Hearing America's Youth: Social Identities in Uncertain Times (Adolescent Cultures, School & Society, V. 23)

Hearing America’s Youth

AC SS

Adolescent Cultures, School & Society

Joseph L. DeVitis & Linda Irwin-DeVitis General Editors Vol. 23

PETER LANG

New York y Washington, D.C./Baltimore y Bern Frankfurt am Main y Berlin y Brussels y Vienna y Oxford

Catherine Cornbleth

Hearing America’s Youth Social Identities in Uncertain Times

PETER LANG

New York y Washington, D.C./Baltimore y Bern Frankfurt am Main y Berlin y Brussels y Vienna y Oxford

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Cornbleth, Catherine. Hearing America’s youth: social identities in uncertain times / Catherine Cornbleth. p. cm. — (Adolescent cultures, school and society; v. 23) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Identity (Psychology) in adolescence—United States. 2. Adolescent psychology—United States. 3. National characteristics, American. 4. Group identity—Research—United States. 5. Race awareness in adolescence—United States. I. Title. II Series. BF724.3.I3.C67 305.235’0973—dc21 2003046096 ISBN 0-8204-5711-6 ISSN 1091-1464

Bibliographic information published by Die Deutsche Bibliothek. Die Deutsche Bibliothek lists this publication in the “Deutsche Nationalbibliografie”; detailed bibliographic data is available on the Internet at http://dnb.ddb.de/.

Cover design by Dutton & Sherman Design The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council of Library Resources.

© 2003 Peter Lang Publishing, Inc., New York 275 Seventh Avenue, 28th Floor, New York, NY 10001 www.peterlangusa.com All rights reserved. Reprint or reproduction, even partially, in all forms such as microfilm, xerography, microfiche, microcard, and offset strictly prohibited. Printed in the United States of America

Cornbleth2.qxd

6/20/2003

1:46 PM




Page v

CONTENTS

Preface

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Dilemmas of Research on Social Identity

vii 1

The Stages and the Players

23

None of the Above?

33

Being Bicultural, Being Proud

65

Racism More Than Race

91

Religion, Age, and Gender

115

Being American

133

Works in Progress

155

Appendix A: Roster of Participating Students

167

Appendix B: Summary of Participating Students

171

Index

173

This page intentionally left blank

Cornbleth2.qxd

6/20/2003

1:46 PM




Page vii

PREFACE

Like students, maybe we need to get a more active role . . . voicing their opinions to the government, letting them know how we feel on certain topics . . . what our opinions are on things that are going around this war, scandals, those kind of things. They never really look to the youth and ask what their opinions are . . . we’re the future, you know. —Steven, Pacific High School, California, 6

My interest is in questions of individual and national identity, especially how young people in the United States at the turn of the century understand and describe themselves. What identity markers do they employ? What meanings do they attach to them? What difference does it make? This interest is in part a reaction to continuing blandishments by selfappointed spokespersons regarding how we should see ourselves, individually and collectively, and what we should teach in the public schools. This largely (neo-)conservative advocacy minimizes the historical and contemporary diversity of American society. Across the political spectrum, too many spokespersons ignore the continuing diversification that challenges conventional wisdom about who “we” are. Racial/ethnic diversity, for example, is not simply a societal characteristic; increasingly, it is intrapersonal as well. Racially, contemporary social identities in the United States, as described by Omi and Winant (1994), continue to be “confused and ambivalent.” In addition, indications of apparent generational differences—that young people are questioning inherited social categories and ways of thinking about themselves and others—provide impetus for asking, “What’s happening?”1 What happens—what do young people say to interviewers-researchers—when identity is no longer a multiple-choice question? Young people are not definitively positioned by existing typologies and discourses like butterflies or beetles pinned to predetermined

Cornbleth2.qxd

viii

6/20/2003

1:46 PM

Page viii

H EARING A MERICA ’ S Y OUTH

pages of a catalogue. They not only reposition themselves within available options but also refashion boundaries and categories and sometimes simply refuse to be pinned down. Adolescents can be seen as forming and transforming themselves, as “trying on” various identities, both off-therack and custom-made, as they create their social selves. They are, in Wexler’s (1992) language, trying to “become somebody.” High school juniors and seniors also can be seen as border-crossing between childhood and adulthood. Adolescence in U.S. society anticipates uncertainty and movement back, forth, and around. These identity questions are important for schools and society, not only because responses are complex and changing but also and more significantly because how we see ourselves, individually and collectively, affects how we think about and act on and in our lives and worlds, locally and more widely. If significant numbers of young people are constructing social identities different from those of older generations, it is important to hear them out—to understand why and how their social identities differ because of their potential social impact. Young people’s social identities offer glimpses of a possible future, of where “we” seem to be headed. At the same time that I argue the importance of understanding young people’s self-described social identities, I recognize that how they have described themselves to us represents a particular “moment” or conjunction of time (in their lives and society) and place (their high school where they are being interviewed by someone from the university) and their locale. Talking with someone else, somewhere else, on a different day, they might (or might not) convey somewhat different personae. This is not to say that our interviewees were putting us on (or off), but that social identities are fluid. The young people’s voices presented here can be seen as moments in the flow of their lives and sense of self, moments whose contours and rhythms are illuminated and interrogated. Although these moments may or may not reach very far into their past or future, they are critical for understanding contemporary youth and society.2 A further consideration is that our interview questions may have prompted reflection on the students’ part as well as our own. Some students seemed to be working out their ideas, their sense of themselves, in the course of the interviews. Students’ self-descriptions display a notable lack of concern or sympathy with the identity politics that have consumed and divided so many of their elders since the late twentieth century. The young people’s sense of themselves, their racial/ethnic affinity groups, and the nation goes beyond identity politics, which prompts me to ask, “Given group recognition and representation, then what?”

Cornbleth2.qxd

6/20/2003

1:46 PM

Page ix

Preface

ix

Despite increasing globalization and attention to its presumably homogenizing impact on social identities, the nation remains a potent source of identity and loyalty for many people, including these young people. However arbitrary and fragile, the nation (like the local community or region in an earlier age) is a symbolic anchor in a rapidly changing and often hostile world. In the case of the United States at the turn of the century, it once again may be an economic beacon and political refuge. The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, seem to have, at least temporarily, increased public support for the “homeland” as well as patriotic displays. Hearing America’s Youth: Social Identities in Uncertain Times, then, is about social identities and what it means to be an American for a culturally diverse group of high school juniors and seniors at the end of the twentieth century. The young people we interviewed come from public high schools in New York and California. After listening to these young people and trying to understand their messages—and their social and political implications—I have worked to make sense of and present them in ways that are both cognizant of the relevant literature and accessible to diverse audiences.

OVERVIEW The chapters of this book, like aspects of social identity, are not mutually exclusive. They are interrelated and overlapping, flowing into one another. Racism, for example, is addressed directly in both chapters 4 and 5. The first two chapters are prelude to the students’ self-presentations and my accompanying interpretive commentary. Chapter 1, “Dilemmas of Research on Social Identity,” offers my theoretical frame, my relational conception of social identity as open-ended journey or negotiated process rather than fixed destination or tangible product, and examines some of the issues involved in this kind of project. One issue or dilemma involves understanding and representing students who reject racial/ethnic identity markers and describe themselves as “a person.” A second concerns the circumstances under which one can speak legitimately or credibly with and about (not for) people who are different from oneself racially/ethnically, culturally, or otherwise. A related concern involves contextualization of interview and other data about social identity. The third dilemma concerns numbers and generalization. In chapter 2, “The Stages and the Players,” following a brief description of research methodology and course of the project, I introduce the six participating schools and sixty-

Cornbleth2.qxd

x

6/20/2003

1:46 PM

Page x

H EARING A MERICA ’ S Y OUTH

plus students we interviewed. The juxtaposition of New York and California schools and students provides rich ground to cultivate analytically and interpretively. A comparative view enables one to see what might otherwise remain unnoticed. The chapter ends with a description of the student interviews and their analysis. The next four chapters foreground what students related about who they are. I have tried not to let my own analysis and interpretation take center stage in order to encourage readers to “hear” the students and test some of their own hunches. Chapter 3, “None of the Above?” introduces two groups of students: those who identified themselves as “a person,” “a human being,” and those who reported mixed racial/ethnic ancestry. I examine what the first group said, the reasons given for such self-identification, and apparent implications including the seemingly double-edged consequences of eschewing racial/ethnic affiliation. Then I turn to the students of mixed ancestry and find that they tend not only to accept but to appreciate and identify with their multiplicity and difference. Students who preferred “personhood” to racial/ethnic (and sometimes all) identity markers, as well as students of mixed ancestry, spanned geographic location, gender, and apparent racial/ethnic affiliation. The focus of chapter 4, “Being Bicultural, Being Proud,” is on Hispanic students. Approximately one-quarter of the students identified themselves as Hispanic—Puerto Rican, Mexican, Mexican American, Central American, mixed ancestry/primarily Hispanic—and, with the exception of recent immigrants, most described themselves as proud of being both American and something else, that is, bicultural or binational. Recent immigrants (from Mexico, Guatemala, and India), in contrast, were more likely to describe themselves as becoming American. None of the African or European American students from either New York or California described themselves in this way. Like “none of the above,” “being bicultural” exemplifies young people’s rejection of conventional either-or categorizations. Several Hispanic students referred to Americans being white, and this chapter ends with a brief consideration of whiteness. While our European American students tended to acknowledge their whiteness, they had little to say about it. In chapter 5, “Racism More Than Race,” I juxtapose what students had to say about race and racism. Other than the Hispanic students, very few students conveyed what might be described as “robust racial identities.” Most responded to our question, “What does it mean to you to be African American?” or whatever descriptor(s) they used, by saying, “That’s what I am.” Overall, the European American students had the least to say about their racial/ethnic identity and Hispanic students the

Cornbleth2.qxd

6/20/2003

1:46 PM

Page xi

Preface

xi

most. Across racial/ethnic, gender, socioeconomic status, and geographic lines, however, students talked about racism. In contrast to many adults’ seeming reluctance to talk about racism, most students seemed to talk freely and at times angrily about being targeted for discriminatory/negative treatment because of their apparent race/ethnicity, or they talked about the prevalence of past and present racism in the United States. Chapter 6, “Religion, Age, and Gender,” presents what students had to say about these aspects of their identity. No other identity markers were mentioned by at least one-fourth of the students we interviewed. I was surprised that religion was mentioned as an important identity marker by more than a few students, once again across racial/ethnic, gender, socioeconomic status, and geographic lines—and also that so few mentioned gender or had much to say about it. I examine these aspects of students’ social identities, regional impact or variation, and their interrelations. Chapter 7, “Being American,” addresses students’ responses to the questions, “Do you consider yourself an American?” and “What does it mean to you to be an American?” This was the only instance in which we asked about a specific identity marker. Five themes predominated in students’ accounts, none of which was voiced by a majority of the students: freedom, rights, and opportunity; born here and/or live here; diversity, individualism, and unity; privileged and/or proud; and supposed to be, imperfect but best. Although students’ sense of being American varied, it is significant that their emphasis was both inclusive and civic, not exclusive or ethnic/racial/cultural. In chapter 8, “Works in Progress,” I step back from the past six years of this project to offer some personal observations, particularly about relational conceptions of social identity and commonplace categories. I end with comments from students suggesting that we adults take them more seriously and listen to what they have to say.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Without the participation of teachers and students from six New York and California schools—Lincoln, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Mission, and Pacific—there would have been no Schooling and Social Identities Project and thus no book. I am indebted to you for your interest and cooperation. The Fallingwater research project, funded by the Graduate School of Education at the University at Buffalo, provided initial support for the project. A small grant from retiring dean Hugh G. Petrie was stretched to enable completion and transcription of all the student interviews.

Cornbleth2.qxd

6/20/2003

xii

1:46 PM

Page xii

H EARING A MERICA ’ S Y OUTH

Several university students and colleagues in New York, California, and elsewhere played key roles in providing access to schools (and teachers and students), interviewing students, reading and offering feedback on all or parts of this manuscript (sometimes more than once), and/or talking with me about issues encountered. Special thanks to Greg Dimitriadis, Nadine Dolby, Greta Gibson, S. G. Grant, Michael Hegazy, Julia Marusza, Pedro Noguera, Angela Stevenson, Lois Weis, and students in my Critical Interpretations of Research seminar. Earlier versions of parts of chapters 1, 3, and 7 have been presented at national meetings and benefited from collegial feedback. Many thanks to editor Phyllis Korper at Peter Lang for her faith in and patience with this project, and to series editor Joe DeVitis for his encouragement and feedback. Of course, the analyses and interpretations offered are my own responsibility. With keen awareness of the sensitive nature of the questions examined here, I recognize that not all readers will agree with my selections, emphases, and conclusions. Hopefully, we can engage in constructive dialogue across differences. This book is dedicated to Dexter Waugh, 1941–1999, with continuing appreciation for all I have learned from him. Catherine Cornbleth Buffalo, New York July 2002

NOTES 1.

2.

Although media and news reports of young people questioning or downplaying inherited racial/ethnic categorizations seem to be increasing, we do not know how their parents and grandparents would have described themselves when they were sixteen, seventeen, or eighteen. Thus, generational differences are difficult to establish empirically. This conception of moment was introduced in Dolby and Cornbleth (2001) and influenced in part by a New Yorker essay (Gladwell, 2000) about interviewing candidates for positions in dot-com companies.

REFERENCES Dolby, N., and Cornbleth, C. (2001). Introduction: Social identities in transnational times. Discourse, 22(3), 293–96. Gladwell, M. (2000). The new-boy network. The New Yorker, May 29, 68–72, 84, 86.

Cornbleth2.qxd

6/20/2003

1:46 PM

Page xiii

Preface

xiii

Omi, M., and Winant, H. (1994). Racial formation in the United States (2nd ed.). New York: Routledge. Wexler, P. (1992). Becoming somebody: Toward a social psychology of school. London: Falmer.

This page intentionally left blank

Cornbleth2.qxd

6/20/2003

1:46 PM




Page 1

1

DILEMMAS of RESEARCH on SOCIAL IDENTITY

Atkinson had turned to Stroud then. “This don’t make no sense. How come this mother—— ain’t got to be nothing? He got to be something. You the man, so you tell the brother he got to be Injun or white, he got to choose. He can’t be no in-between.” —Owens, 1999, p. 123 I’m not really sure, it’s like I’m in between, trying to find out who I am, where I’m going, where I’m at right now. —Penny, Pacific High School, California, 1

Before turning to the identity data and its interpretation, I set out my conception of social identity and the perspective that frames this work. In so doing, I also examine dilemmas encountered in the course of this project.

SOCIAL IDENTITY and ITS STUDY By social identity, I mean a person’s configuration of self-designated descriptors, especially significant group memberships and their meanings

Cornbleth2.qxd

2

6/20/2003

1:46 PM

Page 2

H EARING A MERICA ’ S Y OUTH

to that person, their interconnections, and their salience in one or another setting. Collective identity, grounded in classical sociology, emphasizes a group’s “we-ness” (Cerulo, 1997, p. 386). Acknowledged similarities among group members may be based in shared experience, such as conquest or revolution, and/or a sense of common fate, such as “Manifest Destiny,” but are not seen as “natural” or inherent in an essentialist sense. Essentialism, in contrast, assumes a predetermination to the extent that things could not be otherwise, such as “women are necessarily . . . ” Collective identity, such as the “nation,” is an imagined community (Anderson, 1991).1 Thus , it becomes important to probe what it means to be Mexican, Jewish, female, and so forth in particular times and places. Social identity, then, is one’s sense of self and belonging, of one’s self in relation to others. Social identities are in-the-making, that is, continually maintained and modified and sometimes contested. The nonessentialist position that neither individual nor group identities are inherent or fixed has been well presented by others (e.g., Appiah, 1992; Carlson, 1995; Conzen, Gerber et al., April, 1990; Hall, 1989/1996; Hotz, April 15, 1995; Wheeler, February 17, 1995) and intriguingly reflected in an exhibit of Luba art at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, New York, during the summer of 1997. The commentary accompanying several Luba masks noted that the word “person” is derived from the Latin for mask (persona), “suggesting that the individual’s creation of his or her identity is continuous, forever negotiated, never completed.” My paperback Oxford Dictionary also cited the Latin persona as “an actor’s face mask” and further noted its early meaning as a character or role in a play. I mention this here not to suggest that identities are masks concealing a “true”or “deep” self, but as a way of indicating that the notion of identities or personae being fluid, created and recreated, is not a recent invention, neither a modernist nor a postmodernist turn. The same can be said of aspects of identity such as race, ethnicity, and/or culture (see, e.g., Nagel, 1994). Questioning prevailing identity categorization schemes and assumptions as I do here does not mean “color blindness,” infinite fragmentation, or eccentric relativism. It does mean recognizing that racial/ethnic and other identity classifications are socially constructed and reconstructed over time and in particular places and circumstances (see, e.g., Alba, 1990; Davis, 1991; Marable, 1995). Individual and collective social identities, at least in the contemporary United States, are shaped by history and social structure as well as biography (Mills, 1959) and biology. They are more complex and fluid than even a generation ago and certainly more so than the emerging American persona of Crevecoeur’s or

Cornbleth2.qxd

6/20/2003

1:46 PM

Page 3

Dilemmas of Research on Social Identity

3

Tocqueville’s eighteenth- and nineteenth-century gazes. Given the history of changing individual, group, and national identities, there is no sound reason to expect either time or identity to stand still now. Another assumption questioned here is that an individual’s identity is necessarily individualist in the Western sense of an autonomous, possessive individual who “has” a unique identity. Hoffman (1996) well reminds us that the Western self with its strong themes of individualism, autonomy, uniqueness, independence, and consistency stands apart from other cultural understandings of self that stress social relatedness, interdependency, commonality, self-other identification, and social responsiveness. Asian perspectives in particular also stress the layered nature of identity, with clear distinctions between social interactional selves and an inner core self that is not reflected in social behavior. (p. 556)

Bracketing Western assumptions about individualist identities is facilitated by my theoretical preference for a sociological more than a psychological conception of identity. In addition to recognizing that aspects of people’s identities are shared, collective, or communal as much or more than uniquely individual, a social identities perspective acknowledges that identities include group membership or role dimensions. Moreover, social identities are formed and sanctioned or contested in social circumstances, in relation to, if not in direct interaction with, others. Social identity, then, is not reducible to individual psychology. Theoretically, my stance is best described as critically pragmatist or a critical pragmatism as elaborated in Cornbleth and Waugh (1995, 1999; see chapter 2) and summarized in Cornbleth (2000). It joins critical and pragmatic traditions so as to link the contextual emphasis and equity goal of critical theory with the self-questioning and pluralism of pragmatic philosophy. The critical dimension gives depth and direction to pragmatic inquiry and dialogue, while pragmatism reminds that cultural critique encompasses all our beliefs. Emergent and action-oriented, this critical pragmatism eschews essentialist, materialist, and theological determinisms on one side and postmodernist quicksands on the other. Following Gunn (1992), what might it mean to adopt one rather than another way of looking at things such as young people’s social identities? In this case, the critical dimension is evident in my challenging inherited or taken-for-granted ways of thinking about and acting on identity questions that are imposed without the consent of the identified, that sustain hierarchy, and/or that carry differential benefits. The pragmatic dimension is evident in my recognition of material practices, empirical grounding, and action orientation. While socially constructed, identities also are lived and consequential—in schools, on the street, at home, and

Cornbleth2.qxd

4

6/20/2003

1:46 PM

Page 4

H EARING A MERICA ’ S Y OUTH

elsewhere. My interest is in the social and political as well as the pedagogical implications of the (re-)formation of social identities among young people. In these ways, Hearing America’s Youth is grounded in but not limited to empirical data from my Schooling and Social Identities Project.

SOCIAL IDENTITIES as RELATIONAL Group identities are constructed and modified in relation to the identities of other groups, mainstream and subordinate, and in interactions with them (e.g., Conzen et al., April, 1990; San Juan, 1992; Tyack, 1995). They have been shown to be interactive/dynamic (not categorical and fixed) and contingent or historically situation-specific (not universal). Movement or fluidity can be seen as constituting social identity as well as shaping it. What it means to be Latina or Native American has changed over time and circumstance. At the individual level, for example, for a female, high school basketball player from a middle-class family of Mexican American heritage, there are situations in which athletic team membership overrides other aspects of her identity, situations in which being female or middle-class is most salient, and so forth. At the same time, there is evidence that group memberships interact. For example, being female shapes how one plays the athlete role, and being Mexican American shapes how one sees oneself as a woman. The multiple group memberships are relational, not simply categorical. They also are relational in the sense argued by Connell et al. (1982) with respect to class and gender. In their view, social class is less an amount of education or money or a range of occupations than it is a set of relations to one’s work and the use of one’s income and other resources. These relations are distinguished in terms of personal control, flexibility, and options. “Classes are not abstract categories but real life groupings” (p. 33). Similarly, gender is not simply a bureaucratic box, a category for statistical analysis. It represents a configuration of historically and socially contextualized expectations and relations both intra- and interpersonal. Gender matters but not to the same extent or in the same way for each (fe)male in every circumstance. Connell et al. (1982, p. 180) further suggest that class and gender be conceptualized as historically located “structuring processes,” meaning “ways in which social life is constantly being organized (and ruptured and disorganized) through time.” In different ways, both class and gender involve or constitute structures of power insofar as each involves “control

Cornbleth2.qxd

6/20/2003

1:46 PM

Page 5

Dilemmas of Research on Social Identity

5

by some people over others, and the ability of some groups to organize social life to their own advantage.” Social relations are organized and institutionalized in the course of power being exercised and contested. Their corollary that the “joint presence” of gender and class be treated as an interactive “relationship between processes,” not as an intersection of “little boxes” (p. 181, italics in original), is extended here to include race/ethnicity. I have been struck by the seeming compatibility of Connell et al.’s (1982) relational conceptualization of class and gender with Omi and Winant’s (1994) constructs of racial formation and racial project. I bring them together here in an effort to flesh out a multidimensional, relational conception of social identity. Both works emphasize the ongoing, situated, and contested dynamics of these cultural productions and their political repercussions. Race/ethnicity, class, and gender—among other social identity dimensions—are negotiated and articulated within and against existing institutional structures and discursive representations. My use of “race/ethnicity” and “racial/ethnic” is best seen as shorthand for racialization processes, the historical and social means by which individuals and groups have been distinguished and labeled by others, usually by those in dominant positions in society. So, for example, according to the U.S. Census, in 1930 (but not before or after) “Mexican” was a racial category. Now Hispanic is an ethnic category and, again according to the U.S. Census, Hispanics may be of any race. Historically in the United States, one apparently black ancestor has made one black, but one apparently white ancestor has not made one white. These socially imposed rules are racialization processes, and they are likely to continue to change over time and circumstance. Especially in view of the scientific community’s recent eschewal of previously assumed biological bases of race, it is more appropriate to think (speak and act) in terms of racialization processes and racialized identity, rather than “racial identity” as if it were a thing that one has or is. The language of racialization and racialized refuses reification, or making race “real,” as if race exists apart from its social constructions. It could be argued further that social identity itself is a relation—or set of relations or interrelations. In this view, people see or define themselves in relation to various individuals and groups, specific life situations, and so forth.2 And as these situations and relations change, so does the person’s conception and enactment of “me” (e.g., Davidson, 1996). Perhaps it would be more appropriate to speak of social identification processes than social identities in order to emphasize their ongoing, interactive, mobilized, in-use nature. While I maintain the social identities language, I do

Cornbleth2.qxd

6

6/20/2003

1:46 PM

Page 6

H EARING A MERICA ’ S Y OUTH

not intend it to imply a thing or commodity that one “has” in the sense of a tangible possession or possessive individual. This position clearly does not argue for either an individualism that eschews all group characterizations and affiliations to celebrate some ideal type, supposedly unique individual, or an essentialist determinism. The individual is, as previously noted, formed in social circumstances. It is to argue for treating our characterizations as partial, multiple, situationspecific, and fluid (e.g., McCarthy, 1995; McCarthy, 1998). Consequently, the research presented here did not begin with race-class-gender or other categories or subcategories. When one begins with such divisions, one usually ends up with (i.e., finds) them. Finding what one is looking for does not mean that it is not “really” there; it may, however, deter one from seeing other things or in other ways. Also, nominal identity markers (i.e., possible descriptors such as conventional categories) are not necessarily everybody’s salient or relevant ones. Thus, I decided to begin this study with open-ended questions. A relational conception carries a further advantage insofar as it links invented and material strands and enables incorporation of material bases of social identity without sustaining reified racial or other categories. Understanding and contesting material manifestations and effects of racial formation, racism, and racial hierarchy embedded in everyday life, for example, do not require invocation of biologic or otherwise essentialist racial types.3 Taking a recent U.S. example, the police practice of “racial profiling” (stopping black and brown, usually male, motorists without immediate cause other than their gender and skin color, especially when they are in a neighborhood of predominantly lighter-skinned people) is a materially racist project. The racial characterization underlying such “profiling” has been created for highly questionable purposes. The challenge is not to create a more realistic, positive, or fairer racial profile but to do away with such pernicious practices altogether.4 Another example is provided by official (e.g., U.S. Census ) racial categories, which, though both arbitrary and changing, likely have influenced how individuals see themselves and others.5 We define ourselves, and attempt to validate that definition, in relation to—as belonging or in opposition to—prevailing categories. Thus, social identity can be seen as a coproduction, both material and invented, comprising individual choices and others’ ascriptions, which is subject to change over time and circumstance.

POLITICS of SOCIAL IDENTITY These examples also point to the unequal power relations in U.S. society that render identity formation an inherently political process. By political

Cornbleth2.qxd

6/20/2003

1:46 PM

Page 7

Dilemmas of Research on Social Identity

7

I refer to the individual or collective exercise of power or influence to shape public perception, policy, and/or practice. The U.S. racial hierarchy with whites at the top, blacks at the bottom, and others somewhere in between, is a prime example of the political economy of social identity. In Who Is Black?, Davis (1991) provides an historical account of the production and distribution of racial categories in the United States. More recently, others have examined the increasing complexity of U.S. racial categories and hierarchy (e.g., Lind, 1998; Wright, 1994). Whereas “one drop” of “black blood” has made some people officially black, official federal recognition as native requires much more, even though kinship, culture, and nationhood are the primary basis of American Indian identity, while race and ethnicity usually are not (Jaimes, 1994). The arbitrariness of categorization and the persistence of hierarchy are powerfully illustrated in Louis Owens’s recent novel, Dark River (1999), where Stroud recalls: And the big sonofabitch wouldn’t admit to being Indian. He held his ground inbetween, neither Indian nor white. Every Indian in Nam was called “chief,” except that one. There’d been a pretty funny discussion about it among the blacks in the platoon. . . . “Now, what I want to know, mother——,” the man, a skinny guy named Atkinson, had said, “is how come Jackson there got to be a brother when he’s whiter than your butt? I mean, the brother got just a drop of black down there somewhere, but he ain’t got a choice. . . . Thing is, he got to be a soul brother even if he don’t want to be. But you don’t got to be no real Injun even if anybody can see you got that bitchin’ all-year tan. All these white mothers—— back home go round bragging they’re Injun and then other Injuns and white folks say they can’t be Injun cause they ain’t Injun enough. You don’t see white mothers—— bragging they black and people saying you can’t be black cause you ain’t black enough. . . . Now anybody look at you and they see an Injun, but you say you ain’t neither Injun or a honky . . .” Atkinson had turned to Stroud then. “This don’t make no sense. How come this mother—— ain’t got to be nothing? He got to be something. You the man, so you tell the brother he got to be Injun or white, he got to choose. He can’t be no in-between.” But Stroud had just laughed with the rest of them, both black and white, while the non-Indian had grinned and walked away. (pp. 122–23)

Beyond race, the politics of hierarchy are clearly evident in what Patricia Hill Collins (1991) calls “dichotomous oppositional difference.” In this prevailing, either-or way of thinking in the United States, there are only two, presumably mutually exclusive, options. The two sides define themselves in opposition to each other, as “not XX” or “not YY.” Finally, the relationship is super- and subordinate, or higher-lower status, as well as oppositional. Female-male is an obvious example. Important here is not only the provenance of identity categories and hierarchy but also how their social and institutional existence structures and limits identity formation, perhaps especially for people of mixed

Cornbleth2.qxd

8

6/20/2003

1:46 PM

Page 8

H EARING A MERICA ’ S Y OUTH

ancestry. Individuals are expected to fit into socially assigned slots. In this regard, I find Berger, Berger, and Kellner’s (1973) account of modern consciousness compelling. Modern consciousness, or ways of thinking about the world, refers to the historically and socially located and constructed meanings formed in people’s interactions with each other and their institutions. In their analysis, modern consciousness has been shaped and sustained primarily by technological production (e.g., interchangeable parts, assembly lines) and state bureaucracy (e.g., New York State Department of Motor Vehicles, IRS). The resulting shared consciousness or “symbolic universe” encompasses interrelated cognitive and normative dimensions, an organization of knowledge and an orientation toward knowledge and action that provide a common frame of reference shared by most members of a modern society.6 Among the major themes of the symbolic universe of modernity delineated by Berger, Berger, and Kellner that are relevant to my project here are what they call orderliness and taxonomization, both derived from state bureaucracy. Bureaucracy values orderliness. It creates and maintains order and predictability (and the appearance of fairness) through rationalized procedures, that is, normal channels or standard operating procedures. Imagine, for example, the procedures for obtaining a driver’s license. Bureaucratic systems of procedures often seem arbitrary and unnecessarily complex. They reflect what Berger, Berger, and Kellner (1973) call a “taxonomic propensity” or desire to break things down into small pieces or steps that can be sequenced presumably to add up to or otherwise result in the desired outcome. Imagine, for example, the periodically popular reading or science teaching kits. Technological production also breaks things down into their component parts, but for a different purpose: Phenomena are classified [by bureaucrats] rather than analyzed or synthesized. The engineer puts phenomena into little categorical boxes in order to take them apart further or to put them together in larger wholes. By contrast, the bureaucrat is typically satisfied once everything has been put in its proper box. (p. 49)

Racial/ethnic categorizations can be seen to persist in part because of their congruence with these themes of modern consciousness. Recent debate about the comparability of Census 2000 questions and response categories with previous census data can be seen, in part, as debate about modern bureaucracy’s hold on the present and near future. Insofar as social identities require social acceptance or validation, individuals are not completely free to “be themselves.” Identity remains contested. A clear case in the present study is provided by Blake, an articulate

Cornbleth2.qxd

6/20/2003

1:47 PM

Page 9

Dilemmas of Research on Social Identity

9

and frustrated young man, who wants to be seen as a person, a human being with rights and feelings like anyone else, instead of being stereotyped as a black male likely to make trouble. For various reasons and especially among young people, characteristics and group memberships other than race/ethnicity may be key to individual and collective identities. For example, inner-city young people interviewed by Heath and McLaughlin (1993) were more likely to be assigned racial/ethnic labels by others than to claim race or ethnicity as a primary aspect of their identities. Most of these young people lived in heterogeneous neighborhoods within families including members of different national, ethnic, racial, and linguistic groups; they talked about learning to “hang with all kinds” (p. 6). The junior high students who Grant and Sleeter (1986) studied in a multiracial community openly claimed the prevailing racial/ethnic categories as identity markers, but did not view these labels (e.g., black, Mexican, white) as designating differences among people. Instead, they viewed differences in color and cultural heritage as “fun” and “interesting,” and defined their own distinct, common identity in terms of their shared neighborhood, which was physically separated from the rest of the city by a river. Some of the students we interviewed felt even more strongly, explicitly rejecting racial/ethnic characterization.

NEGOTIATING THEORETICALMETHODOLOGICAL-SOCIAL DILEMMAS Given my interest in questions of social identity (i.e., how young people describe themselves, what identity markers they employ and the meanings they attach to them), in 1996 I began interviewing high school juniors and seniors who were participants in one or both of two field-based projects with which I was associated in western New York. In 1999, while on sabbatical research leave, I was able to spend time at two schools in California where I observed U.S. history classes and interviewed students. Undergraduate and graduate students joined me, and the interview pool has grown past sixty. As I have worked with the data and a range of relevant literature, questions of interpretation and imposition, and their social and theoretical as well as broadly methodological implications, continue to trouble me. My intent here is to explore these questions in relation to our data on young people’s social identities in order to illustrate what difference one or another response might make. By so doing, I hope to resolve, at least

Cornbleth2.qxd

10

6/20/2003

1:47 PM

Page 10

H EARING A MERICA ’ S Y OUTH

for the time being, dilemmas that have enriched as well as impeded my work, while avoiding both extremes of theory (or theorizing) unencumbered by data and alienated empiricism. One question of interpretation and imposition concerns the understanding and representation of students who reject racial/ethnic identity markers and describe themselves as “a person” or “a human being.” Having asked an open-ended question about identity, one cannot simply say “no, you are . . . ” either during the interview or in subsequent analysis. As researchers, how do we treat some young people’s avoidance of social descriptors such as race that do matter in everyday life? A second question concerns the circumstances under which one can speak legitimately or credibly with and about (not for) people who are different from oneself racially/ethnically, culturally, or otherwise. How can one respond to the strong culturalist position (Feinberg, 1998) without simply dumping one’s data or abandoning the research altogether? A related question concerns contextualization of interview and other data about social identity. How data are contextualized both concretely and theoretically shapes their interpretation, sometimes in substantial ways. For example, in presenting the angry and critical comments of an outspoken young African American man, what interpretive difference does it make if one does or does not also note his pride in just recently receiving his first paycheck from a part-time job? A last question to be considered here, not unrelated to questions of context and “speaking about,” concerns numbers and generalization. My sense of social identities is that they are both socially formed and shared. How widely shared? While I am leery of claims to individual uniqueness (individuals are formed in social circumstances), I also am leery of the assumption that a small subset very likely mirrors other small subsets or the larger group of which it is a part—what Tversky and Kahneman (1971) called the erroneous “Belief in the Law of Small Numbers.” A recent New Yorker piece (Gawande, February 8, 1999) also reminds of “the Texas-sharpshooter fallacy,” a reference to the tendency to consider cases out of context or to define a larger population around isolated cases. The sharpshooter “shoots at the side of a barn and then draws a bull’s-eye around the bullet holes” (p. 37). Of the twenty-six students from western New York asked to describe themselves, twenty-two mentioned race/ethnicity, while nine described themselves as a “person” or a “human being” or refused to claim any group membership (some used both racial/ethnic and person descriptors). Which, if any, of these subsets “speaks” for U.S. juniors and seniors or African Americans or any group represented here? What difference

Cornbleth2.qxd

6/20/2003

1:47 PM

Page 11

Dilemmas of Research on Social Identity

11

does it make where, if anywhere, one draws a bull’s-eye? In what follows, I foreground these dilemmas or questions of interpretation and imposition in social identities research, drawing on our interview data for illustration.

NONE of the ABOVE Despite growing evidence that some young people are questioning inherited social categories and ways of thinking about themselves and others (e.g., Chideya, 1999; Heath and McLaughlin, 1993; Steel, 1995), for many adults identity, especially racial/ethnic identity, remains a multiplechoice question. The U.S. Census 2000, which both reflects and shapes public perception, offers choice among four racial categories, with some subcategories, “some other race,” and the option of marking all that apply. Hispanic ancestry, which was a racial category in earlier Census distinctions, became a separate item about ethnicity. Mixed ancestry is being accommodated in the 2000 Census by “allowing” respondents to select more than one of the four categorical options: American Indian or Alaskan Native, Asian or Pacific Islander, black, white. These now familiar categories are neither natural nor normal. They were created and modified in particular times and places to serve then-dominant interests. Our interview question to students was open-ended: In the United States, it is common to identify and describe people according to the groups to which they seem to belong. For example, people talk about racial/ethnic, cultural, national, language, religious, social class, age, gender, and political groups. Which, if any, of these groups—or others—do you use to identify or describe yourself? We also asked students what it means to them to be (each of the descriptors they mentioned) or why they prefer not to use group descriptors. In this context, what are we to make of the rejection of racial/ethnic identity markers by students who describe themselves as “a person” or “a human being”? How are we to understand and represent their social identities? Blake, a student at Lincoln, an urban secondary school in western New York, told us: I’m a black American. Black American, African American, I’m just me, you know? . . . I’m a person first, and I’m a human being first, and then, um, color second or whatever you like to call it. Um, basically that’s how I feel about it. Whatever you wanna label yourself, it’s totally up to you. Whatever you feel comfortable being called. (1)7

Cornbleth2.qxd

6/20/2003

1:47 PM

Page 12

H EARING A MERICA ’ S Y OUTH

12

Another Lincoln student, Linda, goes further. Linda does not identify herself or others on the basis of apparent group membership. “I just try to stay away from that,” she told me, “I just try to look at somebody else as a person” (2). She continued, “Like it’s hard sometimes because, uh, the people in my family and the people I work with . . . they not only classify themselves but they classify everyone else around them. . . . People want to know, and I don’t know why but people just want to know” (2). To override these students’ self-descriptions and simply categorize them by race (or other conventional categories) not only imposes identity markers but further misrepresents by flattening or condensing their personhood in ways that render them unrecognizable to themselves (cf. Schegloff, 1997). And these illustrations do not tap the further complexity of students whose racial/ethnic heritage is mixed. Carl, a student at urban Johnson High School in western New York, told us , “I don’t identify myself as a group. . . . [I identify] as an individual” (7). Shortly afterward, the interviewer asked: AS: Can I just ask your ethnic background? Carl: My culture like? AS: Yeah. Carl: Like what I am? AS: Yes. Carl: I’m some Indian. Well, I’m half Indian. White. Some—a little bit—I think I’m German. I’m a whole bunch of things. AS: And you don’t identify yourself as any of those? Carl: Not really. (7–8)

My response to the dilemma of understanding and representing these young people’s social identities has been to ask what seems to cross-cut conventional racial/ethnic categories that might account for their identification as a person or individual. Consequently, I focus on the reasons they give for rejecting some or all group categorizations and seek out underlying themes.8 Such themes have as much or more descriptive and explanatory power as racial/ethnic or other category labels. An emphasis on themes also is intended to foreground young people’s assumptions and intentions regardless of the specific self-descriptors they employ. Moreover, it sheds light on within-group differences.

Cornbleth2.qxd

6/20/2003

1:47 PM

Page 13

Dilemmas of Research on Social Identity

13

In the present case, the students who identify as a person or individual seem to be assuming that negative stereotyping and associated discrimination such as they’ve experienced can be minimized if not eliminated by eschewing racial/ethnic classification. Those who avoid labeling others as well as themselves seem to be trying to improve interpersonal and intergroup relations in addition to their own treatment and opportunities. The avoidance of group identification, a resort to individualism, can be seen as these students’ way around bigotry and racism and perhaps also as challenging the United States to live up to its professed ideals. It is much less a claim of racelessness than an appeal to abstract principles. These themes are explored further in chapter 3. Recognizing that social identity is an open-ended and continuing question also enables identification of trends and change over time. It appears, for example, that over the past decade, at least, increasing numbers of young people are identifying themselves as a person or human being. They are actively choosing not to use or to highlight racial/ethnic ancestry, their own or others’. This apparent trend, if it holds, suggests generational differences with significant political and social as well as pedagogical implications.9

SPEAKING WITH, SPEAKING ABOUT Under what circumstances can one speak legitimately or credibly with or about people different from oneself? What Feinberg (1998, p. 59) calls the “strong culturalist” position “holds that there are collective experiences that can only be authentically understood from the inside” (p. 60). That is, only insiders, members of the group or culture, can speak about or for that group or culture (or fully understand what is said). Collective experiences or identities are assumed to be unique, incommensurate with those of other groups or cultures, and often incompatible as well. Putting aside the question of “speaking for,” which is not relevant here, the strong culturalist would reject the legitimacy and/or credibility of (a) my interviewing a black male high school student, and (b) my analyzing and interpreting the interview data obtained by a young black male interviewer (or myself). I am an outsider on at least three counts: age, gender, and race/ethnicity. (Education and religion also might be counted against me.) Feinberg notes two major problems with the strong culturalist claim. While culture influences one’s view of the world, including views of other cultures, that does not mean “that cultures are impenetrable and that translation between them is inherently impossible” (1998, p. 84). That in

Cornbleth2.qxd

14

6/20/2003

1:47 PM

Page 14

H EARING A MERICA ’ S Y OUTH

itself is a self-contradictory claim, he notes. Who could know two cultures well enough to say they are incommensurable? A second problem is that some experiences “are better understood by people who have participated in them regardless of their culture” (p. 87). Such experiences might include being put down or ostracized by other students at one’s school, the death of a loved one, and dealing with one’s breast or prostate cancer. Additional problems are that cultures are neither mutually exclusive nor necessarily at odds, and people can and do live with and through more than one as my interview example above illustrates (e.g., age, gender, race/ethnicity). Furthermore, few if any cultures are static and internally homogeneous; there is variation in viewpoint and the story(s) to be told as well as change over time and circumstance (see, e.g., Burbules, 1997). With perhaps a very few, geographically isolated exceptions, there are no culturally pure or unique groups in contemporary societies. Instead, what McCarthy (1998) calls “radical cultural hybridity” (p. 149) is the norm. Drawing on the work of Edward Said (1993), Homi Bhabha (1994), and Stuart Hall (1989/1996), among others, McCarthy describes “an ongoing conversation between cultures which are interwoven and interdependent, and whose very definition depends on the existence and interaction with the other” (p. 155). Using different language, Feinberg (1998) offers a similar observation: Because different cultural groups in a multicultural society exist within the same political unit, often sharing the same language, they actually connect to each other’s experience in many important ways, and the stories they tell must inevitably involve each other. . . . Given that the stories and histories of one group usually involve the stories and histories of other groups, to tell one is to tell the other but from a different perspective. (p. 195)

Voices of the group represented are needed for authenticity and respect. Consider insider and outsider accounts as different perspectives, neither silencing insiders from telling their own stories or excluding outsiders “from telling stories from other centers of experience” (Feinberg, 1998, p. 196). What is needed is “more contact and more negotiation, rather than an isolationist insistence on the priority of one or another telling” (p. 195). I concur. With respect to research on social identities, sharing and dialogue about data and interpretation are crucial to resolving this dilemma of imposition from one or another direction. Ruling out one or another interviewer, researcher, or author a priori is not only limiting but also arbitrary and a form of group censorship. While recognizing the substantial pitfalls of projecting one’s own identity assumptions on others, individually or collectively, I wonder whether there might be as much or more

Cornbleth2.qxd

6/20/2003

1:47 PM

Page 15

Dilemmas of Research on Social Identity

15

of a potential problem with unexamined assumptions when studying people who seem “like me.” Our own personal and cultural lenses are inevitably distorting. Consequently, in my writing about young people’s social identities, I draw liberally on the interview transcripts for illustration and the tenor of the students’ talk about themselves. They have seemingly important things to say not only about themselves but also, directly or indirectly, contemporary U.S. society and schooling. It is one way of speaking about people who are different from me—or, simply, not me—that offers more legitimacy than reversing the emphasis to favor interpretation over voice and context (cf. Weis and Fine, 1996, pp. 497–98) or to engage in what Schegloff (1997, p. 167) calls academic imperialism. Using extended interview excerpts also helps to contextualize speakers’ statements in their own words. As researcher-author, I am still doing the selecting, but I am not simply snipping a phrase or an isolated sentence that supports my theoretical preferences. Moreover, the relational conception of social identity I employ sees individual and group identities as constructed and modified in relation to the identities of and interactions with other individuals and groups, both mainstream and subordinate. As just suggested, insofar as none of us are one-dimensional, it is likely that some of your group memberships and self-descriptors overlap with mine and, furthermore, that we identify ourselves in relation to some similar phenomena and possibly also to each other. Individual and collective social identities are to varying extents shared, overlapping, interconnected—not mutually exclusive. A relational conception of social identity differs from an oppositional conception associated with “othering,” that is, defining myself as unlike you, as the positive opposite of your negative characteristics (see, e.g., Weis, 1990, for a disturbingly vivid illustration). While differences as well as connections emerge from or accompany relational conceptions of social identity, differences are not necessarily dichotomous, oppositional, or hierarchical. As Michele Fine observes, “Self and Other are knottily entangled” in qualitative research (1994, p. 72). She urges us to “work the hyphen” between ourselves and those we study in part by “[e]roding the fixedness of categories” that separate us (p. 72) and also by “construct[ing] texts collaboratively, self-consciously examining our relations with/for/despite those who have been contained as Others” (p. 74), thereby acknowledging and exposing parts of ourselves: When we write essays about subjugated Others as if they were a homogeneous mass (of vice or virtue), free-floating and severed from contexts of oppression,

Cornbleth2.qxd

16

6/20/2003

1:47 PM

Page 16

H EARING A MERICA ’ S Y OUTH and as if we were neutral transmitters of voices and stories, we tilt toward a narrative strategy that reproduces Othering on, despite, or even ‘for’. (p. 74)

I can acknowledge my presence and social location without redirecting attention to myself and turning the research into a “story of me.” And I can forego any temptation or presumption to know, give voice to, or empower the young people we have interviewed. Instead, I can try to listen carefully to their voices and hear what they are saying as active social agents and constructors of their individual and collective identities—some but not all of which challenge dominant representations. If social identities are neither primordial nor essentialized, then we can come to understand them, more or less, even as they are in motion. While I take the culturalist concern with outsider misrepresentation seriously—culture matters—I do not privilege any identity marker, view, or voice a priori. Of course, I also try to include people from a range of backgrounds on a research team, share my initial interpretations with other members of the research team (and sometimes with interviewees as well) and incorporate their comments, and seek feedback from academic colleagues, none of whom is quite like me.

