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Seeking difference: Latino-White relations in a Los Angeles bilingual school

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Seeking difference: Latino-White relations in a Los Angeles bilingual school

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SEEKING DIFFERENCE: LATINO-WHITE RELATIONS IN A LOS
ANGELES BILINGUAL SCHOOL

by

Jazmín A. Muro

A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(SOCIOLOGY)

August 2015

Copyright 2015 Jazmín A. Muro

ii
Dedication

Para mi familia
José, Sara, Claudia, Esteban y Nadia
por inspirarme y apoyarme

iii
Acknowledgements

Completing a Ph.D. is no easy task. The challenges that come from dedicating
several years of your life to conduct research and become an expert in a particular area of
your discipline are often multiplied for first generation students like myself. Graduate
school was a difficult and trying experience for me that often left me feeling
disempowered and alienated. And yet, I was able to successfully complete this program
because of the varied support I received from my family, friends, my partner and my
academic advisors. I could not have done this without them. They are the people who
have taught me, by believing in me and pushing me, that I could and would finish.
My dissertation co-chairs Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo and Jody Agius Vallejo
deserve many thanks. Thank you Pierrette for providing me with an example of an
excellent scholar. As an undergraduate, your book Domestica inspired me to conduct
research in the Latino community and your work ethic and dedication continues to inspire
me. You have pushed me towards becoming a better ethnographer, interviewer, writer
and overall thinker and I am grateful that I have had the opportunity to work with you.
Jody, thank you for teaching me the ins and outs of academia, including its informal and
unspoken rules, and for providing me opportunities to serve as your research assistant and
teaching assistant. Thank you both for allowing me the freedom to explore topics I did
not originally intend to research and giving me latitude in my approach to my project and
this dissertation. I also want to thank George Sanchez for providing me with constant
encouragement and taking a genuine interest in my work. Thank you Leland Saito for
providing me a listening ear and validating my feelings about the difficult process that is
graduate school. I am thankful for your persistent honesty and encouragement. Stachelle,

iv
Melissa, Amber and Lisa L., thank you for taking an interest in both my success as a
student and my general well being as a person. You have always been kind and I enjoyed
getting to know you these past few years.
I am so grateful for the colleagues and friends I have made while at USC. Thank
you Glenda Flores and Emir Estrada for being excellent mentors and friends. Leaving
home was hard for me, but I was very lucky to meet two fellow Zacatecanas who
welcomed me into their lives and shared their families with me. Kushan Dasgupta,
Michela Musto, Alfredo Huante, Hyeyoung Kwon, Jess Butler, Edson Rodriguez,
Demetrios Psihopaidas, Vanessa Monterosa and Robert Chlala made graduate school a
better place for me and I am lucky to have you each as colleagues and friends. Celeste
you are the best pom-mate I could have asked for and I could not have written this
dissertation without your support.
In addition to the support of many people at USC, I am fortunate enough to have
an amazing support network in Denver. Lisa Martinez served as my undergraduate
mentor during my time at DU and I fell in love with sociology in her class. She has
supported me during difficult times, celebrated with me during the good times and I am
so grateful to have a mentor that is incredibly smart, kind, dedicated to making a positive
dent in the world and who has shown me genuine care as both a student and person. Lisa
you are such a positive influence in my life and I am lucky to have you as a mentor and
friend! Thanks to Deb Ortega, Miriam Bornstein, Oscar Somoza, and Johanna Leyba for
all the work you do to make Latino students feel welcome in less than welcoming
environments and for setting wonderful examples for us to follow. Eva Bonilla is one of
my best friends, and I cannot thank her enough for all of the support she provided during

