were sellouts. The Mexican Americans thought the Mexicans were shallow and superficial because they concentrated on their appearance rather than school work. The poor Mexican Americans thought the middle class Mexican Americans were snobby and essentially white. The middle class Mexican Americans thought the poor Mexican Americans were scary and thuggish. These cliques would blend sometimes, especially on sports teams, but for the most part avoided each other. I belonged to the middle class Mexican American group and was accused of being a white sellout many a time.
Valenzuela’s article reminds me of a sociological phenomenon among Mexican Americans. First generation Mexican Americans are very optimistic about their chances for success in the U.S. They recently arrived and have no where to go but up as far as acquiring social and financial capital. But second and third generation immigrants become pessimistic about their prospects for upward mobility, due largely to the effects of racism. They tend to become “disaffected” as Valenzuela put it, because they have seen their parents work themselves to the bone to no avail. They reason that if institutional prejudice is intent on keeping them as a permanent underclass, there is no point in trying. This being said, I think there is a growing portion of 3rd and 4th generation Mexican Americans who are in a position of extraordinary opportunity thanks to the education, sacrifice, and diligence of their parents. I am the proud daughter of a lawyer and a teacher who both went to college and instilled in my sister and I a tremendous work ethic as well as a tremendous respect for Chicano culture and Chicano people. Not all upper generation Chicanos become “disaffected,” many of them are sensitive to the situations and positionalities of the diverse Mexican American population. Latino civil rights organizations such as the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund come to mind. This organization, which employs more than 60 Chicano/a lawyers, composes legislation and brings litigation to help everyone from the undocumented Mexican immigrant to the highest ranking Mexican American professional. While Valenzuela’s study captured an important aspect of the Mexican American school experience, I would also suggest studying upwardly mobile Mexican American youth who manage to maintain their culture and work ethic because they are the leaders of future Chicano movements.
In thinking back on my friends in high school, we weren’t really connected by similar backgrounds. We all came from difference classes and ethnic and racial backgrounds with the only real common denominator being that we were all in the honors track. It is interesting though that all the minority students in the honors track ended up becoming close friends, an I mean all. My friends would just say it’s because we have similar interests, but I have doubts that’s the only reason. I have to say that finding a common experience of being minorities in a predominately white Catholic high school contributed to all of us becoming friends. I think most often, people will choose friends based on similar interests and personalities, but there is something uniting about having similar experiences.
Among immigrants, I think language is always a divide. I look at the Vietnamese community back home and I see the division between people who can speak Vietnamese well and those who can’t. For the older generation, there is the desire to preserve the culture with language being a central part of it. Those who can speak the language are praised while those who can’t can be the target of some disparaging remarks. While I do not see it creating as much of a division as in the Valenzuela article, a tension can start to grow that has the potential of exploding over. Like others have stated though, language is only one issue. There are many other factors that contribute to the divide including class both in their country of origin and within America and personal perceptions.
The divide between immigrants is always a tough one. For those of you who saw Takeo’s play, there was a scene with a Chinese delivery boy in which he was looked down upon by other Asian Americans because he made them look bad, sometimes serving as a reminder of what their family used to be. Within a certain Vietnamese student group on campus, FOB is indiscriminately thrown around in describing Vietnamese international students, or more recently arrived immigrants as if they were lesser than us in some way. Within immigrant communities, I feel that there are perceptions of what people should be, leading to these disputes.
Looking back on my High school experience I went to a suburban school with majority white students. There was a huge divide in my school caused by the tracking system and the two different cafeterias. One of the cafeterias was called West Café and was run by a students’ business organization called DECA. The food in West Café was very good and very expensive in comparison to the IC cafeteria. The IC cafeteria was run and funded by the school and thus they served the more typical school lunch. These two separate cafeterias caused a huge rift in the school. All of the students that received free lunch were required to eat in the IC cafeteria. Additionally, the students who could not afford West Café ate in the IC cafeteria. The split was not just an underlying financial separation but rather was pronounced by the extreme color divide. The IC cafeteria is where all minority students hung out and the West Café was where all the white rich kids hung out. The rift was so extreme that many students that ate in West Café never set foot in the IC cafeteria the entire time they attended Cherry Creek because they felt “awkward” and that it would make them look “uncool.” The divide was then perpetuated by the tracking system similar to Berkeley High School in the documentary “School Colors.”