SHOOTING from the HIP? Increasingly in my fieldwork, I’ve taken to analyzing observation and interview data across classrooms, schools, districts, and interviewees. Instead of dividing students, teachers, or others into racial/ethnic or other demographic groupings and then looking at what each has said or done, I look first to what people are saying or doing and then to who is saying or doing it. When there are no clear group differences or patterns, I do not identify the transcript or fieldnote excerpts as urban-suburban, black-white-Hispanic, or otherwise except for gender, which usually is communicated by proper names (e.g., Cornbleth, 1998). To so identify serves mainly to fulfill the expectations of conventional research practice that also perpetuate socially constructed assumptions of difference that may not appear in all or even most instances. Moreover, such categorizing deflects attention from other possible differences and patterns as well as within group variation. My preference for the previously introduced foregrounding of themes rather than front-end categories can be seen as consistent with a critically pragmatic questioning of the givens, the hand-me-down practices of social research in the United States. It has troubled at least a few academic colleagues who “just want to know” who is speaking—whether Linda is

Cornbleth2.qxd

6/20/2003

1:47 PM

Page 17

Dilemmas of Research on Social Identity

17

black or white, from the urban or suburban high school, for example—or who are concerned that I may be erasing race. In the first case, I ask “Why do you want to know? What difference does it make?” In the second, I point out that race does not matter to the same extent or in the same way in every situation, that whether and how it plays out is what counts and should be emphasized. Neither response immediately satisfies. For example, as I’ve indicated earlier, nine of twenty-six western New York high school students we interviewed about their social identities described themselves primarily as a “person” or a “human being” or refused to recognize any group membership. They constituted a substantial minority of the sample and seemed to reflect a possible trend among young people talking about their social identities (cf. Farrell, 1996; Grant and Sleeter, 1986; Heath and McLaughlin, 1993). The three students we interviewed who refused group labels appeared to be Hispanic (Marissa), African American (Jay), and European American (Linda). Combining appearance with self-report, there are three African American, three European American, two mixed ancestry, and one Hispanic: six males and three females; one from suburban Kennedy High School, three from urban Johnson, and five from urban Lincoln (see chapter 3). What does this breakdown offer us toward understanding the social identities of young people in the United States at century’s end? For these reasons, I extend the dilemma of context and representation to consider questions of numbers and generalization, the sharpshooter and the bull’s-eye. I have addressed this dilemma last, not only because it seems to follow from the others but also because I have no comfortable resolution to offer beyond a mix of caution and humility. It is too easy to “see” what fits one’s theoretical or political preferences, especially if others have reported similar findings, and to draw the bull’s eye around those cases, in effect discounting the others. For example, in a recent analysis of interview data about what high school juniors and seniors do know and believe about the United States (Cornbleth, 2002), I noted a theme of critique and/or activism. Four of the five New York students who voiced critique are male; all four of the students who talked about “doing something” about the nation’s problems beyond complaining about them are female. Two of the students are from suburban Eisenhower High School and two are from urban Johnson while five are from urban Lincoln. Four of the students are European American (three female, one male), three are African American (two male, one female), one is Hispanic (female), and one is of mixed ancestry (male). What does this breakdown offer us toward understanding young people’s emergent social critique and activism in the United States in the 1990s?

Cornbleth2.qxd

18

6/20/2003

1:47 PM

Page 18

H EARING A MERICA ’ S Y OUTH

The racial/ethnic, gender, and urban/suburban numbers offer little if anything to me. The three most outspoken critics were the two African American male students and the mixed ancestry male student who described himself as “Hispanic in a black race” (2). It is, perhaps, tempting to “see” the “angry young black man” in these data and to perpetuate that image by drawing the sharpshooter bull’s-eye around the two African males and through the mixed ancestry male. The gender divide between critique and activism is more distinct, and the numbers are slightly larger, but it does not fit most preconceptions or any existing data with which I am familiar. No bull’s-eye is apt to be drawn here. Given the numbers and distributions, the only difference that I would be willing to risk acknowledging and commenting on is that all the students who voiced critique came from the urban schools. Even here I would be cautious about the urban attribution, because four of these five students had the same outspoken U.S. history teacher. What appears to be an urban effect may be a teacher effect, or some mix of these and other influences, or no effect at all. Consequently, my preference is for rich description and minimal categorization of persons or groups. Even with large numbers and clear-cut differences, I am concerned not to flatten respondents with stickerlike labels such as “angry young black man”; the students in this illustration may well be these things, but they are not only these things. Other substantial dimensions of their knowledge and beliefs about the United States, or their social identities— including dimensions that might extend understanding of “angry young black man”—ought not to be ignored. My concern here is not to shoot from the hip in ways that create or perpetuate strawpersons or caricatures, however catchy or momentarily appealing, that work against understanding and the interests of those being studied. These challenges of representation in research on social identities stem from complexity and seeming contradiction as well as methodological and ideological concerns. There are multiple truths about ourselves and others. Being multidimensional or multifaceted does not necessarily entail fragmentation; it neither guarantees nor precludes coherence, however transient.

CONCLUDING COMMENT It is from this critical pragmatist perspective and relational conception of social identity, with the dilemmas of such research well in mind, that I

Cornbleth2.qxd

6/20/2003

1:47 PM

Page 19

Dilemmas of Research on Social Identity

19

move now to the project methodology, what I’ve found, and what I believe it means. The critical pragmatist perspective predated the project and shaped its course and contours. My initial conception of social identity was refined and elaborated over the course of the project, while the dilemmas seemed to grow in size and specificity as I moved from interviews to analysis and interpretation. Perspective, conception, and dilemmas are interconnected in several ways. For example, the dilemmas might not have loomed so large in the absence of a critical pragmatism. From another perspective, they simply might not have been noticed (e.g., speaking with and about) or simply seen as circumstances for which the rule-determining right answer is given (e.g., the “n” from which one can generalize). Other perspectives or approaches to social identities no doubt would surface different conceptions and dilemmas.

NOTES 1. 2.

3.

4.

5.

6. 7. 8.

For a wittily sophisticated interpretation from a literary perspective, see McHale (in press), “A poet may not exist: Mock-hoaxes and the construction of national identity.” This is my interpretation of a position suggested by Seth Chaiklin of Aarhus University, Denmark, at an international conference in honor of the one hundredth anniversary of Vygotsky’s birth, October 1996, Moscow. I am working from Omi and Winant’s (1994) theory of racial formation and their concept of racial project in this effort to explore and understand young people’s social identities, “noticing race” (p. 159) without essentializing it or presupposing racial or other identity categories. Ironically, perhaps, the evidence clearly shows that the practice of racial profiling does not net proportionally more criminals. See, for example, Cole and Lamberth (May 13, 2001). Current U.S. Census categorizations are largely politically and administratively determined (by the Office of Management and Budget), although influenced by various groups including scientists-researchers. Other national census procedures, such as Canada’s, ask about heritage or ancestry, not race. Note that this analysis preceded the pervasiveness of the Internet, digitization, and the dominance of multinational corporations as well as postmodern theorizing. Page numbers are from interview transcripts. I also have been asking interviewees to say what it means to them to be black, or Christian, or whatever they say they are rather than assume that we all know what “it” means or that “it” means the same thing to all people who so identify. This focus on themes and underlying assumptions has been influenced not only by my theoretical bent but also by discussion during a plenary session of a one-day conference, “Women of Color and Visual Representations,” at the University of California-Santa Cruz, March 5, 1999. The discussion, which centered on the meanings and limits of the category label “women of color,” pointed out both the importance of names to some participants and the futility of trying to reach consensus on and fix the meaning of any such designation. It strongly suggested to me that associated meanings and implications are more important to understanding

Cornbleth2.qxd

6/20/2003

20

9.

1:47 PM

Page 20

H EARING A MERICA ’ S Y OUTH than the labels per se. One such meaning, the experience of oppression, is very relevant to the present study. Both cross-sectional and longitudinal research would seem to be needed to sort out age-related and generational effects.

REFERENCES Alba, R. D. (1990). Ethnic identity: The transformation of white America. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Anderson, B. (1991). Imagined communities. (2nd ed.). London: Verso. Appiah, K. A. (1992). In my father’s house: Africa in the philosophy of culture. New York: Oxford University Press. Berger, P., Berger, B., and Kellner, H. (1973). The homeless mind: Modernization and consciousness. New York: Vintage. Bhabha, H. (1994). The location of culture. New York: Routledge. Burbules, N. C. (1997). A grammar of difference: Some ways of rethinking difference and diversity as educational topics. Australian Education Researcher. Carlson, D. L. (1995). Constructing the margins: Of multicultural education and curriculum settlements. Curriculum Inquiry, 25 (4), 407–31. Cerulo, K. A. (1997). Identity construction: New issues, new directions. In J. H. and K. S. Cook (eds.), Annual review of sociology (vol. 23, 385–409). Palo Alto, CA: Annual Reviews, Inc. Chideya, F. (1999). The color of our future. New York: William Morrow. Cole, D., and Lamberth, J. (May 13, 2001). The fallacy of racial profiling. New York Times, Week in Review, 13. Collins, P. H. (1991). Black feminist thought: Knowledge, consciousness, and the politics of empowerment. New York: Routledge. Connell, R. W., Ashenden, D. J., Kessler, S., Dowsett, G. W. (1982). Making the difference: Schools, families, and social division. Sydney: George Allen & Unwin. Conzen, K. N., Gerber, D. A., Morawska, E., Pozzetta, G. E., and Vecoli, R. J. (April 1990). The invention of ethnicity: A perspective from the USA. Altreitalie, 37–62. Cornbleth, C. (1998). An America curriculum? Teachers College Record, 99 (4), 622–46. Cornbleth, C. (ed.). (2000). Curriculum politics, policy, practice: Cases in comparative context. Albany: SUNY Press. Cornbleth, C. (2002). Images of America: What youth do know about the United States. American Educational Research Journal, 39 (2), 519–52. Cornbleth, C., and Waugh, D. (1995, 1999). The great speckled bird: Multicultural politics and education policymaking. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Davidson, A. L. (1996). Making and molding identity in schools: Student narratives on race, gender, and academic engagement. Albany: SUNY Press. Davis, J. F. (1991). Who is black? One nation’s definition. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. Farrell, J. P. (1996). Narratives of identity: The voice of youth. Curriculum Inquiry, 26 (3), 235–43. Feinberg, W. (1998). Common schools/uncommon identities: National unity and cultural difference. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Cornbleth2.qxd

6/20/2003

1:47 PM

Page 21

Dilemmas of Research on Social Identity

21

Fine, M. (1994). Working the hyphens: Reinventing self and other in qualitative research. In N. K. Denzin and Y. S. Lincoln (eds.), Handbook of qualitative research, 70–82. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Gawande, A. (1999, February 8). The cancer-cluster myth. The New Yorker, 34–37. Grant, C. A., and Sleeter, C. E. (1986). After the school bell rings. London: Falmer. Gunn, G. (1992). Thinking across the American grain: Ideology, intellect, and the new pragmatism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Hall, S. (1989/1996). New ethnicities. In D. Morley and K. H. Chen (eds.), Stuart Hall: Critical dialogues in cultural studies, 441–49. London: Routledge. Heath, S. B., and McLaughlin, M. W. (1993). Identity and inner-city youth: Beyond ethnicity and gender. New York: Teachers College Press. Hoffman, D. M. (1996). Culture and self in multicultural education: Reflections on discourse, text, and practice. American Educational Research Journal, 33 (3), 545–69. Hotz, R. L. (1995, April 15). Is concept of race a relic? Los Angeles Times, A-1, 14. Jaimes, M. A. (1994). American racism: The impact on American-Indian identity and survival. In S. Gregory and R. Sanjek (eds.), Race , 41–61. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Lind, M. (1998). The beige and the black. New York Times Magazine, August 16, 38–39. Marable, M. (1995). Beyond black and white. London: Verso. McCarthy, C. (1995). The problem with origins: Race and the contrapuntal nature of the educational experience. In C. E. S. and P. L. McClaren (eds.), Multicultural education, critical pedagogy, and the politics of difference, 245–68. Albany: SUNY Press. McCarthy, C. (1998). The uses of culture. New York: Routledge. McHale, B. (in press). A poet may not exist: Mock-hoaxes and the construction of national identity. In R. Griffin (ed.), The faces of anonymity. New York: Palgrave/St. Martin’s. Mills, C. W. (1959). The sociological imagination. London: Oxford University Press. Nagel, J. (1994). Constructing ethnicity: Creating and recreating ethnic identity and culture. Social Problems, 41 (1), 152–76. Omi, M., and Winant, H. (1994). Racial formation in the United States. (2nd ed.). New York: Routledge. Owens, L. (1999). Dark river. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. Said, E. (1993). Culture and imperialism. New York: Knopf. San Juan, E., Jr. (1992). Articulations of power in ethnic and racial studies in the United States. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press International. Schegloff, E. A. (1997). Whose text? Whose context? Discourse & Society, 8 (2), 165–87. Steel, M. (1995). New colors: Mixed-race families still find a mixed reception. Teaching Tolerance (spring), 44–49. Tversky, A., and Kahneman, D. (1971). Belief in the law of small numbers. Psychological Bulletin, 76 (2), 105–10. Tyack, D. (1995). Schooling and social diversity: Historical reflection. In W. D. Hawley and A. W. Jackson (eds.), Toward a common destiny: Improving race and ethnic relations in America, 3–38. San Francisco: Jossey–Bass. Weis, L. (1990). Working class without work. New York: Routledge. Weis, L., and Fine, M. (1996). Narrating the 1980s and 1990s: Voices of poor and working-class white and African American men. Anthropology and Education Quarterly, 27 (4), 493–516. Wheeler, D. L. (1995, February 17). A growing number of scientists reject the concept of race. Chronicle of Higher Education, A–8, 9, 15. Wright, L. (1994). One drop of blood. The New Yorker, July 25, 46–55.

Cornbleth2.qxd

6/20/2003

1:47 PM

Page 22

22

This page intentionally left blank

Cornbleth2.qxd

6/20/2003

1:47 PM




Page 23

2

THE STAGES and the PLAYERS

Like, there’s love here, there’s hate here, there’s friendship, there’s enemies. So it’s not just one thing. [Pacific’s] not just a good school; it could be a bad school too. —Penny, Pacific High School, California, 3

Following a brief description of the course of the project and my research methodology, I introduce the six schools and sixty-plus students providing the database for this project. The young people we interviewed and whose U.S. history classes we observed come from six public comprehensive high schools in medium-size metropolitan areas of two of the most diverse states in the United States, New York and California. They reflect the broad middle range of America, from working poor to upper middleclass families, not its extremes. They are neither dropouts nor attending elite private schools. They are neither the privileged nor the pathologized. These young people do have a lot to say when adults are interested and willing to listen, and to put aside, or at least temporarily bracket, the expectations or mantras prevailing in their own academic or political-ideological homes. The juxtaposition of New York and California schools and students at the end of the twentieth century provides rich ground to plow analytically and interpretively. Consistent with the critical pragmatism that

Cornbleth2.qxd

24

6/20/2003

1:47 PM

Page 24

H EARING A MERICA ’ S Y OUTH

frames this book theoretically and my stance on the dilemmas of research on social identities presented in chapter 1, I began this research project with open-ended questions. For example: How do young people describe themselves when identity is not a multiple-choice question? What are their images of the nation? What are their beliefs about what it means to be an American? In parallel fashion, I analyzed the interview data inductively, seeking themes and patterns. While I kept track of the usual demographic descriptors such as gender, school (a rough proxy for social class), and apparent or reported race/ethnicity, I did not use these, a priori, as presumably meaningful analytic categories. Instead, I looked for substantive themes and then for their relationships to demographic descriptors. For example, I was struck initially by the substantial minority of New York students who eschewed or downplayed racial/ethnic self-description. When this “finding” held among California students, “none of the above” became a substantive interpretive theme. After the fact, I examined who these students were with respect to race/ethnicity and other demographics. Subsequently, I looked to see whether and where what I call “robust racial identities” could be found. Additionally, more students talked about religion as part of their identity than I would have predicted, and fewer than I would have liked included gender. Not surprisingly, social class and political leanings were rarely mentioned. The parent Schooling and Social Identities Project1 began in two schools, urban Lincoln and suburban Kennedy, in western New York in the mid-1990s. Over the next few years, two more schools from the same school districts were included, urban Johnson and suburban Eisenhower. Students at Eisenhower were interviewed about their images of America but not their personal identities, while the reverse was the case with students at Kennedy. In the spring of 1999, while on sabbatical in California for five months, I was able to observe U.S. history classes and interview students at two more high schools, Mission and Pacific, the former south of San Francisco and the latter to the north. Multicultural issues were in the news nationally as well as in New York at the time of our New York interviews. While the “America debate” about what it means to be an American and what version of the nation’s history should be transmitted to future generations via school curriculum and culture (Cornbleth and Waugh, 1995, 1999) was fading from its late 1980s–early 1990s peak, controversy over national history standards and New York State Education Department social studies–history standards continued (see, e.g., Cornbleth, 1996; Nash, Crabtree, and Dunn, 1997; Symcox, 2001). By 1999 in California, immigration issues were more

Cornbleth2.qxd

6/20/2003

1:47 PM

Page 25

The Stages and the Players

25

salient than multiculturalism. In the wake of the April murders of twelve students and one teacher by two students at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, however, student violence and cliques trumped both. To a large extent, the Schooling and Social Identities Project drew on a convenience sample of schools, and the classroom observations as well as student interviews depended on volunteers. After beginning with Lincoln and Kennedy, however, I sought to include schools with differing student bodies so as to reach a range of students. So, for example, most of the African American students are from New York, whereas the few Asian students are almost entirely from California. The New York Hispanic students are Puerto Rican, whereas the California Hispanic students are Mexican, Mexican American, and from Central America. Most of the classes observed were “regular” or heterogeneous ability U.S. history classes; one of the California classes was AP (Advanced Placement) U.S. history and government, and the New York classes included both “Regents” and general. The descriptions of the schools, students, and project methodology that follow are intended to enable readers to judge the credibility of the data and analysis, to determine the generalizability of my data and analysis to other sites and samples of interest, and to undertake similar studies.

THE SCHOOL SITES

New York Of the four western New York schools, two are in an older city, and two are in an affluent adjacent suburb. Kennedy, a suburban high school of 1,225 with some racial/ethnic and socioeconomic diversity, is predominantly white (more than 90 percent) and upper middle-class. Eisenhower, the second suburban high school, has 925 students and less racial/ethnic and socioeconomic diversity. It draws students primarily from the more recently developed section of the suburb, farther out from the city. Lincoln, an urban secondary magnet school with a “traditional academic” program and approximately 900 students, is located in a predominantly African American neighborhood. It draws students primarily from working-class families; at the time of the study, 60 percent of the students were of African descent, and 37 percent were of European descent.2 Most of

Cornbleth2.qxd

6/20/2003

26

1:47 PM

Page 26

H EARING A MERICA ’ S Y OUTH

the white students travel to the school from other neighborhoods. Johnson, a predominantly Hispanic/Puerto Rican urban high school of 950 students, has the most diverse student population in the region—linguistically and racially/ethnically—and a higher proportion of students from poor families than the other schools. The median household income in the suburban district is reported (by the New York State Education Department in 1998 at www.nysed.gov) as more than two and one-half times that in the urban district. At Johnson, 71 percent of the students were eligible for free lunches in 1995–96 compared with 52 percent at Lincoln and 4 percent at Kennedy and Eisenhower. In 1995–96, 5 percent of the students at Johnson and 13 percent of the students at Lincoln earned academically oriented Regents (rather than local) diplomas compared with 57 percent at Kennedy and 73 percent at Eisenhower. Sixty-six percent of the students at Johnson were classified as LEP (limited English proficient) as were 1 percent each at Kennedy and Eisenhower and none at Lincoln. According to 1990 Census categories and counts, the seven-county western New York area had a population of 1.6 million, 89 percent of which was white. The major city in the region, Buffalo, had a population of 328,000, 65 percent of which was white.3 The major European ethnic groups, both in the region and city, are German and Polish, followed by Italian and Irish. Blacks made up 8 percent of the population in western New York and 31 percent in Buffalo, Hispanics 2 percent and 5 percent, both Asians and American Indians less than 1 percent. By 1997–98, according to the New York State–compiled School District Data Book Profiles, of the Buffalo Public Schools’ 46,500 students, 53 percent were black, 34 percent white, and 10 percent Hispanic. Of the suburban district’s 9,400 students, 92 percent were white, 4 percent Asian, 2 percent black, and 1 percent Hispanic.

California The two California schools are best described as metropolitan, that is, near large cities and adjacent to small- or medium-sized cities. While seeming neither urban or suburban in an East Coast sense, Mission High School is described as suburban and Pacific High School as urban in the California Public School Profiles database. Mission is just inland from the central coast and serves approximately 2,150 students, of whom 50 percent are classified as white, 45 percent as Hispanic, and 5 percent as Asian or other. Pacific High School in the northern Bay Area is smaller and

Cornbleth2.qxd

6/20/2003

1:47 PM

Page 27

The Stages and the Players

27

more diverse. Its student body of about 1,450 is 43 percent black, 22 percent Asian, 21 percent white, 10 percent Hispanic, and 4 percent Filipino and other. According to school-provided data, in 1997–98, 6 percent of the students at Mission received Aid to Families with Dependent Children, and 40 percent of 1996–97 graduates completed coursework necessary for admission to the University of California or California State University system. Comparable data for Pacific are 12 percent and 75 percent, suggesting that, overall, it is economically poorer and academically stronger.4 Mission High School serves students from distinctly different communities separated by geographic location, race/ethnicity, and income. One is largely white and affluent. The second is mostly Mexican and Mexican American and much less affluent. In a November 1997 memo, average family income was reported to be less than half that of the white community.5 New York data show median household income in the urban district to be $10,000 less than the poorer California community for the same time period. Tensions between the two communities, including reported efforts by some affluent whites to create their own, separate school district, were ongoing during the course of my research. Students from the second, poorer community are bused to the school. A substantial proportion of these students (40 percent, 16 percent of Mission’s students) are classified as LEP and as migrant, qualifying them for special services. While the students I interviewed were all in “regular” U.S. history classes, some may have been receiving supplementary language instruction. One of the students who volunteered to be interviewed, Caphra, was an exchange student from Peru whose English was quite good. Pacific High School, in contrast, serves students from a range of communities including affluent suburban and exurban areas to rural-agricultural areas to a small industrial city. Eleven percent of Pacific’s students are described as LEP; less than a quarter of these are Spanish-speaking. One of four high schools in the geographically large school district, Pacific was described by Ruth, one of the students I interviewed there, as the more open-minded and less conservative of the district’s two better schools, better because of safety, academic opportunities, and achievement. For academic, political, or other reasons, some students travel a considerable distance to attend Pacific. Another view of Pacific was provided by Penny, who described a photography project to “capture” the school and described a “school of opposites.” She told me, “Like, there’s love here, there’s hate here, there’s friendship, there’s enemies. So it’s not just one thing. [Pacific’s] not just a good school, it could be a bad school too” (3).6

Cornbleth2.qxd

6/20/2003

28

1:47 PM

Page 28

H EARING A MERICA ’ S Y OUTH

The Students The students we interviewed were high school juniors or seniors who volunteered to be interviewed (or agreed to be interviewed when we personally invited them). In seeking volunteers, I tried to include a range of students; in some cases, teachers were helpful in suggesting students who might have a lot to say, or something worth hearing, but also might be reluctant to volunteer publicly. We were not strangers to the students. They knew us, having seen us around their school, because we had been sitting in on their eleventh grade U.S. history classes or, in one case, because we and they had been participating in an urban-suburban partner project. We did not find contradictions between our observations of students, classes, and schools and what students told us in individual interviews. Of the sixty-two students we interviewed at the six schools, five were from Kennedy, seven from Eisenhower, thirteen from Lincoln, eleven from Johnson, eleven from Mission, and fifteen from Pacific. The group turned out to be evenly divided by gender within and across schools except for Pacific, where two-thirds of the students who volunteered to be interviewed were male. At this point, the spring of 1999, the students’ responses seemed to be becoming redundant or repetitive. Since we did not seem to be learning much more or new, I decided not to seek further students to interview. Appendix A provides a roster of participants, and Appendix B a summary of the distribution of participating students. As suggested in chapter 1, these student interviews should be considered as reflecting their identities at one moment in time and place, as identities-in-process or in-the-making. Without detracting from their individual and wider significance, it is important not to consider them as fixed or a finished product. The students’ senses of what it means to be an American, in particular (see chapter 7), may have been influenced subsequently by the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and all that has followed. What they told us remains significant, however, as a marker of the later twentieth century and as a baseline from which to gauge subsequent change.

The Interviews and Their Analysis The social identities described here are best read in terms of the context of the interviews as well as my interpretive lens. The interviews were conducted individually with student volunteers, in the mid- to late 1990s, in

Cornbleth2.qxd

6/20/2003

1:47 PM

Page 29

The Stages and the Players

29

a range of places in the students’ schools (e.g., corner of the cafeteria, empty classroom, storeroom, picnic table in the courtyard). All but a handful were taped with the students’ consent and later transcribed to facilitate systematic analysis. In briefly describing the project to students and soliciting their participation, usually in their U.S. history class after being introduced by the teacher, I emphasized that, whereas numerous adults had strong ideas about what students should learn and believe, I was interested in what they actually knew and believed about the United States and how they would describe themselves when identity was not a multiple-choice question. In cases where few students volunteered, I invited individuals personally, and most agreed to be interviewed. The interviewers were known to the students as folks from the university who had been sitting in as observers of their eleventh grade U.S. history classes and/or who had been an integral part of an urban-suburban partner project.7 Consequently, we were not strangers to the students. Three of the interviewers are females of European ancestry: one faculty member over fifty years old and two graduate students under thirty. One interviewer is an African American male undergraduate student, well under thirty, and one is a European American faculty member in his forties. Despite apparent differences between ourselves and the students, they seemed reasonably comfortable with us and generally eager to talk, glad that some adult was interested in what they had to say. The major data source for the present analyses consists of students’ responses to the questions about their self-descriptions and their sense of what it means to be an American. After some brief introductory talk in most cases, the interview usually began with this question: “In the United States, it is common to identify and label people according to the groups to which they appear to belong. For example, people talk about racial/ethnic, cultural, national, language, religious, social class, age, gender, and political groups. Which, if any, of these groups—or others—do you use to identify or describe yourself?” We also asked students to elaborate, for example, to explain what it means to them to be ——— to describe how they came to see themselves that way, to describe any situations where they identified primarily with one rather than another group.8 Including a list of groups in the opening question was intended to introduce the conventional categories in familiar language, offering students some possibilities or starting points. At the same time, we were clear that these categories were optional, not at all required. Consistent with the norms of ethnographic interview research (e.g., Bogdan and Biklen, 1992; Erickson, 1986), data analysis has been induc-

Cornbleth2.qxd

6/20/2003

30

1:47 PM

Page 30

H EARING A MERICA ’ S Y OUTH

tive. I read, reread, and marked the transcripts as I constructed, tested, and refined interpretive themes in response to my questions about social identities. Initial interpretations also were shared with university colleagues and other members of the research team who had participated in the larger project on which I draw here, and their feedback informed subsequent analysis. Major themes are emphasized in the interpretation that follows, drawing liberally on the interview transcripts for illustration and the tenor of the students’ talk about themselves. The emphasis on themes is intended to foreground young people’s self-perceptions, intentions, and assumptions regardless of the specific descriptors or categorizations they employed, as promised in chapter 1. In presenting the results of my data analysis, pseudonyms are used to protect anonymity. Consistent with my theoretical position, school, district, racial/ethnic, gender, and other categorical identifications are noted only when relevant to differential findings.9

NOTES 1.

2.

3.

4.

5. 6.

7.

The classroom observations of images of America conveyed in U.S. history classes are not included here (see Cornbleth, 1998). Students’ images of America are included here only as they are relevant to specific themes. For an analysis and interpretation of the New York students’ images of America, see Cornbleth (2002). While more recent demographic data are available in several instances, I present the available data nearest to the time of the student interviews. Most of the school and district data reported by the states have been provided by the schools and school districts. “White” includes people of Hispanic origin. Data are from the 1990 Census of Population and Housing Summary Tape File 3A, obtained at the University at Buffalo’s Lockwood Library. AFDC rather than free or reduced-price meals is used as a socioeconomic status indicator for the California schools, because the available meals data appear in error or misrepresentative. In either case, recent immigrants, legal or otherwise, may be reluctant to seek, or discouraged from seeking, government-provided social services. Personal communication from Margaret A. Gibson. I do not recall other students voluntarily describing their school in these ways, except perhaps for the Johnson students who remarked with pride on the diversity of students (range of languages spoken) at their school. The partner project involved approximately twenty students from urban Lincoln and twenty students from suburban Kennedy as well as their English teachers (one from each school) and myself. The students met four times as a group: first at Kennedy and then at Lincoln where, in pairs, the visitors shadowed the hosts, and then met as a whole group; at a downtown performance of August Wilson’s

Cornbleth2.qxd

6/20/2003

1:47 PM

Page 31

The Stages and the Players

8.

9.

31

“Coming Home” and afterwards over pizza; and finally at the university, where the students offered video and live presentations on topics/issues relevant to their experiences getting to know each other across racial, socioeconomic, and other divides. Interviews at Johnson were shorter than those at the other schools both because of time constraints and, possibly, the preferences of the students as well as the relative inexperience of the interviewer. Earlier, the Fallingwater research group at the Graduate School of Education, University at Buffalo, of which this project was a part through 1996–97, engaged in extensive discussion of how to describe the participants in the study so as to (a) protect their anonymity and maintain promised confidentiality and (b) represent them without encouraging stereotyping by using conventional categorical descriptors that do not appear to make a difference in a particular instance. My position minimizing the use of such characterizations was not shared by most of my faculty colleagues. They were less concerned about confidentiality and possible stereotyping than just wanting to know who was who. I suggest that this “just wanting to know” reflects the often unexamined yet pernicious hold of conventional categories and assumptions about what matters.

REFERENCES Bogdan, R. C., and Biklen, S. K. (1992). Qualitative research methods for education (2nd ed.). Boston: Allyn and Bacon. Cornbleth, C. (1996). Discouraging diversity: Making education policy New York style. Social Science Record, 33 (2), 7–14. Cornbleth, C. (1998). An America curriculum? Teachers College Record, 99 (4), 622–46. Cornbleth, C. (2002). Images of America: What youth do know about the United States. American Educational Research Journal, 39 (2), 519–52. Cornbleth, C., and Waugh, D. (1995, 1999). The great speckled bird: Multicultural politics and education policymaking. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Erickson, F. (1986). Qualitative methods in research on teaching. In M. C. Wittrock (ed.), Handbook of research on teaching (3rd ed., 119–61). New York: Macmillan. Nash, G. B., Crabtree, C., and Dunn, R. E. (1997). History on trial: Culture wars and the teaching of the past. New York: A. A. Knopf. Symcox, L. (2001). Whose history? New York: Teachers College Press.

This page intentionally left blank

Cornbleth2.qxd

6/20/2003

1:47 PM




Page 33

3

NONE of the ABOVE?

I would liberate myself and ourselves from the entire machinery of verbal hypnotism. . . . I am simply of the human race. . . . I am of the human nation. . . . I am of Earth. —Jean Toomer, 1894–1967, quoted in Cynthia Earl Kerman and Richard Eldridge, The Lives of Jean Toomer: A Hunger for Wholeness

In contrast to other, noteworthy studies (e.g., Davidson, 1996; Proweller, 1998; Wexler, 1992; Yon, 2000), my interest in young people’s social identities and identity relations does not focus a priori on either class or race/ethnicity—or the apparent role of schooling in identity (re-)formation. I do not address within-school groupings or cliques except as interviewees see them as important. My informants are juniors and seniors about to leave high school and venture out in the world, and I focus on how they see themselves now and, to a lesser extent, where they see themselves heading. While this approach may provide glimpses into identity (re-)formation processes, it is primarily an illumination of a moment in the lives and identities of these young people. In this chapter, I focus first on the significant minority of our interviewees who eschewed racial/ethnic identity markers and then on those who described themselves as of mixed ancestry. Although most students

Cornbleth2.qxd

34

6/20/2003

1:47 PM

Page 34

H EARING A MERICA ’ S Y OUTH

(forty-three of the fifty-two who were asked about their identities) mentioned their race/ethnicity, either as part of their identity or in response to a direct question, fourteen (27 percent) preferred not to be so identified. How are we to understand and represent students who downplay or reject racial/ethnic identity markers and describe themselves as “a person” or “a human being”? Having asked an open-ended question about identity, one cannot then reject what people say. My response has been to emphasize themes rather than particular descriptors or categorizations in analyzing and interpreting the interview data. I have tried to listen carefully to the students’ voices and hear what they are saying as active social agents and constructors of their individual and collective identities—some but not all of which challenge dominant representations. Jay’s selfdescription as a teenager, for example, seemed much less an effort to emphasize his age than an effort to avoid being stereotyped negatively as a black male. He was neither denying nor trying to hide his African Americanness and gender; he seemed to me to be attempting to sidestep stereotyping and associated discrimination. The major data source for the present analysis consists of students’ responses to the following question: “In the United States, it is common to identify and label people according to the groups to which they appear to belong. For example, people talk about racial/ethnic, cultural, national, language, religious, social class, age, gender, and political groups. Which, if any, of these groups—or others—do you use to identify or describe yourself?” We also asked students to elaborate, for example, to explain what it means to them to be ——— and sometimes to further describe how they came to see themselves that way or any situations where they identified primarily with one rather than another group or descriptor. By the time of the California interviews, having recognized that a substantial number of students were avoiding or rejecting categorizing and labeling, especially with respect to race/ethnicity, I mentioned this directly to students who had done so and asked them to say more. For example, I said to Aphra at Mission High School: Okay. I’d appreciate it if you said a bit more about not identifying with any groups, and I’ll tell you the reasons. Many, or most, adults do label and group people. We’re finding in this project that clearly large numbers of young people don’t. And I think that’s an important generational difference, and we’re trying to understand that. So if you could say more about why you don’t or if you’ve changed, how and why, that would be very helpful. (2)

I’ll present their responses to my comment later in this chapter. The nine New York and five California students whose social identities are foregrounded in the first section to follow described themselves

Cornbleth2.qxd

6/20/2003

1:47 PM

Page 35

None of the Above?

35

Table 3-1 Students Preferring “Person” Identity Race/Ethnicity*

Self-Description

Kennedy High School Max

white

person

Johnson High School Carl Manuel Marissa

white, Native American Hispanic-black [Hispanic]

individual human being (no categories)

Lincoln High School Blake Jay Kirk Linda Maggie

black American [African American] white, Caucasian [European American] African American

me, person, human person person (no categories) individual

Mexican, European [European American] Guatemalan

just American average guy my own self

Chinese African American, Indian

student human race

Mission High School Aphra Larry Jesus Pacific High School Andrew Steven

*Brackets indicate that race/ethnicity was observed and inferred, not self-reported

primarily as a “person” or a “human being” or refused to adopt any group membership. After presenting a sketch of each, highlighting what they say about being who they are and why they see themselves this way, I consider emergent themes across the cases and their implications. I describe the New York and California students separately because it seems to me that they differ in their intensity and reasons for eschewing racial/ethnic (or all) categorizing and labeling of people. The California students less often used the “person” language as in “I am a person, a human being,” appealed to abstract principles, or conveyed a sense of mission to change or correct prejudice, discrimination, or racism in U.S. society. Their concerns seemed more limited or local, not prejudging or stereotyping (or being stereotyped), to avoid the offending stereotypes and their effects by not using the language. In addition, several California

Cornbleth2.qxd

6/20/2003

36

1:47 PM

Page 36

H EARING A MERICA ’ S Y OUTH

students neither identified themselves racially/ethnically nor took an explicit stand against such identity markers (Chrissy, Faye, Kendall, and Marian—all from Pacific High School); they are not included here. Had they been included, the percentage of students preferring “none of the above” would have risen from 27 percent to 35 percent. Six of the nine New York students described here are male (only Max and Kirk among these nine students explicitly identified themselves by gender). Based primarily on racial/ethnic self-report (or observation and inference, indicated in brackets), three of the students are black (all from Lincoln), three are white (two from Lincoln and one from Kennedy), one is Hispanic, and two are of mixed ancestry (the latter three from Johnson). Four of the five California students are male (only Andrew explicitly identified himself by gender). Two are of mixed ancestry (one from Mission High School and one from Pacific High School), one is white (from Mission), one born in Guatemala (from Mission), and one Chinese born in Brazil and raised in Taiwan (from Pacific).

PERSONAL SKETCHES

New York Max, “male human” Max, a senior from suburban Kennedy High School, conveyed a self-confident, even arrogant, manner during the interview. He began to describe himself by rejecting group membership labels and then agreed to “male human because technically that’s what I am” (3). Max: In describing myself, I would use none of those groups. . . . I see them as irrelevant. I see them as mere labels. I mean, I think, I think the character in the book The Illuminatus . . . said it best when he said that in labeling something, you are making it a damned thing, whereupon it is supposed to behave like any other damned thing of the type. And that goes beyond just calling someone a Jew or a black or a white. It goes along with calling someone a doctor. . . . I think such titles, and even such cherished things as heritage and racial identity, are actually weaknesses that bring people down rather than strengthening them. They drive people apart from each other and make them see differences that don’t exist. JM: Say more about driving people apart.

Cornbleth2.qxd

6/20/2003

1:47 PM

Page 37

None of the Above?

37

Max: I think that in learning and going more in depth with your heritage you are creating a barrier to other human beings based on where you originate from, a barrier that should not exist. You are setting yourself apart. . . . I think everyone should be judged on their individual merit. . . . I know a great many people who share the heritage that I supposedly am part of. I have nothing in common with them. Am I supposed to somehow feel for them and not feel for someone, for example, of Italian background or someone who’s black? There is no logic behind ethnicity or race or, um, cultural differences in my humble opinion. (1)

Max goes on to explain that cultural identification breeds divisiveness and war such as in Ireland, Bosnia, and the Middle East, or just dislike as between the English and the French in this century. In response to a question about group labels or tags that others have used to describe him that he finds uncomfortable or unacceptable, Max told us: Well, um, I’m Jewish. Um, I do not like being addressed, I do not like being addressed as “you Jews” or “the Jews.” I do not even like hearing it. Um, I don’t connect much with my background. I don’t think I connect much with any background, truth to tell. Um, gee, um, I don’t—being, see being a white, I’m white, no one’s addressed me as a white man before. But I mean, just calling you a white man puts you into a category with other white men. I mean, I’m a human. That’s the only category that I’m really comfortable with. Um, all the others are just additional little labels tacked on. No, well, strike that. A male human because technically that’s what I am. JM: So, should categories be irrelevant? Max: Oh, they are irrelevant. But male is a scientific term. And human is very relevant actually, as opposed to being a chair or a plant. I think that humans are infinitely superior to such things and so should be given that title, “human male.” Past that, oh, and my name’s [Max]. That’s another title I don’t mind. That’s my name. (3)

He also evinced a bit of humor in talking about himself in relation to his parents: Well, my mom is an immigrant. She was born in Israel. Um, she grew up in a lower-middle class family. Um, she worked for everything that she has, unlike me, the prince . . . my father, conversely, was an upper middle-class gent. Um, he’s a radiologist, a doctor. Um, far as I can tell he had not a silver plate but he had all the opportunities he needed, um, to succeed. (7)

Max went on to say that he is more like his mother, “a very dominant, aggressive personality” (7). He ended the interview saying that his ideas haven’t changed in the past few years, “people are people. Humans. Not blacks or whites or Jews or Italians or Russians . . . that’s it” (10).

Cornbleth2.qxd

6/20/2003

1:47 PM

Page 38

H EARING A MERICA ’ S Y OUTH

38

Carl, “an individual” Carl, a junior from urban Johnson High School, agreed to the interview only if he could be interviewed along with his friend Richard. Richard responded to our questions first, while Carl listened, and then Carl responded to the same questions; after that, both talked with interviewer AS about their images of America and their U.S. history class. “I don’t identify myself as a group,” Carl told us; he identifies himself “as an individual” (7). Asked to say more, he continued, “I don’t like following people. I like doing my own thing. I do what I want” (7). Shortly afterward, the interviewer asked more directly: AS: Can I just ask your ethnic background? Carl: My culture like? AS: Yeah. Carl: Like what I am? AS: Yes. Carl: I’m some Indian. Well, I’m half-Indian. White. Some—a little bit—I think I’m German. I’m a whole bunch of things. AS: And you don’t identify yourself as any of those? Carl: Not really. (7–8)

Clearly, Carl is much less self-revealing than Max. He is clear about rejecting group categorizations and being “an individual.”

Manuel, “human being” Also a junior at Johnson and of mixed ancestry, Manuel described himself as “Hispanic and, I mean like Hispanic in a black race” (2). Asked if there was anything else, he said, “No. I’m just a human being. I think everybody should get along, and everybody should be with everybody. But, still, everybody has their own race and nationality, so I’m, you know, Hispanic” (2). Asked what it meant to him to be Hispanic, Manuel told us, “I’m proud of my country [referring to Puerto Rico where he was born]. I’m proud of who I am, and I’m proud of having two languages” (2). He went on to explain that it was good to have two languages because so many people in the United States speak Spanish and there are

Cornbleth2.qxd

6/20/2003

1:47 PM

Page 39

None of the Above?

39

a lot of other Spanish-speaking countries. He didn’t say anymore about being black. Toward the end of the interview, Manuel said, “I’m my own person. Everybody is different. . . . God put us here for a reason. We all supposed to do what we’re supposed to do. . . . I’m just my own person. I’m different from everybody else” (12). Unlike Carl, Manuel does not reject all group characterizations. He does, however, insist on his individuality.

Marissa Having dropped out of another urban high school, Marissa had recently returned to school as a junior at Johnson and was in the same U.S. history class as Carl and Manuel. She refused all group membership labels except when asked directly about her family background. Then she said, “I’m Hispanic. My mother and father came from Puerto Rico” (2). She told us: I don’t think I belong to any group. . . . I’m not any group. AS: Do you ever identify yourself by your ethnic background or your racial background? Marissa: No, I mean I don’t, I don’t want to be disagreeing with people or because of my ethnic background be closer to somebody—or farther away from somebody. . . . I’d rather just be my own person and do whatever I want instead of, like, talking and gossiping [referring to other Puerto Rican girls in her history class]. ’Cause I don’t like that [gossip]. (2)

Although she shared at length about her impressions of the school, neighborhood, and “America,” Marissa didn’t directly reveal more about how she sees herself.

Blake, “a person first” Blake, a senior from urban Lincoln High School, spoke at length about himself and about how “it’s supposed to be” in America, expressing anger, sadness, and hope. While neither denying nor ignoring being black, Blake emphasized his desire to be treated fairly as another human being and equally as an American. He wants to be seen as a person with rights and feelings like anyone else, instead of being stereotyped as a black male likely to make trouble. He told us: I’m a black American. Black American, African American, I’m just me, you know?

Cornbleth2.qxd

6/20/2003

1:47 PM

Page 40

H EARING A MERICA ’ S Y OUTH

40

JM: What do you mean by that? Blake: I’m a person first, and I’m a human being first, and then, um, color second or whatever you like to call it. Um, basically that’s how I feel about it. Whatever you wanna label yourself, it’s totally up to you. Whatever you feel comfortable being called. Some, especially people in my race, some people will say that we should call ourselves Africans because that’s what we are. Because that’s where our blood, that’s where we come from. Well, I wasn’t born in Africa. I was born here in America, so even though my blood line may be from Africa, and I may have it in my family, but I wasn’t born there. . . . I’ve never been to Africa. I’ve heard things about it. I’ve read about it. I’ve seen pictures of it. I have never been there. I have never lived there. So, I really cannot speak too much on me being from there, like what it’s like, or where I grew up at, because I grew up here in America. So, basically all I know is about living here in America. And I feel that I’m a black American, African American, whatever. (1)

Blake continued, with considerable emotion, referring to racial slurs: You feel this way about me because of what you see in the newspaper or what you’ve heard about people like me. You assume that all of us are the same. And we’re not the same. JM: Say more about that. Blake: Because the media today has painted such a picture of black people. That we, that all we do is sell drugs. All we do is stand on the corner. Or, there are a couple of good of us, but the best thing we do is juggle a basketball or run a football down a football field. That’s the media. That’s the picture that’s painted by the media. And so based on what people see on the TV, that’s how they feel. That all of us are that way. And it’s not true. And it’s not true. (3)

Blake articulates clearly what several other students seemed to hint at but did not make explicit.