v
this journey. She and Dr. Alberta Hernandez are driven and incredible women and I am
happy to have them in my life.
My family’s experiences have led me to sociology in many ways. My parents,
José and Sara, made their lives here in the U.S. so that my siblings and I could benefit
from opportunities we would not have had in Mexico. We are lucky in that sense, but I
am also aware that this has meant a lot of sacrifices for them and I am infinitely grateful
for their courage and resiliency. My parents have always pushed me to succeed, and
while I admit this was a lot of pressure for a young child, I can now see that their
convictions were a reflection of their deep belief that I could accomplish great things.
Mami y papi, este doctorado es una pequeña muestra de gratitud por todo lo que han
hecho por nosotros. Ustedes son mis mejores maestros y también la inspiración detrás de
gran parte de mi trabajo.
As the oldest sibling, my sister Claudia has always carried a great deal of
responsibility in our family and I want her to know that it is noticed and appreciated. She
is now a bilingual therapist, a great mom to my nephew Mateo and a wonderful sister and
one of my best friends. My younger brother Esteban is the quietest and kindest of the
bunch—the introvert of the family. He brings us much needed balance and he reminds
me to take a pause and enjoy the simple things. He has so much potential and I look
forward to seeing him grow in the coming years. Nadia, or my Nanis, always impresses
me with her ability to critique mainstream narratives of gender despite her young age and
I know she will do great things. Thank you all for being with me throughout this journey-
--though you may not have been with me physically in Los Angeles, you have always
been a driving force for me.

vi
I cannot give enough thanks to my partner Ryan Rodriguez for all the support he
has given me in the latter part of my doctoral journey. He is such a kind person and he
has taught me so much about being kind to myself. Your company, caring and humor
have sustained me through hard times and I cannot express how happy I am to make a
family with you.
Finally, a huge thank you to the families that let me spend time with them, ask
them personal questions about their beliefs and experiences and that took care of me
during this project. You all inspire me in your pursuit to raise socially conscious children
and provide them with experiences that validate their diverse realities.

1
Table of Contents

Abstract 2

Chapter 1: Voluntary Integration in a Bilingual Immersion School 3

Chapter 2: Choosing Immersion and Integration 36
Chapter 3: Renegotiating New & Old Boundaries with Symbolic Integration 64
Chapter 4: Integrated Classes, Segregated Recesses 94
Chapter 5: Spoon-fed Social Justice? Masking and Challenging Inequality 131
Chapter 6: Conclusion 163
Bibliography 173
Appendices
Appendix A: Role and Reflexivity in the Field 183
Appendix B: List of Interviewee Respondents 187
Appendix C: Samuelson and Los Angeles Area Demographic Tables 190

2
Abstract

Assimilation scholars have focused on the incorporation of immigrants and
their children, often using contact between immigrants and natives as a measure of
their trajectories (Alba and Nee 2003, Lee and Bean 2010, Telles and Ortiz 2008).
Race scholars, on the other hand, have examined contact between racial/ethnic groups
in order to decipher when interactions lead to positive or negative outcomes (Bobo
and Zubrinsky 1996, Dovidio et al. 2003, Dixon 2006). However, these literatures
have not yet addressed how and why individuals seek contact with those who are not
of their race/ethnicity and the results of voluntary integration. This dissertation uses a
Spanish/English immersion school in the greater L.A. area as an empirical site to
examine voluntary contact and integration between Latinos and Whites in Southern
California. Three main questions guide this study: What are Latino and White
families’ motivations for choosing immersion and integration? How do Latino and
White families experience immersion and what is the character of their interactions
with each other? And, what strategies are used to negotiate difference and inequality
in immersion? Drawing from over 20 months of ethnography and 66 in-depth
interviews, I find that despite a shared interest in bilingualism and voluntary contact,
racial and socioeconomic divides between Latino and White families persist. These
divisions manifest in segregated parent organizations, friendly but minimal
interactions and limited time together outside of school. This research contributes to
our understanding of how inequality takes new forms in schools despite increasing
diversity across the nation.

3
Chapter 1: Voluntary Integration in a Bilingual Immersion School

I met Pablo the first time I attended the Fall Festival at Samuelson
Elementary, a Spanish/English dual language school in the west side of the Los
Angeles area. I had been walking around, observing the different activities available
for students and trying to meet parents I could later interview. There were jumpy
castles throughout the field, and a large courtyard with long rectangular tables for
families to eat. Around the perimeter of the yard were food stands ranging from
tamales to Chinese food and aguas frescas, vendor selling shirts with the campus logo
and other items and a small haunted house put together by Samuelson parents.
Students were running around and participating in stations with water balloons, sugar
skill decorating, pumpkin carving and face painting, while adults operated the stations
and collected tickets from children. A children’s folkorico group performed
traditional Mexican dances on the small stage at the middle of the blacktop before the
student mariachi sang songs in Spanish for an audience of over one hundred people.
The cafeteria space had been transformed with altars, small lights and artwork. Each
classroom completed an altar with pictures of loved ones to celebrate Día de Los
Muertos, a Mexican holiday honoring those who have passed away. Signs in both
Spanish and English accompanied the altars with explanations of the significance
behind altar components like offerings of pan dulce and cempasúchil flowers.
After walking around the festival for some time, I recognized a parent from
parent meetings and said hello. She introduced me to her friend, another parent,

