Impact of The Nature of The Neighborhood on The Racial Formation of The Students’ Body

Growing up in Bell Gardens, an urban neighborhood within the city of Los Angeles, I was surrounded by many different cultures. In my neighborhood during the twenty-first century, the streets were bright and filled with music, colorful surroundings and laughing children during the day, and once the sun went down, everyone went inside of their homes.

My mother had a strict policy of not letting my sister, brother, and I play outside once the sun started going down. Often times there were gangs and violence that ran the streets late and night, and my mother knew that the streets were not a safe place. As a child and before I left to college, she told me “I want you and your siblings to get out of Bell Gardens and create a better life for yourself, ” because she did not want me to get trapped in the “hood” for all of my life; she believed that I was better than what Bell Gardens had to offer. My mother stood tall before me after every minor mistake in my life as she refused to allow me to be part of the growing statistics of Latino high school dropouts. I was taught that I am to fight vigorously to be able to provide a better life than what I experienced, for my family, future children, and for myself. I learned that I was Mexican very early on in my life.

My grandmother from my mother’s side was the child of a mother and father from Guadalajara, a city in western Mexico, both of which stayed in their country. My grandfather from my mother’s side is from Cofradia de Duendes, a city from western Mexico. Both my grandmother and grandfather from my mother’s side are immigrants from Mexico who spoke no English. I never knew where my father’s father originated from, but heard that my grandmother from my father’s side was an immigrant from Mexico who also spoke no English.

My father is one of seven children and has his high school diploma. My mother is one of six children and attended East Los Angeles Community College for two years but unfortunately dropped out of college before failing to obtain an associates degree. My family at one point were financially stable. My mother, in 2002 became a single parent due to my father’s endless consummation of drugs and alcohol, he is now incapable of reacting to the world the way he used to. Once my mother stopped getting the financial support of my father, the total household income fell dramatically. I attended both primary and secondary school in Bell Gardens. The way the Los Angeles board of education worked was by dividing the city by district. Students were required (unless the pupils receive special permission from the city) to apply to schools within their district. My class, the kindergarten class of 2002, was a large class of fifty students within a classroom. I stood with the same class for the next four years.

My class was extremely diverse, but we did not have any white students in the class at all. Often times some of my peers thought I was white, but once they heard my last name, they knew I was Hispanic. As I think back, I never remembered my racial identity being questioned until I moved on to high school. In my primary and middle school years, I would not perceive myself as a raced body yet. When I was young, I had not encountered race and I was unaware of various racial backgrounds, since I was a part of the majority, I never really noticed if I was experiencing marginalization or not. When I was in middle school, I was highly encouraged by my primary school teachers to apply to private schools. I applied to scholarship programs such as the Gates Scholarship, in hopes that I would receive the financial assistance I needed in order to attend these institutions. My mother felt that sending me to a private school in a wealthy neighborhood was a great opportunity I had to receive the best education possible. My classmates would question why I wanted to go to these “white” schools. My classmates told me that I would not belong because my race was not white. I will be the “token” Spanish girl in the school. I ended up not attending a private school because I was not able to afford the tuition. I wanted to go to a high school in Miracle Mile, which is just west of Downtown Los Angeles. Instead, I ended up at Bell Gardens High School, which is located in the city of Bell Gardens. The ethnic makeup of my high school was 99% Hispanic, which of ~50% of the students were of Puerto Rican descent, and 0. 01% African-American.

The Puerto Rican students would often talk Spanish in the classroom, outdoor play settings, and after school. Due to being in a small classroom structure during the time I attended primary and middle school schooling, I had never met a Puerto Rican person before. I saw that they knew Spanish, and were communicating in Spanish using their Puerto Rican accents, knew more Spanish music than I did, and they had more friends they could relate too. I often wondered why the Hispanic students weren’t approaching or even talking to me and trying to make connections with me. I was often teased because I was a “light Spanish girl” in my grade. Due to my white skin, I was often called “la gringa” or “la Americana” by my Hispanic peers. I told them I was Mexican as they asked me “Do you speak Spanish?” I replied yes and they said “Well, let me hear your spanish. ” As I spoke a couple of words in my broken spanish, my peers would tell me “speaking broken spanish does not make you Mexican. ” I felt that my language barrier as well as the color of my skin, was preventing me from being accepted into this community. I felt a strong intuition that I should be apart of this community because I identify with it. In my reality, it was okay for me to identify as Hispanic/Latino without being able to speak proper spanish. To my peers however, since I was not able to communicate with them “correctly, ” then I wasn’t “Latino-enough. ” I began to question whether or not I actually was apart of the Hispanic/ Latino community. As I experienced these microinvalidations, I began to question my experiential reality. What does it mean to be Hispanic/ Latino? Was there certain rules that had to be followed? My peers were disapproving of my racial identity because I was not able to speak proper Spanish though my cultural upbringing was extremely Latino-centric. This in turn discouraged me from being determined to learn more Spanish and communicate with my Latino peers freely. The fact that I was communicating with them in broken Spanish, in turn made them claim that I was “white” because I could not speak proper “Spanish. ” I had a very hard time handling whether the students were being intentional about their insults, or unintentional. Because I was being marginalized within my own high school community, I was often excluded from group activities within the playground, conversations, and out of school social events. At that time, I did not think about the significance of these microaggressions on my identity and how these microaggressions were changing how I perceived the world as black and white, I decided to ignore and do nothing.

Michael Omi and Howard Winant explains that: “Our compass for navigating race relations depends on preconceived notions of what each specific racial group looks like. Comments such as, "Funny, you don't look black, " betray an underlying image of what black should be. We also become disoriented when people do not act "black, " "Latino, " or indeed "white. " The content of such stereotypes reveals a series of unsubstantiated beliefs about who these groups are and what "they" are like”. I slowly stopped participating in classroom discussions and among groups. Because of my experience, I am very discouraged to learn more Spanish and feel less of a connection to my culture. I feel that the first time that I remember questioning my racial identity was during parent teacher conferences in my first year of high school. My mother has dyed blond hair and has very fair skin; she is often mistaken for as white. As we walked passed the hallways together, we visited my first period. There was a parent there that knew my mother, they began conversing in Spanish for a few moments before they parted ways. I saw heads turn and as they stared at my mother speaking fluent Spanish. As they were conversating, I saw some peers speaking about my mother. They were mesmerized about my mother speaking fluent spanish. When we returned to the car, I asked my mother why is it that she never taught me proper Spanish. She told me that I never really looked interested in learning. My mother’s comment made me feel more excluded from the Hispanic/ Latino community in which I was immersed in since I was not able to communicate proper spanish. In a community that is very difficult to understand issues of ethnicity, the neighborhood of Bell Gardens is historically a Hispanic/ Latino based Community. I

believe that the nature of the neighborhood influenced the racial formation of the students’ body; it seemed that white parents were hesitant to send their children to school in Bell Gardens. Bell Gardens has been thought of to be a dangerous community, but due to gentrification, the racial formation of the community is slowly changing. Thinking back of my high school as a community itself, I felt that the Latino students were very inconsiderate to issues of ethnic and cultural diversity. Because I was not part of the majority (Puerto Rican and proper Spanish speaking), I was often times excluded from events and social communications. In transition, I realized how much people in the United States make distinctions according to language skills. Individuals who cannot speak English in a grammatically correct way or have an accent are not considered to be intelligent. Those who speak a language other than English are considered outsiders; and this means they cannot be fully integrated into mainstream society.