Jay, “teenager” Like Blake, Jay is a senior at Lincoln and an African American male who prefers not to be identified by race or gender. He acknowledged being a star player on the school’s basketball team, state champs in their division that year, and earning a basketball scholarship to a liberal arts college. When I asked about “the basketball label. That doesn’t matter much to you?” Jay replied, “that doesn’t bother me much. Because, I mean, that’s how people identify me. . . . I seem to enjoy it” (2). In response to our initial question about how he would describe himself, Jay said, “I can be classified as a teenager” (2). He volunteered that “I don’t look at it as race. I don’t look at it as religion or anything like

Cornbleth2.qxd

6/20/2003

1:47 PM

Page 41

None of the Above?

41

that because I think that we’re all just one. We should just be one big happy family. I wish things were like that. . . . That’s how I would like to be identified—as just a teenager” (2). When I responded, “Okay. You say that you ‘would like to be,’ so that suggests you’re not. Other people peg you differently?” Jay said: Yeah. I mean, there’s so many different groups that you can’t avoid it. You’re in a religious group or a social group. You’re in a gender group. Like you said, all those things [referring to the opening question in our interview] and you can’t avoid it. You’re always going to be classified as something. If you’re different from somebody else, they’re going to classify you. . . . If people want to classify me, and I don’t like it, I don’t think there’s anything I can do about it because they’re gonna do that anyway. . . . But I just keep going on. I don’t let that bother me. . . . You hear a lot [in the news] about the black and white thing and, you know, all these different groups. But I tend to, don’t pay no mind because to me the whole thing is just stupid. It’s just stupid. . . . I know if it does bother me, it will eat me up. I don’t want anything to do that to me.” (2–3)

He gave an example of the “race thing” that he has experienced playing basketball: Especially playing basketball because, I mean, they use it, the black and white thing, so much, so often. . . . I’ve been in situations where we’re playing against a team that’s predominantly white, and it seems like the referees, they call the game differently. . . . when we were up in [name of town] playing for the state championship, the game was like that. I mean, the team that we played, they were a bunch of rich folks, and one of the coaches overheard them trying to put us down, saying that we’re a bunch of poor blacks from the inner city, we can’t do anything right, we don’t have this, we don’t have that. CC: This was the coach trying to get his team up? Jay: This was people just in general talking. And one of our coaches overheard them, and they didn’t know. They didn’t realize it. You know, the coach came back, and he used that as motivation. And that’s what helped us win, also. (3)

Jay also described himself as something of a loner: “I’m really not a group type of person. I mean, it’s okay every now and then. But I’m more like to stay by myself. That way I won’t have to worry about anything” (4). And, “I really don’t listen to that many people because I don’t want people trying to run my life. I’m my own person” (6). That person seems to have been strongly influenced by his mother, whom he described as “like mentally, she’s the strongest person alive that I know. And I think if you’re mentally strong, you can do anything” (5). Later, Jay restated his belief that people don’t differ that much. Referring to his experience in the partner project with a suburban school

Cornbleth2.qxd

42

6/20/2003

1:47 PM

Page 42

H EARING A MERICA ’ S Y OUTH

and students, he said, “When you think about it, there’s really not any differences. You learn that everybody is just the same thing. Maybe, if you want to call it that, a different color” (8). In these statements, Jay seems to be trying to downplay, if not do away with, group classifications and labels. At least for the time being, his emphasis on “mental strength” and being his “own person,” as well as the recognition he receives from playing basketball extraordinarily well, seems to provide some insulation from the overt racism that disturbs Blake. I’ve quoted Jay at length in an effort to convey some of the complexity and nuance of his seemingly ambivalent feelings and frustration.

Kirk, “person, white male” A senior at Lincoln, like Blake and Jay, Kirk also is one of Jay’s friends, and both served on the school’s Senior Council. In a Black History school assembly (and later during the partner project), Kirk and Jay did a moving reading of Langston Hughes’s “Let America Be America Again,” where Kirk was the narrator and Jay was the poor-minority-immigrant voice “that mumbles in the dark” and then speaks out. Unlike Blake and Jay, Kirk is white, went to a neighborhood Catholic school until about five years ago, and is active in ROTC. He responded to our opening question by saying, “Um, well, Caucasian male. Um, Roman Catholic religion. Consider myself not a prejudiced person at all—ethnic or racist, religious, anything like that. I take people how they really are. ’Cause I don’t, really, I classify myself as a person more than anything else” (1). Asked why these identity markers, Kirk responded, “’Cause it’s politically correct. It’s a, that’s what I am really. . . . I just classify myself as a white male. That’s what I am” (1). Later, in response to our question about uncomfortable or annoying group labels that others have used to describe him, Kirk said: White trash, as a start. Um, it’s really it. I mean, names are really nothing, ya know. . . . It’s just, I don’t believe in racism, at all. I’m a very nonbiased person, so I try and, if I treat somebody else with respect, I expect that same respect in return. That’s just, ya know, that’s one thing that really gets on me. Racism in this country is a big thing. And being in this school, having the friends I have, I’m friends with everyone. Ya know, it’s not a black thing, a white thing, it’s just you’re friends with everybody. That’s the way it should be. (2)

Kirk noted that his ideas have changed since he moved from the neighborhood Catholic school to Lincoln: I grew up in [neighborhood] all my life. Uh, I went to the neighborhood school, ya know, so I didn’t experience too many things. . . . basically everybody

Cornbleth2.qxd

6/20/2003

1:47 PM

Page 43

None of the Above?

43

knew each other. You hung around in your own neighborhood. You stuck with your own, ya know. It was, it was, ya know, it was nice . . . then, when I came to [Lincoln] I noticed there’s all different kinds of people here. . . . So when I came here, it was like a learning experience on my own. I learned that life isn’t so nice and sweet and perfect. It’s not like that everywhere. Some people got it harder. (7)

Earlier, Kirk had talked about the increasing gap between rich and poor in the United States and poverty in the neighborhood surrounding the school. He also commented further on the diversity of students at Lincoln: Um, a very diverse, diverse school . . . I still feel that I’m not a prejudiced person, ya know. You can’t, you can’t blame an entire race of people for the actions of a few. That’s always my feelings. There’s always going to be bad apples in every single, in every single walk of life there’s going to be some bad apples, whether it be white, black, Puerto Rican, whatever. JM: Say more about what you mean by different types of people at this school. Kirk: Um, racially, ethnically, religiously. I mean everything really . . . you really won’t find too many people that are exactly like you even though they might have the same skin color or they might believe in the same religion. . . . they could be Italian, you could be Irish. You know, it’s just, even those little differences can make a difference. JM: Why do they make a difference? Kirk: You’re proud of who you are, ya know. And you try and, sometimes you try and compare that to other people just to make yourself, ya know, you gotta feel, you gotta feel better about yourself so you compare. You know, you say, well “I’m an Italian and Irish and Polish so I’m better than you who are Swedish, German, and, ya know, Chinese.”. . .[Some people] think, “Oh, if you’re not exactly the way I am, ya know, Anglo-Saxon, Caucasian, then you’re no good. You’re nothing.” That’s why the KKK is so dangerous, cause that’s what they believe. (8)

While Kirk describes himself as “a person more than anything else” (1), and unprejudiced, he is aware of racial/ethnic and social class differences. He acknowledges, but has less to say about, gender and religion.

Linda Linda, too, is a senior at Lincoln and of European ancestry. She does not use group labels to describe herself or others because she sees them as creating problems:

Cornbleth2.qxd

44

6/20/2003

1:47 PM

Page 44

H EARING A MERICA ’ S Y OUTH I just try to stay away from that because, I don’t know, I just like people . . . some people like to classify themselves like that, and that doesn’t bother me. . . .I just try to look at somebody else as a person. . . . it’s hard sometimes because, uh, the people in my family and the people I work with . . . they not only classify themselves, but they classify everyone else around them. And, um, I really don’t feel, I don’t feel it’s proper to say “HEY THAT’S NOT VERY NICE!” (2)

She continued, saying, “Maybe if somebody asks specifically, you know . . . then I’d say, ‘Well, I think he was Hispanic, or he was black, or she was white.’ . . .People want to know, and I don’t know why, but people just want to know” (2). Later, Linda volunteered, “A lot of people think that I’m naive or I think too simply or something. I don’t know. Why does it have to be so complicated? I mean, it really isn’t. I mean, people really aren’t that different” (5). Referring to her grandmother’s bigotry and “my brother, he has views, too, that I wouldn’t want to get into,” (6) Linda talked about people she knows who make a big deal out of everything. So and so cheated me. This ethnic group cheated our ethnic group. . . . It’s such a big argument about things in the past, you know. . . . And everybody wants to sit around and argue about who was right and who was wrong. . . . And nobody wants to get on with it. It really bothers me. That’s why, that’s why I think like this. . . . personally, what I think everybody needs to do is judge everybody on an individual basis. (6)

Linda’s response to the declining neighborhoods around the school and where she lives not too far away is to focus less on what’s wrong and more on what to do about it, “to get on with it.” She is positive about Lincoln and her experience there: “get here, and you learn to deal with people and to know people and to get along with people” (6) different from yourself. Several of the students at both Lincoln and Johnson shared this positive view of their school experience.

Maggie, “individual person” Maggie, a senior at Lincoln, described herself in terms of race, religion, and social class with the qualification that “It’s the individual person and not the African American” (3). What does it mean to be black? It doesn’t mean, for me, it doesn’t mean, for me, to be different really from anybody else. It’s just a different skin color. . . . I don’t really put too much focus on white people and black people as being different because I think me being a person, that it just happens that I’m black!

Cornbleth2.qxd

6/20/2003

1:47 PM

Page 45

None of the Above?

45

You know, the black thing just doesn’t really, it’s not something I focus on. . . . I’m not that type of person that thinks of “Oh, I’m just this because I’m African American. I’m this. I’m that.” (3)

Despite her downplaying of race, Maggie commented later that “we all know that race does make a big difference [to others] for anything you do” (5). Regarding religion, Maggie said, “I’m not into religion that much” (3). Later, she added, “Religion is probably the most important thing, but that’s not for me right now in my life. It hasn’t been yet. One day I would love it to be” (4). She said that she is a Baptist and that she has been to Jehovah’s Witnesses, Muslim, and Catholic religious services with friends. With respect to social class, Maggie said: Okay, social class, where you stand in society, where people will look at you in society. You know, as far as the things you have accomplished so far. As far as the things that you have, so far. That’s what social class means to me. That’s what I believe right now. I would say that I’m in the lower class because there’s really not too many things that I have. My family’s not rich or well off or anything like that. (4)

Maggie expressed concern that middle-class people (who send their children to private schools or live in the suburbs) see people like herself who go to city schools as poverty-stricken and all the negative things that implies (which she did not specify). “That bothers me,” she said. “It’s not a fair judgment” (6). She was apprehensive at the beginning of the partner project, expecting to be put down by the suburban students, but, she told me, “you know, they weren’t rude. They weren’t ignorant. They didn’t, I mean, if they did look down on me for being where I’m from or who I am, I didn’t feel it” (9). While Max and Kirk also made direct reference to social class, it seemed to matter more to Maggie.

California

Aphra, “just American” Aphra, a junior at suburban Mission High School, and the only female among these five California students, told me that she’s “filled out a lot of papers that asked for ethnicities and I refused to do those just because I don’t identify with anything. Um, I guess I would be considered just

Cornbleth2.qxd

46

6/20/2003

1:47 PM

Page 46

H EARING A MERICA ’ S Y OUTH

American. . . . Besides from that, I don’t really classify myself as anything in particular” (1). American, Aphra explained later, means “a big, like, hodgepodge and just everything” (4). She did describe herself as “pretty serious about schoolwork” and “pretty independent” (1). When I asked Aphra to say a bit more about not identifying with any specific group, she explained as follows: With me, like ethnically, and my sister, we’re like, my sister’s black and white mixed, and I’m Mexican and white, so I don’t classify myself as white, and I wouldn’t say Mexican. Whereas, here, there’s a lot of like, Mexican ethnically background people, but other than that, um, I just, I don’t exactly want to exactly be related with some of our cultural, like the society stuff, so like, I’ve been in other countries and asked if I’m, like, from America. As soon as I say, “California,” they have this, like, image of me. And so it’s not, like, something I necessarily want. . . . I think when someone gives, like, a background or some kind of a title to them, then that’s going to create stereotypes in someone else. . . . Like, you know, if you hear something, you might think, “Oh well, they’re from here so they must be, like, Catholic, or they must have these kind of views,” or something related to that. And I don’t have any of those. CC: So you see it as a way of trying to avoid stereotyping or . . . Aphra: Yeah, pretty much. Not just that. I just don’t even, like, I just don’t see reasons for, like, like, more of a grouping, like, in our campus we have a lot of groups, but it’s not the same as the kind you’re referring to. And so, it’s just never really risen to the point where I need to classify myself. Even when it is, it’s only, like, language involved, or just your background, and I don’t see the reason for that. I don’t know, I mean statistically I could see why colleges would want to know this percent is this and this percent is that, but aside from that I don’t see why it’s important. [Proposition 209 against affirmative action in California college admissions was still in the news at the time of the interview.] So I don’t really like to get into that. (2)

Aphra also described different groups at her high school and where she sees herself fitting in: This might be the general stereotype, but in general I think you’ll have a lot of people be able to point out different areas that are associated with different people. We probably have around five or six different main, kind of, student clashing groups. Well, clubs too, which signify the different kinds of groups. You see a lot of the similarities among the people. . . . it’s, like, kind of sporty people, and then the people who party, and then younger sporty people who are really involved in school. And then you have a little group of surfers and skaters, and then we have kind of, I guess they’re referred to as Goth, they like to dress in black, and a lot of them are really smart, but I don’t know what, how they are academically-wise. And so, and then we have a whole, like, it’s kind of funny cuz, like, the whole quad or main area here, it’s generally populated by the, like, English speakers and more of, like, white American kids. And then all, like, along

Cornbleth2.qxd

6/20/2003

1:47 PM

Page 47

None of the Above?

47

the borders you see a lot more of the Mexican kids. They have their own little sects. CC: Do you try to stay away from those groupings too, or— Aphra: No, I don’t. Well, we walk through there every day to go to the bathroom or what not, but I don’t, I don’t know very many of them. No, I know quite a few, but those ones are more that hang out over here. CC: What I was asking is are you part of one group more than another? Aphra: Yeah, well, I hang out in the quad just cuz that’s where my friends are but, yeah, I don’t really. It’s just different because most of them speak Spanish, and I don’t speak Spanish. If I could speak Spanish, I’d talk to them, but for the majority of them I, I don’t really. I have a few classes where I’m involved with a lot of them. CC: A lot of? Aphra: More of the Spanish speakers who have been integrated into some of my classes, it’s pretty neat. I like it cuz then I feel I know more people in the school that I wouldn’t have met otherwise. (2–3)

Recall that student cliques were very much in the news during the months following the student shootings/murders at Columbine High School in Colorado in the spring of 1999 when these interviews took place. The local newspapers carried stories about cliques at area schools, including Mission, and other Mission students mentioned similar groupings. Interestingly, none of the Pacific High School students mentioned similar divisions, although one of the teachers did. It is impossible to tell whether the Columbine media coverage and local spin-offs served to crystallize or increase awareness of student groupings and territorial associations at least temporarily.

Jesus, “my own self ” Jesus, a junior at Mission High School, was born in Guatemala and came to the United States with his family when he was nine. He began by saying that because he is a Jehovah’s Witness, it is hard for him to identify with other groups. “You know, it’s pretty much as I am, my own self” (1). He continued: “The idea of identifying people by your gender, color, race, it, uh, you know, sometimes peers, peer pressure, you know, it gets you into it, but I try my hardest not to do it, cuz I’ve been at, I have been identified, and I know how it feels” (1).

Cornbleth2.qxd

48

6/20/2003

1:47 PM

Page 48

H EARING A MERICA ’ S Y OUTH

Jesus said that his not wanting to group or label people came from both being a Jehovah’s Witness and his own experience. “Both, yeah, because, you know, my, first of all, my family. My family is, have good manners, and I’ve been taught and all that, and all my stuff, plus we base our lives on the Bible, so it, it shows us how to live a proper life” (1). When he first came to the United States, Jesus says, he encountered a lot of name-calling because he was different and didn’t speak English. It was very uncomfortable, he said, “but now I’ve grown to it . . . it’s no big deal . . .I get called names, yeah, but I go along with it, laugh at it. . . . Most of the time it’s between friends, you know, so it’s no that big of a deal” (3). How Jesus sees being a Jehovah’s Witness shaping his life is explored further in chapter 4.

Larry, “average guy” Larry, also a junior at Mission, is tall, athletic-looking, and soft-spoken. He described himself as a “consumer” (1), “an average guy,” and “typical citizen, I guess” (2). Larry told me, “I’m not out there trying to change things” (2) and “I try to be fair and like not judge other people by stereotypes, and I don’t go along with just what other people say . . .I just try and be fair and nice to people and treat people the way that I would want to be treated myself” (3). Early on, Larry said that “It’s hard to say” (1) who he is. He explained: I think that, uh, the government tries to put, not tries to put, but a lot of times people are put into a certain stereotypical, uh, group, you know, that type of thing. People are put into groups by other people, not by themselves. I don’t think people necessarily put themselves into groups. People are put into groups by others. CC: And how do you feel about that? Larry: I don’t think it’s right or wrong necessarily, I think it’s probably human nature to do that. It’s part of human nature to do that, so, but I just think that, uh, it’s, it’s wrong when you start to, uh, prejudge someone or have a prejudiced opinion based on your stereotype or act, act, uh, negatively toward someone based on your opinion or your stereotype of them as being part of a group. CC: How do you think you’ve come to not want to label people? Larry: Um, just because I usually find that as soon as you think you know someone or you have someone perfect, you know, you know exactly what this person’s like, if you sit down and actually talk to the person, you’ll find, ninety-nine times out of a hundred, that you’re wrong about them.

Cornbleth2.qxd

6/20/2003

1:47 PM

Page 49

None of the Above?

49

CC: Okay. Can you, without mentioning names, can you think of a particular case in your experience where that happened? Larry: Oh yeah, for sure. Also, my dad told me, you know, never, never judge someone, you know, based on what you think you know. Always give people the benefit of the doubt. Cuz usually stereotypes are, I think, a lot of them are negative stereotypes, so if you, if you’re quick to put someone in a stereotype without talking to them or getting to know them, then I think it’s wrong because, you know, you’re setting yourself up to feel negatively about someone you don’t know. CC: Could you tell me a bit about the example? Any example. Larry: Um, just like, there’s a guy I know that I thought was a typical gangster/skater guy, or skater and, you know, I thought he probably gets bad grades and, you know, does drugs and all, the whole bit, you know. But later on I was getting to know him and talk to him. He’s like a 4.0 student, you know, and he, like, just completely the opposite of what I thought, you know. Completely the opposite. And like now I’m, like, pretty good friends with him, so, you know, like I didn’t, I never really, I didn’t think of all skaters or whatever to be, to be that way. . . . But that was that one case, but ever since then I’ve tried never to, never to do that. (1–2)

In addition to his own experiences, Larry credited his beliefs to his background, specifically his parents’ views and their influence on him.

Andrew, “student” For Andrew, a senior at Pacific High School, “skin color and origin of where your ancestors were from” (1) are a way to distinguish people but say little about their values. He doesn’t use race to identify himself. Andrew describes himself as a student and teenager or adolescent. He also named gender as an identity marker, one of very few students to do so. Being a student means being “sort of tracked towards a goal, an academic goal, and I guess an occupational goal also” (2) and to stay on track, while being a teenager means being separated from adults and allowed to do some things that adults can’t or would rather not do like “staying out really late” or “partying a lot” (2). Andrew thinks that “being male still makes a difference” (3) in college and occupational choice, for example, becoming a doctor rather than a nurse. In response to my question about where he supposed those ideas came from, Andrew said: I think just the past, the way that in the past hundred years the women’s movements have increased, but it’s still not completely equal. So I think there’s still

Cornbleth2.qxd

6/20/2003

1:47 PM

Page 50

H EARING A MERICA ’ S Y OUTH

50

some sort of a stereotype between how mothers or females should be mothers and the, um, caretakers while the men are outside working. And it’s a stereotype that men are less nurturing also, and that’s why they’re more towards like the more manual labor fields. CC: How do you feel about those stereotypes? Andrew: I don’t, I think that both genders are capable of doing all of the things, and I think in some way in the future it’ll kind of go away, like stereotypically, because I guess there’s a transition period where it’s still semiunacceptable to, unacceptable to society, and we’re still transitioning towards complete gender equality. (3)

Andrew’s rejection of race as an identity marker is a reaction to how he was raised. He told me: Although I come from a Chinese background, which is, I guess, taught to be, as I see in Chinese backgrounds where it’s more racist towards some race and some culture, but CC: You said the Chinese are racist? Andrew: Yeah. CC: OK. Andrew: Like my culture, I was raised that Chinese people are more superior than some other race, and I was taught to believe that. But after looking and observing at other cultures, I don’t think there is truly, like, a difference between them other than, like, societal differences. Kind of like where you live, like the East Coast being different from the West Coast, something along those lines. CC: How did you come to believe this? Andrew: Um, I guess growing up in a diverse area such as, area such as the Bay Area where I was allowed to interact with, um, people from all different areas and cultures and learning more and more about each one of them. And I learned that each group has a unique way of expressing themselves and a unique way of going about things, and not that any one of them is wrong or any one of them is less than another. (3–4)

Andrew chose not to join the Asian Student Union at school, he told me, because “it kind of segregates by race or at least gives it preferential treatment” (2). Instead, he’s on the debate team “that allows a whole, um, kind of, classes and races to come together, change the world in some way by talking about it” (2). Reading the interview transcript, I wished that I had asked Andrew to say more about that statement, about class differences and about changing the world by talking about it.

Cornbleth2.qxd

6/20/2003

1:47 PM

Page 51

None of the Above?

51

Steven, “human race” A junior at Pacific High School, Steven told me: I don’t like being, like, really labeled as, like, you know, you know ethnic. I mean, like, you know, they say race, but like ethnicity, I come from a black and Indian [Asian] background. I say I’m African American and I’m Indian descent. As far as, like, race, I, like, if someone asked me what race am I, I’d say human. (1)

Steven also described himself as “an average teenager, I guess, social boy” (1) and later as a Pisces. He said that he doesn’t think about groups that much, “I just get along with everybody” (1). When I asked him to say more about that, he explained: I don’t think people should be put in a position where they have to be discriminated, you know, based on who they hang out with or what their background is, what kind of ethnicity they come from. I like the idea where everyone can, you know, be together in one and not have to worry about those kind of things, you know. Everyone should get along. (1–2)

For Steven, like Kirk from Lincoln, racial/ethnic heritages are acknowledged and valued, but are not to keep people from getting along.

INTERPRETATIONS and PROGNOSTICATIONS Analysis of the explanations given by students for identifying as a person and downplaying or eschewing racial/ethnic identification revealed three reasons shared by more than one-third of the students: divisiveness, getting along better, and individualism. A fourth, overlapping theme was voiced by the two African American males from Lincoln and two students from Mission: escaping negative images and obtaining fair treatment, including equal opportunities. Two-thirds of the students talked about racial/ethnic categorization as divisive: “driv[ing] people apart”; “creating a barrier” between groups and people from different groups; causing problems such as one-upmanship; “mak[ing] them see differences that don’t exist” or that don’t matter much at all, encouraging discrimination. Here, the emphasis is on the perceived negative effects of categorization such as stereotyping. Five of the students (Linda, Jay, and Kirk above, and Manuel from New York; Steven from California) pointed to what could or should be instead, that is, possible positive effects of eschewing racial/ethnic categorization. Jay and Manuel said that people should get along, should be with each other

Cornbleth2.qxd

52

6/20/2003

1:47 PM

Page 52

H EARING A MERICA ’ S Y OUTH

if not “just be one big happy family.” Kirk referred to combating racism, saying “it’s not a black thing, a white thing,” while Linda talked about “get[ting] on with it” and moving on from problems in the past, and Steven said that “everyone should get along.” These students are neither claiming nor advocating racelessness or color blindness; they are advocating better interpersonal and intergroup relationships. They are contesting racial/ethnic stereotyping, not racial/ethnic affiliation. It is noteworthy that most of these students seemed to be resisting racial/ethnic categorization in general, not merely resisting a personal identity characterization in order to avoid negative discrimination (although the latter may have provided impetus). These young people could have said, for example, that racial/ethnic identification is unimportant or does not matter or is not relevant in this instance, or they might have minimized between-group differences or tried to redefine a racial/ethnic category to exclude themselves (Day, 1998, p. 166). More than half of the students also referred to individualism in one way or another as a reason for identifying as a person. Six (Marissa, Carl, Jay, and Manuel from New York; Aphra and Jesus from California) referred to being their “own person” or “doing my own thing” or simply not liking to follow other people. In contrast, Linda and Max talked about judging people (and/or being judged) “on an individual basis,” “on individual merit,” and Aphra and Larry pointed out that group-based expectations are often wrong in individual cases. Aphra tries to distance herself from Anglos’ expectations of “Mexicans,” while Jesus, who also distinguishes himself from recent Mexican immigrants, describes knowing how it feels to be “called,” to be taunted and rejected because of his difference. While Aphra simply says that she does not relate to Mexican culture, Jesus notes apologetically that Mexicans’ “life manners are very different from me” (p. 7). Neither seems to recognize that they might be engaging in the group stereotyping that they previously rejected in general or in relation to themselves. Individual rather than group-based judgment was implicit but quite clear in both Blake’s and Jay’s comments about having equal opportunities and being treated fairly as a person with rights and feelings. Both wanted to escape what they saw as media-fostered negative stereotypes of blacks, especially black men, as well as others’ prejudices more generally. None of the other students in this group, except perhaps Jesus, spoke as directly as Blake and Jay about being targets of racist or other discrimination although all (except Larry and perhaps Kirk and Linda) can be seen as minorities or marginalized in one way or another. Even Max, for example, a white male from an affluent family, is also a Jewish student in an

Cornbleth2.qxd

6/20/2003

1:47 PM

Page 53

None of the Above?

53

overwhelmingly Christian district recently wracked by controversy over district, school, and classroom celebration of Christian holidays. Whether or not they directly connected their personal experiences to their reasons for identifying as “a person,” more than two-thirds of these students mentioned or implied having felt significant racial/ethnic discrimination personally or having close friends or family members with such experience. The students relied heavily on personal experience and anecdote to support or explain their self-identifications; there was little if any mention of structural aspects of racism and intergroup conflict in the interviews. Four students, however, did refer to and oppose social hierarchy, at least implicitly (Blake, Jay, Jesus, Andrew). Andrew, for example, was quite clear in rejecting the presumed superiority of his Chinese ancestry. For Blake, Jay, and Jesus, white Americans were at the top of the hierarchy they found oppressive. Overall, then, divisiveness (unnecessary, undesirable, wrong) is most often cited by these students, closely followed by individualism and getting along better, as a reason for their beliefs. From the perspectives of these students, racial/ethnic (and other) categorizations create problems for individuals and groups. A majority appear to favor what I call a “resort to individualism” to avoid and/or oppose racism and other forms of division and discrimination. It is their way around group-based bigotry, to minimize if not eliminate it, and perhaps also to challenge the United States to live up to its professed ideals. They are hopeful in this regard. A resort to individualism, however, is double-edged. One significant limitation is that endorsing traditional U.S. individualism—rugged, possessive, or otherwise—deflects attention from institutional or structural aspects of racism and intergroup conflict. The students may, in the longer run, be undermining their own possibilities by seeming to take a conservative (neoliberal?) position that sustains racial/ethnic hierarchy and hostility while seeming to offer equal opportunity to individuals. Perpetuation of such beliefs in U.S.-style individualism and meritocracy seems a cruel hoax for all but a relatively few young people today. The double-edged nature of the resort to individualism illustrates a key advantage of emphasizing emergent themes over front-end categories in work on social identities, of pointing to implications and foregrounding effects rather than conventional starting points. Demanding racial/ethnic or other categorization imposes and misrepresents some young people, while neglecting the meanings of preferred self-descriptors unnecessarily limits interpretation and understanding of all of us. Being black or of mixed ancestry, for example, does not mean the same thing to all who so identify.

Cornbleth2.qxd

54

6/20/2003

1:47 PM

Page 54

H EARING A MERICA ’ S Y OUTH

Recognizing that social identification is an open-ended and continuing question also enables identification of trends and change over time. As I have noted earlier, for example, it appears that over the past decade, at least, increasing numbers of young people are identifying themselves as a person or human being. They are actively choosing not to use or highlight racial/ethnic ancestry, their own or others’. By the time of the California interviews, having recognized that a substantial number of students were avoiding or rejecting categorizing and labeling, especially with respect to race/ethnicity, I mentioned this directly to some of the students who had done so (depending on how the interview was going timewise and whether the question fit in easily) and asked them to say more. Of the five California students I asked about possible generational differences, only two responded directly to my query, Chrissy from Pacific and Larry from Mission. Chrissy told me that sometimes people do use group labels to identify people “nowadays,” but not like they used to. She explained: Like a lot of kids I know, they’ll be, like, you know, they’ll be like, “Oh, you’re white so you’re kind of, like, dorky.” In general it’s just kind of, like, all white people are kind of, you know, some people just say that kind of stuff. But I think it’s less than what it used to be. I think, you know, like I know some of my, like, my great-uncles who are, you know, eighties and nineties, they still, you know, they kind of make, like, stereotypical remarks. And I think people do that less, they try to stereotype people less, at least in the sense of race. (2)

While Chrissy’s comment illustrates what I had asked about, Larry offered a possible explanation, perhaps because I phrased my question somewhat more personally: CC: Okay. In the course of doing these interviews, I’m finding a number of people like yourself who are saying pretty much the same thing, and it seems like it’s more common for older people closer to my age to want to label and group people than it is for younger people. Um, any thoughts about a possible generational difference here? Changes in how people think? Larry: I think that someone that grew up in your time period, and someone of your age, can look and see the changes that have gone on in society, in America, over the years and it’s, uh, I wouldn’t say easier for you to stereotype but that happens more so because they see changes more. They see the way things were back then and the way things are now, the differences, and they look for a reason why. Everyone looks for a reason why things happen, the cause and effect. So I think that probably has a lot to do with it. (1)

I understand Larry to be suggesting that because people his age have grown up with racial/ethnic diversity, they are less likely to be uncomfortable with people different from themselves and thus less likely to label

Cornbleth2.qxd

6/20/2003

1:47 PM

Page 55

None of the Above?

55

and distance or put down (or “other”) people they see as different. How they will negotiate societal pressures to declare themselves and categorize others remains to be seen as does the nature and strength of such pressures. This apparent trend, if it holds, suggests generational differences with significant political and social as well as pedagogical implications to be considered in the concluding chapter. What appears to be generational could be age-related and change over time as these young people grow older. Longitudinal study would be needed to resolve the question. In the milieu that I have just sketched, and the aftermath of hatemotivated killings of students by white male students at Columbine High School in Colorado, Oakland (California) high school students reserved time to speak at a June 1999 school board meeting, and about one hundred demonstrated in favor of ethnic studies as an antidote to Eurocentric curricula and racial hostilities based on stereotypes and misunderstandings. The Oakland school board was prepared to consider a proposal to increase the police forces at city high schools. Instead, students suggested multiethnic education, not more police, as a way to ameliorate racial tensions and school-site violence. According to the students, existing courses do not deal with issues of social justice or “the cultural histories of Oakland’s diverse student body, which students at the meeting felt was crucial to increasing empathy and reducing friction among different racial and ethnic groups” (Mungin, June 18, 1999, p. 4). To what extent such curricula would make the desired difference is less important here than the example of a sizable group of diverse high school students organizing in support of substantial ethnic studies curricula, not separate studies of one or another racial/ethnic group or so-called feel-good courses. Examples such as this, along with the curtailment of affirmative action policies and practices, are altering the social landscape in ways whose effects are equivocal. One possibility is a purportedly color-blind society. To the extent that color blindness means “white,” it remains racist and is likely to be short-lived, given changing U.S. demographics. Another possibility is a shift in attention from race/ethnicity to social class and the ever-increasing gap between rich and poor in the United States. Whether this, too, becomes a form of racist color blindness remains to be seen. From another perspective, young people’s choosing not to use or emphasize their own or others’ racial/ethnic ancestry can be seen as movement against the grain of modern bureaucratic mentality (Berger, Berger, and Kellner, 1973). According to Berger, Berger, and Kellner’s analysis of modern consciousness introduced in chapter 1, a major theme is taxonomization reflected in the tendency to categorize people and to rank-order the resulting categories. These young people seem to feel little

Cornbleth2.qxd

56

6/20/2003

1:47 PM

Page 56

H EARING A MERICA ’ S Y OUTH

or no need to put themselves or other people in a predetermined grouping or pigeonhole. In this respect, they may be evincing a postmodern sensibility, perhaps as harbingers of future U.S. society. Whatever interpretive turn one prefers, it seems likely that these young people and their peers across the United States will be buffeted by social and political crosscurrents. After and outside of high school, they are likely to encounter pressures toward racial/ethnic identification and separation given the extant politicization of race/ethnicity both among college students and within racialized communities and organizations. And economic competition, in a robust economy as well as in economic hard times, is likely to exacerbate intergroup tensions (see, e.g., Weis and Fine, 1996) and, consequently, identifying with one’s “own kind.” In such circumstances, and the absence of social analysis and organization, it seems unlikely that very many young people could “go it alone” and fully resist the pull of inherited racial/ethnic categorization, hierarchy, and practice. A last consideration here, identification as a person, a human being, does not carry the same or similar consequences for all who so describe themselves. It may be a viable option for white people in the United States as long as whiteness remains the norm. It is much less viable for people of color in this color-conscious society. Agreement—in this case on the primacy of the person rather than his or her race/ethnicity—plays out differently for different young people. Agreement across racial/ethnic and other divides does not necessarily lead to unity, justice, or peace.

MIXED RACIAL/ETHNIC ANCESTRY Students of mixed ancestry who so identified themselves also are “none of the above” when asked to “select one” predetermined racial/ethnic category.1 Of the eight students who described mixed racial/ethnic ancestry (15 percent of the students asked about their identities; see Table 3-2), four preferred to be identified as a person: Manuel and Carl from Johnson High School, Steven from Pacific, and Aphra from Mission. While they preferred the person descriptor, Manuel and Steven also talked about their heritages. Carl and Aphra, in contrast, said very little. The other four reflected a range of feelings. At one extreme, Faye described herself as very mixed and avoided specifying her ancestry. Another position is represented by Damon, who said that he described himself as black and then, when asked what it meant to him to be black, said, “Well, I ain’t even black. I’m, like, half Puerto Rican. My mom ain’t black, she’s Puerto Rican–Mexican. My dad is black” (p. 2). While Steven preferred to iden-

Cornbleth2.qxd

6/20/2003

1:47 PM

Page 57

None of the Above?

57

Table 3-2 Students of Mixed Ancestry Reported Ethnicity

Preferred Racial/ Ethnic Self-Description

Indian, white Hispanic in a black race black, Native American

“individual” “human being” “human being”

Pacific High School Damon Faye Steven

black, Puerto Rican–Mexican mixed black, [East] Indian

“human being” “human being” “human race”

Mission High School Aphra Brita

Mexican, white Chinese, African American

“just American” “just American”

Johnson High School Carl Manuel Richard

tify himself as “human race,” he talked at greater length than the other students about his mixed ancestry. While the numbers are much too small to even gesture at generalization, it seems worth noting that at least two of these students represent at least second- and third-generation mixing. Mixed ancestry is becoming more complex. The four students who preferred to be identified as a person have been introduced above. While Carl and Aphra said very little about their ancestry, Manuel and Steven were among the most vocal about theirs. Manuel was very positive about being Hispanic and having two languages (see above and chapter 4). In response to my question about how being black and [East] Indian has shaped his life, Steven said: I take the best of the both worlds. . . . I like having that diverse feeling, you know. Like I have my black side which is, like, you know, part of my culture, and have my Indian side where, you know, it’s less American, and it’s more, you know, like, it’s different. . . . It’s just two different worlds. CC: How has it influenced you? Steven: It’s, um, I don’t know, it’s made me probably, uh, stand out than everybody else. I don’t know too many other black and Indian people. So I guess it sort of, like, makes me stand out from the crowd or whatever, you know. People are like, “Oh, you’re black and Indian, oh!” you know. So it gives me a little,

Cornbleth2.qxd

58

6/20/2003

1:47 PM

Page 58

H EARING A MERICA ’ S Y OUTH um, I guess it just highlights me a little bit, I don’t know why. I don’t know if it’s a good or a bad thing. CC: Does it give you more freedom to be who you want to be? Steven: Um, not on the Indian, not on the Indian side. I have more limitations cuz my dad’s Indian and I live with him, not with my mom, they’re divorced. But, um, yeah, they’re more traditional than, you know, Americans, even though my dad’s not the typical Indian guy, you know. He treats me and my sister equally and, you know, he knows that we’re grown-ups and everything. But there are limitations, like I can’t go out, you know, all night long, like some of my friends do, or I can’t go certain places with other people as much as all my other friends can. I’m sure if I was living, like, with my mom or whatever, on that side, I might have more freedom than I do living on the Indian side. But, you know, I associate with both of my halves all the time. (2–3)

While some of the mixed-ancestry students, like Steven, preferred to identify as a person, none, except perhaps for Faye, expressed confusion, discomfort, or distress with being mixed. Richard described himself as a “young, black, Native American male” (1). When the interviewer asked him to say more about being black and Native American, Richard continued: Native American is, the Native American side is, I don’t know, I get along more with, like, my Native American family members. It’s nice. I feel, like, good because I know my cultures have a lot to do with, like, the world and stuff. [unintelligible] AS: To do with what? Richard: Like history and stuff. Like all you used to hear about is, like, Native Americans and, like, African Americans. I don’t know, I like it. AS: Anything more about that? Richard: Not really. (1–2)

Brita had more to say and was more enthusiastic about her mixed ancestry. Initially, she said that she described herself racially: CC: Okay, and you said you describe yourself racially. What do you, what do you say there? Brita: It’s, like, if someone were to, like, ask what nationality I am, I’d be all, “Oh, I’m half Chinese and half African American.” And, like, people would be, like, usually ask me, it’s like, they’d think, “Wow! That’s kind of cool.” You know, it kind of gives me more of a, like, unique, different, like physical, like personality I guess, and mental personality. It’s different, not that many people are out there half Chinese, half African American, at this school [Mission] too. So, it kind of makes it a little more diverse.

Cornbleth2.qxd

6/20/2003

1:47 PM

Page 59

None of the Above?

59

CC: Okay. How did that influence or shape— Brita: Me? CC: —who you are, yeah. Brita: I think it makes me a more stronger person. CC: Okay. Brita: Cuz, like, I learned about, like, the slaves and how, like, the Asians and, like, the blacks were treated back then. And it just makes me, like, feel more stronger about myself, that I can stand up to, you know, well not everything, but I’m a strong person because of that. (2–3)

Like Steven at Pacific, Brita relates that others see her as exotic, and she seems to like the attention. After Damon explained that he wasn’t all black, the interview continued: MH: Well, what does it mean to you to be Puerto Rican? What does it mean to you to be black? What does it mean to be mixed? Damon: Uh, it just mean, I’m just, uh, I don’t know, really it doesn’t mean nothing to me, I’m just who I am. I just run my friends and stuff, so, you know? MH: So, it doesn’t make a difference in your life? Or does it? Damon: Well, I don’t think I would want to be white. I don’t know why, but I wouldn’t want to. I don’t know why. It’s a hard question. MH: Yeah, I know. A lot of people haven’t thought about it. Go ahead, take your time. Damon: Nah, well, I wouldn’t know, I wouldn’t know. I couldn’t say because if I was white I probably be like a whole different person. I’d probably look on us as, like, “I’m glad I ain’t black,” just like I’m glad I ain’t white. So, I really don’t know. MH: How does it make you feel to be black/Puerto Rican? Damon: It makes me feel, like, I guess I feel like everybody else, you know, just, I feel like myself. I don’t try to be, you know, really try to get in that where people be all “We all black and we don’t want no white people, no Mexicans.” We don’t really do that, we just, we care who you are, you know. It just happens to be that everybody black in the group [his group of friends]. (2–3)

Faye told me that she didn’t identify with any groups, but she referred only to racial/ethnic groups: CC: Which, if any of these groups or others, do you use to identify or describe yourself?

Cornbleth2.qxd

60

6/20/2003

1:47 PM

Page 60

H EARING A MERICA ’ S Y OUTH Faye: I don’t really because, uh, basically me and my friends are really mixed and then, I mean, we’re just a big melting pot and so I don’t really, um, say that I’m particularly anything. CC: Okay. So, say more? Faye: Um, I’d have to say that, in general, most of my, most of my, well I know that, like, ’round school, I know that there’s, like, there’s the Asian group and then there’s the white people, I mean, and mostly, but I think that we’re, I don’t [pause] we’re a melting pot group. CC: Okay. So what does it mean to be the melting pot group? Faye: Um, just, I mean, it’s not any kind of, but it’s just to be known that we’re, we all feel that, it’s just, we’re just. Okay, let’s start over. Um, I don’t know. CC: I’m not trying to disagree, but to understand. Faye: I know, it’s just like, um, we’re, we’re all from, like, different backgrounds, and I think we’re all, yea, I mean, we’re all mixed with everything. And so it’s just, we don’t, like we have this joke where we all put “other,” you know, where they say ‘What are you?’ and so we all put “other” and that’s kind of our inside joke kind of thing, but none of us feel like we fall under a specific category, and maybe that’s why we get along so well. (1–2)

When I asked Faye about any labels others have used to describe her that she finds objectionable, she explained her belief that people should name themselves and others should respect that: Well, nothing really makes me angry, but we, like, there’s a group of guys in class and they like to say, you know, “Are you black, are you African American?” and it’s like, “Don’t discuss that,” it’s like you feel like you are whatever you are . . . so don’t, you know, question what other people think or want to call themselves. And I think if some people are going to be really, “I want to be called this instead of this,” then you should, like, respect that but don’t argue about it. (2)

FURTHER INTERPRETATIONS and PROGNOSTICATIONS How might we understand the self-descriptions of students of mixed racial/ethnic ancestry? The early twentieth century studies of mulattoes usually viewed them as “‘victims’ of their own mixed heritage which supposedly pulled them in two conflicting directions” (Morton, 1985, p. 108). Cultural differences, at first seen as biological and later as environmentally shaped, presumably trapped and marginalized the tragic mulatto. U.S. society’s code noir or “one drop” convention defined mixed race people as black or the lower status of their ancestries (i.e.,

Cornbleth2.qxd

6/20/2003

1:47 PM

Page 61

None of the Above?