4
named Pablo. Pablo appeared to be at least in his 50’s and was wearing Khaki pants
with a white guayabera shirt and a black fedora hat. He shared that he was a
journalist and told me he had been a Samuelson parent for several years before asking
me about my project. I asked him what grade his children were in and he explained
that his older daughter attended Samuelson many years ago and his youngest child
was now in second grade. When I asked him if he spoke Spanish, he shared that he
understood it but was not a native speaker:
I grew up in a time where speaking Spanish was not acceptable. My
parents and grandparents all spoke it, but of course they would stop
around us kids—they didn’t want us to learn it. I mean it is very
different now—back then my parents were victims of their
generation…that’s why I didn’t learn it as a kid.

I did not have a chance to respond before he continued to share how important it was
to him and his Peruvian wife that their children speak Spanish, “Nowadays we can
embrace it. We don’t have to live with the stigma.”
Pablo also shared that parents go out of their way to come to Samuelson. His
reaction was not uncommon—most parents shared their own motives for enrolling
children at the school upon hearing why I was on campus participating in meetings
and other activities. His response, however, illustrates the marked shift that has
occurred in his own lifetime and which has affected several generations of his family.
Though his grandparents and parents spoke Spanish, they made a concerted effort to
shield his generation from learning the language out of fear that it would bring them
experiences of discrimination and negative attention. For Pablo, this was no longer
the case. While he did not speak Spanish fluently, he valued the dual language

5
instruction Samuelson provided for his daughters and viewed bilingualism positively.
Pablo’s experiences reflect the historical trajectory of Spanish bilingual
education in the U.S.—while Spanish speaking and Latino origin students have been
a part of the American educational system since at least the 19
th
century, their
language needs have often placed them in segregated classrooms receiving subpar
educations. The legacies of these historical experiences can be seen today—while
Latino origin students now comprise one fourth of the students in our public school
system, they are the most segregated student group in the nation (Gandara and Aldana
2014). But integrated schools also exist, and dual language immersion programs draw
student populations with high levels of racial/ethnic, linguistic and socioeconomic
diversity. Immersion programs simultaneously offer English learners an alternative to
English only education and native English speakers the opportunity to learn a second
language. Spanish/English immersion programs account for approximately 92% of
immersion programs in the U.S. and California has more programs than any other
state (Center for Applied Linguistics 2015). What draws families to these integrated
settings? And what are families like Pablo’s hoping to achieve through immersion?
Assimilation scholars have focused on the incorporation processes of
immigrants and their children, often using contact between immigrants and natives as
a measure of their trajectories (Alba and Nee 2003, Alba 2009, Lee and Bean 2007,
Lee and Bean 2010). Race scholars, on the other hand, have examined contact
between racial/ethnic groups in order to decipher when interactions lead to positive or
negative outcomes (Bobo 1983, Bobo and Zubrinsky 1996, Dovidio et al. 2003,

6
Dixon and Rosenbaum 2004, Dixon 2006, Pettigrew and Tropp 2006, Ellison et al.
2011). However, these literatures have not yet addressed how and why individuals
seek contact with those who are not of their race/ethnicity or class and the results of
this voluntary integration.
This study examines the motives for enrolling children in a racially/ethnically,
linguistically and socioeconomically diverse school and experiences of immersion in
order to understand the relationship between voluntary contact and race relations
between Latinos
1
and whites. This project also expands research to include adults
who choose immersion for children and interact with “difference” without formal
regulation by teachers or school officials. Three main questions guide this
dissertation: What are Latino and white families’ motivations for choosing immersion
and integration? How do Latino and white families experience immersion and what is
the character of their interactions with each other? And, what strategies are used to
negotiate difference and inequality in immersion? In order to answer these questions,
this study draws from participant observation at Samuelson Elementary,
2
a K-5
immersion school, and in-depth interviews with parents, teachers and staff. As a site
of historical segregation of Latinos, and Mexican origin peoples in particular
(Gonzalez 1985, Sanchez 1993), Southern California is the ideal place to examine
new patterns of contact between Latinos and whites.

