Mixing It Up in California

November 17, 2004 - “World majority” teenagers in Alhambra, Calif., are Mixing It Up to build a better school - and future.  Ask them, “Can you fix it?” and they answer resoundingly:  “Yes we can!”

By Jeff Sapp | Curriculum Specialist/Writer, Tolerance.org

    “We’re taught that we should meet different people, but we all grew up right here in Monterey Park and have gone to school with each other since first grade,” says Cindy Lam.

    Cindy Lam, Andrea Teng and Min-Ling Li are all seniors at Mark Keppel High School in Alhambra, Calif.

    When they graduate from high school, Cindy and Min-Ling plan to attend the University of California, Berkeley, where they’ll study medicine and education, respectively.  Andrea plans on attending the University of Southern California where she’ll study communications.

    “Sadly,” Cindy laments, “the universities we’ll go to are also predominantly Asian.  I rarely ever have an experience where I’m not the majority.”

    Mark Keppel High School is 72% Asian and 22% Latino.  There is a handful of white students in the school and no more than 10 African-American students.

    As white residents in California shift from majority to minority, some educators have stopped referring to people of color as “minorities.”  Instead they choose a new and more accurate descriptor:  “the world majority.”

    If ever this held true, it is in schools like Mark Keppel.  The concern of Min-Ling, Andrea and Cindy is that they will not be prepared for a diverse world if they don’t get outside of their comfort zones.

    That is why the three teenagers joined 3.4 million others across the nation Tuesday, carrying out Mix It Up at Lunch Day at their school.

“Those Things Matter”

    According to Giselle Castro, a teacher who is the school’s Mix It Up adviser, Mark Keppel has the usual groups that don’t always mingle well.  “There’s the athletes, the cheerleaders, the skaters and the Goths,” she says.

    But there are added dimensions as a result of being in the Los Angeles area, one of the largest and most diverse regions in the United States and long a port-of-entry for people around the world.  Not everyone grew up right in Monterey Park and has gone to school together since first grade like Andrea, Min-Ling and Cindy.

    “The problem here,” says Principal Gary Gonzalez, “is often that different ethnicities don’t interact well.  Sure you may be Chinese, but do you speak Mandarin or Cantonese?  Sure you might be from Vietnam, but are you Vietnamese or are you ethnic Chinese from Vietnam?  For some kids here, those things matter.”

    Students, teachers and administrators all agree that it is language use that most separates students at Mark Keppel.

    One Chicana student says that she is scared to go over where the Latino kids are at during lunch.  She is fourth-generation American and doesn’t speak fluent Spanish.

    “Those Latinos yell at me in Spanish, and I just get scared,” she says.

    The names that students call each other seem to reflect this as well.

    A Latino student could be called paisa which means “same place as me” if they’re from the same country.  If they are a recent immigrant and are an English learner, the slang name is less flattering.  Chuntz means “a wild horse.”  In other words, they’ve not yet been broken into what it means to be an American teenager.

    The Asian kids talk about the FOB-ers, slang for “fresh off the boat,” meaning again that they are new immigrants.

    At Mark Keppel, 32% of the students are LEP (Limited English Proficient) and fitting in is difficult.  Those students who have already assimilated into American culture are considered “cooler,” according to Andrea who admitted that she has heard new immigrants referred to as “border hoppers.”

    “They don’t understand our slang,” she says.

“Can We Fix It?”

    The student organizers for Mark Keppel’s Mix It Up are from Giselle Castro’s Conflict Resolution class.  They wore white T-shirts and carried permanent fabric markers with them Tuesday.  Each time they met a new person, they asked that student to sign their shirt.

    The smell of food and markers lingered in the air when the bell rang, signaling the end of lunch and Mix It Up.

    The 36 Mix It Up student organizers ended the day with hundreds of names written all over their T-shirts.  One student had names up and down his arms, many from students he’d never spoken to before Tuesday.

    One T-shirt message tells the story:  “I never met this person until today.”

    Mark Keppel High School is in the midst of a large construction project, and the physical school grounds are torn up.  That’s why student leaders decided the school slogan would be one they learned from cartoon character Bob the Builder.

    “Can we fix it?  Yes we can!”

    Min-Ling, Andrea and Cindy have had experiences where they have left their small Monterey Park lives and went into areas of Los Angeles where they weren’t the majority.

    “The just stare at us like we’re freaks,” Cindy says.  “It makes you feel left out.”

    It’s the very reason Min-Ling wants to be a teacher.  “I feel like I can make a difference.  I feel like I can give kids hope.”

    With language and ideals like that, it’s easy to believe that social boundaries can be bridged and the world can be fixed.

    Yes it can.

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