61

hypodescent). These assumptions appear to have considerable holding power and to have been generalized to all biracial and mixed-race persons. Root (1992), for example, asserts that “multiracial people experience a ‘squeeze’ of oppression as people of color and by people of color” (p. 5) who have internalized either-or, black-white thinking. There also are political and economic concerns about numbers vis-à-vis government programs, for example, legislative redistricting, that may press mixedancestry people to declare themselves as XX or YY, not both. More recent work, (e.g., Funderburg, 1994; Greene, April 1999), however, and personal accounts (e.g., Steel, 1995) suggest that when mixed race young people speak for themselves, they do not necessarily accept previous generations’ portrayals or pressures. Funderburg, for example, notes that the biracial people she interviewed in 1992, especially those under twenty-five, “are forging a self-concept that is deliberately biracial” (p. 15) despite societal pressure to “select one.” Similar findings are reported by Iijima Hall (1992) based on her study of thirty young people with black fathers and Japanese mothers. When asked to “please choose one” racial identifier, eighteen selected black, while ten selected “other.” In response to open-ended questions, however, these young people tended to identify with both their heritages and to comment positively (twice as often as negatively) on being racially mixed. They saw themselves as having the best of both worlds and as more easily accepting and understanding people of different ancestries. The outstanding professional golfer, Tiger Woods, featured in a 1997 Time story on increasing numbers of multiracial Americans and the desire of many to be recognized as such (White, 1997), may have made it easier for mixed-race young people in the United States to declare themselves. Woods describes himself as black, Chinese, Thai, American Indian, and white. According to the Time story, “The old black-white stereotypes are out of date,” and America has failed “to come to grips with the perplexing and rapidly evolving significance of racial identity in what is fast becoming the most polyglot society in history” (White, 1997, p. 33).2 The students we interviewed who identified as mixed race/ethnicity ranged from matter-of-fact to proud of their ancestry; we observed no major conflict or angst. Perhaps because we described the project as openended and ourselves as interested in young people’s views, without pigeonholes or predetermined options to choose from, the students felt more comfortable describing themselves than they might have otherwise.3 The publicized debate about racial/ethnic categories for the 2000 Census, especially the press for (and opposition to) a multiracial category, also may have served to validate these students’ sense of themselves. Most

Cornbleth2.qxd

6/20/2003

62

1:47 PM

Page 62

H EARING A MERICA ’ S Y OUTH

(six of eight) of the students who self-identified as mixed ancestry attended either Johnson or Pacific High School, the most racially/ethnically diverse of the five schools where we asked students to describe themselves. We do not know whether mixed-ancestry students tend to select schools (or other settings) with a diverse population when they have choices or whether the schools’ diversity served to encourage mixedancestry students to view themselves positively—or both. In any event, naming one’s mixed racial/ethnic ancestry can be seen as declaring one’s presence, and a means of self-empowerment. Also noteworthy is that the students who described themselves as mixed appear to be creating their identities in relation to one or more socially recognized racial/ethnic groups, but not allowing themselves to be defined by the group(s). Whether they present themselves as a more or less unique individual (e.g., Brita) or as part of a collective (e.g., Faye), these young people are active, albeit not autonomous, agents in their own racialization and broader identification processes. Demographic trends suggest that the number of mixed-ancestry people in the United States will continue to increase, probably at an accelerating rate. In the 2000 U.S. Census, 2.4 percent of the population self-identified as “two or more races” and 5.5 percent identified as “some other race” (Grieco and Cassidy, 2001, pp. 10–11).4 Moreover, mixed ancestry is becoming more complex, not simply a matter of XX and YY. Of those self-identifying as “two or more races,” 7 percent (about a half million people) identified as more than two (p. 4). Based on various projections, Lind (1998) suggests that, instead of the previously predicted white minority by mid-twenty-first century, the United States is likely to have “a mostly white mixed-race majority” (p. 38). Instead of “the old duality” between whites and nonwhites, he predicts “a new dichotomy” between blacks and nonblacks as whites, Asians, and Hispanics continue to intermarry and have children. In any event, the inherited racial categories are likely to become less and less relevant as more of us identify with “none of the above.”

NOTES 1.

2. 3.

Not included here are any students like Sharon who identified as white, mentioned being “a little bit” Indian as well as French and Italian, and intimated that she may be even more mixed. Also see Cose (2000) and the special issue of Time magazine (1993). It is possible, of course, that some mixed-ancestry students chose not to describe themselves as such. Citing other sources, Root (1992, p. 9) indicates that an esti-

Cornbleth2.qxd

6/20/2003

1:47 PM

Page 63

None of the Above?

4.

63

mated 30 percent to 70 percent of African Americans are multiracial, as are most Latinos and Filipinos and a majority of American Indians and Native Hawaiians; “Even a significant proportion of white-identified persons are of multiracial origins.” Wright (1994, p. 47) reports that various estimates show “at least seventy-five to more than ninety percent of the people who now check the Black box could check Multiracial, because of their mixed genetic heritage” and the NAACP estimate in 1997 was as many as 70 percent, according to McLeod (1997). One-third of those identifying as “two or more races” and 97 percent of those identifying as “some other race” also identified as Hispanic. Overall, 48.5 percent of self-identified Hispanics also identified as “two or more races” or “some other race” (Grieco and Cassidy, 2001, pp. 10–11).

REFERENCES Berger, P., Berger, B., and Kellner, H. (1973). The homeless mind: Modernization and consciousness. New York: Vintage. Cose, E. (2000). Our new look: The colors of race. Newsweek, January 1, 28–30. Davidson, A. L. (1996). Making and molding identity in schools: Student narratives on race, gender, and academic engagement. Albany: SUNY Press. Day, D. (1998). Being ascribed, and resisting, membership of an ethnic group. In C. Antaki and S. Widdicombe (eds.), Identities in talk. London: Sage. Funderburg, L. (1994). Black, white, other: Biracial Americans talk about race and identity. New York: William Morrow. Greene, W. (April 1999). Ethnic identity and the cultural playing field: Choices made by ethnically mixed adolescents. Paper presented at the American Educational Research Association, Montreal. Grieco, E. M., and Cassidy, R. C. (2001). Overview of race and Hispanic origin. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Commerce, Economics, and Statistics Administration, U.S. Census Bureau. Iijima Hall, C. C. (1992). Please choose one: Ethnic identity choices for biracial individuals. In M. P. P. Root (ed.), Racially mixed people in America (250–64). Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Lind, M. (1998). The beige and the black. New York Times Magazine, August 16, 38–39. McLeod, R. G. (1997). Tiger Woods an emblem for census issue. San Francisco Chronicle, April 24, A4. Morton, P. (1985). From invisible man to “new people”: The recent discovery of American mulattoes. Phylon, 46 (2), 106–22. Mungin, L. (1999). Teens demand ethnic studies. Express, June 18, 4. Proweller, A. (1998). Constructing female identities. Albany: SUNY Press. Root, M. P. (1992). Within, between, and beyond race. In M. P. Root (ed.), Racially mixed people in America (3–11). Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Steel, M. (1995). New colors: Mixed-race families still find a mixed reception. Teaching Tolerance (spring), 44–49. Time. (1993). The new face of America. Weis, L., and Fine, M. (1996). Narrating the 1980s and 1990s: Voices of poor and working-class white and African-American men. Anthropology and Education Quarterly, 27 (4), 493–516.

Cornbleth2.qxd

64

6/20/2003

1:47 PM

Page 64

H EARING A MERICA ’ S Y OUTH

Wexler, P. (1992). Becoming somebody: Toward a social psychology of school. London: Falmer. White, J. E. (1997). “I’m just who I am.” Time (May 5), 32–36. Wright, L. (1994). One drop of blood. The New Yorker, July 15, 46–55. Yon, D. A. (2000). Elusive culture: Schooling, race, and identity in global times. Albany: SUNY Press.

Cornbleth2.qxd

6/20/2003

1:47 PM

Page 65




4

BEING BICULTURAL, BEING PROUD

I do consider myself an American cuz I was born here. . . . but I also have in my mind where I came from, where my origin is. I came from Mexico, that’s where my parents came from . . . One part I’m American cuz I was born here, cuz I’ve been raised here, cuz I have all, this nation has taught me everything I know. And by the other part I’m Mexican . . . I’m still part of that culture. I feel myself as part of that culture, so I consider myself both. —Peter, Mission High School, California, 4

Both Puerto Rican students in New York (all from Johnson High School) and Mexican American students in California (all from Mission High School) proudly described themselves as bicultural—as Puerto Rican, Hispanic, or Mexican and as American.1 For the most part, other dimensions of their social identities were secondary. Recent immigrants (from Mexico, Guatamala, and India), in contrast, were more likely to describe themselves as becoming American.2 None of the African or European American students from either coast described themselves in this bicultural way. While a few African American students said that their ancestors came from Africa, none mentioned any continuing ties. More commonly, to be African American meant having dark skin and/or being discriminated against. Like “none of the above,” “being bicultural” challenges conventional either-or expectations and categorizations.

Cornbleth2.qxd

66

6/20/2003

1:47 PM

Page 66

H EARING A MERICA ’ S Y OUTH

As a group, the Hispanic students communicated more robust racial/ethnic identities than either African or European American students. (There were too few students of any Asian or Native American ancestry to warrant comparison.) The European American students, not surprisingly perhaps, displayed the least sense of racial/ethnic identity or pride. Like fish unaware of water, until they are out of it, the white students seemed unaware (naive or ignorant) of white dominance in the United States and the privilege that whiteness carries. Because several of the Hispanic students made reference to Americans being white, being taunted as a wannabe, or whiteness as normative/privileged, I end this chapter with a brief account of the European American students’ shallow sense of their whiteness and its impact on others. What seems to mean so much to one group is taken for granted by the group that “possesses” it. If the white students have a deeper sense of racialized identity, they did not communicate it, not even to white interviewers. Juxtaposing others’ perceptions of others’ whiteness with one’s own is illuminating.

BICULTURAL PRIDE In the New York interviews, where all the Hispanic students were Puerto Rican (Puerto Rico is a U.S. Commonwealth, and Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens) and from Johnson High School, we simply asked students what it meant to them to be an American. In California, we first asked each student, “Do you consider yourself to be an American?” and then, “Why not?” or “What does being an American mean to you?” With the exception of Guatamalan-born Jesus and Geraldo (and an exchange student from Peru), the California Hispanic students initially identified as Mexican or Mexican American.3 Later, in response to our question, all but these three said that they consider themselves to be American as well. Peter’s comment is representative: “I take my nationality into consideration a lot. . . . I’m a very proud person . . . I’m Mexican American, and I identify myself like that” (1). Carmen told me: I really like to connect with, um, my heritage being Latin American and Mexican American. That’s how I basically describe it even though I don’t hang out with specifically just one group, you know, with all Hispanics or all whites, you know. . . .The group I hang out with, it’s mixed, it’s a variety. . . . But if I had to pick, yeah, it’d be with, you know, my heritage. I’m, I’m Mexican. (1)

Like Carmen, Peter and Eva emphasized that they didn’t hang out with just one group, that they had friends from different racial/ethnic/ cultural backgrounds. In New York, Magdalena, Manuel, Marissa, and

Cornbleth2.qxd

6/20/2003

1:47 PM

Page 67

Being Bicultural, Being Proud

67

Mercedes volunteered similar comments. Several Johnson students told us that they enjoyed their school’s diverse population, including learning something about other languages, religions, and cultures. Magdalena pointed to the eleven different flags displayed on the first floor of the high school, representing the students’ varied origins and languages spoken.4 When I asked Peter what being Mexican American meant to him, how it has changed or influenced who he is, he recounted a job experience in which he felt that he had to prove himself. Despite his stated pride in his heritage and his apparent self-confidence, he felt that he had to prove to himself, if not others, that he was at least as good as “American people”: I work at this particular job where . . . there was a lot of American people . . . there were a couple of Hispanics, and I was going to be one of the few, so usually, I don’t know if this is true or not, but I kind of had the feeling that they would treat them better because maybe they were, they had better skills than the few Hispanics that were there. And my goal for that, going in there was, “No, I have to prove myself, I have to prove that I am, that I can be as good as them if not better.”. . .I don’t know how to explain it, the fact that I’m of a different race gave me the, oh, how do you say this, the will, the wanting to prove that I’m better than them. Just to prove that I can be as good as any other race, you know. And I always walk around, when I walk around I don’t put my head down because I’m of a different race. I’m not ashamed of who I am. I’m always proud of it. And if people notice it, they’ll respect me for that, and if they don’t, well you know, then that’s their problem. . . . CC: So, what happened on the job? How did it go? Peter: . . . I think I proved that, you know, I could be better than them. I was just trying to show it to myself, prove myself, to myself, that I could be as good. In my mind, I did that. I accomplished it, which was my goal. (3)

Similarly, New York Hispanic students expressed pride in their heritage. Yolanda, who was born in Puerto Rico and came to New York when she was five, described herself in terms of her Hispanic–Puerto Rican culture and Spanish language. “It means a lot to me,” (2) she told us, including job opportunities because “I can use two languages” (2). Puerto Rican–born Manuel, who seemed to identify primarily as “a human being,” also said, “but everybody has their own race and nationality so I’m, you know, Hispanic . . . I mean like Hispanic in a black race . . . I consider myself as an Hispanic” (2). Asked what being Hispanic meant to him, Manuel emphasized pride. “I’m proud of my country. I’m proud of who I am, and I’m proud of having two languages” (2). Magdalena emphasized that Puerto Ricans in Puerto Rico do speak English and that they are diverse. “’Cause what are we, we’re just a little

Cornbleth2.qxd

6/20/2003

1:47 PM

68

Page 68

H EARING A MERICA ’ S Y OUTH

mixed. You know what I’m saying . . . just a big melting pot. . . . Now some of them you would think are whites, but they’re not. There’s from real, real white to real, real black” (6). Mercedes identified herself in terms of Hispanic nationality, which she said means culture, and described what is expected of young women like herself: You have to—the females are always—they’re supposed to do good in school and stuff like that. You can’t—they expect you to get married a virgin. They expect you to finish school. A lot of times you can’t cut your hair. They like long hair. AS: Is “they” your family? Mercedes: Yeah. The, um, the older brother is—if you have an older brother, it’s real hard because they overprotective with you. They always on you about things. Things like that. AS: Do you have an older brother? Mercedes: Yes. (1)

Mercedes also distanced herself from Puerto Ricans who have only recently arrived on the U.S. mainland and “think that Puerto Ricans revolves around them” (4). People like herself who were born on the mainland, “American Puerto Ricans,” she told us, “are different because they know that they’re not the only people, that their nationality is not the only ones that live in America” (4). Only Marissa among the New York Hispanic students we interviewed declined to describe herself or others in racial/ethnic/cultural terms. The attachment to Mexico or Puerto Rico and the cultural pride that these students express echoes the findings of other studies of Hispanic students. Nieto (1996), for example, quotes thirteen-year-old Yolanda, who was born and began school in Mexico and then moved to southern California during first grade at age seven. I just say what I am and I feel proud of myself. . . . I don’t feel bad like if they say, “Ooh, she’s Mexican” or anything. . . . It’s like you get along with everything; you’re Spanish and English, and you understand both. . . . For me, it’s good. For other people, some other guys and girls, don’t think it’s nice; it’s like, “Oh, man, I should’ve been born here instead of being over there.” Not me, it’s okay for me being born over there ’cause I feel proud of myself. I feel proud of my culture. (p. 223)

Cultural pride also is evident in Fine and Weis’s (1998) interviews with young adult Puerto Ricans they describe as working poor, especially

Cornbleth2.qxd

6/20/2003

1:47 PM

Page 69

Being Bicultural, Being Proud

69

the men. The men claimed dual allegiance, to Puerto Rico and the United States, asserting their right to be recognized as Puerto Rican— their right to cultural difference—and to equal opportunity and treatment as Americans. While expressing strong cultural loyalties, the Puerto Rican women also questioned some aspects of traditional female roles. Interestingly, the Hispanic students in this study, male and female, sounded more like Fine and Weis’s men, perhaps because most have yet to cope with adult expectations and responsibilities. Eva, for example, is an accomplished athlete who intends to go to college, perhaps on an athletic scholarship, and become a police officer. Pride in being Hispanic may be a means of protest against economic and social discrimination (Nelson and Tienda, 1985) as well as of unifying peoples whose mixed ancestry makes them mestizo/a or mulatto/a. Fine and Weis (1998) suggest that the cultural pride they found among New York and New Jersey Puerto Ricans is an attempt to counter—or to gain acknowledgment in the face of—the black-white dichotomy that dominates race relations in the eastern United States. Additionally, in Mexico, and perhaps elsewhere in the Spanish-speaking Americas, a sense of attachment to a place and a national family or community—la patria, la gente—appears widespread. A similar sense of belonging is uncommon in the United States. An example comes from my interview with Geraldo at Pacific High School. At the end, I asked him, “If my Spanish was good enough to conduct the interview in Spanish, what difference would that have made?” (7). Geraldo responded that it would change the way he says things, that “there’s some expressions in Spanish that you can’t say in English, you just can’t translate them” (8). We continued: CC: What about the question when I asked about whether you considered yourself an American, and you said no, you were from Guatemala. In explaining that, are there ways that would be better or more comfortable in Spanish? Geraldo: Yeah, cuz there’s, I mean, it’s another way of thinking, you know. Not only when you speak it, but when you, when you think about where you’re coming from. It’s just, cuz when I hear my grandmother talk, she talks with a lot of pride and stuff, so I guess I’d be able to say it like that too, you know, with a lot of emotions instead of in English just, just answering. CC: Okay, because if there were some things you wanted to say in Spanish, I would say go ahead, and if I need help translating, I’ll get help translating. Geraldo: Do you want me to say it in Spanish? CC: Sure. [After a few more questions, Geraldo had this to say in Spanish:]

Cornbleth2.qxd

70

6/20/2003

1:47 PM

Page 70

H EARING A MERICA ’ S Y OUTH Geraldo: Okay. No soy Americano porque mis raices son de Guatemala. Es de donde soy, es mi sangre, es mi gente. [I’m not American because my roots are from Guatemala. It’s where I’m from, it’s my blood, it’s my people.] CC: Mas? Diga mas por favor. [More? Say more please.] Geraldo: Es quien soy, es la forma en que yo pienso, es como hablo. [It’s who I am, it’s the way in which I think, it’s how I speak.] CC: Gracias. [Thanks.] (8)

Being both Hispanic and American is not without problems. When I asked Peter if he considered himself an American, he said “yes.” He didn’t separate himself from the “American people” he referred to earlier: I do consider myself an American cuz I was born here . . . but I also have in my mind where I came from, where my origin is. I came from Mexico, that’s where my parents came from. . . . One part I’m American cuz I was born here, cuz I’ve been raised here, cuz I have all, this nation has taught me everything I know. And by the other part I’m Mexican . . . I’m still part of that culture. I feel myself as part of that culture, so I consider myself both. (4)

Peter, like most of the Mexican American students, communicated pride in and comfort with both aspects of his heritage. But sometimes being bicultural disturbs other people and creates problems. When I asked Peter how being “both” works for him, he explained at some length: See, one of the big problems that I always see is people saying . . . people for some reason, when they look at me they think that I’m, I’m this Mexican person who thinks he’s white. . . . See, there’s a different way from how Mexican people act when they came from Mexico, and there’s a certain way how, how people like me who were born here act. And they see me, “Oh, that guy thinks he’s white,” you know, “and he’s really Mexican.” And that’s one of the big problems that I think and I’ve seen and I’ve experienced . . . that’s kind of, you know, it’s hard. (4)

With some emotion, Peter explained that he and others like him don’t “wannabe” someone else. They want to be accepted as they are, which doesn’t fit into a single group pigeonhole or others’ preconceptions: You know, it’s not that we’re trying to be like the white people, you know, we’re just, you know, we’re Mexican American, that’s what we are. We don’t want to be judged as either, we’re either Mexican or we’re American. We’re just what we are, we’re just Mexican American, that’s it. (4)

Peter’s observation and comment here reflect a widespread assumption that American equals white, that to be American is to appear and act like a middle-class white person. The assumption of whiteness as the American norm is explored later in this chapter.

Cornbleth2.qxd

6/20/2003

1:47 PM

Page 71

Being Bicultural, Being Proud

71

Immigrant students, in contrast, are not (yet) facing such identity challenges. Mexican-born Will described himself as becoming American. Initially, he said, “I’m Mexican,” it’s “my culture, we know where we come from” (fieldnotes, p. 1), and he mentioned how his parents struggled to get here. When asked later, he said that he considered himself an American because if you don’t, you’re not going to get anywhere in America. “I just follow along,” he told me. Being Mexican American is the second step. You can be both. Guatemalan-born Jesus, who identified himself as a Jehovah’s Witness and said that he doesn’t like using other group labels to describe himself or others, did not consider himself an American, “no, not a citizen,” (3) but said that one could be (or become) both Guatemalan and American: CC: Do you feel like you belong here? Jesus: Well, I like it here. I, I, I do feel like I belong here, but I don’t consider myself an American. It, I know I’m different, although I’ve grown to it a little. CC: Okay. Say more about that. Jesus: Yeah, in a, sometimes my, my English is not perfect. I have very many mistakes in the language pronunciation of words, so that’s always reminding me I’m not American. . . . Americans, you know, they’re usually blonde hair, and what I’ve seen is most of the time they get chosen before I do [referring to school projects and choosing teams or groups] . . . the teachers would just say, “Okay, go ahead and choose your groups” and then, you know, friends get along with friends, they group together. . . . And it’s like we already know with which groups we belong to because you know, our friends. It’s like our groups are already set. (4)

On being both Guatemalan or Central American and American or North American, Jesus concluded: Not right now, I don’t feel myself that way right now. But I guess, you know, as college and having a career, then things would start changing . . . I was talking with this, with my mom a couple of days ago, how English has become really a part of my life. I think in English, I dream in English, and Spanish is just when I need to use it. English is always here. . . . I feel more like I, I fit here. Because back in my country, I, I only lived over there till I was nine. . . . I don’t know, it’s hard for me to describe myself, where do I fit. (5)

It is noteworthy that language carries different meanings and implications for New York and California Hispanic students. Having two languages is presented as a plus by the New York Puerto Rican students who mentioned it; it was not so mentioned by the Hispanic students I interviewed in California. Being LEP is a problem for California Hispanic stu-

Cornbleth2.qxd

72

6/20/2003

1:47 PM

Page 72

H EARING A MERICA ’ S Y OUTH

dents, a marker that sets them apart. While not all the New York Puerto Rican students we interviewed were fluent speakers of English, they did not mention LEP as a problem. This is one of the few instances in which regional context seemed to matter.

AGE, SPORTS, and RELIGION The New York students described being Hispanic and/or Puerto Rican in terms of culture or nationality, emphasizing language and having two languages. They did not use the terms of race or ethnicity as did the California students who also spoke of culture, nationality, and heritage. The California students tended to emphasize heritage and roots—“where we come from,” in Will’s words. Two of the female New York students mentioned gender at least implicitly (such as Mercedes talking about an overprotective older brother) as part of their identity, and one also mentioned age. No other group memberships were claimed by the New York Hispanic students; there was no mention of religion except reference to there being several religions represented at their school. The California students mentioned a wider range of group memberships as part of their identity. Four of the six mentioned religion (two Roman Catholic, one Christian and one Jehovah’s Witness), three (including one female) mentioned sports or being an athlete, and two mentioned age. None mentioned gender. Age generally meant being a teenager, neither a child nor an adult. New York’s Magdalena indicated that being a teenager meant being seen as a troublemaker. For Geraldo, it meant being more comfortable around other people his own age. Similarly, Eva talked about usually being around other teenagers. Being an athlete involved various sports, particularly football for Peter, baseball for Will, and both track and basketball for Eva. Will and Eva said that they hoped to get college scholarships at least in part on the basis of their sports ability. Will also saw playing baseball as a way of meeting more people and making “connections to everywhere” (fieldnotes, p. 1), as did Peter, who said, “You meet people, we’re close” (8). Eva talked at greater length about being an athlete, describing how it has motivated her to stay in school and do well, provided perspective, and kept her in shape. “Different perspective. Different things make a difference, and just sports itself can make you think differently about things” (2), she told me. When I asked for an example, Eva talked about working for a goal and improving one’s performance. “Determination, just win-

Cornbleth2.qxd

6/20/2003

1:47 PM

Page 73

Being Bicultural, Being Proud

73

ning a game, losing a game. If you win, you’re just happy, and you think about the next game, winning it, getting better. Just doing better to succeed, you know. If you’re not doing good at one thing, succeed better and do better for the next” (2). With respect to religion, students talked about codes of behavior and youth groups, not spiritual beliefs or scripture. Both Will and Peter are Roman Catholic. Will described being involved in church, which led to being involved in his local community. Peter said, “We’re Catholic and our family’s really strong about religion, and I guess you could say that’s a big part of who I am, too” (1). Asked how being Catholic has shaped who he is, Peter told me: It saved my life in a lot of ways, cuz I think, mostly when I was younger, cuz I would always see my friends doing things, you know, everybody said they were bad, and because of my religion and my belief, I always held myself back from that. Which, you know, I think ended up being a good thing cuz it kept me from getting into trouble, it kept me from, you know, a lot of other things. . . . I feel strong about religion. CC: Other ways it shaped who you are? Peter: I guess it’s just shown me to be a better person overall, you know. The way I treat people, I’ve learned not to judge people by, by you know, just by the outside. You gotta get to know the person before you can make an opinion about them . . . it’s shown me a lot, I just can’t think of it all right now. (2–3)

Eva, who first described how sports have been a key aspect of who she is, then said that “it’s like religion’s the main thing, like you have a different perspective on things, like, um, life itself” (3). She continued, describing her Christian church and religious belief: People live life just going on like it’s just living, you live and then you die. I see it differently. You live and you’re living for someone and you’re going to somewhere afterwards. So like every day, like, just has its impact on me. I have to live each day knowing what I do, knowing how I go along with my day, making sure every day is right, just knowing that any day could come when I might not be here anymore. So, religion is a real big thing in my life, it helps me to be who I am and stuff like that. CC: Okay. And the youth group? Eva: The youth group is, are kids, some people who come here [to Mission high school] are in my youth group as well, that’s where age comes in . . . one age group, they’re teenagers. CC: And what kinds of things does the youth group do?

Cornbleth2.qxd

74

6/20/2003

1:47 PM

Page 74

H EARING A MERICA ’ S Y OUTH Eva: Um, we, for Christian night, they had Christian concerts there, and we usually just watch some films about the coming of the Christ and, um, learn more about God. (3)

For Jesus, religion was the only group identity marker he volunteered. He explained that being a Jehovah’s Witness meant that he didn’t identify with other groups: “It’s pretty much as, I am my own self” (1). When I asked how being a Jehovah’s Witness shapes his life, Jesus said: “My family is, have good manners and I’ve been taught and all that and all my stuff, plus we base our lives on the Bible, so it, it shows us how to live a proper life” (1). He continued: For me it means being different from everyone else in a way that I base myself on the Bible, my life. And, and having the right choices, you know, not doing drugs, not being alcoholic or, or start to do it. Uh, one thing that I really have in mind all the times, and it’s really hard and as a teenager, you know, your feelings, your, the opposite sex, start growing and it’s hard, but you, um, for me I try to keep myself away from that because, you know, it can become really dangerous. Um, one way I do that is, you know, not attending parties and so on, et cetera. Um, so being a Jehovah’s Witness I would think sets me as, you know, not apart from others because that would be, you know, bad I guess, but being with them but not acting the same way they do. CC: Okay. How difficult is that? Jesus: Well, it can be very difficult if you, you know, just go off and, um, start. You know, because sometimes, you know, when other kids, you know, they start making jokes, you see them enjoying it and you’re not, so it’s kind of hard . . . you want to fit there because you don’t want to be there, you know, by yourself, but I, somehow I’ve been able to manage that here. Um, at the beginning it was hard because, I don’t know, I don’t even remember who did I use to hang out with, you know, during my freshman year. I completely forgot. But now it’s, you know, I fit in with, I guess, I don’t know, what [inaudible] calls them, the nerds, um, because I, I don’t know, we’re all smart, we dress differently, you know, we don’t wear the baggy clothes and stuff like jocks and stuff like that. (2)

As identity markers, age, sports, and religion link the California Hispanic students more closely to their black, white, and Asian counterparts on both coasts than to their New York Hispanic peers (see chapter 6). They are part of the crisscrossing of identity strands that undermines notions of mutually exclusive identity groups based on race/ethnicity or any other categorization.

BEING DEFINED by OTHERS: RACISM and GANGS While racism will be considered in more depth in chapter 5, prejudice, discrimination, and racism associated with immigration history and lan-

Cornbleth2.qxd

6/20/2003

1:47 PM

Page 75

Being Bicultural, Being Proud

75

guage as well as color are relevant here and considered separately in part to avoid seeing racism solely or primarily in black-and-white terms. Aspects presented here are retrieved in my consideration of students’ views of racism and identity in chapter 5. When asked about change over time in his ideas as he has learned more or had new or different experiences, Jesus mentioned “the whole racial matter” and described the discrimination he faced when he first came to the United States and didn’t speak English: Because back then, when I first came here, you know, everybody was rejecting me because I didn’t speak English. I was different from them, I dressed differently. But now it’s all changed because now that I speak English, I, you know, people, you know, they, they take me in as part of them. They allow me to participate in their, in their different activities, so it’s made me change in a way that, you know, they’re not, they’re not really racist. (7)

He also shared his belief that local antagonisms between Hispanics and whites at Mission High School were exacerbated by Mexican gang activity in the area:5 The reason, I think the reason why they are being, um, labeled as racist is because of, you know, their lives are completely different than other people they’re against, you know. For example, I don’t mean to point to anyone, but Mexicans, I see them very, I don’t hang out with them very much because their life manners are very different from me, and I see how they’re really different from the United States. You know, they dress differently, they talk differently, you know, and, um, you know, um, sometimes they do things that don’t, that they, Americans, really don’t like so that’s the reason why I think they start, you know, getting racist. It’s not, I really wouldn’t identify it as racism but rather as, you know, trying to keep away from them but sometimes there’s people that just take it too far and, you know, go on and do things that are really not correct. CC: Like what? Jesus: Oh, like beating them. Yeah, you know, I’m talking about that level. (7)

Carmen talked at length about the gangs at Mission and the problems they created for Mexican Americans like herself who were not troublemakers. She also touched on school district politics, saying, “they’re always trying to kick us out, you know, from the school districts and stuff like that because of other Mexicans that are causing trouble and stuff” (3). When I asked her to tell me more, she continued: Like most of the gang members, because of them, cuz you know, they do come from poor family backgrounds and stuff like that. Their parents unfortunately did have to come and work in the fields and stuff like that and then I guess they don’t feel they get enough attention so they, they get into gangs. And all the tension they’re raising between the white kids that go here, we’re blamed for.

Cornbleth2.qxd

76

6/20/2003

1:47 PM

Page 76

H EARING A MERICA ’ S Y OUTH You know, they just blame the whole, whole ball of Hispanic kids. And so, like usually, the good ones, who, you know, are getting good grades and not causing any trouble, end up having to pay. CC: And that includes you? Carmen: Mm-hmmm, yeah, exactly, includes me. We end up having to pay for what they do. You know, cuz a lot of, you know, there is, the gang activity here isn’t that bad, but there’s a lot of it. CC: What do they do? Carmen: They, um, they start fights with other Mexicans as well as, like, other kids that are here. But it hasn’t been too bad for the past couple of years. It’s gotten a lot better, cuz I’ve heard of how it used to be worse between the rival gangs, you know, but now there’s just one type of gang here, and they start things with the kids from [predominantly white town] and the kids that are, you know, white. They’ll start fights, you know, one thing said wrong or one look is taken the wrong way and then things will get started . . . they’re [whites] trying to push us out because of what they [Mexican gangs] do. I don’t really know how to explain it that well, but like, because of them we’re getting pushed out. Cuz they’re thinking that if one Hispanic kid’s like this, then I guess all of them are, and they’re making most of the good ones pay for what the bad ones are doing. That’s the way it’s been for a long time. CC: Who’s the “they”? Carmen: Like the school districts, that’s who it is, you know, cuz they’ve been trying to push most of the kids, most of the Hispanic kids that live in [predominantly Hispanic town], they’re trying to push us back into just [town] instead of, you know, interacting with the two districts [referring to the two towns within the school district]. . . . They’re trying to, like, separate them again. . . . I’m getting a little mad, too, because I have to pay for what the gang members are doing. (3–4)

Will also mentioned gangs briefly as something that made him uncomfortable at Mission High School. They try to overpower everybody else, he said, overpower verbally, not physically. While both Jesus and Carmen, but not Will, cited discrimination against “good Hispanics” like themselves because of the actions of Mexican gang members, neither suggested that the gang activity may be, at least in part, a response to discrimination against Mexican immigrants and other Hispanics. Peter offered a different view after saying that Mexican immigrants and Mexican Americans born in the United States act differently and going on to describe being accused (wrongly) of wanting to be white. When I asked him about the differences, reminding him that I was a relative newcomer to California, he explained at some length:

Cornbleth2.qxd

6/20/2003

1:47 PM

Page 77

Being Bicultural, Being Proud

77

I guess, for example, you could say that Mexican people that just came from Mexico, they act, obviously they’re going to act differently because they haven’t been here. And then people, you know, those people come here and they’re proud of being Mexican and they’ll show it, right? And then there’s other people, people like us will criticize them for being you know, for being so Mexican. There’s like words I could use, but I just don’t want to. And I think that’s, you know, that’s wrong because I mean, if you’re proud of where you came from, I don’t think there’s a problem in showing it. But people here say, “No, you came from Mexico, you came from Mexico and you’re here now, why are you so proud of your nation, if you had to leave it?” You know, and I say, “Well, there’s no problem. They came cuz maybe they had financial problems and they thought they could have a better life here.” But people don’t understand that, they look at these people acting all proud of their nation and say, “Why are you guys so proud, are you so proud of being from Mexico, if Mexico didn’t do anything for you guys? Why are you so proud? Why do you have to go around saying Mexican Pride or Brown Pride, whatever, if your nation didn’t even do any good for you?” And I just think, you know, that’s wrong for people to say that because if you want to be proud of where you came from, you have the right and you shouldn’t be, you know, criticized by it. Cuz I mean, you came from that place, there’s this certain love that you’re going to have for this place. Just the same that I would if I go to Mexico, you know, I still, I would still feel love toward this country cuz it’s where I was born. And it’s different, too, because there’s people, like, it’s even worse because there’s people like us who are Mexican American, born here, and we actually criticize those people who are actually the same people as us, the only difference they weren’t born here. They have this different mentality than us and for some reason our people, my kind of people, think, might think that we’re better than them. And that’s just totally wrong, I think, because first of all we came from the same place, and you know, we’re the same, you know, just because one was born in Mexico and one was born here gives us no right to, you know, treat them any differently. That’s probably some of the differences that I see. (5)

California Hispanic students talked about experience with racism in three situations: initially, when they did not speak English or did not speak it well (Jesus); in relation to gangs (Jesus, Carmen), and more generally (Peter, Carmen). They did not talk about racism beyond their personal experience, for example, in abstract or institutional or historical terms or in terms of other groups such as Native or African Americans. New York Hispanic students, in contrast, less often used the language of race or racism, but talked instead about segregation and discrimination against people of color like themselves. They offered examples from personal experience and from their understandings of the history of African American struggles for civil rights. Personal experience with racism generally is reflected in Peter’s account of being both Mexican and American, not wanting to be white or

Cornbleth2.qxd

78

6/20/2003

1:47 PM

Page 78

H EARING A MERICA ’ S Y OUTH

taunted as a “wannabe.” Carmen’s account of being the target of racism in her elementary school seems a classic case:6 When I was in elementary school, a lot of the teachers were, um, they kind of stereotyped all of the Mexican kids there like “Oh, all their parents work in the fields, all their parents were, like, you know, very low educated, you know, quit school” and this and that. . . . That, yeah, they stereotype Mexican people as being on welfare, lazy, and just obscene, you know, and obnoxious field workers. And that really made me mad because my mom has been working here since she’s gotten here. She’s never had to, you know, have food stamps, she’s never had to, you know, rely on the government for her earnings and stuff like that. She’s always been a hard worker. And so has the rest of my family that’s been here. That really made me mad. A lot of that has been going on ever since I was little, always, and it still has been, still is going on. CC: How do you think that influenced or affected you? Carmen: It’s affected me by, like, making me angry sometimes when the issues are raised and stuff, that’s when I really start being, you know, mean about it and stuff and I start defending my family, you know, and how they are. It just brings on a little anger sometimes, but I never shoot back with something racist back, never, you know. (2–3)

Earlier, when Carmen first mentioned “seems like they’re being racist or, you know, something racial’s being towards me, that makes me mad” (2), I asked her what she does when people say things that she thinks are racist: I don’t say anything racist back, but I just tell that, you know, they’ve got to think a little bit more, and, you know, they have to think before they speak and really, like, get to know what they’re doing also, you know? Because, judged on what color you are, cuz everyone has like a stereotype of “white people act this way, black people act this way, Mexican people act this way,” or “they all do certain things,” you know, and I don’t like that. I usually don’t like prejudging people but then sometimes I do tend to do it, but then I forget about it once I get to know the person or they get to know me. My opinion changes a lot, you know, especially on the situation or what I’ve been through. (2)

Carmen’s acknowledgment of her own stereotyping seems significant, as does Peter’s acknowledgment of his negative attitudes toward Mexicans in some situations. Very few of the young people we interviewed mentioned their own foibles. Among the New York Hispanic students, Marissa and Yolanda talked about racism while Mercedes described segregation in the city, and Magdalena recounted racism and sexism in U.S. history and groups who fought for their rights. Marissa’s accounts of racism involved the city police and store personnel:

Cornbleth2.qxd

6/20/2003

1:47 PM

Page 79

Being Bicultural, Being Proud

79

I mean there’s some police that are good and some that are bad, you know. If, a couple times when I’m around, ’cause my brother’s real bad and I’ve seen him get into trouble [she didn’t elaborate], and they’re like, “Oh, okay, look we’ve got another spic to put away.” You know? I mean that’s stuff that they do. . . . It’s supposed to be that, you know, you have a right to not be harassed but sometimes you just don’t go there. . . . I think they should be more careful, like, and really investigate the type of policemen they hire and things. . . . I don’t know if it’s like that in Kentucky or, you know, so I’m not gonna say, “Oh, America’s like this.” I don’t, in here, the west side where I live, that’s the way it is. (5–6)

Marissa also mentioned racist police behavior toward African Americans, saying, “You know, they get called niggers and stuff like that” (5). At the same time that she took issue with racist behavior, she indicated her impatience with people who break the law or “act bad”: Like I don’t have nothing against black people, but the ignorant ones I do, the ones that don’t know how to behave, or are selfish. The same with Puerto Ricans. I’m Puerto Rican, but if I see one that’s acting bad and doesn’t know how to act, then I’m gonna, I’m gonna [re]act the same way. (9)

Just as she limited her account of racism to the local urban area, Marissa was careful not to overgeneralize her experience when she talked about how she’s been treated in area stores: I’ll go to a store and, you know, sometimes they’ll stare at me and follow me around the store and other times they won’t. Sometimes I will be offended, but sometimes I’m, like, “Okay, they’re just doing their job.” AS: I’ll tell you, sometimes it’s just teenagers. I mean it is a racial and ethnic thing, but sometimes store owners are afraid of teenagers. Marissa: Yeah. And then, I don’t know. It offends me because I know I’m in there to buy something. I’m not in there to steal something. And they’re always watching, and watching, and watching, and questioning what you’re going to do. And you know, that’s it. But I’m not sure if it’s like that everywhere else . . . if you go into a store, like if I go into a Hispanic store . . . you know how you go in and say “hello”? But if I go into like a [large supermarket chain] store, it’s like “Oh, what is she gonna do, what does she want here?” You know, “hurry up and buy,” and I don’t like that. (6)

Yolanda described what she called “prejudism,” including unfairness in the criminal justice system regarding who gets charged and who gets convicted of crimes like murder. It’s “out of prejudism,” she said, “a lot of skin color and that’s not right because we’re all the same inside” (3). In contrast to Marissa, Yolanda thinks things are getting better. “Well, we stopped the, you know, the talking about skin color, or having a different

Cornbleth2.qxd

6/20/2003

1:47 PM

80

Page 80

H EARING A MERICA ’ S Y OUTH

fountain for a different type of person, or of different classrooms. You know, we’re all together now, and we all talk and communicate together” (3). Yet, according to Mercedes, the city is “so segregated”: It’s like the west side is mostly Hispanic. The east side is most black Americans. And then you got south part which is mostly Italian and German people. And then everything is so segregated. So I see when I’m in the streets, when I go to different places in [city], it’s there in my face. . . . I don’t like it, I really don’t. I think, um, I never really experienced stuff like that until I came to [city]. . . . I feel it’s real segregated and real racial over here, and I’m not used to living like that. In the City [New York City] we used to, you know, everybody lived together. Everybody stuck together. . . . I’m pretty sure it is not only in [city]. I’m pretty sure it happens all around the United States of America. But I haven’t—and I’m pretty sure it happens in New York [City] too, you understand. But I don’t, I never experienced it over there until I came to [city]. . . . And when I came to school, I was getting the impression that, um, that you had to stay with your people and, you know, everybody is so segregated. AS: In the school? Mercedes: . . . if you go to the lunchroom, you see a little group of kids. Puerto Rican kids in one table. You see a group of kids, black at one table. You see Russians in one table. You see Italians in one table. Everybody of their nationality stick together. And they don’t—they, they so into their own nationality and think that their nationality revolves around the world instead of, you know, talking to different people, getting to know every, you know, different people. It’s good to learn about other people and their culture and the way they live. You learn interesting things. But it’s real segregated over here. (5)

Segregation, Mercedes explained, causes problems. Disagreements become violent, people get killed. Moreover, she told us, she likes “talking to all kinds of people. Doesn’t matter the color of your skin or where you come from” (6). Earlier, she had told us, “I like talking to everybody. I’m not racial. I like learning about people and the way they live, you know, their culture. I like doing that” (2). Magdalena talked about the past more than the present, describing a white male U.S. history and that groups such as women and blacks had to fight for equal rights. Like Yolanda, she seemed to think that things are getting better: Seems like all the white people did everything. Basically, that’s how it was. Because black people weren’t allowed to vote for years, I mean for a long, long time. And, women, women had no rights. Woman do everything, but they had no rights. ’Cause I mean, the man wouldn’t have survived if it wasn’t for a woman . . . history, it’s just men, white men. . . . I betcha no man back in time, they didn’t know how to cook. I mean how would they survive if there wasn’t no woman in the house . . . they did everything. They clothed their man, they

Cornbleth2.qxd

6/20/2003

1:47 PM

Page 81

Being Bicultural, Being Proud

81

fed their man, you know what I’m saying? They, um, took care, men back then used to LOVE having kids, they took care of their kids. . . . I mean people had problems with it. They didn’t like how things were going. I mean women had to fight to get rights, to get recognized as we have a voice, we want to be able to vote, too . . . [enslaved Africans] had to fight to become free, because they were owned, they were, like, it was your dog or something practically. I mean they went through a lot. (4)

Magdalena was one of the few students to recognize that rights were struggled for; they didn’t “just happen.” She also argued that black and white people shouldn’t hate each other today because of what happened in the past: And, um, like, you’ve got to think about it, too. How do some of these black slaves get, like, run away? Some white people had to think it was wrong and had to help them. Because if every white person thought slavery was, um, was okay, why wouldn’t we still have them African American slaves? Some white person had to think, hey, maybe . . . it’s not right. (5)

Personal feelings appear to enter into Magdalena’s views of history as she continues, saying how glad she is “that I live now, not then, because then, I don’t know how it would be. I would be scared, I mean, everybody hated each other” (5). But not everyone’s changed, she said. “I have some friends where they dislike that I date black guys” (5). Recall that it was Magdalena who described Puerto Ricans as “a little mixed . . . from real, real white to real, real black” (6).

AMERICANS are WHITE? Without recapitulating the literature on whiteness or entering into debates about its provenance, meanings, or future, it is worth exploring students’ beliefs and assumptions about whiteness in relation to their own identities and sense of being American. Peter’s comments, for example, clearly indicate that “acting white” (e.g., Fordham and Ogbu, 1986) is not only an epithet directed toward academically successful African American secondary students by their less academically successful peers (or by whites). Being characterized as acting white or as a wannabe for California Hispanic students is to be accused of wanting to be an American—Americans are white-European Christians, a modest broadening of the earlier WASP (white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant) designation. There also appears to be a class aspect to being American in this context; Americans are of at least middle-class socioeconomic status. Just as the Irish, Italians, and Jews have “become” white in the mutating U.S. racial

Cornbleth2.qxd

82

6/20/2003

1:47 PM

Page 82

H EARING A MERICA ’ S Y OUTH

hierarchy (e.g., Sacks, 1994), perhaps Hispanics and Asians, but not African Americans, eventually will “become” white. Spina and Tai (1998) have well characterized this phenomenon: “Whiteness remains the dominant racial ideology, not by promoting Whiteness as superior, but by promoting Whiteness as normative” (p. 36). Fine et al. (1997, p. viii) go further, asserting that whiteness embodies objectivity, normality, truth, knowledge, merit, motivation, achievement, and trustworthiness; it accumulates invisible supports that contribute unacknowledged to the already accumulated and bolstered capital of whiteness. Rarely, however, is it acknowledged that whiteness demands and constitutes hierarchy, exclusion, and deprivation. [emphasis in original]

Whiteness appears to be accepted, at least implicitly, as normative, if not synonymous, with American for the Mission High School Hispanic students interviewed here. Pride in one’s Mexican or other heritage coexists with an at least implicit assumption that to be fully American is to be white. While Peter’s comments suggest that he is uncomfortable with this formulation, Jesus takes it for granted. In explaining why he doesn’t consider himself an American although he’s “grown to it a little,” (3) Jesus volunteered, “Americans, you know, they’re usually blond hair” (4) and most of the time they get chosen for school groups, projects, or teams before he does. Aphra, too, referred to the “white American kids” in contrast to “the Mexican kids” (3) when she was describing student groups and where they tend to congregate at Mission High School. These students are not alone. Color blindness as it has been promoted and practiced typically assumes whiteness as its norm. The white teacher who does not “see color” among her students typically treats them—and expects them to behave—as middle-class white youngsters. Even academics participate in conflating whiteness with American (see, e.g., Spina and Tai, 1998) and suggesting that a pan-European ethnic identity, European American, “avoids the obvious pitfalls of a merely racial identity, as ‘whites’” (Alba, 1990, p. 316). Of the sixteen European American students from Lincoln, Kennedy, Mission, and Pacific who were asked about their identities (seven students, all at Eisenhower, were asked only about images of America), ten (63 percent) described themselves as white. All three of the students from Pacific and one from each of the other schools avoided either racial or all group identifications. Three of these six students made reference to being white in the course of their interview, but did not claim whiteness as an identity marker. Nearly half the students (seven) mentioned a specific European ancestry, often a mixed one: Scottish and Middle Eastern; Italian, French, and Native American; Spanish and English; Portuguese and Italian; Polish and Austrian-German.