1
While some argue Latinos can be of any race, this project follows scholarship that
finds Latinos are racialized and treated as a racial group in practice (Golash Boza
2006, Vasquez 2011).
2
Samuelson Elementary is a pseudonym.

7
Theoretical Frameworks
Immigrant Integration
Shifting demographics have heightened attention on the Latino population by
laypeople, politicians and scholars who share concerns about their incorporation into
American society. Scholars have produced a number of studies attempting to decipher
if Latinos are incorporating into a white middle-class, becoming racialized minorities
or are following other paths of incorporation (Jimenez 2010, Agius Vallejo 2012,
Vasquez 2011). Classic assimilation theory posits that immigrants and their children
will shed their culture and become increasingly like the “core” culture over time,
resulting in their absorption to this core and eradicating racism and prejudice (Gordon
1964, Park 1924). More recent assimilation theory argues that incorporation
trajectories for immigrants and their children are segmented (Portes and Zhou 1993)
and that groups need not shed their ethnic culture in order to experience a minority
culture of mobility and structural incorporation (Neckerman, Carter and Lee 1999).
Contemporary assimilation theorists challenge the notion that the ‘core’ is static
and argue assimilation is a two-way process where differences between immigrants
and U.S. native born reduce over time (Alba and Nee 2003). In this approach,
immigrants and their children are constantly remaking the ‘mainstream’ and this can
be seen in large-scale boundary change between racial/ethnic groups. Numerous
studies gauge these changes among Latinos by measuring their levels of contact with
other racial/ethnic groups via rates of racial/ethnic intermarriage, friendship
preferences and segregation in housing and schools (Qian and Lichter 2007,

8
Rosenfeld 2001, Rosenfeld 2008, Telles and Ortiz 2008, Lee and Bean 2010). Current
assimilation scholarship theorizes the result of contact between Latinos and other
racial/ethnic groups, but an understanding of how and why groups seek contact with
“others” can contribute to this body of work.
Intergroup Contact and Conflict
Research on contact between racial/ethnic groups generally argues that
contact between members of different racial/ethnic groups can lead to positive
outcomes or conflict. The first line of theorizing finds that contact between groups
can lead to diminished prejudice and a reduction in bias (Allport 1954, Dovidio et al.
2003). Factors such as equal status, common goals and the support of authorities must
be present in order for contact to yield positive results (Dovidio et al. 2003). The
second line of work on intergroup and race relations finds that conflict can also result
from contact. For example, group position theory argues that groups have strong
understandings of their social position relative to other racial/ethnic groups and
conflict arises when they perceive this position is threatened (Blumer 1958). Other
work on group position theory finds that the U.S. has a fairly clear racial hierarchy
(Bobo 1983, Bobo and Zubrinsky 1996), even in multiracial contexts (Bobo and
Hutchings 1996).
Contact research focusing on Latinos finds personal contact between whites
and Latinos and sustained friendships between them can lessen prejudices about
Latinos as a group, but positive interactions are more likely to occur when those
interacting share a similar socioeconomic standing or are of “equal status” (Dixon and

9
Rosenbaum 2004, Ellison et al. 2011). Yet, because Latinos are overrepresented in
low wage work (Catanzarite and Trimble 2008), equal status interactions between
Latinos and other racial/ethnic groups are less likely to occur and hierarchical
workplace interactions are less effective at reducing stereotypes about Latinos (Dixon
and Rosenbaum 2004).
Missing from work on intergroup contact is an analysis of what occurs in
contexts that draw individuals of varying racial/ethnic and socioeconomic
backgrounds voluntarily. Dual immersion programs that attract diverse families are
ideal to examine voluntary contact and integration among Latinos and whites. It is
possible that voluntary enrollment makes individuals more willing and eager to build
cross-cultural relationships, despite the socioeconomic, linguistic and racial
differences that exist between them. It is also possible, however, that a common goal
of raising Spanish/English bilingual children is not enough to bridge economic and
racial inequalities.
Latino Racial Categorization and Latino-white Relations
As the U.S. becomes more racially/ethnically diverse, the emergence of new
color lines and the racial categorization of Latinos has garnered much scholarly
attention (Yancey 2003, Bonilla Silva 2004, Bonilla Silva and Dietrich 2008,
O’Brien 2008, Lee and Bean 2010). These studies have produced mixed results--
some scholars argue that whiteness will expand to include Latinos (Yancey 2003, Lee
and Bean 2010) and others argue Latinos will occupy an intermediate position
(O’Brien 2008). The categorization of Latino origin peoples is particularly difficult