From an outsider looking in it may seem that the division is voluntary and students just hang out with students of their same race because they feel more comfortable but the underlying structure that was in place in my high school created a rift between students that was even stronger than it would have been normally. I think it is natural for students to hang out with other students that have similar backgrounds to themselves because a large part of having a friendship is based off of what you have in common. However, I think that in internally segregated schools like mine was the rift between students is caused by the structure of the school and the system in place.
I think Valenzuela emphasized the importance of language through its effect on social capital. In the example of Canadian immigrants, I would expect the hierarchy would be different, because without overt language barriers these students would be better able to understand and complete schoolwork and within the immigrant community groups defined by language use would not exist. However, other features of social capital, such as parents’ education, family income, or attitudes toward schooling, could have unique patterns in Canadian immigrants, in which case a hierarchy based on those differences could exist. I think numbers are always important too, which for example can contribute to pan-ethnic identities. In my high school the only clear group division was between Japanese students and everyone else. In this case the effect of language on social capital was very much at play. While mother-tongue language use differed greatly amongst the “everyone else” group, the Japanese students were the only ones who suffered because of a lack of English competency AND had the numbers to band together.
Throughout my schooling, I was usually the only black student in all of my classes, but I think what affected me most was that I was one of the only first generation Africans at my school and the only Ghanaian, aside from my older brother. Growing up in Columbus, Ohio there was a very large Ghanaian and West African population. We attended the African Christian church and most of my friends consisted of other Ghanaians. In fact In Columbus today, you can walk into a gas station and speak Twi with many of the people there. This was not the case at all when we moved to Alabama. In Alabama, I didn’t really have the option of looking at myself as distinctly Ghanaian because everyone who saw me as just black. This created a huge divide because I struggled with the idea of where do I fit in with this concept of blackness. I hadn’t had to deal with that when I was younger. By the time I graduated high school none of my friends shared a similar background. I definitely got the same sense as Rachel, that this was reminiscent of Lee’s work. One group judges another because they are lacking this or that. I think it’s more complex than just the language issue, although I think the language issue heightens feelings that are already there.
The groups in Venezuela’s work remind me of my own high school. We had “cliques” of people who were in the same group based on their similar backgrounds. One group was labeled the “ESL kids”. The structure of their classes forced them to take the majority of their classes together with the same teacher thus separating them from the rest of the student body . Outside classes, many of them also pIayed soccer. Language served as a huge barrier for them and it would have been difficult to be a member of their group if you were a non-1st generation Mexican who didn’t speak Spanish well.
I joined my group of friends because we were all on the same athletic teams and in the same clubs. I had a varied group of friends so we all had very different backgrounds.I think high schools all have a hierarchy regardless of whether language is used as a barrier. However with many immigrant students, language is very important in defining a person’s validity as part of the group.
In working with youth who are in and out of Juvenile Hall in the Bay Area, I have learned a lot about the two major gangs in the area, the Nortenos and Surenos. One defining factor for whether you are considered in one gang or the other(other than family associations) is how long you have lived in the U.S. Language and immigration history are also important defining qualities for membership in each of these gangs. The sentiments expressed by some of the students in Valenzuela’s piece remind me of how members these two groups speak about members of the opposite gang.
I think it’s interesting that from person to person, there is no one clear-cut pattern as to how people related or socialized. For me, I’d say that my high school was relatively harmonious, but my closest friends were among the small minority of white students. I never completely fit into the Asian American scene because most of them were recently 1st, 1.5, and 2nd generation SE Asian folks whose common reference points were different from mine. This group was pan-ethnic, with Vietnamese, Mien, and Chinese people all hanging out together; I was cool with them but I never felt like “one of them”; partly because I didn’t speak either of my “native languages” (which had nothing to do with communicating and everything to do with status and ethnic authenticity). I made friends largely as a consequence of us commonly sharing similar cultural capital (college educated parents) and thus shared understanding of a lot of the same cultural references (politics, history, pop culture, literature), and many of these friends happened to be white. So, I totally understand where Valenzula’s coming from, exploring the various ways in which cultural capital and generational placement result in clique formation. At my school, however, there was surprisingly little conflict between groups; no one was resentful of my clique or our relative academic success (which I would attribute to our de-tracked system, and my own tendency to spend a lot of time volunteering to tutor others in class).