Cornbleth2.qxd

6/20/2003

1:47 PM

Page 83

Being Bicultural, Being Proud

83

For most of these European American students, whiteness was just “what I am.” None expressed a robust white racial identity or acknowledged any kind of white privilege. Either voluntarily or in response to our follow-up questions, nine of the ten students who identified as white said that being white didn’t mean or matter much. Representative comments include: And white is just something I’ve always used. They’re what I’m comfortable with. (Brad, 1) Not very much. I don’t really feel it’s, see I don’t, I think. Okay, the main thing it means to me is the kind of music I listen to. . . . Black people would probably never listen to. And that’s about the only difference I can see with me. I know a lot of people are really proud of their heritage and actively seek it out and try to find all these things about it, but I don’t know. I’m living now, not then. (Martin, 3–4) Mmmm, I don’t know. ’Cause that’s who I am. (Nancy, 1) Sam: Um, it’s not really a big thing with me. I mean, I’m, I say I’m American and that I’m, I mean, if one the surveys, if one the surveys and stuff like that, I always put that I’m white. But, I mean, other than that it’s not a big thing. CC: Okay. So it doesn’t shape day-to-day life? Sam: No, not a huge thing. (Sam, 2)

Kirk went a bit further, noting that acknowledging his whiteness is politically correct: Um, well, Caucasian male. Um, Roman Catholic religion. . . . I classify myself as a person more than anything else. JM: Why do you find these groups comfortable? Kirk: ’Cause it’s politically correct. . . . Um, well, if you want to classify anybody as how they are . . . you do it by skin color, religion. . . . I just classify myself as a white male. That’s what I am. (1)

It may be that being a participating school in the Partner Project (see chapter 2), Lincoln and Kennedy, or being in a school where two racial/ethnic groups predominate, Lincoln and Mission, increases the salience of race/ethnicity and perhaps the sensitivity that Kirk calls political correctness. It seemed to me that European American students expressed more uncertainty, awkwardness, or hesitancy in talking about being white than African American students did about being black, and more hesitancy than they did about other identity markers. I inferred hesitancy from pauses and seemingly more frequent use of “you know,” “like,” “well,” “I mean,” “I don’t know,” and “um.”

Cornbleth2.qxd

84

6/20/2003

1:47 PM

Page 84

H EARING A MERICA ’ S Y OUTH

With reference to their whiteness, Kennedy’s Bruce and LeAnn said that they had no experience of being a minority or the target of racism: “I really never had to label myself” (Bruce, 1). Lacey and Sharon, however, explicitly situated their whiteness in opposition to blackness and then had little or nothing to say about it: Lacey: I don’t use race that much ’cause being white, that’s not a thing that people use a lot. JM: What do you mean by being white, that’s not a thing that people use? Lacey: Well, I think that if you’re African American or something, it’s used more as a, a word to describe yourself, more than, um, white. JM: Why is that, do you think? Lacey: Um, um, I don’t know. (1)

Sharon was more direct: Basically, the only way I describe, ya know, myself as, I mean, yeah, I mean white, but that’s just, ya know, just a color. It’s kinda like a description word more than anything else. I mean, ya know, I’m not black, I’m not, ya know, you are what you are. (1)

To be described as white by others is okay, even for some students who do not use race/ethnicity identity markers to describe themselves. Linda, for example, explained: Well, I am what I am, so if somebody says, well, “white girl,” I mean, I’m not gonna be offended because I am. So, I mean, if somebody were to insult me, then I’d be upset. But, um, if they’re, a lot of people just use it as, like, a descriptive term, and if they’re using it that way, then fine. I don’t see the problem with that. (2)

Martin injected a bit of humor: I don’t mind when people identify me the right way. I remember once, as an insult, somebody called me a conservative, and that really bothered me. I don’t really see a problem with, if some person comes up and says “Hey, white boy!” I’m like, “What?” I don’t care if people say that, it’s what I am. I jokingly say, I was going around telling people one day, “Well, you know, with my white heritage, I’m going to change my name to Beavis.” (3)

Martin was the only European American student to mention dress (“the grunge group”) as an identity marker; both he and Sharon mentioned music. Perhaps the U.S. history context of the interviews discouraged popular cultural referents.

Cornbleth2.qxd

6/20/2003

1:47 PM

Page 85

Being Bicultural, Being Proud

85

A mixed European ancestry, especially an unusual combination such as Scottish and Middle Eastern, was seen positively by the students who claimed it. Sharon commented on other students’ questions about her ancestry: I think really the only things people use is because, ya know, I’m white or I look Italian or I look, I mean. Sometimes people pick up on the different nationalities that I am anyway, and they’ll be like, “Oh, are you so and so?” I’ll be, like, “Yeah, I’m a little bit.” But, I don’t know, I don’t have a problem with people saying that to me. . . . I mean, it doesn’t bother me. I mean, it’s my history. It’s where I came from. So it, I think it’s neat to, ya know, I like it when people ask me, ya know, “Oh, are you American Indian?” And I’ll be like, “Yea, I am sorta Indian.” So, I don’t get offended at all. (2)

Anna, who is Spanish and English, likes being different and sees her Spanish surname as an advantage. “Um, national or like ethnicwise, I’m half Spanish, my dad’s Spanish, so like my grandparents are from Spain, and then my mom, she’s white, English; I don’t know much about her family” (1). Later, I asked how that shaped “who you are? What difference does it make?” (2). Anna responded: Mmmm, gosh, I don’t really think it makes a difference. I may be more accepted by different, you know, maybe that class more cuz they’ll see me and be all, “Oh, what? Your last name’s,” you know, I have a Spanish last name. And they’ll be like, “Oh, you’re Mexican?” And I’ll be like, “No, I’m just half Spanish.” And it helps me out. Like, well, I know for, like, collegewise, like by saying that I’m half that, like, a lot of more grants or scholarships you can get, I think, not just one. CC: So, you think it’s an advantage? Anna: Yeah, I, I think it is advantage? CC: Okay, other ways in which it makes a difference? Anna: Hmm, um, I like it. It’s not, it’s not, kind of, it’s funny, you know, I’m fairly, you know, white. I am white. And, you know, it’s kind of cool to have an ethnic last name, I guess you could say. CC: Okay. And it’s cool because? The reason I’m pushing it is it means different things to different people, and so I want to know what it means to you rather than making assumptions that could be wrong. Anna: No, it’s just, just having a different last name than everyone else, like I’m usually the only one in my class. (2)

Finally, when our interview was almost over, I asked Chrissy about why she did not use racial/ethnic identifiers:

Cornbleth2.qxd

86

6/20/2003

1:47 PM

Page 86

H EARING A MERICA ’ S Y OUTH CC: When I asked you to describe yourself in the first questions, uh, you said that you didn’t use racial or national or cultural groups. Would you say why? It’s okay, I’m just curious. Chrissy: It’s cool, um, probably because, like, I mean, my, my mom’s side of the family is Portuguese . . . [reference to language, food, festivals when she visits grandmother but not at home] And on my dad’s side they’re Italian. . . . There’s no, you know, there’s no speaking Italian, no, like, other things from the culture besides, like, the food sometimes. So, I guess I’ve been assimilated. (8)

Her only mention of whites or whiteness came earlier when I asked her about possible generational differences in the use of group membership and labeling to identify people: Um, I think nowadays sometimes people do that [identify people by group labels]. Like a lot of kids I know, they’ll be, like, you know, they’ll be like, “Oh, you’re white so you’re kind of, like, dorky.” In general, it’s just kind of, like, all white people are kind of, you know, some people just say that kind of stuff. But I think it’s less than what it used to be. I think, you know, like I know some of my, like my great uncles who are, you know, eighties and nineties, they still, you know, they kind of make, like, stereotypical remarks. And I think people do that less, they try to stereotype people less, at least in the sense of race. (2)

The white young people who were part of Phoenix’s (1997) study of more than two hundred London youth ages fourteen to eighteen had even less to say about their whiteness than the students we interviewed. Phoenix summarizes: Many white young people found it difficult to talk about what being white meant to them and few presented themselves as having white identities. Those white young people who had ancestry other than white English generally had more to say about ethnicity and being white than those who were white and English. Thus, Irish, Jewish, or Scottish white young people were more likely to say that they had thought about issues related to ethnicity and to being white. Generally, however, the white young people consistently played down the significance of color while frequently producing accounts [e.g., of relationships with “others”] which indicated that their lives are racialized. (p. 188)

When asked, black and mixed-parentage youth (Phoenix’s terms) were much more likely than whites to say they were sometimes or always “conscious of their color” (p. 189). White youth were more likely to indicate “that they considered color to be irrelevant and were proud of themselves as individuals” (p. 190). When asked, one third expressed pride in being white, compared to 92 percent and 77 percent of black and mixedparentage young people respectively. None of the sixteen students we interviewed volunteered pride in being white. Finally, an interesting parallel between Phoenix’s data and our own is that in response to “ques-

Cornbleth2.qxd

6/20/2003

1:47 PM

Page 87

Being Bicultural, Being Proud

87

tions about whether the English are white or merely people who live in England” (p. 193), white youth were less exclusionary (38 percent) than black and mixed-parentage young people (61 percent), the latter seeming to exclude themselves or reflect a sense of being excluded as did some of the California Hispanic students. Our students’ minimal comments about their whiteness also resemble Frankenberg’s description of the white women she interviewed: “A key feature of these narratives was the sense of whiteness as unmarked marker, very often viewed as substantively empty and yet taken as normative” (Frankenberg, 1994, p. 65). They differ, however, insofar as the European American students neither conflated whiteness with Americanness nor saw Americanness as similarly empty (see chapter 7). Not seeing whiteness, or not seeing whiteness as racial “reinscribes its centrality and reinforces its privileged and oppressive position as normative” (Spina and Tai, 1998, p. 37). It does not, as evident earlier and in the next chapter, obviate recognition of racism by students of all colors.

CONCLUDING COMMENT Caphra is an exchange student from Peru attending Mission High School. She told me that she wants to become a doctor and decided to become an exchange student in order to learn English: It’s, um, right now, English is an important language all around the world, and if you want to get a job or you want to be a really good professional or have a degree, or master’s or whatever, you need to know at least another language. So I said, well, English . . . and I just wanted to know part of your culture too, you know. (3)

She has found the United States different from what she expected. “And they talk like if, I don’t know, if you are great, you know. Like, when you think about it and you come here and you find all the racism and you say, ‘Whoa, it’s not like, exactly like you said,’ you know” (3). Earlier in the interview, Caphra said that she was not racial, that it doesn’t matter. When I asked her to say more, she explained, reminiscent of Magdalena’s description of Puerto Rico: No, I’m really used to it. Peru is a mix, um, you can find there Japaneses, because after World War II they went to Peru, you can find blacks, you find our own race that is, um, Incas, you know. So we are kind of, a little bit dark, uh, you find whites, you find every kind, I mean, it’s, we are completely mixed. (2)

I asked Caphra what she sees here in California and the United States:

Cornbleth2.qxd

6/20/2003

88

1:47 PM

Page 88

H EARING A MERICA ’ S Y OUTH Here, a lot of racism, I hate that. I, I don’t agree with that, I don’t think it’s fair. Um, I don’t think that because of the color of your skin or because your beliefs, you are different than the rest of the people or you are a bad person, you know. And I don’t think it’s fair because you can be a nice person, but because they see that you are black or maybe, I don’t know, um, you don’t have the same religion that they have, they are really racist and they go against you, and I just don’t like it. (2)

When I asked Caphra if she had experienced racism in the United States, she responded: Yes, yes. Here, a lot. And, like, I don’t have too many friends here and just because they see my color of skin or because they know that I speak Spanish, most of the time they think that I’m Mexican, uh, but I’m not. And so sometimes they are mean, you know, but sometimes there is also nice people. (2)

In response to my question about an example of people being mean, Caphra said: Not like they attack you probably, but they look at you in a bad way. Or sometimes when you try to talk with them, they are like “Yeah, yeah,” or they just don’t talk to you, you know, just, like that. Yeah, but I never experienced that before, never. I knew that blacks sometimes, you know, like some people like— but I never experienced it before. (3)

Had Caphra been an exchange student at Pacific High School, her experience very likely would have been much different. Since September 11, 2001, news reports such as “Struggling to Be Both Arab and American” (Wilgoren, November 4, 2001), about the large Arab American community in Dearborn, Michigan, remind me of the experiences recounted by Spanish-speaking students in California. Bicultural pride is not only an Hispanic phenomena. Nor is it unAmerican. Instead, bi- or multiculturalism increasingly seems to be emblematic of being American.

NOTES 1.

2.

None of these students described themselves as Latino/a or Chicano/a. One Guatemala-born student at Mission who described himself as Hispanic did use the language of Latino, saying “there’s that bond of being Hispanic, Latino” (Geraldo, 3). Students who described themselves as mixed race or biracial are considered in chapter 3, “None of the Above.” The language of “bicultural” is mine, not the students. Of the four, only Geraldo, who was born in Guatemala and came to the United States when he was two, maintained a single non-U.S. identity, although he said “Yeah, I guess you could” be both Guatemalan and U.S.-American. He told me,

Cornbleth2.qxd

6/20/2003

1:47 PM

Page 89

Being Bicultural, Being Proud

3. 4.

5. 6.

89

“I’m from Guatemala, my roots are there, my family’s from there, everything, who we are is over there, so I can’t, I can’t be something else” (3). Except for Geraldo, all the California Hispanic students were from Mission High School. The comments of the students at Mission High School about having diverse friendships occurred within a few weeks of the mass killings at Columbine High School in Colorado and wide media attention to high school cliques both nationally and locally. The students may have been reacting to oversimplified and somewhat sensationalized media portrayals of various groups of students as well as to a reported history of local problems with Mexican youth gangs from whom they seem to have wanted to distance themselves. Both Mission students who talked about gangs described them as Mexican, not Mexican American or mixed immigrant and native born. It also resembles Joan’s New York school experience, recounted in chapter 5, of being considered inferior because she is black.

REFERENCES Alba, R. D. (1990). Ethnic identity: The transformation of white America. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Fine, M., Powell, L. C., Weis, L., and Wong, L. M. (1997). Preface. In M. Fine, L. Weis, L. C. Powell, and L. M. Wong (eds.), Off white: Readings on race, power, and society (vii–xii). New York: Routledge. Fine, M., and Weis, L. (1998). The unknown city. Boston: Beacon Press. Fordham, S., and Ogbu, J. U. (1986). Black students’ school success: Coping with the “burden of ‘acting white.’” The Urban Review, 18 (3), 176–206. Frankenberg, R. (1994). Whiteness and Americanness: Examining constructions of race, culture, and nation in white women’s life narratives. In S. Gregory and R. Sanjek (eds.), Race, 62–77. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Nelson, C., and Tienda, M. (1985). The structuring of Hispanic ethnicity: Historical and contemporary perspectives. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 8 (1), 49–74. Nieto, S. (1996). Affirming diversity: The sociopolitical context of multicultural education. (2nd ed.). New York: Longman. Phoenix, A. (1997). “I’m white! So what?” The construction of whiteness for young Londoners. In M. Fine, L. Weis, L. C. Powell, and L. M. Wong (eds.), Off white: Readings on race, power, and society, 187–97. New York: Routledge. Sacks, K. B. (1994). How did Jews become white folks? In S. Gregory and R. Sanjek (eds.), Race. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Spina, S. U., and Tai, R. H. (1998). The politics of racial identity: A pedagogy of invisibility. Educational Researcher, 27 (1), 36–40, 48. Wilgoren, J. (November 4, 2001). Struggling to be both Arab and American. The New York Times, B-1, 8.

This page intentionally left blank

Cornbleth2.qxd

6/20/2003

1:47 PM




Page 91

5

RACISM MORE THAN RACE

Well, when I was raised . . . my parents really didn’t say, “Well, [Teresa], you’re black” or anything. I knew I wasn’t white, by color of skin. But, um, I don’t really know, I don’t know. I feel comfortable just saying I’m black or African American. To me it doesn’t have to deal with being in Africa or anything like that. It’s just my race. I am American, and I’m black. . . . I’m just who I am. . . . I really don’t have a problem with my race, or who I am, you know? . . . I always am identifying with being black more than female because we live in a white world, so you just feel your blackness a lot. —Teresa, Lincoln High School, New York, 1–2 It’s not just the black men. They label us also, um, especially as being maybe, um, a prostitute . . . maybe being on welfare and having all these babies. And they think all we’re doing is being on welfare, is just collecting benefits and money and, um, just sitting up, you know what I’m saying, just sitting up, collecting for nothing. —Teresa, 4

While a few students offered what might be described as “robust racial/ethnic identities,” most responded to our question, “What does it mean to you to be African American?” or whatever racial/ethnic descriptor(s) they used, by saying “that’s what I am.” By robust racial/ethnic identity, I mean something more than “what (or who) I am” or skin color

Cornbleth2.qxd

92

6/20/2003

1:47 PM

Page 92

H EARING A MERICA ’ S Y OUTH

(or other physical characteristic). I also mean more than food and holidays, what a colleague calls pizza and polkas ethnicity. Recall Chrissy, talking about her Portuguese-Italian background (chapter 4) and saying, “There’s no, you know, there’s no speaking Italian, no, like, other things from the culture besides, like, the food sometimes. So, I guess I’ve been assimilated” (8). A robust racial/ethnic identity, in contrast, conveys a sense of history (e.g., roots, ties, events or experiences), culture (specific practices), family, and/or community affiliation (or collective identity). Overall, the European American students had the least to say about their racial/ethnic identity and Hispanic students the most. Across racial/ethnic, gender, socioeconomic status, and geographic lines, however, students talked about racism and injustice. In contrast to many adults’ seeming reluctance to talk about racism, most students seemed to talk freely and at times angrily about being targeted for discriminatory/negative treatment because of their apparent race/ethnicity, or they talked about the prevalence of past and present racism in the United States. Many explicitly indicated their desire to see the United States live up to its oft-stated ideals. Here, I juxtapose what students had to say about race and racism. Their comments are consistent with Omi and Winant’s (1994) conceptualization of racialization and racial projects much more than conventional notions of race or racial categorization. They also appear to support my relational view of identity and identification processes. Understanding and contesting material manifestations and effects of racial hierarchy and racism do not require prior racial categorization. While I was not surprised that most of the white students we interviewed had little or nothing to say about being white, I was surprised that so few African American students had much to say about what being black or African American meant to them. Unlike whiteness, blackness is noticed in the United States. It is not taken for granted except insofar as African Americans are stereotyped negatively. Only three of thirteen (23 percent) of the African American students who were interviewed about their identities offered what could be considered “robust” racial identities: Joan from Lincoln, and Marvin and Penny from Pacific. In addition, Blake, who identified himself as “a person first” (1), and Teresa, who described herself as a black African American female, both from Lincoln, spoke strongly and angrily about their black identities in the context of a racist society. They seemed to be emphasizing racism more than race. While Blake was hopeful about the future, Teresa expressed more bitterness and pessimism. Among the four Asian students, only Sander expressed a strong racial/ethnic identity—as Indian, not Asian. And not

Cornbleth2.qxd

6/20/2003

1:47 PM

Page 93

Racism More Than Race

93

unlike Blake and Teresa, Sander’s account of his Indianness included considerable reaction to others’ prejudice and discrimination. His story provides a transition from race to racism.

ROBUST RACIAL/ETHNIC IDENTITY Here I introduce Joan, Marvin, Penny, and Sander with extended excerpts from their interviews and then offer some tentative, cross-case interpretation. At the time of our interview, Joan was a senior at Lincoln and senior class president. She was nineteen, she told me, older than most of the students because she had repeated fifth grade. In response to my question about which groups, if any, she used to identify or describe herself, Joan said: Let’s see. Black, female, teenager, Christian. . . . I don’t know. A lot of people categorize as far as leaders and followers, and I’m usually put in the leaders category. CC: Okay. You said black, female, teenager, Christian, leader. Say a bit about why these feel comfortable, about why these seem to fit. Joan: Well, black because I am black. That one I can’t avoid, not that I would want to. Female obviously because I am female. Teenager because I’m nineteen. [about thirty seconds of static] . . . my parents, trying to get used to the idea that their kids are going away. And me and my mother are going through a doozy right now. [laughter] We can identify with each other . . . [more static]. One of the biggest groups, I don’t want to say group, but that’s the biggest part of my identity. I believe that God plays a big part in everything that happens in my life. Everything good that happens, you know, He’s responsible for. Anything bad that happens is because I need to learn a lesson from it. So, He’s the biggest part of my life. So it’s very important that I identify myself as Christlike or Christian. CC: Do you see that as a choice in comparison to being black or female? Joan: Yeah. With being black, and I have to say this, you probably hear a lot of people say you’re a “wantabe.” Or people who are black are supposed to be trying to act like they’re white, or white trying to act like they’re black. And I really think black is not, it has two different meanings. Black in one perspective is the color of your skin, which I never understood that when I was little. I’m not black, I’m brown. But, that was a way of identifying skin color. And then there’s another perspective as far as the way you act. Being black is more a state of mind than it is skin color. Black, to me, not to say that the black race is superior or anything like that, signifies strength. So, when I say I’m black, you know, it’s always, my mother raised me that way. Cuz I had a lot of teachers who used to

Cornbleth2.qxd

94

6/20/2003

1:47 PM

Page 94

H EARING A MERICA ’ S Y OUTH put me down because I was black. And the way it was when we were little was that only the white kids were suppose to be smart. The black kids were suppose to be dumb. That’s the way it was. So if we got a low grade, it was, like, “oh well,” you know. And I remember the one time I got a higher grade than the smartest white girl in the class, and it was like everybody had a problem with it, especially the white kids in the class. But after I read this book called Beyond Roots, it was about blacks in the Bible, you know, stuff like that. And I made it up in my mind that black [another fifteen seconds of static]. (1–2)

A bit later, Joan related her blackness and Christianity in relation to where she felt “at home.” I used to go to a church that was predominantly white. And the pastor would always get up, and he’d talk about how race didn’t matter, you know. When somebody asks you what race you are, you say, “we’re Christian.” And that’s supposed to be it. And I almost laughed to myself because, I’m like, this guy doesn’t walk into stores and have people treat him like he’s black. I mean, when you can walk in my shoes, then you can tell me how it supposedly feels. So, I mean, I identify myself as a Christian, but there’s certain things that I have to say, I’m a black Christian. You know, I’m still a child of God but, you know, I have to face different things than you have to face. And now I go to a predominantly black church. And I feel more at home there. I mean, we’re all Christians, but they have a different perspective on life because we’ve been through a lot of the same things, and I feel more comfortable around them, and I can talk to them better about what’s going on in my life then I would be able to people at the other church that I was going to. CC: All right. When you say that you feel more comfortable, more at home. I have an idea of what that means to me, but what does that mean to [Joan]? Joan: More comfortable when I can be around people that I can talk to, that have walked the same walk of life, and that I can gain some kind of knowledge from as far as where I’m going, some of the things I’m going to face because they’ve already been there. And, it’s like, I can’t talk to a thirty-year-old white female and her tell me some of the things I’m going to go through as being a black female, because she’s never been there, so she doesn’t know, you know. Plus, the music is different. [laughter] I mean, we had a mixture of races in the other church, and they tried to imitate black music, but it didn’t work all that well. It really didn’t. (3–4)

Later, she mentioned having a lot of fun at her church, having an active youth group, and loving her church. Joan also interrelated being black, being female, and being senior class president when she talked about a recent conflict over the senior class trip. At one point, she reflected: I try not to pull my identity as an African American into it, or Christian, because being senior class president, I have to relate to everybody, try to get along with

Cornbleth2.qxd

6/20/2003

1:47 PM

Page 95

Racism More Than Race

95

everybody. And it’s funny that the group of people that I identify with the most, which would be the black females, are the ones that I don’t get along with. I mean, that’s just beyond me. Those are the ones that I have the problems with. I mean, I get along with the white guys and white females and the black guys. And it would seem like you’d be closer to the people that are the most like you, and it doesn’t always seem to be that way. (5)

Later in the interview, referring to an economics class project, Joan reflected on blacks as a group: We get, [name], a black female and I, read up on this stuff and affirmative action, and that thing that happened really ticked me off to no end. CC: Which thing? Several things have happened. Joan: Oh, yeah. When people started talking about we didn’t need affirmative action. It really upset me when I heard blacks who used affirmative action to get where they are, a lot of them, felt that we didn’t need it anymore. Only because they got to where they are. And I honestly, as much as they like to say prejudice doesn’t exist anymore, I see it everyday. So, I still think that we do need affirmative action to help blacks get into positions. A lot of them have proven themselves worthy of those positions once they got there. So, it’s not like a handout. We’ve still got to earn our piece once we get there. So, that upset me. And then it seems like, and I hate to say that blacks have been pacified, but given certain things to satisfy us? But we still don’t have that ultimate goal that we set so way back when, you know, walk hand in hand, you know? We’ve got some people walking hand in hand, but we still have some people trying to bite our necks off. You know? (7)

Toward the end of our interview, when Joan told me that she tries “not to let how other people perceive me affect how I behave” (13), I commented that “that’s hard” to do, and she agreed, saying that she tries to “just be myself.” “Being myself,” Joan concluded, “was a lot easier than trying to be somebody else. And once I started being myself, it was a lot easier to get along with people, even at this school . . . although some people are just still going to be impossible” (13). For Joan, being herself is being a black, female, teen, Christian leader. She lives in multiple worlds, and her identity is multifaceted. Whereas Joan spoke at length, Penny and Marvin had less to say. However, they too conveyed robust racial/ethnic identities. Their references were to history much more than to gender, age, or religion. When I first asked Penny to describe herself, she was uncertain about how to respond: I’m not really sure, it’s like, it’s like I’m in between trying to find who I am, where I’m going, where I’m at right now, whether I want to stay, whether I want to leave. I know I’m religious . . . I know I want to go to college, um, I

Cornbleth2.qxd

96

6/20/2003

1:47 PM

Page 96

H EARING A MERICA ’ S Y OUTH know I want to be a photographer and a fashion designer, but I know before that I gotta get my full education. (1)

It wasn’t until I asked Penny about whether she thinks of or considers herself an American that she spoke about being African American: Yeah, in a way I’m American because I was born in America, family’s born in America. I call myself that, but really, like, African American cuz, you know, ancestors came from Africa. . . . I call myself that, not all the way American. After I seen, you know, what’s been done to our people I don’t really say I’m all American, all the way with everything they do, KKK and all that stuff. All that way American, no. CC: What would you say it means to you to be an African American? Penny: I see myself like African American because American, I’m not sure, we came from Africa and then the generations later were born in America, so I guess that’s where we got our African American from, although they don’t want to be known as African Americans though, they just want to be known as black. That’s another thing, why call themselves blacks, maybe it’s some kind of name we’re under cuz black, we’re not this black. We are not, the color of my hair is, like, jet black; brown, we’re not that black, but they want to say that, fine. But African American, I can go with that for right now. Anything other than Negro or, ugh, anything but that. . . . I can’t just call myself American. Like the whites and stuff, that’s American cuz, you know, their, their ancestors came from England and decided to, to colonize America. That’s like, Americans right there, that’s them. But I do call myself African American, American in some ways, though. (5)

I pressed Penny on her definition of whites as Americans, using my family and myself as an example and asking, “What about people like myself whose family came from central and eastern Europe?” In response to her questions, I clarified, “I mean, I was born here, I was born in Chicago, but my grandparents and great-grandparents came from central and eastern Europe” (5-6). She responded thoughtfully: “Hmm, that’s kind of hard. . . . You don’t know, I’d say like American. You were born, you were born here, you’re from America. I’m not saying like fullblooded American or something like that” (6). So Penny both feels ties to Africa and dissociates herself from some white American practices. She associates being American with being white, as do some of the Hispanic students, as well as being from England a long time ago. Later in the interview, she talked more about American racism. Marvin began by describing himself as “just black basically . . . just me, regular person” (1). When the interviewer, also a black male, pushed Marvin to talk about what being black meant to him, Marvin in effect thought aloud. His conclusion seems to me profound, and it is worth following how he got there.

Cornbleth2.qxd

6/20/2003

1:47 PM

Page 97

Racism More Than Race

97

I mean, it’s not really, like you gotta be, like, with only black people, you know. That’s how everybody’s gonna see you, as being black, you know. Like they might think, you know what I’m saying, looking at you, that you’re mixed with something or something like that, but they’re always going to think that you’re black. So I just see myself as being like, you know, whenever I go at applications, everything, I just put, you know what I’m saying, African American or black, cuz you know, that’s how they, you know what I’m saying. MH: What difference does that make in your life? Marvin: What difference? Being black? It doesn’t really make a difference. I mean, I don’t know, I don’t know, like, how it is being another color, so, you know what I’m saying. It’s just, I don’t know, it’s just like, I don’t know. MH: . . . Um, when you see yourself as black or anything else you describe yourself as you know, it means something to call yourself that. . . . And everything like that, you take risks, you describe yourself as that for a reason, you know what I’m saying. And so you describe yourself as black . . . you described yourself as black for a reason, and black means something, you know what I’m saying. So I’m trying to figure out what does that mean to you. Cuz it means something different to me than it probably means to you. So I want to see what it means to you. Marvin: Mmm, I think it means like, um, let me think, just, I don’t know, it’s like, mmm, I don’t know. I gotta, like, there’s so many things I wanna say. MH: Well, then, say it, just spit it all out. Marvin: Um, it’s like, uh, I don’t know how to put my thoughts into words, you know. Like, I don’t know, it’s like man, it’s like just representing like, who you are, you know what I’m saying. Like people, your family and stuff, you know what I’m saying, like, it’s just like you are just living, you know what I’m saying, living history, you know what I’m saying. Like all your ancestors and everybody, you know what I’m saying, they was probably mixed with something but you know, the main, like, person is black. So, you know what I’m saying, and you’re all carrying all your history with you which is like, just like a walking historical figure, everybody’s, they all got history. MH: A walking historical figure? Marvin: That’s how I see myself, just dragging around all my ancestors. MH: Well, let’s go back to the other question. So what does it mean to be a walking, you know, historical figure? Marvin: I mean, you gotta, you gotta have pride, . . . to be a historical figure you gotta . . . just do all you can, you know what I’m saying, or you, yeah, basically you gotta just do as much as you can or something. (2–3)

Clearly, Marvin sees himself as part of something larger than himself, with a long history, a family history or an ancestral community. Moreover,

Cornbleth2.qxd

98

6/20/2003

1:47 PM

Page 98

H EARING A MERICA ’ S Y OUTH

he seems to see himself as having pride and responsibility in its continuation. None of the other students we interviewed expressed this sense of connectedness over time. If, as Cross (1995) contends in distinguishing oppositional from defensive racial/ethnic identities among African American youth, a major function of black identity is protection against racism in daily life, then only Joan seems to articulate a black identity capable of providing such protection. Penny and Marvin, in contrast, are still struggling with who they are, or are becoming, and the role being black plays in that process. Citing his earlier work, Cross notes that a fully developed black identity serves at least three functions in a person’s daily life: (1) it defends the person from negative psychological stress that results from having to live in a society that is at times very racist; (2) it establishes a sense of purpose, meaning, and affiliation; and (3) it provides a psychological mechanism that facilitates social intercourse with people, cultures, and situations located outside the boundaries of blackness. (p. 195)

It may be, however, that multifaceted identities, even a powerful sense of one’s history such as Marvin’s, or a strong sense of oneself as “a person” such as that presented by Blake in chapter 3, could serve similar purposes for black and other youth facing racism. From another direction, Sander’s sense of his Indianness, presented below, could be seen as protective in the manner suggested by Cross. More than other immigrant or mixed-ancestry students, Sander talked about being pulled in different directions and of how he’s changed. Sander told me that “much as I would not like to be thought of” this way, most people think of him as “a jock” because he plays football and likes it a lot. When I asked about other ways in which he describes himself, Sander said: I’m Indian, which is not very common here . . . cuz, like, I’m the only one here. And I think people look at me a lot cuz I’m Indian. I mean, anything Indian happens they always refer to me, they always ask me questions about it, which I don’t mind. I always like to educate people on my culture. I don’t mind that at all. (1)

Sander’s Indianness was evident in his explanation of why he doesn’t consider or think of himself as an American even though he’d lived in the United States for seven years at the time of the interview: As an American? I’d have to say no. And I know I actually had this discussion with my mom and she’s really mad that I keep saying no, but I can’t see myself as American. American-Indian maybe, but never as American. It’s just when I think of American, the common conception comes to mind is blue eyes, white

Cornbleth2.qxd

6/20/2003

1:47 PM

Page 99

Racism More Than Race and blond hair, you know. And, I think, um, of myself as Indian. People ask me what nationality I am, I’m not going to say American, I’m going to say Indian. So why should I consider myself American? But I’m not even a citizen of this country, but even if I was a citizen, I don’t think I’d call myself American, at the most I’d go American Indian. And then I’d be, and I have a problem with that too cuz then people start thinking I’m like native Indian, then I’d have to go, “East Indian, you know, from India.” And then they’d finally get it. [CC laughs] So I’d have to say no, I don’t see myself as American. CC: Do you think you could be both Indian and American? Sander: Yeah, that’s, that’s kinda like what I find, like, a lot of people writing about these days. I was reading, like, there’s this, like, articles in the [name of newspaper] Times, especially yesterday, like, over coverage of Indian arts and stuff in America, and it’s just like I’m one of those people stuck in a generation gap. My parents just came to the United States, and they’re totally Indian. I was Indian, and I’m trying to be American, and my dad’s like pulling me more to the Indian part, my friends pull me more to the American, and I find myself wanting to be more American just cuz I think it’s a lot more fun than being so, my dad’s really strict with me. Being Indian involves being strict in a lot of ways. But I do try to, um, be more cultural, like I do hang out with a lot of my Indian friends, I do hang out, go to Indian movies, parties, and, like, hang out with Indian girls a lot, just cuz I think it’s kind of cool hanging out with our own race once in a while. Cuz most people take it for granted, but I don’t. And I get to see these people, like, on the weekends or something, that’s it, not every day. CC: You mentioned feeling pulled both ways . . . what it means to be an American. To be an American as well as being Indian. Sander: To be an American would be to have, I think, a lot more freedom. My parents are very strict. They have to know, like at every moment, where I am, and I can’t come home that late; if I do, they really trip about it. Most of my friends, they don’t have that problem. Their parents aren’t that strict. My parents have always been very strict about that. I have to spend a certain amount of time with my grades. I can’t just finish homework, go to the game, you know, do whatever. No, you have to stay in your room, find something else to do, and my friends don’t have to do that. A lot of them even do homework watching TV, which is, like, I couldn’t even dream of doing that. I think it means having a lot more freedom and a lot more choices, that they seem to have. At the same time I kind of like being Indian because your parents kind of take care of you. Like a lot of my friends, like their parents don’t even cook dinner, you know. It’s just like you kind of have to feed yourself. My parents would never do something like that. They always make sure I’m, like, well fed. That’s one thing I kind of appreciate I guess. And if they don’t cook dinner, they’ll, like, give me, like, twenty bucks or something to go get, like, a big meal or something to eat, you know. It’s not none of that ninety-nine cent-stuff. They’ll make sure I can go to, like, a nice restaurant and get some. They’ve always been like that for some reason, like very caring in that way, you know. . . . And if I ever need something, they will get it, give it to me probably. It’ll probably take a little time, but. And

99

Cornbleth2.qxd

100

6/20/2003

1:47 PM

Page 100

H EARING A MERICA ’ S Y OUTH

another thing with being American, most people like Americans have to, like, get their own things. Like, you know, most American friends of mine, they have to get their own car, they have to pay their own insurance and all that. My parents cover everything just cuz they take it upon themselves. . . . And a lot of them also, it’s, like, you know, after high school they have to move out or once you go to college you can’t come back, you know, or you pay rent, whatever. That’s never the case in my family. I can come back anytime, I can come back when I’m forty, they won’t care. They’ll just be glad to see me. Yeah, so that’s kind of cool I think. (3–5)

Finally, in response to my question about any change over time, Sander mentioned ways in which his ideas about appearance and dress are becoming Americanized. Not only does he wear baggy clothes now and not think much of it, but he’d consider getting an ear pierced, which he used to think was awful. His telling of the story also illustrates his reflectiveness about change: Um, one idea that comes to mind strongly, I think about . . . it’s not a big idea, it’s just, like, a way I think I’ve changed. Like, I remember when I was in India I saw a guy at airport, like he was from the United States, he came there, he was Indian, and he had, like, his ear pierced and I was like, “That is the worst thing ever!” I promised myself I would never get my ear pierced, and I haven’t, but it, like it occurs to me now that last week I went to my friend’s place, like, he owns a store in [nearby town] . . . people’s ears, pierce them, and I almost got my ear pierced. And it’s just like, the way that now I look and say, “What’s wrong with getting your ear pierced?” you know. I’ve been changed, I have. Like back then I was so against it, I would not dream of doing that. I was like, “If that ever happens, I hope it gets cut off or something,” you know. But now it’s like, I could see that happening, and I think that’s one way of how, how I’ve been changed. It’s not a big example, but I think it, it means a lot. If I can be changed by that way, I think I can be influenced to change more and more. . . . But I have changed, people change . . . you always try to think you’re your own individual person, you don’t let people change you, but they do in a lot of ways, they change you a lot. (7–8)

Discrimination or racism were evident when I asked how being Indian made a difference in his life. Sander explained at some length: That’s probably the hardest thing, I would say. Just because it’s always harder for me in everything I do, being Indian. Like coming out for football, it was hard cuz you’ve never seen an Indian football player before, you don’t think they can play or anything, so they never gave me, I was given a chance, but I was not treated as fairly as other people were. Like compared to some of my black friends, Asian friends, they were given more of a chance cuz they know that they might have capability of playing. I always had to work really, really hard to prove myself. . . . It’s the same with making friends. I’ve always had to, I haven’t had like a clique or such. If you look at our school, mostly people hang out by their race, um, for the most part. Like right now I hang out with most of my Asian

Cornbleth2.qxd

6/20/2003

1:47 PM

Page 101

Racism More Than Race

101

friends who are like Chinese, Korean, um, Japanese and all that. And it took me a while to, like, fit in with them and I think it took a lot longer than it would . . . if I was Chinese myself. I would’ve fit in just automatically from the get-go. I think it would’ve been a lot easier. But being Indian, it was hard, and I have a lot of friends in, like [two towns in the area] who go to, like, high schools that are just, like, full of Indian people and they don’t have a problem like that, you know. They have a lot of Indian friends, and it’s never been that hard. But for me, and they’re surprised when they come to my house and they see like, pictures of me and my friends. They’re like, “Is this all the people you hang out with?” You know, cuz they’re, they’re surprised that like they’re all Asian. So yeah, that’s kind of, it seems like I’ve always had to work harder. And it still happens, like I know if I go to the gym to a pickup basketball game with one of my friends, the first person they’ll pick is him even though they don’t know how any of us play, just because they think he can play better cuz they see more of him but they haven’t seen more of me. Even though I’m a pretty good basketball player I always get picked last just cuz of that, you know. So I think that has a lot to do with it and I, I always feel like I have to work harder that way. (3)

The matter-of-fact tone of Sander’s account of his experience with discrimination or racism is consistent with Cross’s (1995) claim for the benefit of a developed racial/ethnic identity. Looking across the four students presented here and the Hispanic students with robust racial/ethnic identities, such as Peter, presented in chapter 4, a few very tentative observation seem warranted. One is the reflectiveness they evidence about their own experiences, thoughts, and feelings at the same time that they are positive about their ancestry. While Penny and Marvin appear to be awakening to the individual and social meanings of their racial/ethnic identities and beginning to personalize them, Joan, Sander, and Peter seem to have rather well-worked-out positions. Along with reflectiveness is a strong sense of connection—of belonging, feeling comfortable, being at home. These students are not unidimensional, however. Their connections are multiple, including links to their family, friends, sports, and/or religion, for example, as well as to their racial/ethnic groups.