10
because of the heterogeneity of the Latino population. Factors such as skin tone,
generation, national origin, and socioeconomic background affect how Latinos self-
identify and how they are identified by others (Oboler 1995, Rodriguez 2000, Ochoa
2004, Agius Vallejo 2012, Pulido and Pastor 2013). Despite this heterogeneity,
scholars show how Latinos are treated as a racial group in practice (Golash Boza
2006, Telles and Ortiz 2008, Vasquez 2011) and those who are darker skinned are
most likely to experience discrimination (Bonilla Silva 2004, Jimenez 2010). Vasquez
(2011), however, demonstrates that racialization, or “the process of distancing and
oppressing people perceived as non-white” (pg. 194), occurs to Latinos of all
generations.
Confusion in the categorization of Latinos is not new—historically, Mexican
origin peoples were legally defined as white but segregated in schools and treated as
racially distinct and inferior (Haney Lopez 1998, Rodriguez 2008). Studies examining
the current treatment of Latinos in work, family and school also illustrate the
complexity of Latino relations with other racial/ethnic groups. For instance, at work,
occupational hierarchies structure workplace interactions and Latino workers must
often cater to white clients and white employers in both low wage and white collar
work (Hondagneu-Sotelo 2001, Agius and Lee 2006, Segura 1992, Garcia-Lopez
2008, Chavez 2011, Flores 2011). Studying the integration and contact between
Latinos and whites at a public immersion school contributes to literature on race
relations by examining situations that are voluntary and adds to our understanding of

11
how racial/ethnic boundaries function for Latinos working and studying in immersion
programs that explicitly value Spanish and have high levels of racial/ethnic diversity.
Dual Immersion
The English language is symbolic of Anglo-American identity, and bilingual
education has faced hostility across the U.S. (Huntington 2004, Portes and Rumbaut
2001). In 1998, Proposition 227 reinstated the sink or swim approach of language
instruction for English language learners in which students would be placed in
“structured English immersion” for one year only and then moved to English only
classrooms (Gandara and Contreras 2009). Despite this, Spanish/English dual
immersion programs, also known as two-way immersion or dual language education,
have experienced a 507% growth since the late 1980s (Potowski 2007). In light of
Proposition 227, parents in California must sign a waiver each year to obtain bilingual
education and dual immersion for children.
But, what exactly is immersion? Dual immersion offers non-English speaking
students an alternative to transitional bilingual education and simultaneously offers
native English speakers the opportunity to learn a second language (Christian 1996,
Christian et al. 2000). Though immersion programs in the U.S. are offered in a variety
of languages, Spanish/English programs account for the overwhelming majority.
According to the Center for Applied Linguistics, as of April 2, 2015, there are
approximately 454 dual immersion programs in the U.S., and 421 are
Spanish/English—about 93%. The majority of dual immersion programs are located
in California (Christian 1996, Christian, Howard and Loeb 2000).

12
Scholars find a great deal of variety in immersion instruction models, target
languages, teaching approaches and proportion of minority and majority language
speakers (Gomez, Freeman and Freeman 2005). Two popular models include the
50/50 model where half of school instruction time is in English and the other half is in
the “target” language (e.g. Spanish) and the 90/10 model where students begin with
Spanish instruction and English instruction increases each year. Despite this variety,
scholars find that many immersion programs originated in the late 1980’s and early
1990’s as a way to teach English Language Learners more effectively. Common
program goals include proficiency in two languages, high academic achievement and
an environment of positive cross-cultural learning (Christian 1996).
Extant literature on immersion focuses on the efficacy of programs in
achieving bilingualism and academic achievement (Christian 1996, Cazabon,
Nicoladis and Lambert 1998). Scholars speak to the potential of student integration in
immersion schools (Cazabon et al. 1998, Christian 1996, Freeman 1998, Christian et
al. 2000), but while some scholars assert friendships form across racial/ethnic groups
(Cazabon, Lambert and Hall 1993, Christian 1996), others have had opposite
conclusions (Lewis 2003). In her work on immersion, Valdes (1997) cautions that
power must also be taken into account when analyzing friendships among diverse
students, as significant disparities in power exist between groups and immersion
programs may be more advantageous for “mainstream” families.
Additionally, few studies consider the role of parents, teachers and other
adults at the school. One exception is Linton (2004), who argues that immersion

