Here's something on the melting pot:
Tucson, Arizona Sunday, 14 April 2002
HISPANIC VS. HISPANIC
A different kind of racism
By Hipolito R. Corella
ARIZONA DAILY STAR
The uniformity of young, brown faces of students milling around Apollo Middle School's concrete courtyard belies the deep divide on campus.
Name-calling and fights between its Mexican-American students and their immigrant schoolmates from Mexico have prompted officials to seek help from a YWCA anti-racism program and search for ways to bridge the gap.
While such divisiveness is common, it could - if left unchecked - lead to violence and a higher dropout rate for students on the receiving end of the discrimination, said Andrea J. Romero, a social psychologist and assistant professor at the University of Arizona's Mexican- American Studies and Research Center.
"Feeling good about yourself is linked to staying in school," said Romero.
Apollo, 265 W. Nebraska St., is in the Sunnyside School District, which has one of the highest high school dropout rates in the city: 9.1 percent last year. The district's middle school dropout rate was 2.5 percent for the same period.
The self-imposed segregation at a school in which nine in 10 of the students are Hispanic is typical of tension elsewhere in Tucson and in communities across the Southwest where established Mexican-American families are often at odds with immigrants.
"In the Southwest's larger society, there's a negative view of immigrants," Romero said. "You don't want to be associated with negative things."
American-born Hispanics often worry they will be lumped together with new immigrants who don't speak English well, look different and have not assimilated into American culture, said Richard Shingles, a political science professor at Virginia Tech.
"There's a feeling they're bringing the whole group down," said Shingles, who is writing a book titled, "Aztlan Lost: The Legacy of Conquest and Race for Mexican-Americans."
The school district does not track how many of its students are immigrants because it is illegal to question a student's immigration status.
Tensions over Proposition 203
Principal Richard Montenegro said the school uniforms, race and ancestry most Apollo students have in common haven't kept them from finding differences to target.
He first noticed rising tensions at Apollo as the 2000 vote on Proposition 203 approached. That's the voter-approved law that replaced traditional bilingual programs with English-immersion classes.
He said some students would hold up green pieces of paper telling immigrant students they could use them as green cards.
This fall the law forced more immigrant students into regular classrooms because only students who already know English can qualify for a waiver to stay in a bilingual classroom.
Students who know no English spend one year in an immersion class before they are placed in a regular classroom.
The law's requirements raised the amount of contact between the two student groups.
It also brought to the surface the prejudice between the two groups of students that has been an undercurrent for years.
"The confrontations were almost daily," said Montenegro. "We had several fights a week. In the past you might have one fight in a month."
Montenegro and students agree there are fewer fights now, but the rift continues.
Immigrant students sit in a certain section of the cafeteria at lunch, and many use a back door to return to class. Both groups freely use racist terms, students say and visits to the school confirm.
"It's like they talk bad about us or ignore us," said Aaron Vega, 16, an eighth-grader whose family moved to Tucson from Sonora two years ago.
"I think they're afraid to be Mexican."
The divide is most evident before and after school, during school dances and at bus stops, said Jesus Bustamante, 14, an eighth-grader whose family moved here from Sonora in July. "They say things when they're in groups."
But the immigrant students taunt just as much, said Ruben Rodriguez, 13, a seventh-grader.
"They say stuff to us in Spanish," said Rodriguez. "They don't like us because we speak English.
"They get all offended when we tell them, 'Speak English.' "
Several students said speaking Spanish is frowned upon by Mexican-American students.
Language became new border
Principal Montenegro said the language barrier makes the self-segregation worse.
The cliques that teens typically form and the physical separation of classes for English learners from mainstream students add to the problem.
On one occasion, a teacher unaware of the rift contributed to it.
The teacher's practice last fall of requiring immigrant students in the English-learning classes to use a particular hallway led to fights in one of the school's pods - circular buildings where classrooms for English-learning students are on the opposite side of English-only classrooms.
Before long, the hallway became a border between the two groups of students, some of whom were willing to fight over its use.
"One of our people wanted to go through the hall and one of the Spanish kids blocked them," said Elizabeth Salazar, 13, a seventh-grader.
Salazar said she is hurt by the slurs leveled against her immigrant classmates.
"Even though they are Mexican, too, they say things to look better to their friends," said Salazar, who was born in California to Mexican parents.
"Everybody's family here has somebody from Mexico."
Ray Collao, 13, an eighth-grader, has crossed groups to defend immigrant friends.
"People don't like me because I stick up for the Mexicans," said Collao. "They think they're different than the Mexican nationals. They think they are better because they were born in the United States."
Despite the fights and name-calling, mixing the two populations is better for the school and the community, Montenegro said.
That's why Montenegro said he wants to alter how classes are assigned to teams of teachers next year. He wants teachers to oversee a combination of mainstream and English-learning classes, which are now kept separate.
He also wants to expand training for teachers to better identify and understand the rift.
"If we can treat it here, maybe it won't be an issue in high school or out on the street," Montenegro said.
Celebrating cultural differences
Aileen Contreras, the prevention specialist, said she hopes to combat the division by educating students about Mexican and Chicano history and culture.
She said many of the students who taunt their immigrant classmates have not experienced the prejudice they hurl at classmates.
They live in overwhelmingly Hispanic neighborhoods, she said, and "a lot of them haven't been in situations where they are the minority."
In January, the school held a Unity Day, in which students from both groups were told to celebrate their differences.
Soon students will begin painting a mural in the courtyard depicting their various cultures.
The mural is being paid for by a $1,000 grant the school received through the YWCA, which had more than 500 Tucson-area students participate in an anti-racism forum last November.
Miriam Navarro, 12, a seventh-grader, said she is tired of the labels and taunting. She said she knows the name-calling hurts because her parents endured prejudice when they went to American schools after moving from Mexico.
Navarro said students direct racial slurs at other students caught speaking Spanish.
"I tell them they're the same."
* Contact Hipolito R. Corella at 573-4191 or corella@azstarnet.com. |