WIDESPREAD RACISM Glimpses of students’ views of racism in the United States, past and present, have been offered in previous chapters, especially in chapter 4 from Hispanic students, as well as in the accounts of robust racial/ethnic identities above. Sander’s account of frequently having to “prove” himself provides a bridge from race to racism. In contrast to what could be seen as downplaying race, students talked more extensively and sometimes passionately about racism in the

Cornbleth2.qxd

102

6/20/2003

1:47 PM

Page 102

H EARING A MERICA ’ S Y OUTH

United States, although they did not always use the language of racism. They described historical and contemporary manifestations of racism, drawing on personal experience, reports of the experiences of friends and family members, and what they learned from reading and other sources in and out of school. Much but not all of their talk about racism was in response to our questions about their images of America. We did not ask about racism directly. Several students, from New York and California, said that they had only recently learned about aspects of U.S. race relations and racism in their U.S. history classes and wished that they had known more sooner. Penny, for example, an African American junior from Pacific taking U.S. history at the time of our interview, told me, “But I really see stuff I never, you learn more stuff that you didn’t really learn before. I didn’t know how people were treated like that [referring to the KKK, Jim Crow laws, the Great Depression]. I don’t know why I didn’t know that before” (9). Similarly, white students from Eisenhower who had recently viewed a video depicting some of the brutality against civil rights demonstrators in the South said that they hadn’t known about the extent and specifics of the violence before. “They should have told us sooner” was a sentiment expressed by several students (e.g., Nick). In any event, students’ talk about racism reflected disappointment, frustration, anger, and hopefulness as well as pessimism about the future—disappointment, frustration, and/or anger with the injustices of a much-touted democratic American way and hopefulness that someday soon America would live up to its ideals. Perhaps the most angry and articulate students on racism were Blake, introduced in chapter 3, and Teresa, both from Lincoln High School, and Penny from Pacific High School. After presenting their accounts, I draw more briefly from the other interviews to illustrate the range of student perspectives. Recall that Blake described himself as “a person first” and spoke angrily about racial slurs and the negative media portrayal of blacks, especially black males like himself. In response to our question about what it means to him to be an American, Blake emphasized that he “should be equal to any other person in this country . . . be given the same opportunities, whether it be employment, schooling, or whatever” (3). Echoing Martin Luther King, Jr., Blake continued: And I should not be singled out or just treated differently or treated any less than any other person. It should be based on my character, and the content of it. And that’s what I feel it should be to be an American, but today, in today’s times, it seems that to be an American to me is almost a joke. (3)

Cornbleth2.qxd

6/20/2003

1:47 PM

Page 103

Racism More Than Race

103

Blake provided an example of being hired for a fast-food service job, along with a white applicant, and then being asked questions by the white woman who hired him such as “Are you gonna be a problem, or trouble for me at this job?” “And I wondered,” Blake related, “why is she asking me this question?” According to Blake, she just gave the other young man a uniform and let him go, “but she holds me back to ask me these questions” (3): I’m wondering, “Why are you asking me?” I didn’t say anything to her. I just answered the question. I said “no.” And I let her walk off. But that really angered me because, what I think her perception of people like me is, you know, we cause trouble. We’re going to be a problem for you, and there’s really no good in us. And that really upset me. (3)

Given experiences such as this, Blake described feeling like an outsider: In some ways it makes me feel cheated. Sometimes I feel like I don’t belong here. Like I was born here, I was raised here, but it doesn’t feel like I belong here. Sometimes I feel like a stranger, a foreigner. . . . Why can’t I just be an American just like anybody else? Why can’t I just be treated fairly like anyone else? That’s what it’s supposed to be. That’s what you say it should be. (7)

Despite his feelings of inequity and alienation, Blake is not without hope for America or himself personally: America’s not all bad, but there’s too much wrong with it, you know? There are a lot of things that are right about America. It’s a good place to be. One thing that is good is the many cultures that are here. And the many different backgrounds that are here. Um, there’s a lot to learn, a lot to experience. Um, a lot of places to go in the country. Um, many things that are good. Those are some of the good things, but there are too many wrong things that are outweighing the good things, which makes it very unbalanced. So what we need to do is eliminate the bad things, tip the scale. (6)

Teresa, in contrast, was much more pessimistic, and where Blake seemed hurt, Teresa seemed bitter. She began by saying that while she doesn’t set herself apart, other people do: Well, I describe myself as being a black African American and, um, when I go places and I see people of different race or different colors, I don’t, I don’t set myself apart, and I don’t say, “Well, they’re white, I’m black.” It is true in a way that they, people such as white people, get more jobs, more openings. Such as if I were to go to . . . for example, if I were to go to a store, they wouldn’t be the one to be followed around. It would be me because of my color. And even if you carry yourself in a way, in a good way, or in, you know, a nice manner, you still would be followed around. And it’s just awful how they label us, especially the black race, me, personally saying. (1)

Cornbleth2.qxd

104

6/20/2003

1:47 PM

Page 104

H EARING A MERICA ’ S Y OUTH

In response to the interviewer’s follow-up question, Teresa continued: Well, when I was raised . . . my parents really didn’t say, “Well, [Teresa], you’re black” or anything. I knew I wasn’t white, by color of skin. But, um, I don’t really know, I don’t know. I feel comfortable just saying I’m black or African American. To me it doesn’t have to deal with being in Africa or anything like that. It’s just my race. I am American, and I’m black. . . . I’m just who I am. . . . I really don’t have a problem with my race, or who I am, you know? . . . I always am identifying with being black more than female because we live in a white world, so you just feel your blackness a lot. (1–2)

From these introductory comments, Teresa goes on to describe her own wariness of some black people, media portrayals of blacks, her anger with being portrayed as a prostitute or a welfare mother, and America as a bottomless pit: It might sound like I’m real prejudiced, but sometimes . . . when I’m walking down the street and I see people of my color, I get kinda scared, whatever, because I don’t know what they might do to me, you know, or what they might say to me that’s gonna offend me. So, I just walk on the side of the street where they’re not there. But, uh, I think . . . I’m most comfortable, let’s say, with my race, and, um, I don’t have a problem with people of other colors, because, you know, I’m friends with everyone. Um, I don’t discriminate anyone for their color or where they came from or anything. I think it’s good to learn about different cultures and different races and other things like that. JM: What if you see a group of white people coming your way down the street. Are you afraid of them? Teresa: Oh no. No, I’m not, no, I’m not afraid of white people. I think it’s because of what society has placed us as being, you know, like a murderer, rapists. . . . And then I think it has to deal with, maybe, the way they dress, the appearance. And I think that’s another thing that society has done. They say, well “the black people is the ones who, gang-banging,” you know. . . . Everyday on the news, basically what you see is something about a black person. You don’t really see anything about what happened in a white denomination, or whatever, or white area. And what they fail to realize to me is that it’s not just us who are making the crimes, who are doing the crimes. It’s white people too. It’s people of other races doing crimes too. But what they wanna do, all they wanna do is tread on the black people, especially the black man. They wanna tear him down. (2–3)

After an exchange with the interviewer about the film “Higher Learning,” Teresa continued: It’s not just the black men. They label us also, um, especially as being maybe, um, a prostitute. . . . maybe being on welfare and having all these babies. And they think all we’re doing is being on welfare, is just collecting benefits and

Cornbleth2.qxd

6/20/2003

1:47 PM

Page 105

Racism More Than Race

105

money and, um, just sitting up, you know what I’m saying, just sitting up, collecting for nothing. JM: Say more about why this is annoying. Teresa: Because everybody is not that way. Everybody, everybody is going for theirs. Like me, in August, I’m going to be going for mine. I’m going to be an elementary school teacher. Everybody, everybody is not down. . . . I want to teach because I love children, I love to teach. . . . Some people are trying to get a job. Some people are really trying, you know. That’s basically all. (3–4)

When the interviewer asked about her image of America, Teresa talked about “a racial country . . . full of prejudice” (5). She continued: It’s really biased. Um, as you know, some people say, “We don’t discriminate.” That’s a lie. There’s a lot of discrimination. It’s gonna go on forever and ever. It’s not gonna stop. I mean, some people think it is. I don’t think it is. It’s gonna go on forever and ever. This is a really mean and nasty world, and I don’t think it’s gonna stop. JM: If I asked you to draw a picture of America, what would it look like? Teresa: A black hole, full of emptiness, abyss, a bottomless pit. The world, like I said, it’s nasty. People are not gonna change. Sometimes I see people praying that the world is gonna change, and people will look at things a different way, and everybody is gonna be equal. No, everybody is not going to be equal. People are still gonna have their differences. (5)

She described school guidance counselors not providing information about scholarships for black students and a white manager turning her down for a job with a local supermarket chain because she is a black. Like Blake, Teresa referred to constitutional guarantees of freedom and equality that are not practiced. Unlike Blake, she doesn’t seem to see racial equality as a realistic expectation or viable goal. From the West Coast, Penny, an African American junior at Pacific High School, both echoes and offers a somewhat different perspective than either Blake or Teresa. Recall that Penny described herself as American only “in some ways” but not all the way because of “what’s been done to our people” (5). Penny’s commentary on racism occurred mainly in response to our question about her images of America. She told me: Um, basically racism towards blacks cuz blacks wanted to live just as good as whites did. . . . They twisted around the, the Declaration of Independence and the Amendments and stuff, how they twist them around like that. And these same people who wanted to be free from the king, from a king that was ruling them. And then they’re going to put blacks under slavery like that. And it was

Cornbleth2.qxd

106

6/20/2003

1:47 PM

Page 106

H EARING A MERICA ’ S Y OUTH

like they were under slavery almost, cuz they were under a king you know. They weren’t independent for themselves. And they just came out of that and they wanted freedom and they said all men are created equal. Okay, so they snatch up some Africans from Africa. They already had, they were already colonized, they had their own place, their own little places in Africa, they go snatch them up from their homes, they already had civilization there already. So they’re going to snatch them, take them all the way over to the other side, bring them there, put them under slavery. I don’t understand how they just put them under slavery like that, you just broke from a kind of slavery. And I’m thinking, they are too lazy to harvest their crop, do their own thing, so they wanted someone else to do them for them. And that’s kind of ironic, how you just came out of that and now you’re going to put someone else under slavery. It makes no sense. . . . So they made the little Amendments that protected blacks [post–Civil War thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth Amendments] and they had all these little rules for these people [Jim Crow laws] and they made no sense, they were kind of funny to read. So blacks can be out this curfew, and blacks can’t do this, and blacks can’t do that and it’s kind of funny to read that stuff. I’m like, blacks need to have the same rights that whites do. Like if whites want to go to, like, a theater or something, you know, want to see something, blacks should be able to have the same things too. That’s where “All men are created equal” comes from; everybody is the same, they have the pursuit of happiness, they have rights, everything, you know. They can just twist that around like that, just put a, just a cover over everything. (7)

Penny is very much aware of the contradiction between stated ideals and lived realities. She wonders how people who have fought for their own freedom can enslave others. She has her own take on post–Civil War experience and how and why prejudice and racism continue: Not just racism, but other things, though, like lynchings and stuff and then how the Ku Klux Klan could just do that to people. And basically it happens in the South. It’s really big in the South cuz they’re mad cuz the North beat them in the Civil War, and they’re still holding a grudge. “We don’t want these people here” and “We don’t want that” and “No integration.” Oh my gosh, just let it go! You lost the war, okay? . . . But I think it comes from the teachings that they taught their children and their children’s children and the way, like, the South and the Civil War taught their children, and it got to their children. They kept teaching racism to their children. That’s how it starts from the parents, and it goes down the children, and it goes down to their children, and that’s how, that’s how it started. Cuz I guess it comes from the children, like, there’s this one saying, they were saying the sins of the father are reflected on or it goes on the son, something like that. So if the father is being racist, it goes on to the son, it’s passed on to him. It’s just amazing how it can just pass on to children like that. (8)

Penny then recounted a family trip to Washington, DC, an exhibit at the Smithsonian, and the importance of knowing your history:

Cornbleth2.qxd

6/20/2003

1:47 PM

Page 107

Racism More Than Race

107

When we [family] went to the Smithsonian in Washington, DC, like, not too far from the Washington Monument, we went to the thing about slavery and how it started the Civil War, and how people used to live, and the way the living conditions, I was like, “Man!” And my mom was like, “You should be grateful that whoever it was that fought, they fought for a reason, cuz if they wouldn’t have, all these civil rights leaders, they would have backed down, we would’ve still been in slavery, and you shouldn’t forget where you come from.” That’s one thing, that’s some of the things these stars and people forget cuz they’re so stuck up, you have to not forget where you came from, who got you up here. I mean, if it hadn’t been for Martin Luther King, Jr., Jesse Jackson, all the other people, we would’ve still been . . . picking cotton and stuff. (8)

Later, near the end of the interview, Penny reflected, “my mind keeps staying on racism, it’s so big, it’s like the biggest thing to happen” (10). Steven and Brita, both students of mixed ancestry, from Pacific and Mission, respectively, expressed their discomfort with American racism. Asked what it means to him to be an American, Steven told me: Um, it means I live in a privileged society where, um, you know, I have a lot of things that other people in other countries and other parts of the world don’t have and that they should have. Um, sometimes it can be, it makes you feel guilty that you have more than other people do and, uh, I guess that’s it. I also like think about, how I don’t think I like, really, really deserve this, cuz like we sort of, you know, we stole the land from the natives and, and all the negative parts of, you know, what made America. I think about that a lot, and I’m ashamed a lot, you know, that we did such horrible things, you know what I’m saying, to people who aren’t white, you know, like . . . CC: In addition to what’s happened in the past, what about the present? How do you feel about the present? Steven: Um, first of all discrimination, not as much on race but like sexuality and, you know, people discriminate against gays and, and religious and stuff like that, you know, like what your beliefs are. Um, that’s, that’s a problem right now, that people are still striving to overcome, and I hope one day we do. (3)

Similarly and somewhat more personally, Brita referred to “like racism down south, Ku Klux Klan, the Nazis and stuff. They should just not be here cuz this isn’t a world of hate. It shouldn’t be, but I guess it is” (4). When I asked, “Do you see racism around here?” Brita told me: Um, I, I, um, not really. Like I sometimes feel like there is, but I know there’s not. I just, I just feel that way because, like, well cuz I live in [town] and like the majority is not black [Brita earlier described herself as half African American and half Chinese], so I just kind of feel like, out of place sometimes, but it’s okay cuz it’s a nice atmosphere. I like to live here, and I don’t really mind it at all. I don’t think about it that much, but I did at first.

Cornbleth2.qxd

108

6/20/2003

1:47 PM

Page 108

H EARING A MERICA ’ S Y OUTH

CC: What makes you feel out of place? Brita: Just cuz I’m not white and, like, a lot of people that I live around are white. And I don’t have very many black friends cuz I just moved here. I moved here from [city] when I was a freshman, so I wasn’t used to it, you know, seeing, like, a whole bunch of different cultures and stuff, cuz what I see is mainly just one, or just a couple. Cuz I don’t see that many, like everyday, like I used to. And so it’s just a different, it’s different, it’s kind of a big change. (4)

A final comment on racism from the West Coast comes from Frank, a senior at Pacific, who responded in this way to my question about any “group names or labels or tags that others have used to describe you” that “you find uncomfortable, annoying, or downright unacceptable”: Um, like for example, like they think of Muslim people as terrorists, most of them. I’ve heard a lot of . . . things over here, like we’re the terrorists, blah, blah, blah. I feel very, very offended by that because that’s a stereotype, just like, let’s say, black people, like all black, all the, like, most black people, I’ve heard on the news . . . are mostly in jail, most of their population of black people, well it doesn’t mean that every black person is the same way. Or just like, same with Muslims, just because one or many Muslim people or a group of Muslim people are terrorists, it doesn’t mean that I’m a terrorist, just because I’m Muslim. It doesn’t make any sense. I’m not trying to take their side, but it’s true, that’s a stereotype and I hate it. (3)

Particularly noteworthy here are Frank’s juxtaposition of the experience of African Americans and Muslims in America and the salience of his comments in the weeks after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the Pentagon outside Washington, DC, and the World Trade Center in New York City. From a very different perspective, white students lacking firsthand experience as targets of racism or negative discrimination expressed surprise and disgust with what they had learned recently about the history of racism and discrimination in a U.S. civil rights unit at Eisenhower High School in western New York. Particularly informative and unsettling, the students reported, was the video, “The Shadow of Hate,” produced by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Nick described knowing something of the events of the 1950s and 1960s civil rights movement but of not having had direct experience or seeing the film clips of white violence (e.g., clubs, hoses, dogs) against mostly black civil rights demonstrators before: When you hear something, it’s different than if you actually can see it, witness it. . . . I wasn’t there, but you saw the footage of it, in the film, and that was, I believe it. They really, I mean, the teachers I’ve had in the past really never said, you know, “This is how it was,” and showed us. (2)

Cornbleth2.qxd

6/20/2003

1:47 PM

Page 109

Racism More Than Race

109

He also spoke for his peers in this regard: I never saw that till then. I never learned that till then. And a lot of kids in class were like that too. They didn’t know that. I got that just from talking to the kids. So I think that, I think that just the past couple of weeks has really turned my mind about stuff. That there is stuff like that that can happen. . . . I never thought that, I mean, the United States would ever let something like that happen. . . . Really, when I saw that video, that was really, I never knew . . . how bad it was and how they were treated. I mean, that was really, really cruel. I don’t know . . . somebody that could live then . . . could live through that . . . it was bad. . . . I’m glad I saw it, though. (2)

Nick also thought that the video might incite blacks to hostility toward whites, saying, “If I were black and I saw that, I’d be, I’d hold a grudge against the whites” (2). James echoed Nick, saying: Just recently, we did a unit on discrimination against blacks, and, you know, we’ve been shown on TV films about how they were beaten, blacks were lynched, and, and unjust discrimination that whites have demonstrated against certain minority groups. And, it just makes me nauseous, some of what I see. (2)

Melissa, the only Eisenhower student to offer a more general critique of America, was more introspective: When I went into the class in the beginning of the year, I had a much more positive image of America than I did now, getting through it. Um, I found that there is a lot of hidden things in our past that many people don’t know about. . . . And um, I think there’s a lot of people that don’t know, you know, about our past and how it was not a great past. It was something that I think Americans should look at and not be proud of. . . . I still think America is a good country. I’m not gonna, like, move away because I don’t like what we did in the past. There’s nothing I can do about that now. But it kind of disappoints me that, um, this country that, in our Constitution is, you know, equal for everyone, and they tried to be different from the other countries by not limiting anyone, and they were, you know, hypocritical, went back on their word and did . . . destroy these people’s lives just because of their race and color. (3)

She also related her own personal experience to what she was learning: This year, like, I have a lot of friends who are minorities [apparently referring to Asians and Asian Americans], and I see how they’re treated. And how, you know, it’s really uncomfortable for me when I go to their, when I, like, go to their family gatherings and they’ve got all Koreans there and I’m the only, only white person there. And I feel uncomfortable. I told my one friend that, and she said, “Well, how do you think I feel everyday?” And I, you know, it just blew my mind, and then we started something about, um, civil rights movement and everything, and I realized that our country is a little more backward than I

Cornbleth2.qxd

110

6/20/2003

1:47 PM

Page 110

H EARING A MERICA ’ S Y OUTH

thought. You know, for being so modern, their thoughts are backward maybe. Not as modern. (3)

Only one of the four Eisenhower students in the other class mentioned racism, which she attributed to “all the different cultures.” Angela commented that “we have so much more racism here ’cause we have so many different . . . blacks, and different races” (3). In addition, two of the three students in the class that had recently completed a civil rights unit, but none of the students in the other class, commented in general terms about effects of living in the suburbs, especially that it limited their opportunities to learn about people different from themselves. Melissa, for example, said: I don’t like to think that I’m racist. I really try, you know, but coming from [suburb] I don’t know how to deal with people . . . people accuse me of being racist like, and you know, I’m not doing anything. . . . it’s kind of embarrassing to me but I don’t have, like, good public relations like that. I don’t know how to act. (5)

Similarly, James assumes that he is isolated in the suburbs and that people who live in cities are more aware of, or knowledgeable about, America. In this context, however, neither student specifically referred to the social class and racial differences that separate their relatively affluent, predominantly white suburb from the poorer, more racially/ethnically diverse city. My impression is that their seeming naivete stems from being sheltered from urban and world realities by both family and school as well as physically removed in their suburb. Overall, 47 percent of the students we interviewed made some kind of reference to racism in America without any prompting from us. Racism was more likely to be mentioned by African American, Hispanic, and Asian American and mixed-ancestry students (nearly two-thirds) than by white students (nearly one-quarter). The difference may reflect the oftcited white reluctance to talk about race out of fear of seeming racist (e.g., The New York Times Co., 2001) as well as evidence that whites are much more likely than blacks to say that race relations are getting better (e.g., Blauner, 1989). The Eisenhower students and their peers at Lincoln were the only white students we interviewed who talked about racism. While the Eisenhower students spoke primarily about what they had just learned during a civil rights unit in their U.S. history class, nonwhite students were much more likely to speak from personal experience. Marissa, like Teresa, for example, described being watched and followed in a store. She also described police calling blacks “niggers” and Puerto Ricans “spics”: I mean there’s some police that are good and some that are bad, you know. If, a couple times when I’m around, ’cause by brother’s real bad and I’ve seen him

Cornbleth2.qxd

6/20/2003

1:47 PM

Page 111

Racism More Than Race

111

get into trouble, and they’re, like, “Oh, okay, look, we’ve got another spic to put away.” You know? I mean that’s stuff that they do. (5)

Despite the reported impact of the civil rights unit in the class at Eisenhower, the comments of two of these three students we interviewed indicated their reluctance to support contemporary antiracism. Melissa said that affirmative action was a good idea but not working out well; it was taking jobs away from other people. John not only conveyed a negatively stereotyped view of the city compared with its suburbs but also was not sure what he would do if something like the violence against 1950s–1960s civil rights protesters happened again: I think that we are responsible that, to make sure something like that doesn’t happen again, but, again, it could. Anything’s possible, but I don’t think I would ever, ah, I don’t know what I’d do if that ever happened, or put in the situation. (3)

In contrast to the Johnson, Lincoln, Pacific, and Mission students, racism for the Eisenhower students (and presumably the Kennedy students, none of whom mentioned racism) seems distant in time and place from their everyday lives. Not all white students are distanced from racism, however. Lacey, a European American student at Lincoln, described her transition from a (mostly or all-) white Catholic school in another part of the city in this way: Lacey: When I first came to this school, I was in the seventh grade and before that I lived in [neighborhood]. I went to a two-hundred-person Catholic school. You know, this is, I’m talking sheltered. And then I got thrown into this school and everything changes, ya know. JM: What do you mean? Lacey: I had never seen black people before [in person]. . . . You take a, a shy little Catholic school girl and throw her into the middle of the [neighborhood] school, and you learn so many different things. I mean, you get these perceptions from the media that, ya know, certain people are this way, and certain people are this way. And then you get thrown in with a bunch of kids and you realized things aren’t always the way they seem. And you can, you can find out so much about other people’s cultures just by, just by talking to them and not, not just my way or the highway kind of thing. You have to listen to people. JM: Give me an example of how your thinking has changed. Lacey: Well, the day before I came to the school for the first time, my dad drove me down here and he said, “Now [name], I’m not a prejudiced guy, but you watch out for the black men, black guys in your school.” And I said, “Okay dad,” ya know, “Okay, you’re the man.” But you see that in the media too. Black

Cornbleth2.qxd

112

6/20/2003

1:47 PM

Page 112

H EARING A MERICA ’ S Y OUTH

guys are portrayed so badly in the media, and I guess that was one of the stereotypes that I had to overcome, ’cause it’s not that way. It’s not. (6–7)

While students used the language of racism, stereotypes, prejudice, and discrimination, they did not seem to recognize structural or institutional racism, that is, that racism is more than individual attitude, belief, and behavior. Attributing negative portrayals of African Americans, especially black men, to the media, especially television, was the closest that they came to expressing awareness of structurally embedded racist practices. Demands for, and the provision of, equality for all Americans threaten the established privilege of some, mostly white, Americans. Students did not seem to see this aspect; at least they did not voice it except perhaps for Melissa’s comment about affirmative action. It appears to be another example of the invisibility of institutional racism and white privilege. Although racism may be acknowledged and deplored by European American young people, they do not seem to see themselves as affected by it, either positively or negatively. This blindness, I suspect, is in part a consequence of their seeing racism as individual, not structural, in nature and operation. Granted that structural explanations are not commonplace in the United States, it is also to European Americans’ benefit to maintain the invisibility of unearned white privilege (McIntosh, 1992). Then one has neither to admit one’s advantage nor to be proactive in interrupting it. Racism is more integral to the self-described identities of African American, Hispanic, and Asian and mixed-ancestry students. Blake and Teresa, for example, describe themselves in opposition to their understanding of whites’ stereotypical perceptions of African Americans. Teresa seems to both adopt and resist some of these negative stereotypes as indicated by her crossing the street to avoid passing a group of young black men and then wondering whether she, too, is prejudiced. She attributes her fear and anger to white people’s treatment of blacks, especially black males. Several students commented on negative media portrayals of African Americans, Native Americans, and Hispanics, including white students who also noted that the media are a major source of their images of America. For example, in response to my question about the major sources of her ideas and images of America, Sharon told me, “Probably, it’s sad to say, but television. I mean, that’s what, I mean, it’s just the way television portrays everyone . . . like the news, the news and just everything on TV. That’s probably where I, like, it’s a big factor” (6). Race is lived differently, and racism is experienced differently, depending on who you are, how you are perceived, and the social-economicpolitical conditions at the time. This juxtaposition of what students told

Cornbleth2.qxd

6/20/2003

1:47 PM

Page 113

Racism More Than Race

113

us about racialized identity and racism can be seen as supporting Omi and Winant’s (1994) theorization of racialization and racial projects (see chapter 1) rather than race per se. Recognizing and challenging the material manifestations and impact of assumed racial hierarchy do not require the acceptance of primordial or socially constructed racial categorization of oneself or others. The much greater attention students gave to racism than to racial aspects of identity also is consistent with the relational approach to social identity introduced in chapter 1, including my extension of Connell et al.’s (1982) relational conception of gender and class to race/ethnicity. These identity markers are not simply boxes to be checked or shorthand for a string of “characteristics.” Rather, they are indicators of socially situated systems of relations to resources or power (with their attendant benefits) and to other individuals and groups.

REFERENCES Blauner, B. (1989). Black lives, white lives. Berkeley: University of California Press. Connell, R. W., Ashenden, D. J., Kessler, S., and Dowsett, G. W. (1982). Making the difference: Schools, families, and social division. Sydney: George Allen & Unwin. Cross, W. E., Jr. (1995). Oppositional identity and African American youth: Issues and prospects. In W. D. Hawley and A. W. Jackson (eds.), Toward a common destiny, 185–204. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. McIntosh, P. M. (1992). White privilege and male privilege. In M. L. Andersen and P. H. Collins (eds.), Race, class, and gender, 70–81. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth. Omi, M., and Winant, H. (1994). Racial formation in the United States. (2nd ed.). New York: Routledge. The New York Times Co. (2001). How race is lived in America. New York: Henry Holt & Co.

This page intentionally left blank

Cornbleth2.qxd

6/20/2003

1:47 PM




Page 115

6

RELIGION, AGE, and GENDER

My family is, have good manners, and I’ve been taught and all that and all my stuff, plus we base our lives on the Bible, so it, it shows us how to live a proper life. —Jesus, Mission High School, California, 1 I believe that God plays a big part in everything that happens in my life. —Joan, Lincoln High School, New York, 2 I think, mostly, people think of us as young people, and they don’t really think of us as anything else. We don’t really get a whole lot of respect or anything, so you just kind of identify with people your age. —Lacey, Lincoln High School, New York, 1 You have to, the females are always, they’re supposed to do good in school, and stuff like that. You can’t, they expect you to get married a virgin. They expect you to finish school. A lot of times you can’t cut your hair. They like long hair. —Mercedes, Johnson High School, New York, 1

After race/ethnicity/culture, the identity markers most frequently mentioned by the young people we interviewed were religion, age, and gender. No other descriptors were used by at least one-quarter of the interviewees. Given the richness of some students’ racial/ethnic/cultural

Cornbleth2.qxd

6/20/2003

116

1:47 PM

Page 116

H EARING A MERICA ’ S Y OUTH

and religious self-descriptions, most of their comments about age and gender seemed relatively thin.

RELIGION Of the fifty-two young people we asked to describe themselves, twenty (38 percent) mentioned religion as part of who they are. For most of these students (fourteen or 70 percent), religion was an important part of their lives, not simply who or what “I am.” Curiously, none of the students at Johnson High School used religion as an identity marker. At the other schools, 40 percent to 60 percent of the students cited religion, including slightly more males than females, slightly more California than New York students, and no students of mixed ancestry. Of the students describing themselves in terms of religion, half said they were Protestant or Christian, six were Catholic, and one each was Jewish, JewishLutheran, Muslim, and Jehovah’s Witness. Other than noting that not all the Hispanic students who mentioned religion were Catholic, I did not observe any connections between religion and other self-identifiers. Of the students who said that religion was an important part of their life or who they are, half (all of whom are from California) credited religion with providing guidelines for right or good behavior. Three of these students spoke strongly about how religion has kept them out of trouble (Jesus, Peter) or turned them around (Penny). As noted earlier (see chapter 4), Jesus described himself only as a Jehovah’s Witness and told me, “My family is, have good manners, and I’ve been taught and all that and all my stuff, plus we base our lives on the Bible, so it, it shows us how to live a proper life” (1). In response to my encouragement to say more, Jesus described how his religion keeps him from using drugs or alcohol or engaging in sexual relations. He also said that he still “fits in” with a group of friends, but that it is not easy. His words are worth quoting again in their entirety: For me it means being different from everyone else in a way that I base myself on the Bible, my life. And, and having the right [inaudible] choices, you know, not doing drugs, not being alcoholic or, or start to do it. Uh, one thing that I really have in mind all the time, and it’s really hard and as a teenager, you know, your feelings, your, the opposite sex start growing, and it’s hard, but you, um, for me I try to keep myself away from that because, you know, it can become really dangerous. Um, one way I do that is, you know, not attending parties and so on, et cetera. Um, so being a Jehovah’s Witness I would think sets me as, you know, not apart from others because that would be, you know, bad I guess, but being with them but not acting the same way they do.

Cornbleth2.qxd

6/20/2003

1:47 PM

Page 117

Religion, Age, and Gender

117

CC: Okay. How difficult is that? Jesus: Well, it can be very difficult if you, you know, just go off and, um, start. You know, because sometimes, you know, when other kids, you know, they start making jokes, you see them enjoying it, and you’re not, so it’s kind of hard cuz that way they sit you away but you kind of, you want to fit there because you don’t want to be there, you know, by yourself, but I, somehow I’ve been able to manage that here. Um, at the beginning it was hard because, I don’t know, I don’t even remember who did I use to hang out with, you know, during my freshman year, I completely forgot. But now it’s, you know, I fit in with, I guess, I don’t know what [inaudible] calls them, the nerds, um, because, I, I don’t know, we’re all smart, we dress differently, you know, we don’t wear the baggy clothes and stuff like jocks and stuff like that. (2)

Peter sees his Catholicism serving a similar guiding function and more. It also leads to positive interpersonal relations. Peter told me: It [being religious] saved my life in a lot of ways, cuz, I think mostly when I was younger cuz I would always see my friends doing things, you know, everybody said they were bad and because of my religion and my belief, I always held myself back from that. Which, you know, I think ended up being a good thing. Cuz it kept me from getting into trouble, it kept me from, you know, a lot of other things and I guess, you know, that’s one of the main, the good things about it for me. I feel strong about religion. CC: Other ways it shaped who you are? Peter: I guess it’s just shown me to be a better person overall, you know. The way I treat people, I’ve learned not to judge people by, by, you know, just by the outside. You gotta get to know the person before you can make an opinion about them. It’s shown me a lot, I just can’t think of it all right now. (2–3)

Whereas Jesus sees his being a Jehovah’s Witness as leading him to “the right choices” and Peter sees his Catholicism as having “kept me from getting into trouble,” Penny sees her being a Christian and becoming “fully religious” as turning her life around. She explained at some length: Like before, like, being raised in the church I wasn’t really fully religious. They just think it like that cuz I wasn’t really, like, religious as soon as I got to school. I used to listen to all this music and all in the mix and stuff and always around the wrong people, hanging around the wrong groups of people, these people that would just smoke everything. And it was, like, hard to break from that stuff. They say it’s easy, but it is not easy to get out of that stuff. Like they say peer pressure is very hard to get out of. These people pressure you into thinking, “Oh yeah, we can cut class and we can do this.” What made me not do it, that stuff, is to think about how my parents will feel. My mom is going to feel she finds out I cut class, or I didn’t do my work or I

Cornbleth2.qxd

118

6/20/2003

1:47 PM

Page 118

H EARING A MERICA ’ S Y OUTH

got bad grades, how she’s going to feel and the effects of it. And I’ve been there before, when I got bad grades and stuff, how it affects them. And it hurt, so after going through that I was, like, “Well I gotta change.” And so I really did give my life to God. I was, like, “I don’t need this anymore,” and I mean if he was to just take that away, I would stop. I would stop what I was doing, so I became fully religious, trying to read the Bible, stay away from all the mess of this school, not everybody’s such a mess, there are some nice people, too. Stay away from all the mess, I was fine. I’m not as, like, talkative as I used to be, I know when it’s time to do the work now, clear in my head, not talk to everybody, just, like, based on trust. I base my life on trust, too, like, “Who am I gonna trust?” You can’t trust everybody at this school to talk to cuz they will run back and talk about you. So I gotta know who I’m talking to, is this person worth, you know, hangin’ with and how is, how’s their life at, you know, their level. If they’re not living the way they should, I don’t really think I want to, you know, but the Bible teaches not to hate people, you know, not to turn away from those people, try to help them, too. If they, you know, they don’t want to be helped, oh well, God could deal with them later. Cuz I don’t, and I always be saying this, like help other people that worry about people too much, “Oh, he’s not going to like me,” “I’m wearing this dress or something so so-and-so will like me.” And I mean, I tell them, my life is not judged upon by who likes me and who doesn’t like me. If you keep doing that, you messed up. You turned into a people pleaser, and that’s definitely something I have been trying to, you know, if I wear this, if I wore that. That’s why I liked fashion so much, like to look nice, maybe, you know. I mean, I didn’t care today, as you can see I got my sweats on. I’m tired, I want to go to sleep, I don’t care, but then on the other side was like, “Well, you know what would look nice, you know, you just came back from Washington, DC, you know.” I’m like no, I’m a keep it real, I got no makeup on, I’m a keep it real, I’m not, I do not care. It was harder to not care about what they think, cuz they’re gonna look at you, they be like, “Girl, what’s she wearing?” I mean, I’m not even trying to get at that stuff anymore. And I, there have been times when I’m like, “Man, I already wore this the last time,” you know. And sometimes when you really listen to people, they can help you sometimes, and you stop and listen to what they’re saying. But I’m learning not to trip off of those people. I’m not like a pro at it, I’m just trying to learn cuz you learn from your mistakes. I’ve made a lot of mistakes, I gotta learn from them every day. No matter how old I get, cuz I’ll be turning eighteen this year, and I still got stuff to learn, as my mom says, still. (4)

Later in our interview, in response to a question about change over time, Penny talked about learning “how to handle yourself in certain situations, knowing what’s right, knowing what’s wrong, standing up for what you believe in, and don’t let anybody change what you believe in. Say in, like, drugs and smoking is bad, it’s going to kill you later” (10). Clearly, religion has had a major impact on these students’ lives and identities. Specific doctrine was less evident in their discourse than guid-

Cornbleth2.qxd

6/20/2003

1:47 PM

Page 119

Religion, Age, and Gender

119

ance toward “right” behavior and avoiding the temptations of “wrong” or destructive actions. Also evident was a strong link with family, or between family and religion, that seemed to draw these students in. Other students offered similar though more modest claims for the role of religion in their lives. For example, Frank told me that “if you want to be on the right path and, um, if you want to make your life a better life, then follow the teachings and doctrines of Muhammed and his life” (2). He offered “helping others and not to lie and not steal” (2) as examples. Kendall responded to my questions about how his Christian religion influences his life in similar terms: “Um, it influences my life by, um, helping others and knowing who I am and how I’m supposed to be, and how I’m supposed to act, what I’m supposed to do and not do” (1). His examples were “to be giving and caring . . . and helping others” (1). Sam’s language was more casual: Yeah, I’m actually sort of a pretty religious person. And so I mean, like, on certain surveys I’ll put that I’m Catholic and stuff like that. And I try to live by, it does sort of change my daily life cuz, like, I don’t drink or any of that stuff just cuz I don’t think it’s right, so that’s where it changes my stuff. (2)

He also said that he prayed before taking the SAT the previous week. Close to half of the students who cited religion as an identifier referred to rituals such as attending church services, praying, singing in the choir, and participating in holiday celebrations. A smaller number mentioned their involvement in church youth groups, which seemed to provide a sense of belonging or community as well as religious teaching and social activity. Brad, for example, who said, “I’m really into religion” (1), was the leader of his Pentecostal youth group at the time of his interview. He was particularly enthusiastic about the youth retreats which included “a lot of different ethnic groups” including African Americans and Hispanics. “Everybody’s just, like, so into the purpose of being there,” he said, “that they just ignore everything else, you know” (1). A few students (all from California) mentioned religious doctrine or belief. Whereas Eva and Jesus (both from Mission High School and the two Hispanic students who did not identify as Catholic) referred only to their specific beliefs and scripture, Kendall and Frank referred to religious differences and resulting tensions. Kendall explained using religion as an identity marker in this way: Because there’s a whole lot of different religions and people believe in different things, so I let people know what I believe in. I’m not going to not, dislike you because you’re not the same religion or what not, but I’m a let you know, like, if this, if us having different religions is going to be a problem, then there’s no need for us to be getting involved. (1)

Cornbleth2.qxd

120

6/20/2003

1:47 PM

Page 120

H EARING A MERICA ’ S Y OUTH

A few minutes later when I commented, “Okay. I don’t see how that would cause problems getting along with other people” (1), Kendall responded: I know because, like some people, like Muslims and Buddhas, don’t believe in God and then, Buddhas don’t believe in God, but then, say, I believe in God, which I do, then we wouldn’t get along because they do believe in something I believe in—I don’t believe in—so it probably wouldn’t work. (1)

Frank talked more vehemently and at greater length about the different sects within Islam and the resultant rivalries. Personally, he was very much opposed to the Wahaabi in Saudi Arabia on grounds of scriptural (mis)interpretation. Kendall seemed to want to avoid religious conflict while Frank seemed eager to enter the fray, at least within Islam. Lacey’s opposition to identification by religion is relevant here. In response to our question about any labels that others have used to describe her that she finds objectionable, Lacey said: I don’t think that anyone should be classified by their religion. I find that, that one offensive ’cause not everyone, you could be prejudiced against, if you’re not the right religion. I don’t like to use that as a, a title or a label or anything at all. I don’t think it matters. JM: Is there an example from your past when that happened? Lacey: Well, I don’t belong to any affiliation at all. We don’t go to church. It’s a, an individual kind of thing. Like if I wanted to, I could, but I, I don’t choose to. And some people would say that that’s un-Christian, and I don’t understand why. (2)

Another small group of students directly or indirectly linked discomfort with or opposition to public displays of homosexuality with their religion or religious beliefs. Homosexuality was okay in private, and homosexuals should have full civil rights, these students seemed to be saying, but they should forego public displays of affection, marriage, and unconventional appearance.1 Caphra, the Peruvian exchange student at Mission High School, described herself as a nationalist and “really religious.” She told me: Because we are Catholic, we don’t allow abortion and we don’t see, like, for example, the gays here, they are treated different. Like in San Francisco, you go and you see them, you know, in the streets, and in Peru you can’t do that. If you’re gay, it’s okay, nobody will tell you anything, you won’t go to prison, but it’s not okay to see them hanging hands or kissing, you know, in the streets. It’s just uncomfortable. And, um, so those kind of stuff. (2)

Cornbleth2.qxd

6/20/2003

1:47 PM

Page 121

Religion, Age, and Gender

121

Joan shared her discomfort later, during the part of interview about her images of America, not only about homosexuality but also about religious cults: It’s not one nation under God. Not even so much to say that other religions are wrong and stuff. But we can’t just go crazy, I mean with Satan worshippers and the stuff that goes on. I mean, it’s like Sodom and Gomorrah all over again. I mean, you walk in the mall, and we see this one guy, and he was gay. And he had silver hair. And, like, I’m sitting there, like, “Oh, my God!” And it’s not, like, so much what you did you keep in your closet. Now it’s very bold. And people accepting this. And it’s getting taught to kids. And it’s scary. We’re supposed to be one nation under God but we’re not. (8)

Similar limits to tolerance were expressed by Bruce in conjunction with his images of America. Previously, he had said that his Protestant religion was “my top priority” (1). Bruce also seemed uncomfortable more generally with social and political change and with his recognition of tensions or conflicts among his beliefs. He said, “People are, like, interpreting things too much. Like, like, even, like, our Constitution, the amendments, laws. They’re, like, like they’re bringing freedom to a different level. I think it’s, like, kind of getting ridiculous” (5). Asked for an example, he talked haltingly and at length about gay rights: . . . things are becoming more socially acceptable, like, for example, . . . like Hawai’i just passed a law that recognizes gay marriages. . . . doesn’t bother me too much ’cause, I mean, that’s, that’s people’s own, but why all of a sudden after two hundred years is that okay? If it had been, uh, ya know, kept quiet and if people wanted to do it, that’s fine. I understand. They should be able to do it. And there’s been a lot of cases where the government was wrong in dealing with, like, gays and lesbians, but I don’t think they, they don’t have, they don’t have to, uh, they can condone it, but I don’t think they have to, um, make it easy. Or, um, make it, make it, make it, um, a way for young people coming up who are just used to it. Because then that’s going to become a large part of society and, I mean, it doesn’t, it doesn’t bother me too much but if it, more and more acceptable, I mean, that’s not our country. That’s not what we’ve been in the past so why, ya know, if you make it acceptable then it’s gonna become a bigger part of us. (5–6)

Bruce is concerned that these changes mean that the basic principles and ideas that we were, that our country and the ideas that have gotten us this far will go out the door. . . . [referring again to gay marriage] . . . it’s not considered, like, a makeup of our country or of the values of our . . . the history of our country, the tradition of our country. (6)

So, for some of these young people as well as older generations, religious belief seems to be double-edged, on the one hand providing a sense

Cornbleth2.qxd

122

6/20/2003

1:47 PM

Page 122

H EARING A MERICA ’ S Y OUTH

of belonging and guidance for leading a good life, and on the other hand provoking tensions if not conflict with those individuals and groups whose beliefs differ in ways considered important. Two additional student comments about their religious identities in relation to other groups or others’ perceptions are worth noting. Frank spoke strongly about not stereotyping all Muslims as terrorists while Joan talked about feeling more comfortable in a black than a predominantly white Christian church. Frank’s interview occurred after the 1993 World Trade Center and 1995 Oklahoma City bombings and subsequent U.S. Embassy terrorist bombings in East Africa but before the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks at the World Trade Center and Pentagon. In response to my question about any ways that others have described him that he finds uncomfortable, annoying, or unacceptable, Frank spoke about the terrorist stereotype: . . . they [other people] think of Muslim people as terrorists, most of them. I’ve heard a lot of [inaudible] things over here, like we’re the terrorists, blah, blah, blah. I feel very, very offended by that because that’s a stereotype, just, like, let’s say black people, like all black, all the, like, most black people, I’ve heard on the news [inaudible] are mostly in jail, most of their population of black people, well it doesn’t mean that every black person is the same way. Or just, like, same with Muslims, just because one or many Muslim people or a group of Muslim people are terrorists, it doesn’t mean that I’m a terrorist, just because I’m Muslim. It doesn’t make any sense. I’m not trying to take their side, but it’s true, that’s a stereotype, and I hate it. (3)

Frank was the only student to mention being the target of prejudice or discrimination on religious grounds. Joan was the only student to see religion and race relationally, that is, that religion is not necessarily separate from race/ethnicity.2 She began by saying that being Christian is “the biggest part of my identity” (2) and continued: I believe that God plays a big part in everything that happens in my life. Everything good that happens, you know, He’s responsible for. Anything bad that happens is because I need to learn a lesson from it. So, He’s the biggest part of my life. So it’s very important that I identify myself as Christlike or Christian. (2)

Recall that Joan also was one of the few African American students to express a robust racial identity. The two aspects, race and religion, seem mutually constitutive in her experience. She told me: I used to go to a church that was predominantly white. And the pastor would always get up and he’d talk about how race didn’t matter, you know. “When

Cornbleth2.qxd

6/20/2003

1:47 PM

Page 123

Religion, Age, and Gender

123

somebody asks you what race you are, you say we’re Christian.” And that’s supposed to be it. And I almost laughed to myself because I’m, like, this guy doesn’t walk into stores and have people treat him like he’s black. I mean, when you can walk in my shoes, then you can tell me how it supposedly feels. So, I mean, I identify myself as a Christian, but there’s certain things that I have to say “I’m a black Christian.” You know, I’m still a child of God but, you know, I have to face different things than you have to face. And now I go to a predominantly black church. And I feel more at home there. I mean, we’re all Christians, but they have a different perspective on life because we’ve been through a lot of the same things. And I feel more comfortable around them. And I can talk to them better about what’s going on in my life then I would be able to people at the other church that I was going to. (3)

Joan also noted that “the music is different. [laughter] I mean, we had a mixture of races in the other church, and they tried to imitate black music, but it didn’t work all that well. It really didn’t” (4).

AGE While much is made of adolescence in American society, age did not seem salient to most of the young people we interviewed, most of whom were seventeen. Perhaps age, like being a student, tends to be taken for granted (only four of our interviewees identified as students). Age or age group was mentioned as an identity marker by fifteen of the fifty-two students asked to identify themselves (29 percent), and few had much to say about it. Overall, age is a draw. Six students said positive things about being a teenager, five mentioned negatives, and four were either neutral or saw both positives and negatives. Evenly divided by region and gender, the students using age as an identifier included only three European Americans. Typical of the positive comments about being a teenager were Arthur’s brief, “It’s fun,” (1) and Steven’s comment about socializing, “I’m an average teenager I guess, social boy” (1). In response to my request that he say more about being an average teenager, Steven said: “I guess going to school and, you know, listening to music, popular music, um, watching TV I guess, I don’t know, you know, going around with your friends, uh, um, I don’t know, having a car. I guess that’s basically it” (2). Jay explained “enjoying myself” as a teenager because later, as an adult, he would have more responsibilities: I was always told that the teenage years are the best years of your life, so you should enjoy them. So that’s what I try to do. I try to feel comfortable with it. So far, I mean, I’m only seventeen, but I’ve been enjoying myself, and that’s all

Cornbleth2.qxd

124

6/20/2003

1:47 PM

Page 124

H EARING A MERICA ’ S Y OUTH

I’m trying to do. I know once I get older, I know a lot of hard work comes, so I just kind of lay back a little bit. [laughter] (2)

Brita expressed similar views and, hesitantly, that she thinks she can handle adult responsibility: “Like I have a job now and so, like, I don’t know, like, what’s expected, but like, I know how it would probably be, like I can, I think I can handle, like if I had to be on my own, like later on” (2). Andrew’s comment about being a teenager seemed to bridge the references to fun and those to later responsibility: I think being a teenager is just, allows people to talk differently to one another and kind of isolates us from the true adults and separates us from the teachers, and it creates a distinction, I think. And I think being a teenager allows us to do some more things that adults would rather, or can’t be able to do, that would be I guess, unacceptable to adults. (2)

When I asked for an example, Andrew said, “Um, I guess staying out really late or something, something along those lines, partying a lot” (2). Negative aspects of being a teenager were limits and lack of respect. Limits included a curfew, mentioned by one student at each of the California schools, and lack of freedom or privileges that would be available later. Kendall mentioned having to convince employers that he is responsible, or more responsible, than most teenagers. Similarly, Magdalena described how some adults see her: “Well, of course, age. ‘Oh God, look at another troublemaker,’ just cause, I’m, you know, [inaudible] a teenager” (1). Lacey offered a similar view: “I guess age mostly. I think, mostly, people think of us as young people, and they don’t really think of us as anything else. We don’t really get a whole lot of respect or anything, so you just kind of identify with people your age” (1). Later in the interview, she described problems facing young people, including her siblings, such as finding decent jobs even when they have a college education. Only Chrissy, from Pacific High School, talked about both benefits and drawbacks of being a teenager. She described the trade-offs in this way: Well, I think teenagers are treated differently than adults and sometimes that’s good but sometimes that’s not. A lot of people don’t consider teenagers as people yet and it’s kind of like, well, what’s the difference between when you’re seventeen and eighteen that all of a sudden makes you a person that is deserving of some things. So I think a lot of times, like, you know, curfew laws and stuff, people, they don’t consider teenagers as people yet, and I think teenagers do things differently. Some, some take more risks, but I think in general, they’re a little bit more flexible than older people. They’re willing to try different things.