13
promotes paced or “selective” acculturation in Latino families and may provide an
alternative to traditional schools that devalue Latino culture (Valenzuela 1999). My
work builds on this literature by including adults in the analysis of these integrated
school settings and examining why they choose immersion for their children.
Studying adult interactions is important because they are not regulated--while
students must work together in the classroom, there is no enforcement ensuring adults
build relationships with each other.
Historical Context
Mexican Segregation in Southern California
Segregation patterns for Latinos in the U.S., and Los Angeles specifically,
have increased significantly over the course of recent decades (Telles and Ortiz 2008,
Orfield et al. 2011, Gandara and Aldana 2014). While these patterns of isolation and
exclusion were set forth in the 19
th
and 20
th
century, their legacies have been long
lasting. After the Mexican-American war and the annexation of much of what is now
the Southwest, Mexicans living in these territories were granted legally white status
in the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848. Yet, scholars have
documented how they were treated as racial others with inferior social status in
practice (Sanchez 1993, Gross 2007, Valencia 2008, Ruben and Donato 2012).
During the 20
th
century, Mexican origin people in the Southwest were subject to
residential, occupational and school segregation that constrained their life’s
opportunities and deemed them less deserving than their legally and socially white
counterparts.

14
In Los Angeles, Mexican origin communities were scattered throughout the
eastern and central regions, while Anglo Americans settled in the west side of the city
(Sanchez 1993). Partly due to the changing economy and the growth of other
racial/ethnic groups in the city, residential segregation was lowest in the first part of
the 20
th
century and only increased in the following decades (Sanchez 1993). This
varied by region, as some scholars have outlined how Mexican origin people were
confined to particular areas with a combination of practices including racially
restrictive covenants, redlining and racial steering. Racially restrictive covenants were
agreements that were attached to property deeds indicating what types of people were
suitable for owning and inhabiting homes in particular spaces. These covenants aimed
to keep “desirable” characteristics in place while simultaneously keeping out
“undesirables” like Mexicans and other non-whites and foreign-born people (Sanchez
1993, Desmond and Emirbayer 2010). In Corona, California, Mexicans were only
allowed to buy property in specific parts of town and real state agents were told not to
show certain listings to Mexican buyers (Alamillo 2006). Racial covenants, for
example, could stipulate that only whites could own a property and that non-whites
could only reside in the home as servants. Although racial covenants became legally
unbinding in 1948 and are no longer enforceable (Martinez 1994), they are often still
attached to property deeds and serve as an artifact of an era of rigid segregation. In
combination with other practices like redlining and racial steering, covenants were
effective in maintaining housing divides between whites and Mexicans, African-
Americans, Asians and other groups perceived as non-whites. The residential

15
isolation of Mexican origin peoples in the U.S. has only increased from levels in 1965
(Telles and Ortiz 2008).
Mexicans also experienced segregation in other areas --Mexican origin people
were not allowed to dine in all restaurants, sit in sections of their choosing at movie
theaters and even had separate clinics in their search for medical care (Alamillo 2006,
Molina 2006). Focusing on the citrus town of Corona, Alamillo (2006) describes how
Mexican workers in the lemon industry had limited access to parks, restaurants and
other recreational spaces. For instance, he notes how the town pool was “For the
white Race Only” (as marked by a sign). Those who were not classified as white,
including Mexicans, were only allowed to swim there on Mondays before the
Tuesday cleaning and shared the pool with dogs. Scholars note how the discourse of
hygiene and public health was used as justification for segregation, as Mexicans and
other racial/ethnic minorities were perceived as lazy and diseased (Molina 2006,
Alamillo 2006). Molina recounts how in Los Angeles, “Mexican clinics” were
located in segregated regions with the intent of protecting whites from non-whites—
including Mexicans, African-Americans and Asians. For example, Molina (2006)
explains how a Mexican clinic was opened in Maravilla next to the existing
Belvedere Health Center, because that center was for Americans and the new clinic
was only for Mexicans. She also notes that doctors believed this segregation was
necessary because “it was unfair to subject whites to an environment polluted by
Mexican’s poor health” and low hygiene standards (Molina 2006, pg. 90). As with all
segregated spaces, these clinics were also unequal and while the city spent $134,000