While language was a factor in my fitting in, I know that intellectually, it does not always play a role in group formation. In the hypothetical scenario of the Canadian students described in the above question, I would suspect that resentment would be similar IF there was a perceived competition of some kind in which there was a clear winner or loser (though it does not matter as to who wins or loses). The nativist sentiments, both centuries-old and contemporary, usually stem from a perceived competition for jobs or for status; we can see an analogous conflict with academic achievement in the article. A “foreign” language merely accentuates whatever differences may already exist, only perceptually. An interesting case study is the historic conflict between Irish immigrants and African Americans for blue collar labor. Looking at the concrete realities of the Irish labor situation, it is clear that most of the labor competition for Irish immigrants came not from African Americans, but from more Irish immigrants, and yet they targeted the newly-emancipated African Americans for intruding on “their” turf in the labor market. All of this happened while they all spoke English against each other, and all of this happened in a period when Irish were often considered Black by the American racial hierarchy. Two oppressed groups that imagine themselves competing for scarce resources will conflict; language may accentuate that conception of competition but it is not the root of the problem.
I grew up in majority white neighborhood. Out of my graduating class of 328 only 14 of us were African American. I can remember after the first week of kindergarten I was switched into a different class. At the time I did not understand why, but in retrospect I now realize at Vanderbilt Elementary school there was only 2 black students in kindergarten, a little boy named JJ and myself. They school officials did not want us (the black kids) to be alone; therefore they switched my class so I could be near my only racial peer. I can remember entering that new classroom terrified of having to meet people all over again. My teacher sat me next to JJ, which was strange because in kindergarten it was taboo to have friends of a different gender. However, despite our gender differences we became quick friends. To this day JJ and I maintain our friendship.
Looking back on this experience I completely understand the divided groups discussed in Valenzuela’s book. JJ and I formed our own social group separate from everyone else because we could relate experiences with one another. We could talk about things no one else could possibly understand. When district lines were redrawn almost 10 black students entered our year. All the other black students knew each other and JJ and I were quickly labeled ‘Oreos’. We were ridiculed by our peers for not really being black. To outsiders all the black kids in the school were one social group. However, if anyone had looked closely they would have realized within the group were subgroups. Just as the Mexican students in Valenzuela’s book sub divided the black kids in my school subdivided. We often made generalizations about one another, which in the end hindered our ability to build a relationship.
Contrary to Ryann’s experience, I had a much more diverse group of friends when I was younger. I was friends with whoever wanted to play soccer or kickball or basketball during recess. Unfortunately, as I grew up and was put in higher tracks, those who I had the opportunity to interact with were mostly white and Asian American. Most of my friends were Asian Americans because it was easier to relate to them in many ways, such as culture and parental expectations. Looking back, it probably was also less embarrassing to bring my Asian friends home because they would understand why my parents insisted on feeding them or why certain decorations exist around the house.
Most of the high school groups that I have been a part of have been pretty homogenous in terms of background and upbringing. Admittedly, this is partly a function of my high school, which tends to have clicks form around extracurricular activities. All of those activities were also more academic than social, which means they have a higher chance of attracting individuals who have similar backgrounds and upbringing (middle class and greatly valued education at home.)
I agree with Michael about calling new immigrants “FOBS,” as it happened with the Taiwanese community at my high school as well. However, I think that instead of being motivated by what people “should be,” I saw more of a distancing from the “foreigners” – who often occupy same immigration status/time frame as one’s parents – to be seen as a part of dominant society.
I don’t know enough about Canada or Canadians to speak on this issue, but I think because Canada and the United States are culturally and linguistically more similar than Mexico and the United States, there would be less of a hierarchy among immigrants.