Cornbleth2.qxd

6/20/2003

1:47 PM

Page 125

Religion, Age, and Gender

125

CC: Say more please about the more risks and more flexible, give me some examples. Chrissy: Like, I mean, some teenagers do more risky things, like, maybe driving, like, really fast, but I’m talking more about things, like, maybe they’ll be friends with someone that they wouldn’t normally be friends with. While adults kind of, you know, they go to work and stick with that group and they don’t really, like, try to branch out and do other things. And I think teenagers, maybe because they have more opportunities, like at school. Like, when I first started forensics I was afraid of public speaking, but I did it anyway, and so now it doesn’t bother me anymore. And so I think that, like, maybe it’s cuz you have more opportunities to take those risks, but also teenagers I think are more willing to take those sort of risks and to challenge themselves some more. Like a lot of adults get scared, they want security. CC: So you see the risks and the flexibility going together? Chrissy: Yeah, I think, I think they’re more willing to take challenges and they’re, so they, they don’t just stick with one thing, they try other things, try to see what other people are like. (1–2)

My impression is that Chrissy not only sees more positives than negatives associated with being a teenager, but also sees teenagers more positively (e.g., flexible, open-minded) than adults. If she recognizes adult responsibilities, she does not seem to see them as reasons for not trying “to branch out and do other things” or for valuing security.

GENDER As with age, relatively few of the young people we interviewed mentioned gender as an identity marker (fourteen, or 27 percent), ranging from 9 percent at Mission to 50 percent at Lincoln and 60 percent at Kennedy (ten of the fourteen students were from New York).3 More than half of the students who mentioned gender said “that’s what I am [male or female],” with little or no elaboration. Most of this group were white (seven of eight) and male (six of eight). Slightly more than one-third of the students mentioning gender talked about gender relations; only one student in this small group was white. Two of the Lincoln students who mentioned gender, Joan and Teresa, spoke briefly of race-gender connections, and Johnson’s Mercedes (who did not explicitly identify herself as female) referred to gender relations in the context of explaining the cultural meaning of being Hispanic.

Cornbleth2.qxd

6/20/2003

1:47 PM

126

Page 126

H EARING A MERICA ’ S Y OUTH

Gender Relations Early in the interview, Teresa said, “I am female” (1). Not long after, she said, “I always am identifying with being black more than female, because we live in a white world, so you just feel your blackness a lot” (2). In response to my question about any ways people describe her that she finds offensive, Teresa talked about black women as well as black men being negatively portrayed by the media, including film, and other people: They label us also, um, especially as being maybe, um, a prostitute. . . . Maybe being on welfare and having all these babies. And they think all we’re doing is being on welfare, is collecting benefits and money, and, um, just sitting up, you know what I’m saying? Just sitting up, collecting for nothing. (3)4

Joan described herself as “female obviously because I am female” (2). Later, while describing the “leader” part of her identity as senior class president, and trying “to relate to everybody, trying to get along with everybody” (5), she reflected: And it’s funny that the group of people that I identify with the most, which would be the black females, are the ones that I don’t get along with. I mean, that’s just beyond me . . . and it would seem like you’d be closer to the people that are the most like you, and it doesn’t always seem to be that way. (5)

Mercedes, in contrast, described herself as Hispanic initially, but not as female. In response to the question of what it meant to her to be Hispanic, however, she described gender relations in her experience: Mercedes: You have to, the females are always, they’re supposed to do good in school, and stuff like that. You can’t, they expect you to get married a virgin. They expect you to finish school. A lot of times you can’t cut your hair. They like long hair. AS: Is “they” your family? Mercedes: Yeah. The, um, the older brother is, if you have an older brother it’s real hard because they overprotective with you. They always on you about things. Things like that. AS: Do you have an older brother? Mercedes: Yes. (1)

The other students who mentioned gender relations talked about male-female relations more generally or in relation to what they implied were societal norms or expectations. Johnson’s Richard and Pacific’s Andrew saw gender relations as more equal, or becoming more equal,

Cornbleth2.qxd

6/20/2003

1:47 PM

Page 127

Religion, Age, and Gender

127

than in the past. In response to the question of what it meant to him to be male, Richard said: Really it’s, I don’t know, I feel, like to me, I look at all the stuff about, like, people saying males are, like, they have that battle between, like, the male being dominant or the female being dominant. I don’t really care. It’s, like, equal to me as I can see. I see a lot of, like, females doing things. Like my mother, she’s out there doing, like, a lot of things. I see some men that couldn’t even tough the things that she does. So, um, . . . just like equal. (2)

Richard’s mother works with one or more community groups and is an antiracism activist. Andrew still sees differences, differences that may work against men as well as women. He told me, “I guess gender, gender is still a big issue” (2), and explained: I think being male still makes a difference in, I guess, college and stuff. You get sort of a biased view about what would more likely be. For instance, I guess in college being a male you’re more, I guess, to follow some sort of path like occupation while with females it’s different. CC: In what way? Say more. Andrew: Uh, I guess in college you are more towards the doctor type of an occupation rather than being able to go into the nursing field. (3)

It is not clear to me now whether Andrew was saying that both men and women could be doctors, but he does seem to be implying that men are not encouraged to become nurses: “It’s more of a general stereotype of what nurses ought to be than what doctors ought to be” (3). We continued: CC: Okay. Where do you suppose these ideas come from? Andrew: Um, I think just the past, the way that in the past hundred years the women’s movements have increased, but it’s still not completely equal. So I think there’s still some sort of a stereotype between how mothers or females should be mothers and the, um, caretakers while the men are outside working. And it’s a stereotype that men are less nurturing also, and that’s why they’re more towards, like, the more manual labor fields. CC: How do you feel about those stereotypes? Andrew: I don’t, I think that both genders are capable of doing all of the things and I think in some way in the future it’ll kind of go away, like stereotypically because I guess there’s a transition period where it’s still semi-unacceptable to, unacceptable to society and we’re still transitioning towards complete gender equality. (3)

Cornbleth2.qxd

128

6/20/2003

1:47 PM

Page 128

H EARING A MERICA ’ S Y OUTH

Chrissy, from Pacific High School and the only white student to talk about gender in relational terms, told me, “I say I’m female” (1). She talked about several aspects of gender relations when I asked her what difference being female made: I think if you’re a girl you’re treated differently. Sometimes it’s good because sometimes people will be nicer to you because you’re a girl or sometimes people will do more things for you or help you out more. Like friends or mostly guys. CC: Help you out in what way? Chrissy: Like, maybe if you need a favor or, like, you know, yeah, if you need them to do something they’re more willing to, to do it. But I think also there’s some, some bad things because people also take you less seriously sometimes and they kind of take it to the other extreme and kind of see you as you always need help. And you know, the salary differences and stuff, so it’s not, so yeah, it’s definitely different. CC: What would be an example of an experience you’ve had? Chrissy: Um, like, I’ve asked friends, like a guy friend for a ride before and if you, like, smile at him and stuff they’re usually, like, “Okay.” But girls who are friends would be, like, “Oh, you need a ride, well okay, I’ll give it to you” or “No, I got to go somewhere” or something. But if you’re nice to them, I don’t know, maybe just guys are really mani, you know, really easily manipulated, but, but um, yeah. They’re kind of, they’re a little bit easier that way . . . sappy. CC: An example of where you feel you haven’t been taken seriously cuz you’re a female? Chrissy: Um, yeah, I’ve had people who, like, people not so much in high school because in high school it’s not a big deal usually, but back in junior high every, like, if you were playing a sport or, you know, playing a game like kickball or something, then you were, people just didn’t pick you or just, like, you know, you just can’t play, even if you were, it’s like, even if you were the best, like if you were a really good kickball player, you couldn’t just be really good, you had to be better than all the boys, you had to be, like, spectacular so it made it, you know, even if you were just, you know, solid, it didn’t matter. (2–3)

Importantly, Chrissy recognizes some of the trade-offs in contemporary U.S. gender relations (as she did with being a teenager), especially people being nice to you and helping you out at the cost of people not taking you seriously and seeing you as always needing help. More so than the other students who mentioned gender, Chrissy and Joan seemed to be probing beneath its surfaces and, however tentatively, raising questions—Chrissy about the costs of people, especially boys, helping you out, and Joan about getting along best with people like yourself.

Cornbleth2.qxd

6/20/2003

1:47 PM

Page 129

Religion, Age, and Gender

129

Gender as Male or Female For most of the students mentioning gender as an aspect of their identity, it was like checking the male or female box on a school form or job application. That was all they had to say. For example, of the three Kennedy students who mentioned being male (Bruce, Max) or female (Nancy), only Bruce said more: “Being a white male, I think is a, it’s almost a, like, I, I don’t, I’ve never had to label myself” (1). Maleness, like whiteness, may be taken for granted in the United States despite evidence that the meanings of both have been changing, albeit probably much less in high school than in higher education venues. Lincoln’s Kirk and Martin used similar language. Kirk said, “I just classify myself as a white male. That’s what I am. . . . ’Cause it’s politically correct” (1), while Martin told me, “I just classify myself as white Slavic male” (1). When I asked Martin about how other people describe him, he told me: I don’t mind when people identify me the right way. I remember once, as an insult, somebody called me a conservative, and that really bothered me. I don’t really see a problem with, if some person comes up and says, “Hey, white boy!” I’m like, “what?” I don’t care if people say that. It’s what I am. (2)

Linda, also from Lincoln, did not use any group labels, but echoed Martin when I asked about how she responds when other people label her: Well, I am what I am, so if somebody says, “Well, white girl,” I mean, I’m not gonna be offended because I am. So, I mean, if somebody were to insult me, then I’d be upset. But, um, if they’re, a lot of people just use it as, like, a descriptive term. And if they’re using it that way, then fine. I don’t see any problem with that. (2)

But, she continued, depending on “how it’s said” (3) and the circumstances, it could be insulting. Finally, Mission’s Sam said, “gender is just a generalized one [group] for everyone to use” (1) and explained: It’s either you’re male or you’re female. There isn’t like a hundred different choices or anything. That could be good. [CC laughs] I mean, like with age and stuff, there’s a lot of different things, but gender you’re either male or you’re female. CC: And how does being male make a difference? Sam: Um, I think society sees us differently. Like, we’re supposed to be the big, strong type. Um, sometimes if you don’t fit that, you get looked down upon. (2)

Cornbleth2.qxd

130

6/20/2003

1:47 PM

Page 130

H EARING A MERICA ’ S Y OUTH

Later, Sam referred to being short and not appreciating being reminded by others. Sam’s comments and Andrew’s above about men not usually being seen as making good nurses are the only ones to suggest that gendered social/cultural expectations may hurt or limit men as well as women.

CONCLUDING COMMENT While mentioned by 25 percent to 30 percent of the interviewees, age and gender did not appear to be important parts of most students’ selfdescribed identities. This was especially the case for age, where only Chrissy had much to say. It was as if most students were creating boxes to check on an imagined form. An alternative interpretation is that age and gender are important, perhaps very important, to high school students but largely taken for granted or subsumed under peer group or peer relations. Had we asked direct questions about age or gender group membership as we did about what it means to be an American (see chapter 7), the results might have been different. While the numbers are small, it is worth noting that some students did see gender relationally, not simply categorically. One is female, for example, in relation to, not in isolation from, others who also are female or who are male. Furthermore, three young women (two African American and one Hispanic) related their race/ethnicity and gender in different ways, illustrating how aspects of social identity are intertwined. These relations carry importance at the individual level as a means of personal integration; being multidimensional does not necessarily entail fragmentation. A relational view is important at the level of groups and nation-states as well, at least insofar as it offers a constructive alternative to unity as commonality or alikeness. Various, overlapping connections or relations can be powerful unifiers. Moreover, a relational view implies both that relations, unlike presumably fixed categories, can be modified and that such complex change has numerous ramifications. That more students described themselves in terms of religion than either age or gender is consistent with the oft-noted religiosity of the United States. It also may reflect that these young people are living at home, subject to parental and family expectations or demands. None of the students, however, indicated that they felt any coercion at home with respect to religious belief or practice. While poignant statements about religious influences in their lives were offered by a few students, most students did not express such senti-

Cornbleth2.qxd

6/20/2003

1:47 PM

Page 131

Religion, Age, and Gender

131

ments. Most (70 percent) of those who mentioned religion in their selfdescriptions said that it was important in their lives but did not say much more. This parallels the relatively small proportion of students who described robust racial identities. Overall, students’ self-descriptions do seem to reflect ongoing identification processes that are more or less fully fashioned and articulated. In the next chapter, I move to what students had to say about being an American, if they considered themselves American. National identity is the only instance where we introduced a particular social identity or identity strand and directly asked students about it.

NOTES 1. 2. 3. 4.

The only other student mention of sexual orientation was a brief reference in the context of inequities in American society. Later, Joan also reflected on race-gender relations. Less than half of students who mentioned age or gender mentioned both. Lincoln students Blake and Jay also described negative media and other portrayals of black men but did not explicitly self-identify as male. See chapter 3.

This page intentionally left blank

Cornbleth2.qxd

6/20/2003

1:47 PM




Page 133

7

BEING AMERICAN

. . . and then you come here [to Lincoln from a Catholic elementary school in another part of the city] and you see that we’re all Americans, but we’re all, we’re all different religions, we’re all different colors, we’re all from the different kinds of families, ya know. And you find out that even though we have all those differences, we’re still American. And there’s still something that makes us common. That we can talk about it and not disagree. —Lacey, Lincoln High School, New York, 7 In a way I’m American because I was born in America, family’s born in America, I call myself that, but really like African American cuz you know, ancestors came from Africa . . . not all the way American. After I seen, you know, what’s been done to our people I don’t really say I’m all American, all the way with everything they do, KKK and all that stuff, all that way American, no. —Penny, Pacific High School, California, 5

National identity, “images of the polity in the minds of its members” (Clark, 2000, p. 250), is part of most people’s social identity in the contemporary world. How do young people on the verge of adult rights and responsibilities understand being an American? What it means to be an American has changed over time. Meanings vary with local, national, and global circumstances as well as the social location and personal experiences of individuals and groups. While the oft-cited conceptions of Frenchmen Crèvecoeur and Tocqueville in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries have historical significance, they

Cornbleth2.qxd

134

6/20/2003

1:47 PM

Page 134

H EARING A MERICA ’ S Y OUTH

cannot accommodate twentieth and twenty-first century American expansiveness and diversity. An obvious contemporary example of varied meanings is the taken-for-grantedness of “Americanness” and U.S. citizenship to many native-borns versus the pride and hopefulness of recently naturalized or prospective new citizens. Johnson High School’s Simon had been in the United States only six months at the time of our interview. He told us that he would become a U.S. citizen after he had lived here for five years, and then he would have the right to vote, “freedom, and the right to speech and all of that stuff . . . participate in all of the cultural activities, and government activities, political activities” (4). Earlier, he described America as “a big country, a very developed country, and a really successful country” (3). Many people come to the United States, he said, because it is “considered to be a really good country. From all of the world, people come here, straight to America. Better than any other country” (3).1 In contrast, Lincoln’s Maggie said, “I probably do take it for granted. I’m not going to lie; it’s something that I just don’t dwell on. Me being an American? I don’t know. You got me” (6). Only four of the fifty-two students asked to describe themselves spontaneously mentioned being American compared, for example, with fortythree who mentioned their race/ethnicity or cultural heritage. No relation was evident between spontaneous mention of being American and what students said it meant to them. Being an American was background, not foreground, for these students at the time of our interviews. A handful mentioned that they might feel more American outside the United States than they do while living here. Similarly, only five of the young people described themselves as students (including one exchange student), even though all the interviews were conducted in schools. Students’ responses to our questions about what it meant to them to be an American (if they considered themselves American) no doubt were influenced by the relative peace, prosperity, and openness of the United States in the mid- to late 1990s. The comments of Simon and Maggie can be seen as reflecting these times. Had our interviews been conducted prior to 1989, during the Cold War, or after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, in New York City and at the Pentagon outside Washington, DC, I expect that responses would be different. While a historical account or analysis of the various and changing meanings of Americanness is another project, the present data can be viewed as a turnof-the-century baseline for future comparisons. Whether “life will never be the same” in the United States as it was prior to September 11, 2001, is an assertion to be investigated, not a truism except insofar as today is

Cornbleth2.qxd

6/20/2003

1:47 PM

Page 135

Being American

135

not an exact replica of yesterday. Whether that date and its horrific events mark the end of an era (of perceived safety, security, and/or innocence) or another moment in U.S. history and society (albeit a rough bump in the road) remains to be seen as of this writing. In our interviews, after asking New York students to describe themselves and then probing their responses, we asked, “A related question: What does it mean to you to be an American?” and again encouraged students to expand, elaborate, or explain. In the California schools, with their larger proportion of immigrants,2 we modified our protocol to ask “A somewhat different question now: Do you consider yourself an American?” and then “Why not?” or “What does it mean—to you—to be an American?” Later, we asked students about their images of America. Sometimes, students’ responses spanned America and Americans. While the focus here is on their sense of what it means to be an American, America is very much in evidence.3 What it means to these young people to be an American varies, and numerous students offered more than one meaning, for example, having both freedom and a feeling of being privileged or fortunate to live in the United States. No single meaning or theme was voiced by a majority of the students. Most frequently mentioned was freedom, rights, and opportunity (43 percent of the fifty-two students asked this question) followed by born here and/or live here (25 percent), diversity, individualism, and unity (21 percent), privileged and/or proud (20 percent), and supposed to be, imperfect but best (20 percent). Also mentioned by at least 10 percent of the students was not or not entirely American (11 percent). Freedom, rights, and opportunity was mentioned by slightly more New York than California students, and more females than males. In contrast, nine of the ten students who said being an American was a privilege and/or a source of pride were from California, and seven were male. Other meanings of being an American did not show regional or gender swings. Only born here and/or live here was voiced by all racial/ethnic ancestry groups at similar rates. Proportionately more European American students described being an American in terms of freedom, rights, and opportunity and of privileged and/or proud. Diversity, individualism, and unity or being part of e pluribus unum was predominantly a European American response. No European American students described themselves as not or not entirely American; this response was offered by two African American, two Asian American, and two Hispanic students. No Hispanic or Asian American students voiced supposed to be, imperfect but best. This sentiment was expressed by European American, African American, and mixed ancestry students, four of the ten from Lincoln

Cornbleth2.qxd

136

6/20/2003

1:47 PM

Page 136

H EARING A MERICA ’ S Y OUTH

High School, three from Pacific, and one each from Kennedy, Johnson, and Mission. Each of these themes is illustrated and examined in the following sections.

THEMES CHARACTERIZING STUDENTS’ SENSE of WHAT IT MEANS to BE an AMERICAN Beginning with born here and/or live here, which seemed the least engaged of students’ responses, I then move to freedom, rights, and opportunity, the most common response, and privileged and/or proud. Then I consider what seemed to me to be more complex responses to what it means to be an American: e pluribus unum or diversity, individualism, and unity, followed by the critically hopeful supposed to be, imperfect but best, and ending with not or not entirely American, which includes both students who are not U.S. citizens and some who are but do not feel fully accepted or do not want to be associated with all of America’s history.

Born Here and/or Live Here Typical of this theme is Linda’s statement, “I live in America. It really, it really doesn’t extend beyond that” (4). Similarly, Sharon said, “I was born in this country, pretty much [laughter], that’s it” (4). For Sharon, however, this conclusion seemed to follow her unsuccessful effort to identify something uniquely American: . . . since America’s kinda such a mixture of different people, it’s too general to just say you’re American. . . . there are so many different cultures already set up before America existed, so all those cultures came over. So America is like a piece of everything. I really don’t think that there’s anything that’s truly American, that’s just American, I think. (4)

Aphra, like Maggie quoted at the beginning of this chapter, told me, “It doesn’t have a meaning to me [referring, apparently, to a racial/ethnic meaning], that’s why I kind of use it. . . . Like, I live here, and I take part in this place . . . this is what I am, and this is my home” (4). She dissociated herself from her friends, whom she described as very patriotic and “military involved”: I have some friends that are really military involved and to them, like, American is this big proud thing, like, you know, they totally love the flag and they get really upset when anything is, like, demeaned or, like, put down . . . I don’t, I mean, I can understand where they’re coming from, and I can, I think it’s disre-

Cornbleth2.qxd

6/20/2003

1:47 PM

Page 137

Being American

137

spectful in a sense but it’s not like I feel hurt or, like, put down by it in any way. I don’t really associate with that. (4)

For other Mission and Pacific students, being born in the United States or living here takes on more importance. Brita says that she’s American because she was born here. Furthermore, “I live in America, I go by the American laws, therefore I’m an American” (3). Peter sees himself as both American and Mexican: I do consider myself an American cuz I was born here. I look, but I also have in my mind where I came from, where my origin is. I came from Mexico, that’s where my parents came from. So I guess I could, I would consider myself as being both. One part I’m American cuz I was born here, cuz I’ve been raised here, cuz I have all, this nation has taught me everything I know. And by the other part I’m Mexican, because my parents came from, their culture, they’ve all, it’s come from them which is Mexico. I’m still part of that culture. I feel myself as part of that culture, so I consider myself both. (4)

Damon told us that he considers himself an American because “I was born here, uh, go to school here, my ancestors fought for here. You know? So, better be!” (4). Marvin responded similarly: Cuz I mean, I’ve been living here, like, for all my life, you know. Everybody who’s brought up here, like, mostly, you know what I’m saying, most of my family was brought up in America, so I mean, you know what I’m saying, if I got, like, most of them are part of me, so I’m American too, you know. (7)

After describing contradictions between what being an American “is supposed to mean” and what it means in practice (see below), Damon concluded, “So it’s, like, America is just where you live, and they got your name on a social security card. That’s basically being American” (5). It may be that the relatively large number of immigrants in central California and the then-recent passage of anti-immigrant Proposition 187 made being born in the United States more salient and important than it appeared to be to the New York students. For Sharon and Aphra, being born in the United States and/or living here seemed a default position because they tried but did not succeed in coming up with anything uniquely American that they thought being an American might mean or stand for. Ironically, perhaps, the diversity of America’s peoples that they passed over may be one of the nation’s defining features.

Freedom, Rights, and Opportunity We conducted the student interviews toward the end of the school year when students were completing their study of U.S. history (juniors), or

Cornbleth2.qxd

138

6/20/2003

1:47 PM

Page 138

H EARING A MERICA ’ S Y OUTH

when at least the New York students had once again studied U.S. government (seniors). As a former high school history/social studies teacher and longtime social studies educator, I was disappointed that so few young people had much to say about U.S. democratic principles, practices, and the continuing struggle to extend their reach. Most of their comments about freedom, rights, and opportunity were brief, and many sounded to me like cliches, what Billig calls expressions of everyday or “banal nationalism” (1995). Students such as Blake, who were critical of the United States for still not living up to its original promise, showed considerably more knowledge about “being an American” than those students who were relatively content. That said, freedom, rights, and opportunity was the most frequently recurring theme, voiced by more than 40 percent of the young people, by slightly more New York than California students, by more females than males, and by proportionately more European American students. Kennedy High School’s LeAnn was typical. Being an American meant “being able to do what you want, and you don’t have all these restrictions on what you can believe . . . the whole land of opportunity type thing” (2). She also said that America is getting freer and more open, noting career opportunities available to women as an example. Similarly, Lincoln’s Jay told me that being an American meant “I have the right to do, or I have the freedom to do, whatever I want to do as long as it’s not hurting anyone. . . . America gives us freedom” (4). Teresa, who expressed considerable anger about racism in the United States (see chapter 5), also talked about freedom and opportunity in America: For me to be an American . . . I guess it means to be free . . . like in other countries, if you do something, a wrong deed, they would cut your hand off or something like that. . . . America is a country of opportunity to me. I think that’s really what it means to me. To be an American means to have lots of opportunities to do things that you probably couldn’t do in other countries. (4)

Kirk mentioned freedom and contrasted the United States with China and its one-child-per-family policy. “Here you can have fifty if you can support it,” (2) he said, but, he continued, “that’s another problem, though, but some people have been taking, uh, our freedom for granted” (2) by abusing welfare and other government programs. Very few students mentioned citizen responsibilities as well as rights. Johnson’s Magdalena and Manuel described freedom directly, in relation to their personal experiences. Magdalena emphasized having choices in the United States, in contrast to “some countries [where] the government tells you what to do, and you have to do it. Here we have a choice

Cornbleth2.qxd

6/20/2003

1:47 PM

Page 139

Being American

139

of how we want things. . . . Because, like, in Cuba, you have a dictatorship, and whatever Fidel Castro says goes” (4). At the time of the interview, Magdalena was living with her aunt, who was married to a Cuban. She described the United States much more positively than Cuba, saying, “Here we have Bill Clinton. What we say, he does, because his job is to do what we need” (4). Manuel’s example of having rights and freedom involved his being Hispanic. He also displayed at least a bit of American individualism: What it means to be American is to have all the rights, all the rights you need to have, freedom. . . . A Hispanic has all his rights to be a Hispanic, to have a second language, to talk about our culture and stuff. Americans, everybody has the same quality of who they want to be, you know, how they want to be. It’s, like, you make your life of it, not nobody else, you know. (5)

Of the New York students who cited freedom, rights, and opportunity as what it means to be an American, Lincoln’s Brad had the most to say: The freedom of speech thing. Um, I like to focus on the Bill of Rights. I mean, that to me is what America is all about, because you’ve got freedom of religion in there, freedom of speech, and those are the loaded ones. Those are the ones that really separate us from other countries, Third World countries, because freedom of speech, you really have a chance to express yourself. Mind you, you have to be limited when it tends to infringe on other people’s rights, but you still have that freedom. You know it’s there. It’s guaranteed. It’s in writing. It’s signed. And that is probably what an American means the most. It’s freedom of speech and of religion, and everything combined in the Bill of Rights, but mainly those two. (2)

Citing the Vietnam-era protests as an example, Brad continued: All the college students, they made their voices heard, they protested. I think that’s when the power of protest really came through. They used their power of protest to let the government know they weren’t happy with the war. And eventually enough people said, “Wait a minute. This isn’t right.” And they eventually stopped the war. And I think that’s the reason Vietnam was stopped, so the freedom of speech almost does have more power than any power, because, you know, like, the pen’s mightier than the sword. It’s just, you can sway a lot of people with your words, you know, like Martin Luther King, Adolph Hitler. That’s a bad example, but, you know, they swayed people with their words. (2–3)

Brad concluded almost as if he were wrapping up a debate competition. And that’s a power that I like, you know, being on the Debate Team and everything. I’ve always been able to talk and talk and talk, so to be able to make people see your opinions and understand where you’re coming from, I think it helps people relate to each other better. . . . People can come together a little better. (3)

Cornbleth2.qxd

140

6/20/2003

1:47 PM

Page 140

H EARING A MERICA ’ S Y OUTH

From the West Coast, Pacific High School’s Marian also emphasized freedom of speech but in more local, personal terms: I can be what I want, you know, who I want and where I want, like I said. In school, we have freedom of speech, we can, you know, get in trouble how we believe a thing is supposed to be or whatever, you know. So, I’m glad it’s like that because if I was born way back when, when all that stuff, the Constitution wasn’t thought about, I probably wouldn’t have survived, cuz I like, you know, to be heard. I like people to hear me in a positive way, it don’t always have to be negative. Cuz I’m straightforward so I want people to be straightforward with me, and I’m glad we can do that. (2)

Faye suggests one possible reason why so many students seem to take their freedom for granted: I feel like I know that I take advantage of the fact that we have so many freedoms and things that it’s, like, you don’t, uh, respect the fact that other people can’t do what you’re able to do, and I think that’s part of it. But I have no idea what it feels like to not have all the freedoms that we do. (3)

Finally, Ruth talked about responsibility and being fortunate to have the opportunity she enjoys as an American: I don’t have, like, the best of lives, like, within America, you know, I’m, like, lower income and everything, but you know, I realize, like, okay, well, I’m fairly safe, I have all these opportunities. The government is giving me a little bit of money to go to college, even though they need to be giving me more, but you know, so I feel really lucky in that part. That I didn’t have to do anything to, like, be an American, I was just born here, you know. I didn’t have to, like, actively take an exam like some of my friends have had to. So I think also in that, like, then I have a responsibility cuz it wasn’t fair, you know, that I just sort of automatically got to do that, which is why I feel, like, an obligation to be involved in Amnesty International and an obligation to do something. I mean, like, I think whatever career people go into, as long as they do it well, like, they’re fulfilling whatever obligation they have, but, like, my personal one that I really want to do, is to, like, help the rest of the world, which is why I want to go into the Diplomatic Corps. So, like, that’s what I see for being an American, as someone who got lucky, but someone who also has a lot of responsibility because of that. (4–5)

Ruth’s recognition of herself as “someone who got lucky” to be born an American and have the opportunities she enjoys provides a transition to the next theme, privileged and/or proud.

Privileged and/or Proud This theme, with one exception, was expressed by California young people, seven of ten of whom are males, and proportionally more of whom

Cornbleth2.qxd

6/20/2003

1:47 PM

Page 141

Being American

141

are European American. At least as much as with the other themes, there is internal variation here. Student comments reveal shades of meaning. Conventional patriotism, or being proud of America and of being an American, seems to represent identification with and support for the nation-state. From Mission High School, Larry put it this way: Um, I mean, you have a lot of freedom based on the fact that we live in this country and I think being American means that, uh, it has a sense of pride, people have a lot of pride in being American and living in this country so I think it’s, I think it’s a good thing to be American. I think that, uh, I can see why other countries, if you look at what’s going on over in the Balkans, consider themselves, or come to this country and be considered Americans. (3)

Sam was one of the few students who mentioned nationality in his initial self-description. When asked about it, he demurred, saying: Um, it’s not really a big thing with me. I mean, I’m, I say I’m American and that I’m, I mean, if one the surveys, if one the surveys and stuff like that I always put that I’m white. But I mean, other than that it’s not a big thing. CC: Okay. So it doesn’t shape day-to-day life? Sam: No, not a huge thing. (2)

Later, in response to our question about what it means to be an American, Sam expressed stronger feelings: “It means that this is my nation, this is the country that I want to be in, it’s not like we’re forced to be here. Um, that if, if we still had the draft and stuff I’d be happy to go off and fight for it to be free, to stay the same way that it is” (4). Pacific High School’s Marvin expressed pride in being an American but was not willing to serve in the military, while Kendall said that he had changed his mind and now was not sure what he would do. Marvin combined responsibility with pride: You gotta, I mean, you gotta abide by the laws, you gotta vote, definitely gotta vote, uh, you gotta just, you gotta have some pride for the, you know what I’m saying, nation to be an American. Just, I mean, just being like respectful, standing up for the anthem, you know what I’m saying. Things like that. Being dedicated to your country basically, you gotta, I wouldn’t go to the Army or nothing like that, but you know, everything else, it’s just, it’s cool. (7)

Kendall described feeling protected and safe, saying: I live in a place, a society, where, uh, you try to know ourselves at the same time helping each other, helping others. In a place where they are going to try to protect you and, you know, uh, cuz, um, you know, all this war stuff. You don’t hear about anybody coming over trying to take our United States . . . try to keep us as united as possible. (2)

Cornbleth2.qxd

142

6/20/2003

1:47 PM

Page 142

H EARING A MERICA ’ S Y OUTH

Later in the interview, when I asked about any changes in his views in the past few years, Kendall described both change and tension about serving in the military to defend the nation-state that has supported him. His comments seem especially poignant in view of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States and subsequent events: Well, it changed cuz I was always like, “No, I’m not going to go to war for this country” and I still say I’m not, but I used to feel like, you know, everybody used to be like, “Well, this country hasn’t done anything for me so I can care less” or “Why should I do something for them if they don’t do nothing for me?” But then you have to understand, like, yeah, like I said before, we have not been attacked lately or, you know, in our time, by other countries . . . so we send men over there to go and try to solve peace with them . . . now I can live in a nice place. CC: So your ideas changed and you would defend the country? Kendall: Because I feel like, yeah, the country has done a lot, and I have more, more, um, let me see, how can I put it? This country does do a lot for us, but then there are things that are more important than your country, like your family and stuff. So if you do go to war to defend the country, you’re doing it to help the country and help your family. And if you do happen to not survive then your family doesn’t have anything left, just, um, memories of what you did and how you tried to defend the country. But then you cannot be there with them when they most need you in the future. (4–5)

Bruce, the lone New Yorker, from Kennedy High School, incorporated several aspects of pride in being an American when he said: Um, first and foremost, this may sound weird, but that we’re living in the best country in the world. And that’s a privilege, and that I think a lot of people, um, don’t respect that enough, I don’t think. I’m not just saying that, ’cause it’s kind of ironic that I’m going to West Point and it’s military and things like that, but I’ve never, I’ve never thought about the military as a career at all until five months ago. (3)

While Bruce uses the language of “privilege,” he seems to use it differently than Ruth above and a few other California students who use the language of lucky or fortunate. The latter seem to be referring to unearned privilege, akin to Peggy Means McIntosh’s (1992) explications of male and white privilege. For example, in addition to her extended comment quoted above about opportunity, Pacific’s Ruth said, “I just think it [being an American] means I got really lucky” (4). From Mission High School, Carmen explained that being an American meant

Cornbleth2.qxd

6/20/2003

1:47 PM

Page 143

Being American

143

to have freedom of speech, it means to live in a country that’s fair. And it makes me thankful to live in a country that’s so, you know, open with their laws and everything. Because so many other countries, they have very, very strict laws and certain groups—ethnic groups or culture groups—can’t vote. And everyone here is free, you know. It’s not as strict as other countries so it makes me proud to live in such a country that’s, you know, independent. [eight-second pause] Proud and grateful. (4–5)

Steven went further, saying: Um, it means I live in a privileged society where, um, you know, I have a lot of things that other people in other countries and other parts of the world don’t have and that they should have. Um, sometimes it can be, it makes you feel guilty that you have more than other people do and, uh, I guess that’s it. I also, like, think about, how I don’t think I, like, really, really deserve this, cuz like we sort of, you know, we stole the land from the natives and, and all the negative parts of, you know, what made America. I think about that a lot, and I’m ashamed a lot, you know, that we did such horrible things, you know what I’m saying, to people who aren’t white, you know. (3)

Steven’s comment reveals more complexity than most of the others and shades into the supposed to be, imperfect but best theme to be considered later.

E Pluribus Unum Diversity, individualism, and unity, or e pluribus unum, was predominantly a European American response (73 percent of students voicing this theme) across genders and regions. Being an American, for these young people, means being different and coming together. It can be seen as a reflection of various mainstream multicultural education efforts over the past several decades. Lacey, from Lincoln High School, and Chrissy, from Pacific, illustrate the individual aspect of this theme. Along with freedom, Lacey described tension between individualism or difference and conformity or commonality. She seemed to be struggling to work out apparent contradictions. To be an American, Lacey said, is to be searching for things . . . everybody seems to be trying to find something. Like, scientists look for answers, ya know, scientific questions. I think teenagers are searching for who they are, what they are. . . . That’s what I think it is to be an American. To find what you’re looking for. . . . you can do so much here that you can’t do in other places, like you have so much freedom to express yourself. (3)

Cornbleth2.qxd

144

6/20/2003

1:47 PM

Page 144

H EARING A MERICA ’ S Y OUTH

After emphasizing “just the freedom” (3), Lacey seemed to contradict herself, saying: I think it’s about fitting in. People, they say it’s okay to be different, but it’s really not. And that’s what I, I think that America’s kind of a hypocritical place to live. It’s all right to be different up front, ya know, but if, it really does matter if you’re a little bit different than other people. That’s why there’s so many labels, I think. (3)

At this point in the interview, Lacey does not seem to be talking about racial/ethnic differences. Recall (chapter 5) that she told us that she had not met black people in person until she moved to Lincoln from a neighborhood Catholic elementary school for seventh grade, and that her father was concerned about her interaction with black men. She also told us (see chapter 6) that she did not belong to any religious denomination and did not like being asked her religion. Later in the interview, Lacey seemed to reconcile, at least temporarily, the differences and tensions she has described as indicated in the quotation at the beginning of this chapter. Chrissy’s version of individualism emphasizes what might be called self-betterment: People are more interested in themselves here. Like, it’s kind of, like, I mean, not necessarily, some in a selfish way, but some in, like, kind of, like, people are actually interested in, like, bettering themselves as individuals, like, internally and also, like, their lives in general. People, I think people are a little more individualistic in America. (4)

Kennedy’s Sharon, above, described America as “such a mixture of different people” that there’s nothing “that’s just American” (4). While Sharon emphasized U.S. diversity, her classmate Nancy emphasized different people coming together. Being an American, Nancy said, means that no matter your background or where you came from or when you came to the United States, that’s, you’re an American, that you share something with everyone who’s an American, but you also, you also have your own background. JM: What’s the thing that you share with other people? Nancy: Um, well, you live in the same country under the same rule, under the same Constitution, and you have the same freedoms and privileges . . . like all the amendments and stuff. (2)

Similarly, from Mission High School, Aphra noted that “America’s known as a big, like, hodgepodge and just everything” so “it doesn’t have

Cornbleth2.qxd

6/20/2003

1:47 PM

Page 145

Being American

145

a meaning to me” (4), while Larry interpreted American diversity somewhat differently: I think that everyone that lives in America is American, you know. Cuz there is no pure, pure-blooded American race. All of us are from different, different countries, our ancestors are all from different places. So to call yourself American is kind of, doesn’t really have any foundation, cuz this nation was founded on a whole bunch of different races coming together, coming here, so America’s more just the people that live there, people that make up the country. (3)

Sam seems to be echoing Larry in recognizing both pluribus and unum: “It’s not really any race, any single race, cuz it’s really a melting pot of everything, cuz we’re all basically immigrants that came from other countries. And so it’s sort of, like, if this is the country that you, to declare yourself a part of” (4). At Pacific, Kendall emphasized similarity (e.g., money, clothing) and unity while Ruth tilted toward diversity and finding nothing “that’s uniquely American” (4). “American is really just ambiguous,” she told me, “I think it’s just culture, like, I don’t think as anything else like religion or political beliefs, that there’s anything that’s uniquely American” (4). Like Sharon earlier, Ruth too may be missing the point that diversity is what is uniquely American.

Supposed to Be, Imperfect but Best This theme was voiced by African American, European American, and mixed-ancestry students but not by Hispanic or Asian American students. While there were no gender or regional differences, most of these critical but hopeful students came from Lincoln and Pacific High Schools. Imperfect but best tends to downplay the problems with America and being an American whereas supposed to be highlights the problems in relation to the historic promise of America and being an American. Although at one point Pacific’s Chrissy says, “It’s not perfect and it’s not the best” (5), her extended comment about being an American well reflects the image of America as not without problems but still better than other nations: I think a lot of people complain about America and they don’t do anything about it. And a lot of people complain about America and then still, you know, reap the benefits of it. And I think, I think America’s a really, you know, it’s not perfect and it’s not the best, but I think it’s a really good country compared to what a lot of countries are like. I think people, you know, people take it for granted that we have things like the Constitution and we have rights that are

Cornbleth2.qxd

146

6/20/2003

1:47 PM

Page 146

H EARING A MERICA ’ S Y OUTH

protected and people, you know, so any little thing that happens, like, they just take it, they blow it out of proportion, and I think people don’t really appreciate some of the things we do have. Like, just as a country, people are like, “The government’s evil, everything’s evil,” it’s, like, well, yeah, sometimes the government doesn’t do, you know, bad things and it sometimes does, you know, illegal things, and you know, it doesn’t tell the public everything, but it’s also a lot better than some countries which have some governments that go out and, you know, kill people and that kind of thing. (5)

Kennedy’s Bruce emphasized U.S. history and government while Mission’s Anna emphasized personal freedom. Recall that Bruce told us that being an American meant “that we’re living in the best country in the world” (3). Asked about the ways in which he thought America is best, Bruce explained: Our government structure, probably first and foremost, and also the, its history has become, even though there’s a lot of negatives in the history, it’s become not, I guess not so much a melting pot but a, so many groups represented . . . there’s so many facets that it’s so interesting. And that, and that everybody pretty much has been, ya know, from many groups is able to come together as one, I mean, ya know, as Americans. (3–4)

Coming together as one, he said, meant “that the minority has been accepted. It’s not so much they’re a minority, but just a part of America” (4). Asked if “what you call a minority would see it the same way” (JM, 4), Bruce said, “I don’t think so at all [pause] but I think some of this minority stuff has gone too far [referring to affirmative action]” (4). At least Bruce seems to recognize some of the tensions of black-white relations in the United States and acknowledge his own uncertainty and/or discomfort. Later in the interview, however, he seemed to be expressing color blindness, or seeing white. When Bruce mentioned that “my best friend actually is, is Asian” and the interviewer asked, “So how do you see Asian people now?” Bruce responded, “Just as, I don’t see them at all really. I just see, I just see them as Americans” (8). Bruce’s interview reflects the nuances—or contradictions—of relatively affluent and welleducated, European American young people who are trying to understand their changing world and rework inherited ideas. Like a kitchen in the midst of remodeling, it is a complex, messy, and lengthy work-inprogress. Taking a more local, personal approach, Anna told me that, despite her fear of violence, being an American is “like, the best thing to be . . . I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else in the world” (3). She explained: There’s still bad stuff that goes on here that other countries say they don’t have, like, you know, I guess, I think it’s China or something, like, that there’s, like,

Cornbleth2.qxd

6/20/2003

1:47 PM

Page 147

Being American

147

less, like, rape and murder and stuff like that, cuz they’re more strict, but then again China, I think they’re kind of strict as far as their stuff. . . . Here, you just, I don’t know, just have to watch out and be aware of your surroundings. Other than that I think it’d be the greatest place to live. CC: Because of? Anna: Because of basically we don’t have, well besides, you know, criminal law, you can basically do whatever, you know. You don’t have to wear certain stuff like one of those countries in the Middle East, you have to, like, you’re not allowed to show any skin which I think is bizarre, and just, it’s the land of the free. (3)

Supposed to be was most eloquently expressed by Lincoln High School’s Blake, who wanted to be seen as “a person first” (see chapter 3) and spoke poignantly about racism (see chapter 5): What I feel it should be to be an American is that I should be equal to any other person in this country. I thought this country was founded on that? I should not be treated any differently than anyone else. We’re all equal. I feel that not based on what color I am, or what nationality I am. That I should be able, be given the same opportunities, whether it be employment, schooling, or whatever, in this country as any other person. And I should not be singled out or just treated differently or treated any less than any other person. It should be based on my character, and the content of it. And that’s what I feel it should be to be an American, but today, in today’s times, it seems that to be an American to me is almost a joke. Because if I was American, then I should be treated equally with any other American. So I feel it’s just a phrase, and there’s no truth to it. (3–4)

Continuing with the theme, “America’s not like it should be,” according to “the principles that it was build on” (4), Blake recounted a history of prejudice, discrimination, and segregation. “It was not,” he said “you’re an American, I’m an American, we’re supposed to be equal. You were either black or white” (5). Asked how he makes sense of varied and conflicting images of America and Americans, Blake said: In some ways it makes me feel cheated. Sometimes I feel like I don’t belong here. Like, I was born here, I was raised here, but it doesn’t feel like I belong here. Sometimes I feel like a stranger, a foreigner. . . . Why can’t I just be an American just like anybody else? Why can’t I just be treated fairly like anyone else? That’s what it’s supposed to be. That’s what you say it should be. (7)

What does one say to Blake as a researcher, an educator, a white person? Other Lincoln students—Sheldon, Joan, and Lacey—also offered comments reflective of this theme. Lacey’s previously quoted reflection pointed to the tension between the pressure she felt to fit in alongside the appearance of considerable freedom, as if to say “you can, but you can’t”

Cornbleth2.qxd

148

6/20/2003

1:47 PM

Page 148

H EARING A MERICA ’ S Y OUTH

or “you’re free to be different, but you’ll pay for that freedom.” Sheldon was more negative, telling me, “I’m not really proud to be an American after realizing some of the things that we did as a people, some of the things that we did to ourselves and to other nations and things. Our whole frame of thought is just polluted. America has polluted itself” (7). Joan, in contrast, was matter-of-fact. “I mean, some people think it’s a really great place, and I guess compared to other countries it is. But, I mean, it has its high points and then at the same time it has its low points. I mean, as big a democracy as its suppose to be, I don’t think everybody gets their fair say-so” (7). From Johnson, Richard takes a different perspective, singling out people, especially young people, as the problem more than government or society at large: To be American should be, like, a privilege ’cause, like, in school we learn about all these other countries and stuff, like less fortunate countries. People come here and, like, I see kids walking around all day, like, selling drugs and stuff. It’s just, like, it’s dumb. When you look at it, like our country is, like, rich compared to, like, most of these other countries. These kids are just, like, taking advantage of them. I don’t know, it looks like it’s starting to fall apart. I hope it will get a little better. . . . They ought to be honored to be living here. Like, I see a lot of families that come from other countries and stuff to get away from all of that, to get a better way of living. And the kids that are, like, born here, they take advantage of it. It’s like they don’t care, like, they never, I don’t know. It’s, like, if they would see, like, how it is to live in another country, they would probably look, like, “man, we’re messing up.” They don’t, it’s, like, nobody cares. (2–3)

For Richard, America is being undermined less by inequality than by “drugs and stuff.” Returning to the West Coast and Pacific High School, Damon and Steven describe America as not living up to its promise. In response to our question about what it means to be an American, Damon said: It’s supposed to mean, like, no uh, not really, no prejudices, just American, you know. Just a culturally diverse, you know, cultural diverse American. And, like, free religion, do what you want. But, you know, it’s a . . . It’s not like that, but that’s how they present America, like it’s free to do what you want. But you can do what you want, but it’s like, “You doing that? You a Muslim, what?” You know what I mean? (4–5)

Not unlike Lacey, Damon seems to be saying that exercising the freedom that is “supposed to be” what it means to be an American can be problematic. Steven refers to discrimination based on race, religion, and sexual orientation (the only one of our sixty-two interviewees to mention the lat-

Cornbleth2.qxd

6/20/2003

1:47 PM

Page 149

Being American

149

ter). Recall that he described feeling guilty at times about living in a “privileged society” because “we sort of, you know, we stole the land from the natives and, and all the negative parts of, you know, what made America. I think about that a lot, and I’m ashamed a lot, you know, that we did such horrible things, you know what I’m saying, to people who aren’t white, you know” (3). I asked Steven about the present United States, “In addition to what’s happened in the past, what about the present?” Steven told me: Um, first of all discrimination, not as much on race but, like, sexuality and, you know, people discriminate against gays and, and religious and stuff like that, you know, like what your beliefs are. Um, that’s, that’s a problem right now, that people are still striving to overcome and I hope one day we do. (3)

Despite their critique, most of these students are hopeful that America and Americans will “overcome” (Steven, 3) problems or “eliminate the bad things, tip the scale” (Blake, 6). Importantly, these students’ critical comments are constructive, not destructive, of American character and idealism.

