I spent my Junior year of highschool living in Gilroy, the Garlic Capital. For those of you who have never been to Gilroy, it is a small California town dependent on agriculture of all sorts. Within walking distance of my house were corn fields, chicken coups, garlic fields, cherry orchards, and a guy that raised turkeys for Thanksgiving. It was also a huge attraction for immigrant labor, which is only part of what I want to talk about.
More after the jump
I remember picking cherries by the basket (earning $2 a basket). I remember thinking that I had better learn to pick them
much faster if I wanted to earn more than $8 per day. The next door neighbor girls were very poor and they worked various agricultural jobs to help their parents get by. At 12 they started working at the apricot factory pitting apricots, by 14 they had scars on their hands all the way up to their elbows.
I remember going to school, which was 70 percent hispanic at the time. Now the latinos (we didn't call them latino back then, they were hispanic) weren't a monolithic group, they included legal immigrants, illegal immigrants, the children of legal/illegal immigrants, and 2nd, 3rd, 4th...to the x generation citizens. That said, there was only one thing they had in common, they hated 'us'. At that time 'us' were the children of the farmers and surrounds. I never felt I was included in the 'us' since I was a recent arrival and my parents weren't farmers.
On the other hand, and maybe even more importantly, they felt I was part of the us group...why? Because I am white and there were some real palpable animosities going on in that school. I found it to be quite strange on so many different levels. Firstly, having grown up in California, I have always grown up with Mexicans. My family married into a Mexican family. I had Mexican Aunts, Uncles, Cousins, etc. I worked in a Mexican restaurant owned family friends. In other words, I was completely 100 percent unprepared to be hated by Latinos.
Secondly, I have never been in the minority before. Yes, I had gone to many diverse schools where a variety of races and cultures are represented, but I had never actually been on the outnumbered side of the dividing line, not only outnumbered, but despised and outnumbered. It was a sobering and scary experience.
It was unsafe to walk the streets in town alone. None of the white kids would do it because, according to them, the hispanic kids tended to run in packs and attack anyone who was alone. Scary stories abound about kids who had ended in the hospital, one by switchblade (before I got there) and one by baseball bat (while I was there). The fear was palpable every single day.
Now the interesting thing about the school is that it was very nice, big classrooms, good resources, but all the instruction was far too easy. The math class was months behind the class I had at home, the "Humanities" class was a dumbed down English Class. All the classes had fancy names, but the material was super easy and super boring for me. I aced every single class except my third year Spanish Class (of which I was one of two white kids). Not because I didn't speak Spanish, but because this moronic school taught Castillian Spanish and all my insruction had been in a less formal more slang Mexican Spanish.
So, what lessons did I take away from my year in Gilroy? Mostly, I took away an appreciation for what it is like to be in the minority, what it is like to live in fear, what it is like when your school doesn't challenge you or help you meet your true potential. I found a whole other world there and I didn't like it one bit.