Not or Not Entirely American This last theme, voiced only by 11 percent of the young people interviewed, includes both students who are not U.S. citizens and some who are but do not want to relinquish their heritage, do not feel fully accepted by other Americans, and/or prefer not to be associated with all of America’s history. No European American or mixed-ancestry students are represented here. Of the three students who were not born in the United States, Simon, as noted earlier, is looking forward to becoming an American and seems happy with his acceptance by Johnson students. Jesus and Geraldo, both born in Guatemala, do not see themselves as Americans. From Mission High School, Jesus, who initially described himself only as a Jehovah’s Witness, seems to see himself as becoming American: Well, I like it here. I, I, I do feel like I belong here, but I don’t consider myself an American. It, I know I’m different. Although I’ve grown to it a little. CC: Okay. Say more about that. You know you’re different but you’ve grown to it a little? Jesus: Yeah, in a, sometimes my, my English is not perfect, I have very many mistakes in the language pronunciation of words, so that’s always reminding me I’m not American. Um, also um, also I’ve noticed that being, from, I have,

Cornbleth2.qxd

150

6/20/2003

1:47 PM

Page 150

H EARING A MERICA ’ S Y OUTH

Americans you know, they’re usually blond hair and what I’ve seen is most of the time they get chosen before I do [for teams or in-class groups]. (3–4)

Later, he told me: I was talking with this, with my mom a couple of days ago, how English has become really a part of my life. I think in English, I dream in English, and Spanish is just when I need to use it. English is always there. CC: Well, how would you describe, uh, who you are in terms of where you belong or where you feel at home? Geographically, in terms of nations or parts of the world. Jesus: I feel more like I, I fit here. Because back in my country, I, I only lived over there ’til I was nine. . . . So it, it, I don’t know, it’s hard for me to describe myself, where do I fit. (5)

Geraldo, from Pacific High School, acknowledged that one could be both Guatemalan and American, but sees himself as Guatemalan. He told me, “I’m from Guatemala, my roots are there, my family’s from there, everything, who we are is over there, so I can’t, I can’t be something else” (4). At the same time, in seeming contradiction, he said: I’ve grown up here since I was two, so this is, this is all I know. I haven’t been to Guatemala since I came here, so I don’t know where I’m coming from. I don’t remember anything from over there. But this is all I know. I don’t identify myself as an American, I just, I just know . . . history. (5)

Later in the interview, I invited Geraldo to speak in Spanish if that would enable him to better express his feelings. Here is what he said: Okay. No soy Americano porque mis raices son de Guatemala. Es de donde soy, es mi sangre, es mi gente. [I’m not American because my roots are from Guatemala. It’s where I’m from, it’s my blood, it’s my people.] CC: Mas? Diga mas por favor. [More? Say more please.] Geraldo: Es quien soy, es la forma en que yo pienso, es como hablo. [It’s who I am, it’s the way in which I think, it’s how I speak.] (8)

Pacific’s Sander also does not see himself as American. His explanation is worth repeating here (from chapter 5): As an American? I’d have to say no. And I know I actually had this discussion with my mom and she’s really mad that I keep saying no, but I can’t see myself as American. American Indian maybe, but never as American. It’s just when I think of American, the common conception comes to mind is blue eyes, white and blond hair, you know. And, I think, um, of myself as Indian. People ask me what nationality I am, I’m not going to say American, I’m going to say Indian.

Cornbleth2.qxd

6/20/2003

1:47 PM

Page 151

Being American

151

So why should I consider myself American? But I’m not even a citizen of this country, but even if I was a citizen I don’t think I’d call myself American, at the most I’d go American Indian. And then I’d be, and I have a problem with that too cuz then people start thinking I’m, like, native Indian, then I’d have to go, “East Indian, you know, from India.” And then they’d finally get it. [CC laughs] So I’d have to say no, I don’t see myself as American. (3)

When I asked Sander if he could be both Indian and American, he described his dilemma this way: I’m one of those people stuck in a generation gap. My parents just came to the United States and they’re totally Indian. I was Indian, and I’m trying to be American, and my dad’s, like, pulling me more to the Indian part, my friends pull me more to the American, and I find myself wanting to be more American just cuz I think it’s a lot more fun than being so, my dad’s really strict with me. Being Indian involves being strict in a lot of ways. But I do try to, um, be more cultural, like I do hang out with a lot of my Indian friends, I do hang out, go to Indian movies, parties, and, like, hang out with Indian girls a lot, just cuz I think it’s kind of cool hanging out with our own race once in a while. (4)

In contrast, Mission’s Will, who described himself as Mexican, referred to his parents’ struggle to get to the United States and said, “we know where we come from,” also described himself as American because, he told me, if you don’t, you aren’t going to get anywhere in America (fieldnotes, p. 1). Will, like Simon, seems both grounded in his ancestral heritage and eager to get along and get ahead in America. Penny, from Pacific High School, and Joan from Lincoln, did not consider themselves entirely American. Joan, who conveyed a robust racial identity (see chapter 5) and referred to what being an American is supposed to be, told me: “I don’t really identify myself so much as an American. I guess if I went and traveled to different countries I would. You know, I’m an African American” (7). Penny also conveyed a robust racial identity and said she was African American, “not all the way American” (5). She went further, saying that she did not want to be associated with all Americans or all of America’s history. “After I seen, you know, what’s been done to our people I don’t really say I’m all American, all the way with everything they do, KKK and all that stuff, all that way American, no” (5). Later, like Jesus and Sander, Penny associated being American with being white: So my folks came, I mean, my ancestors, ancestors before that came from Africa. I can’t just call myself American. Like the whites and stuff, that’s American cuz you know, their, their ancestors came from England and decided to, to colonize America. That’s, like, Americans right there, that’s them. But I do call myself African American, American in some ways, though. (5)

Cornbleth2.qxd

152

6/20/2003

1:47 PM

Page 152

H EARING A MERICA ’ S Y OUTH

No European American students associated Americanness with whiteness in our interviews (see chapter 4).

CONCLUDING COMMENT National identity, or what it means to be an American, can and does take different forms; there is no right or fixed answer. What seems especially significant at this turn-of-the-twenty-first century time in U.S. and global history is that the large majority of young people we interviewed see the United States and being an American in civic, not racial/ethnic/cultural terms. A civic nationalism or national identity tends to be individualistic with emphasis on a sovereign people united by an agreed-upon social contract such as the Constitution and its Bill of Rights. An ethnic national identity, in contrast, is collective with emphasis on a presumably unique people or ethnic culture such as the Bosnian Serbs or the IRA Catholics (see, e.g., Greenfeld, 1992). In both, individual identity (e.g., as an American) is situated within “the people.” The people, however, are defined in broad, if not universalistic, terms of human rights and citizenship as in the United States, Britain, and Canada (also, see Jaenen, 1981) or in terms of a specific shared history, heritage, religion, and/or language such as in Japan, Russia, and Saudi Arabia. While the former high school teacher in me would appreciate more and more specific references to U.S. history, government, and civic culture (see, e.g., Fuchs, 1990) in the student interviews, there were repeated references to encompassing American democratic political ideals and institutions. The students were inclusive, not exclusive or separatist. In this respect, the young people are more sophisticated than many, perhaps most, of their elders who continue to claim or seek some sort of tangible common culture. National unity, e pluribus unum, is much more a matter of reaching agreement on how to live together peaceably than of how to look, sound, or act alike. Another aspect of the relative sophistication of many of these young people is that approximately 40 percent attach more than one meaning to being an American. American is not simply a one-dimensional symbol or a multiple-choice question. As the reappearance of student names and overlapping excerpts from their interviews indicate, being an American has multiple and sometimes conflicting meanings for them. To the extent that the New York and California students we interviewed are representative of many more of their peers in the United States, it is premature to claim that globalization and a global popular cul-

Cornbleth2.qxd

6/20/2003

1:48 PM

Page 153

Being American

153

ture have eclipsed the nation-state vis-à-vis young people’s social identities. While the nation-state may not be the anchor in an uncertain world that it has been for many adults in the United States, it is far from obsolete for these young people.

NOTES 1.

2. 3.

Simon and his family emigrated from India. Contrast his outlook with Sander’s, presented in chapter 5. Sander and his family have been in the United States for several years. Puerto Ricans have had U.S. citizenship since 1917. The New York students’ images of America are analyzed in Cornbleth (2002).

REFERENCES Billig, M. (1995). Banal nationalism. London: Sage. Clark, J. C. D. (2000). Protestantism, nationalism, and national identity, 1660–1832. The Historical Journal, 43 (1), 249–76. Cornbleth, C. (2002). Images of America: What youth do know about the United States. American Educational Research Journal, 39 (2), 519–52. Fuchs, L. H. (1990). The American kaleidoscope: Race, ethnicity, and the civic culture. Hanover, NH: Wesleyan University Press. Greenfeld, L. (1992). Nationalism: Five roads to modernity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Jaenen, C. (1981). Mutilated multiculturalism. In J. D. Wilson (ed.), Canadian education in the 1980s, 79–96. Calgary: Detselig. McIntosh, P. M. (1992). White privilege and male privilege. In M. L. Andersen and P. H. Collins (eds.), Race, class, and gender, 70–81. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.

This page intentionally left blank

Cornbleth2.qxd

6/20/2003

1:48 PM

Page 155




8

WORKS in PROGRESS

I was teasing him [a teacher in school] . . . because he had asked me something, and I gave him an answer, and he didn’t believe me. And he went and found out that what I told him was true. And so I walked behind him and said, “See, if you just listened to us teenagers, you wouldn’t have had that problem.” We laughed. We joked about it. But, I guess, I think if people do kind of listen to us, I mean, I know we don’t know everything, but we do know something. I guess if everybody could just listen to each other and understand, everything would be fine. It would be a lot better. —Jay, Lincoln High School, New York, 9

Individually and collectively, Americans of all ages continue to be works in progress. By progress, I mean in motion, undergoing change, or moving on. My sense of progress is neither linear nor smooth; nor is it uncontested. I see this concluding chapter to Hearing America’s Youth: Social Identities in Uncertain Times as both epilogue to the present project and prologue to future investigations of young people’s social identities and their social, political, and/or pedagogical implications. The identification processes revealed in the particular moments of our interviews with these young people are ongoing. Only the interview transcripts suggest fixedness or permanence.

Cornbleth2.qxd

156

6/20/2003

1:48 PM

Page 156

H EARING A MERICA ’ S Y OUTH

In this concluding chapter, rather than directly recapitulate the theoretical frame with which I embarked on this project (and elaborated and refined somewhat along the way), or summarize my analyses and findings, I step back just a bit from the past six years of this work and offer some observations and commentary. In so doing, I address the “so what” question. What difference does it seem to make?

MOMENTS of IDENTITY Young people’s social identities do matter, certainly to them, and also to the rest of us, at least insofar as they directly affect us. To recognize the “ongoingness” of social identities or identification processes is not to imply that they are ephemeral or transient, without consequence. Rather, I understand “moments” as overlapping, being influenced by what precedes and influencing what is yet to be. The overlap is uneven as is the movement from one moment to another. Borders among moments are rarely marked unequivocally; they may not even become visible until one looks back sometime later. This sense of moment is similar to Raymond Williams’s (1977) conception of residual, dominant, and emergent traditions. Aspects of past meanings, practices, and relationships (the residual) shape current ones, producing the predominant contours of the present moment, while alternative or oppositional meanings, practices, and relationships are emergent, challenging existing norms. While it could be argued that all moments are local, and social identities are radically contextualized,1 the extension if not globalization of communication, culture, and economy has expanded the potential range and reach of residual, dominant, and emergent movements from which young people might draw (or in which they might participate) in fashioning themselves and shaping their own and others’ future. Our moments are both individual and collective as well as both separate and overlapping. This is not to reify either moments or movements, but to recognize their material manifestations and felt “realities,” however fleeting, for those involved. Moreover, while case studies of the social identities of individual students would require many more interactions and interviews in various settings in order to capture various moments of their ongoing identification processes, the shared themes that emerged from our individual interviews with sixty-plus young people lend credence to the collective patterns as well as the diversity described in preceding chapters. So, for example, the high school juniors and seniors we interviewed in the mid- to late 1990s were speaking during a period of relative stability

Cornbleth2.qxd

6/20/2003

1:48 PM

Page 157

Works in Progress

157

and prosperity. With a few exceptions, they appeared to be very much “into” their everyday lives in all of their material specificities. Recent events, including economic downturn and the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and the subsequent “war on terrorism,” might well turn current high school juniors’ and seniors’ attention and social identities in somewhat different directions. Age and experience as well as subsequent events would likely modify the social identities expressed now by the young people we interviewed several years ago. It is unlikely, however, that many would (or could) completely overturn or reject their former selves. Instead, I envision changing identification processes as changes in emphasis, elaborations, and extensions within a dynamic not unlike recognizing or feeling some aspects of one’s social identity more in some situations than others. Consequently, while limited or bounded, the present moment, as a conjunction of time (in one’s life and society) and place (geographic and social location) is not inconsequential as it carries into future, overlapping moments.

Revisiting Relational Conceptions Earlier (see chapter 1), in conceptualizing social identity, I described the construction and modification of group identities as relational processes, carried out in relation to other groups. Seeing one’s social identity as incorporating membership in or affiliation with one or more groups emerges from social circumstances and interaction, which change over time. Furthermore, multiple group memberships are not mutually exclusive; they, too, are relational. So, for example, what it means to be Jewish in the United States has been constructed in relation to the Protestant Christian majority and to Catholics and other minorities. It has been modified in relation to the Holocaust, the establishment of Israel, and subsequent Israeli-Palestinian conflict as well as domestic events and interactions with other groups in the United States. Being seen as white (not always the case in the United States) and being female and an academic are not independent of being Jewish. Jewishness shapes how one sees oneself as a woman; being female shapes one’s academic role and opportunities. Early encounters with anti-Semitism may shade one’s whiteness as the experience of ignorance, hate, and discrimination engenders defensiveness and/or empathy with people of color and others whose negative experiences have been much more severe and sustained. As this simplified example illustrates, social identities can be seen as relational in at least three aspects: internally or within the person; in rela-

Cornbleth2.qxd

158

6/20/2003

1:48 PM

Page 158

H EARING A MERICA ’ S Y OUTH

tion to changing circumstances; and in relation to and interaction with members of other groups whose identities also are undergoing (re)formation. In our interviews with New York and California young people, only a few instances of explicitly relational conceptions emerged. All were from females and all but one involved a relation between gender and race/ethnicity. Johnson High School’s Mercedes, for example, described family expectations for young Hispanic women such as herself and the male (especially an older brother’s) role as protector and enforcer. I have tended to employ a relational conception of social identity and identification processes positively, in terms of connectedness and mutual determination if not overlap or commonality, not in terms of separatism and continuing fragmentation. It likely has been evident to at least some readers that the interpersonal and especially the intergroup aspect of relational conceptions and practices, carried to extremes, can become oppositional and quite hostile. Opposition and hostility among individuals and groups, however, are much less dependent on one or another conception than they are on the maldistribution of resources including power and opportunity, and efforts to maintain or overturn their arrangement. It is easier at times to say who we are not. What does it mean to me to be female? A response such as “Well, not male” takes less effort than thinking about and expressing the various personal meanings of being a woman. So, for example, Kennedy High School’s Sharon tells us that she describes herself as white “but that’s just, ya know, just a color. . . . I mean, ya know, I’m not black . . . you are what you are” (1). Clearly, in the United States, white and black are much more than “just a color.” Although the effects may be the same, I sensed lack of thought rather than hostility in Sharon’s remark. Distancing was evident in the comments of two Hispanic students at Mission High School who attributed Hispanic-European American tensions largely to Mexicans and Mexican gangs (see chapter 4). They distinguished the Mexicans from Mexican Americans like themselves who were good students and citizens but were lumped with the troublemakers by many European American students and adults. Curiously, they did not seem to recognize that they were lumping “good” Mexican immigrant students with “bad” ones just as they saw themselves being unfairly branded. Without variation or difference, the basis for self-identification disappears. Most, if not all, identity markers involve some tensions with others or we-they “othering.” An oppressive form of identity conceptualization and practice is what Patricia Hill Collins (1991) calls “dichotomous oppositional difference.” This extreme practice acknowledges only a negative relation, distance, and super-subordinate status. Common examples

Cornbleth2.qxd

6/20/2003

1:48 PM

Page 159

Works in Progress

159

include male-female, black-white, and native-born versus immigrant. In each case, there are two groups or categories, whose characteristics are distinguished in opposition to the other (as not you), and one group is able to claim and maintain power over the other. Men and women, for example, are distinguished by presumably masculine and feminine characteristics. To be a man is not only to display socially sanctioned masculine traits but also, and perhaps more important, not to display feminine ones.2 While dichotomous oppositional difference and its variants can be seen as a negative case of relational conceptions, I see it as more likely to stem from essentialist notions. Dichotomous oppositional difference does not recognize multiple group memberships or aspects of identity, change over time, or interactions with various groups that also are fluid.3 One way to mitigate practices based on the assumption of dichotomous oppositional difference, at least on an interpersonal level in everyday life, is to complicate it by introducing additional variants. Black-white is an obvious oversimplification of racial/ethnic identification in the United States. Another approach is to recognize similarities, in addition to acknowledging differences, between men and women, for example. Once dichotomy and difference have been undermined, the grounds for opposition and hierarchy are destabilized. Merely recognizing dichotomous oppositional difference as a status-enhancing ploy can begin to alter the terms of engagement.

Commonplace Categories? A part of the problem with the kind of negative dichotomizing just described is that it has become commonplace, commonsense, taken for granted for many people in the United States. It is common to talk in either-or, all-or-nothing terms, to hear both sides of the story as if there were only two. Similarly, I frequently hear my university graduate students talk in good-bad, positive-negative terms. It is difficult—or perhaps just unfamiliar—for many of them to simply describe a classroom situation without judging it, or to identify substantive analytic themes in a textbook content analysis rather than evaluative ones. Early Puritan beliefs, a Protestant work ethic, competition, and modern bureaucratictechnological consciousness (see chapter 1) all support these ways of thinking. My observations are intended to suggest how deeply ingrained categorical, especially dichotomous, and evaluative or hierarchical thinking appear to be in U.S. history and society.

Cornbleth2.qxd

160

6/20/2003

1:48 PM

Page 160

H EARING A MERICA ’ S Y OUTH

In this context, racial/ethnic categorization and presumed hierarchy are rather easily normalized and come to be seen as natural. This is not the place to restate the various, supposedly scientific and sometimes elaborate, racial categorization schemes put forward by various Europeans, and later European Americans as well, since the sixteenth century. In the U.S. Census, significantly, these were collapsed, simplified. The first U.S. Census in 1790 distinguished between free persons and slaves; free persons were subdivided into white males, white females, and other free persons. The 1850 Census introduced black and mulatto as well as white designations. In the 1890 Census, quadroon and octoroon were introduced to further distinguished “colored” persons. The names and numbers of categories have varied over the last century (see, e.g., Anderson, 1988; Davis, 1991; Lee, 1993). Significantly, a key question for Census 2000 was whether and how to recognize mixed ancestry. The result was to direct respondents to mark all racial categories that apply. The census reflects changing times and circumstances and well illustrates the social construction of racial categorization in the United States. Although presumed biological bases for racial differentiation have been substantially eroded if not negated in the past decade or so, social-political-economic bases have not. There are, however, signs that inherited boundaries are being blurred, not merely trespassed. Three interrelated signs are evident in our interviews with young people: increasing diversity and contact; increasing hybridity, individually and culturally; and increasing communication and information about various individuals and groups. The United States has not escaped the increasing migrations of the world’s peoples since the mid-twentieth century. Especially since the 1965 changes in U.S. immigration law, the number and diversity of immigrants to the United States has grown substantially. New York and California are among the half dozen or so states that have been the major recipients of recent immigration. Most of the students we interviewed seemed comfortable with greater diversity, more so than their parents’ and grandparents’ generations who grew up in a different United States or another part of the world. Recall Linda’s comments about her grandmother’s hostility toward other ethnic groups and that her brother displays some significant prejudices as well. In contrast, Linda rejects group categorizations and wishes people would stop fighting old battles or complaining about the past and move on. Or recall Kirk and Lacey’s comments about moving from Catholic elementary schools to Lincoln High School and learning to get along with people different than themselves. Pacific High School’s Ruth is used to the diversity of California’s Bay Area and likes it.

Cornbleth2.qxd

6/20/2003

1:48 PM

Page 161

Works in Progress

161

She told me: Unless I’m in a group where they kind of force you to do it, I never really think of myself as, like, racially different just because there is such a mix of people around here. It’s like, I only really notice it when I’m, say, in the Midwest or something and, like, everybody has, like, blonde hair and blue eyes and then you notice, like, okay, I’m . . . this group. But you know, I don’t, like, necessarily associate myself and my personality with that sort of thing. (1)

Earlier, she had described herself as “sort of, like, a mix of cultures . . . one side of my family is Polish-Lutheran and the other side is AustrianGerman-Jewish” (1). If racial/ethnic/cultural diversity and contact or interaction are not yet the norm, for most of these students diversity is at least okay. A second, related sign that inherited racial categories or boundaries are being blurred is the increasing prevalence of biracial, multiracial, or mixed-ancestry people—what scholars such as Bhabha (1996) and McCarthy (1998) call hybridity. Hybridity is becoming societal or cultural as well as individual as U.S. popular culture increasingly incorporates various idioms. What is especially significant here is not only the growing mixed-ancestry population but more importantly that increasing numbers of people are so identifying and, perhaps more gradually, being accepted rather than pressed to choose only one part of their heritage. One drop and hypodescent rules/expectations for racial/ethnic identification are less often followed or “enforced.” Such means of sustaining presumed white purity and higher status are vestiges of an oppressive past that, while still residual in the present, are becoming objects of ridicule. In our interviews with young people, there may have been more students of mixed ancestry than the 15 percent who so identified themselves. Those who did describe themselves as mixed or more than one ranged from matter-of-fact to proud of their two or more heritages. Steven, for example, told me: I take the best of the both worlds. . . . I like having that diverse feeling, you know. Like I have my black side which is, like, you know, part of my culture, and have my Indian side where, you know, it’s less American, and it’s more, you know, like, it’s different. . . . It’s just two different worlds. CC: How has it influenced you? Steven: It’s, um, I don’t know, it’s made me probably, uh, stand out than everybody else. I don’t know too many other black and Indian people. So I guess it sort of, like, makes me stand out from the crowd or whatever, you know. People are like, “Oh, you’re black and Indian, oh!” you know. So it gives me a little, um, I guess it just highlights me a little bit, I don’t know why. I don’t know if

Cornbleth2.qxd

162

6/20/2003

1:48 PM

Page 162

H EARING A MERICA ’ S Y OUTH

it’s a good or a bad thing. . . . But, you know, I associate with both of my halves all the time. (2–3)

Brita told me that being “half Chinese and half African American makes her unique at Mission High School and “a more stronger person” (2). In contrast, Faye described herself as very mixed and avoided specifying her ancestry. These students can be seen as blurring the boundaries of inherited racial/ethnic categories and reconfiguring racialized identities. It is the blurring that seems most important for the foreseeable future. Presumably mutually exclusive racial categories are not being redrawn or erased as much as being made more permeable and losing their sacred aura. Increasing diversity and hybridity are among the features of contemporary society that are much different for today’s young people compared to their parents’, grandparents’, and earlier generations. Heterogeneity is becoming more familiar and acceptable, even if grudgingly for some. A complementary trend has been communication with and information about “other people” and parts of the world. With satellite TV and the Internet, it has become difficult if not impossible, for example, for governments to “manage” the “news” to which their populations have access. Clearly, not all of the available information is either credible or conducive to living comfortably with diversity within or among individuals and groups. Greater access to communication channels and information sources, however, tends to blur previously assumed boundaries, especially dichotomous distinctions and claims to uniqueness. If nothing else, young people have more options from which to choose or to construct their social identities. The blurring of inherited racial/ethnic boundaries to which I have been referring occurs largely in the discourse of the young people we interviewed, others like them, and both popular and academic cultures. Racial categorization and hierarchy remain institutionally embedded and influential. Materially racist practices continue as students’ accounts of everyday prejudice and discrimination among police, employers, and store clerks attest. Moving beyond identity politics, what follows group recognition and representation? Echoing Manning Marable (1995) and others, Nancy Fraser convincingly argued in a public presentation at the University at Buffalo on February 11, 2000, that recognition does not yield status parity or remedy maldistribution of resources, for example, equitable access, fair play on level economic or political fields. There is more work to be done.

Cornbleth2.qxd

6/20/2003

1:48 PM

Page 163

Works in Progress

163

IN CONCLUSION Our conceptions, of ourselves and of being an American, do matter. How we see ourselves, individually and collectively, affects how we think about and act both on and in our lives and worlds, locally and more broadly. It is more than thinking ourselves into being or a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy. For example, if young people see themselves as multifaceted, not one-dimensional, they are likely to see more connections between themselves and “others” who are different in some ways yet similar in others. People who see racial/ethnic categories as blurred or problematic are less likely to act as if prevailing classification schemes and hierarchies are “real” or meaningful than those who take them for granted or otherwise support them. Listening to young people on the verge of adulthood, we find that they do not simply mirror adult society. At the same time that they are pushed-pulled and/or battered by it, young people are part of the ongoing conversation and constructions of who “we” are. They are not often heard, however, except when they demand adults’ attention by means of violence or other negative action, a shooting rampage at a suburban high school, for example. Then, at least briefly, adults pay attention and ask, “How could this happen?”; then they usually ask other adults presumed to have relevant expertise. Pacific High School’s Steven, quoted at the beginning of the preface to this volume, told me that adults “should want to know everything about us before we come in and take our place” (6). He suggested that although young people have not yet voiced their opinions and made a difference, adults might find the prospect intimidating: It’s probably like they’re afraid of giving up their authority to, like a, like any parent, they’re afraid of losing what little power they have, you know, or they, they just want to be in control, and they lose that control, and other people have power also or have a voice. Intimidating. (7)

Mission High School’s Larry volunteered that young people are more knowledgeable than adults seem to think: I think kids notice a lot of things that adults wouldn’t think they would notice, you know. I think they’re a lot more perceptive than people give them credit for, even a lot younger than myself. CC: Okay. An example come to mind? Larry: Um, I don’t know, I think, I think a lot of parents think that their kids are pretty naive when it comes to the way the world works and the way people are in

Cornbleth2.qxd

6/20/2003

164

1:48 PM

Page 164

H EARING A MERICA ’ S Y OUTH

the world, and attitudes and stuff of people, and I think that kids these days grow up a lot faster than they use to. They’re a lot of times forced to mature a lot quicker, be more mature at a younger age. (6–7)

Lincoln High School’s Jay related the following story: I was teasing him [a teacher in school] . . . because he had asked me something, and I gave him an answer, and he didn’t believe me. And he went and found out that what I told him was true. And so I walked behind him and said, “See, if you just listened to us teenagers, you wouldn’t have had that problem.” We laughed. We joked about it. But, I guess, I think if people do kind of listen to us, I mean, I know we don’t know everything, but we do know something. I guess if everybody could just listen to each other and understand, everything would be fine. It would be a lot better. (9)

If we listen to these young people, we hear a range of voices and can catch glimpses of possible futures. Among the predominant themes is a mix of critique and hope as expressed, for example, by Lincoln High School’s Blake in chapters 3 and 5. Although many of the young people we interviewed are critical of America, for differing reasons, most of the critics also are hopeful about their own and the nation’s future. One key implication is the desirability of renewing the public culture and renegotiating the unum in e pluribus unum. These students are not giving up. There are grounds for hope as well as critical problems to be addressed.

NOTES 1. 2.

3.

My thanks to Greg Dimitriadis for this idea and language. African American students’ denigrating their high-achieving peers for “acting white” (Fordham and Ogbu, 1986) is an especially pernicious form of dichotomous oppositional difference which appears to at least partially reflect internalization of white racism. Other forms of oppositional identity, such as opposition to most, if not all, forms of categorization and opposition to negative identity markers imposed by others, are much different insofar as the opposition is to discriminatory practices, not to another group presumed to be inferior.

REFERENCES Anderson, M. J. (1988). The American census: A social history. New Haven, CT : Yale University Press. Bhabha, H. K. (1996). Culture’s in-between. In S. Hall and P. du Gay (eds.), Questions of cultural identity, 53–60. London: Sage. Collins, P. H. (1991). Black feminist thought: Knowledge, consciousness, and the politics of empowerment. New York: Routledge.

Cornbleth2.qxd

6/20/2003

1:48 PM

Page 165

Works in Progress

165

Davis, J. F. (1991). Who is black? One nation’s definition. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. Fordham, S., and Ogbu, J. U. (1986). Black students’ school success: Coping with the “burden of ‘acting white.’” The Urban Review, 18 (3), 176–206. Lee, S. M. (1993). Racial classifications in the U.S. census: 1980–1990. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 16 (1), 75–94. Marable, M. (1995). Beyond black and white. London: Verso. McCarthy, C. (1998). The uses of culture. New York: Routledge. Williams, R. (1977). Marxism and literature. New York: Oxford University Press.

This page intentionally left blank

Cornbleth2.qxd

6/20/2003

1:48 PM




Page 167

APPENDIX A

ROSTER of PARTICIPATING STUDENTS

Reported Racial/ Ethnic Ancestry1

Gender

Eisenhower High School John Melissa Nick Amy Angela Bob Karen

(NA-European American)2 (NA-European American) (NA-European American) (NA-European American) (NA-European American) (NA-European American) (NA-European American)

M F M F F M F

European American3 European American European American European American European American

M F M F F

African American4

M

Kennedy High School Bruce LeAnn Max Nancy Sharon Lincoln High School Blake

(continued)

Cornbleth2.qxd

6/20/2003

1:48 PM

168

Page 168

H EARING A MERICA ’ S Y OUTH Reported Racial/ Ethnic Ancestry

Gender

Lincoln High School (cont’d) Brad European American Carrie (NA-African American) Jay (African American) Joan African American Kirk European American Lacey European American Linda (European American) Maggie African American Martin European American Mary (NA-African American) Sheldon (NA-African American) Teresa African American

M F M F M F F F M F M F

Johnson High School Arthur Carl Julian Kaylee Magdalena Manuel Marissa Mercedes Richard Simon Yolanda

(African American) Native and European American Hispanic5 African American Hispanic Hispanic and African American (Hispanic) Hispanic Native and African American Indian [recent immigrant] Hispanic

M M M F F M F F M M F

Mission High School Anna Aphra Brita Carmen Caphra Eva Jesus Larry Peter Sam Will

European American Mexican and European American Chinese and African American Mexican American6 Peruvian [exchange student] Mexican American Guatemalan (European American) Mexican American European American Mexican

F F F F F F M M M M M

(continued)

Cornbleth2.qxd

6/20/2003

1:48 PM

Page 169

Appendix A: Roster of Participating Students Reported Racial/ Ethnic Ancestry Pacific High School Andrew Charles Chandler Chrissy Damon Faye Frank Geraldo Kendall Marian Marvin Penny Ruth Steven Sander 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

Chinese (European American) African American European American African American, Puerto Rican, and Mexican Mixed Asian American–Pakistani Guatemalan (African American) (American) African American African American European American African American and Indian Asian American–Indian

169

Gender M M M F M F M M M F M F F M M

Observed if not self-described. NA = not asked. Most of the European American students identified as “white.” “European American” is used here for consistency. Students used black, African American, and both. “African American” is used here for consistency. All of the Johnson Hispanic students were Puerto Rican; some identified as Hispanic and some as Puerto Rican, some as both. California students distinguished between Mexican (born in Mexico) and Mexican American (born in the United States of Mexican ancestry); that distinction is continued here.

This page intentionally left blank

Cornbleth2.qxd

6/20/2003

1:48 PM

Page 171




APPENDIX B

SUMMARY of PARTICIPATING STUDENTS

Gender

Racial/Ethnic Ancestrya

Male

Female

African American

European American

Mixed Hispanic and Asian

3 2 6 6

4 3 7 5

0 0 8 2

7 5 5 0

0 0 0 5

0 0 0 4c

California Mission (1999) Pacific (1999)

5 10

6 5

0 5

3 3

6 1

2 6d

Total

32

30

15

23

12

12

24

37

20

20

New York Eisenhower (1996)b Kennedy (1996) Lincoln (1996) Johnson (1997)

Percent of Total a. b. c. d.

Determined by self-report and/or observation. Year of interview in parentheses. Includes one student who identified as “Hispanic in a black race,” primarily Hispanic. Includes one student who identified as black, saying he also was Hispanic.

This page intentionally left blank

Cornbleth2.qxd

6/20/2003

1:48 PM




Page 173

INDEX

A

African American, as identity marker, 39–40, 65 racism and, 98 robust, 92–93 age, as identity marker, 72, 74, 123–25, 130 American assumption of whiteness, 70, 151–52 becoming, 65, 71, 100 being (See being American (themes)) analysis of interview data, 24, 29 ancestry, mixed. See mixed racial/ethnic ancestry “Andrew,” 36, 49–50, 124, 126, 127 “Angela,” 110 “Anna,” 85, 146–47 “Aphra,” 45–47, 56, 82, 136–37, 144–45 “Arthur,” 123

B behavior, influenced by self identity, viii being American (themes) born/live here, 135, 136–37 diversity/individualism/unity, 135, 143–45 freedom/rights/opportunity, 135, 137–40 not/not entirely American, 135, 149–52 privileged/proud, 135, 140–43 supposed to be, imperfect but best, 135, 145–49

Berger, Brigitte, 8, 55–56 Berger, Peter L., 8, 55–56 Bhabha, Homi K., 161 bicultural, 65 pride, 88 bilingual, 38, 67, 71–72 Billig, Michael, 138 biracial, 61 See also mixed racial/ethnic ancestry black. See African American, as identity marker “Blake,” 8–9, 39–40, 92–93, 98, 102–3, 138, 147 “Brad,” 83, 119, 139 “Brita,” 58–59, 62, 107–8, 124, 137, 162 “Bruce,” 84, 121, 129, 142, 146

C “Caphra,” 87–88, 120 “Carl,” 12, 38, 56 “Carmen,” 66, 75–76, 77–78, 142–43 categorical thinking, 159–60 categories, racial/ethnic institutional, 162 in US Census, 61–62, 160 Chicano, 88 n.1 “Chrissy,” 36, 54, 85–86, 92, 124–25, 128, 130, 143, 144, 145–46 cliques, 25, 33, 47 collective identity, 2, 9, 92 Collins, Patricia Hill, 7, 158 Connell, R. W. et al., 113 context of interview data, 10, 15 regional, 72

Cornbleth2.qxd

174

6/20/2003

1:48 PM

Page 174

H EARING A MERICA ’ S Y OUTH

critical pragmatism, 3, 16–17 critique/activism, 17–18 Cross, William E., Jr., 98, 101 cults, religious, 121 cultural identity practices of, 92 pride in, 38, 67, 68, 72 culturalist position, 13, 16 interviews and, 10 problems with, 14–15

F “Faye,” 36, 56, 58, 59, 62, 140, 162 Feinberg, Walter, 14 female. See gender Fine, Michelle, 15–16, 68–69 Fine, Michelle et al, 82 “Frank,” 108, 119, 120, 122 Frankenberg, Ruth, 87 Fraser, Nancy, 162 Funderburg, Lise, 61

D “Damon,” 59, 137, 148 Dark River (Owens), 7 data source, 29, 34 dichotomous oppositional difference, 158–59 differences talking about, 50 within-group, 12 discrimination against Hispanics, 76–77, 77–80 against Indians, 100–101 religious, 122 sexual orientation, 148–49 See also racism diversity, vii, 156, 160 divisiveness, from racial/ethnic categorization, 51, 53 dress, as identity marker, 84

E e pluribus unum, 135, 143–45 essentialism/non-essentialism collective identity and, 2 dichotomous oppositional difference from, 159 ethnic studies curricula, 55 European American, as identity marker, 65, 66 “Eva,” 66, 69, 72–74, 119

G gangs, 75–77 gender, 4, 72 as identity descriptor, 24, 36, 49, 125–30 race and, 125 relations, 125, 130 generational view of national identity, 152 of social categories, vii–viii, xii n.1, 13, 55 “Geraldo,” 66, 69–70, 72, 149, 150 group identity, relational nature of, 4–6, 62, 157–59 groups, membership in, 1, 2, 9

H heritage/roots, 72 Hispanic/Puerto Rican, as identity marker, 65, 66, 72 and gender relations, 126 “Manuel,” 57 “Max,” 38–39 history, sense of, 92, 95–98 Hoffman, Diane M., 3 homosexuality, 120, 121, 148–49 human being. See identity markers, rejection of hybridity, 161–62

Cornbleth2.qxd

6/20/2003

1:48 PM

Page 175

Index

175

I

L

identification processes, 156–57 identity collective, 2, 9, 92 individual, vii, 3 multifaceted, 95, 98 national, vii, 131 as social construction, 2–3 social implications of, 4, 13 we-they, 158–59 See also group identity; social identity identity markers, rejection of, 9, 17, 33–36, 35 table 3–1, 54–56 reasons for, 51–56 by substantial minority, 33–36 as theme, 24 identity politics, viii, 6–7 Iijima Hall, Christine C., 61 immigration, 24–25 individualism, 51, 52–53 injustice, 92 interpretation, 30 interview questions, 11, 29, 34, 102, 130, 135 transcripts, 15 interviewers, 29

“Lacey,” 84, 111–12, 120, 124, 143–44, 147–48, 160 “Larry,” 48–49, 54, 141, 145, 163–64 Latino, 88 n.1 “LeAnn,” 84, 138 LEP (limited English proficient), 71–72 Lind, Michael, 62 “Linda,” 12, 17, 43–44, 84, 129, 136, 160

J “James,” 109, 110 “Jay,” 17, 34, 40–42, 123–24, 138, 164 “Jesus,” 47–48, 66, 71, 74, 75, 77, 82, 116–17, 119, 149–50 “Joan,” 92, 93–95, 98, 121, 122–23, 125, 128, 147–48, 151 “John,” 111

K Kellner, Hansfried, 8, 55–56 “Kendall,” 36, 119–20, 124, 141–42, 145 “Kirk,” 36, 42–43, 83, 129, 138, 160

M “Magdalena,” 66–67, 72, 78–79, 80–81, 124, 138–39 “Maggie,” 44–45, 134, 136 male. See gender “Manuel,” 38–39, 56, 57, 66–67, 138, 139 Marable, Manning, 162 “Marian,” 36, 140 “Marissa,” 17, 39, 66–67, 68, 78–79, 110–11 “Martin,” 83, 84, 129 “Marvin,” 92, 93, 96–98, 137, 141 “Max,” 36–37, 129 McCarthy, Cameron, 161 McIntosh, Peggy Means, 142 “Melissa,” 109–10 “Mercedes,” 67, 68, 72, 78, 79, 125, 126 methodology, 28–30 Mexican-American, 65–67 mixed racial/ethnic ancestry, 33, 56–57, 60–62, 85, 161 students of, 57 table 3–2 modern consciousness, 8, 55–56 moment, 33, 156–57 concept of, viii, xii n.2 music cultural differences of, 123 as identity marker, 84

Cornbleth2.qxd

6/20/2003

1:48 PM

176

Page 176

H EARING A MERICA ’ S Y OUTH

N “Nancy,” 129, 144 national identity, vii, 131, 152 nationality attachment to, 69 as culture, 68, 152 Native American, as identity marker, 58 “Nick,” 108–9 Nieto, Sonia, 68

O Omi, Michael, 92, 113 Owens, Louis, 7

P pedagogical implications, of social identity, vii, 4, 13, 55 “Penny,” 92, 95–96, 98, 102, 105–7, 116, 117–18, 151–52 person, as identity marker, 35 table 3–1 See also identity markers, rejection of “Peter,” 67, 70, 72, 73, 77, 78, 81, 82, 101, 116, 117, 137 Phoenix, Ann, 86 political implications, of social identity, 4, 7 power class and gender as structures of, 4–5 shaping public views, 7 pragmatism, critical, 3, 16–17 prejudice, 79–80

R race, mixed. See mixed racial/ethnic ancestry race/ethnicity as racialization process, 5 religion and, 122 racial/ethnic categories, 7–9, 41–42, 160

hierarchies, 7–9 identity markers, 9, 10, 11 robust identity, 91–92, 101 racial identity. See race/ethnicity racialization process, 5, 92, 113 racialized identity, 5, 113 racism, x–xi, 87–88, 92–93, 101–2, 110 against African-Americans, 103–9 against Hispanics, 77–80 against Indians, 100–101 institutional, 112 from media, 112 relational conceptions intergroup, 158 of social identity, 5–6, 15, 18, 92, 113, 157–59 religion, 45, 73–74 as identity descriptor, 24, 74, 116–23, 130–31 research, social numbers vs. generalization, 17 representation, challenges of, 17–18 themes vs. categories, 16–17 “Richard,” 58, 126, 148 Root, Maria P. P., 61 “Ruth,” 140, 142, 145, 160–61

S “Sam,” 83, 129–30, 141, 145 “Sander,” 92–93, 98–101, 150–51 Schooling and Social Identities Project, 24 school sites California, 26–27 western New York, 25–26 segregation, 77, 80 “Sharon,” 84, 85, 136, 137, 144, 158 “Sheldon,” 147–48 “Simon,” 134, 149 social categories, 11 generational view of, vii–viii, xii n.1, 13, 55 meaning of, 19–20 n. 8, 65 social class, 4 as identity marker, 45, 53 social identification process, 5–6, 92

Cornbleth2.qxd

6/20/2003

1:48 PM

Page 177

Index social identity, 2–3 descriptors for, 1 fluidity of, viii, 156 impact on behavior, viii, 163 implications of, 4 relational conception of, 5–6, 15, 18, 92, 113, 157–59 research, 14–15 Spina, Stephanie Urso, 82 sports, as identity marker, 72–73, 74 standards, history and social studies, 24 stereotyping, 51–52 “Steven,” 51, 56–58, 59, 107, 123, 143, 148–49, 161–62, 163 student interviewees, 28 ancestry, self-reported, 36 labeling and, 35–36

T Tai, Robert H., 82 “Teresa,” 92–93, 103–5, 125, 126, 138 themes, 164 demographic descriptors and, 24 in social research, using, 16, 53

V violence, student, 25

W Weis, Lois, 68–69 white, as identity marker, 42, 66, 82–83 whiteness assumption of, 70 as normative, 82, 87 students’ beliefs about, 81–87 “Will,” 71, 72, 73, 76, 151 Williams, Raymond, 156 Winant, Howard, 92, 113 Woods, Tiger, 61

Y “Yolanda,” 67, 78, 79

177