16
in the 1920’s for the Belvedere Health Center, the Maravilla Mexican clinic cost
about $600 and was not full service.
Finally, while there was no legal basis for the segregation of Mexican origin
students as was the case for African Americans in the South or Japanese, Chinese and
“Mongolian” students in the West, the practice was normative in both California and
the Southwest (San Miguel and Valencia 1998, Valencia 2005, Donato and Hanson
2012). Waves of Mexican migration that corresponded to the need for cheap, flexible
labor for agriculture, railroads and other manual work increased the presence of
Mexican children and produced the need to figure out how to educate Mexican
students and deal with what Anglos called “the Mexican problem.” As Mexican
families migrated, they either brought children with them or had children while in the
U.S. and in the early 20
th
century, the number of young, school age children of
Mexican origin was sizeable (Gonzalez 1990). Because education was now
compulsory, the education of this young population of Mexican origin students
became a “challenge” for the American educational system. Students who were
lighter complected, of higher socioeconomic status or held non-Mexican names were
sometimes able to pass as non-Mexican and enroll in “American” schools, but most
Mexican-origin students were subject to enrollment in disparate facilities and given
subpar educations. Scholars have contrasted the resources available for students in
white and Mexican schools and found that in one white school in Santa Paula,
California contained over 20 classrooms and multiple administrative offices for less
than 700 white students, while the Mexican school served over 1,000 students in only

17
eight classrooms and had only two bathrooms and one administrative
office (Menchaca and Valencia 1990).
In Texas, Master’s student Carlos I. Calderon detailed the disparities between
white and Mexican schools for students in a community near the U.S.-Mexico border
Valencia (2008). In this thesis, Calderon outlined the pervasiveness of the inequality
between schools--using photographs to show the differences in quality of lighting,
bathroom facilities and also covering the differences in quality of instruction. For
instance, teachers conducting courses in the Mexican-American school had an
average of ten more children per class than the Anglo school and first grade
instruction was taught over two years--effectively holding back Mexican-origin
students one year regardless of academic ability (Valencia 2008). Moreover, while
the Anglo school included a cafeteria and indoor restrooms, students at the Mexican
school had to walk home for lunch or to the nearest restaurant to eat and their
bathrooms were outhouses. In terms of extracurricular activities, Mexican origin
students were not given any opportunities to learn how to play musical instruments
nor were they allowed to compete in athletics against the white school.
Language, the agricultural work schedule and the overall perceptions of
Mexican-origin students as “slow” were common justifications for their segregation
in schools. School officials and politicians reasoned that Mexican origin children
needed special instruction to learn English and had other educational needs that were
best addressed in segregated groups (Gonzalez 1990). During this time, educators
believed bilingualism was connected to mental retardation and they feared that trying

18
to learn more than one language would confuse students and delay their mastery of
any language (Portes and Rumbaut 2001). Moreover, while documents from
desegregation trials show that language was a primary justification for segregation,
the argument that it was pedagogically beneficial relied on the assumption that
Mexican origin students did not speak English. But this was solely an assumption, as
schools did not conduct any systematic testing of student language ability (Martinez
1994, Valencia 2005, Valencia 2008). The “unique” needs of Mexican origin children
also included the belief that segregation would allow educators to teach them about
American norms and values (Gonzalez 1990, Valencia 2008). The claims justifying
the segregation of Mexican origin students on the basis of language and “unique”
needs would be more believable if students were transferred to “American” schools
upon learning English, but this was not the case and students were assigned to
Mexican schools despite their “assimilation” level or English ability.
Perceptions of Mexican students as “dull” and delayed learners also
contributed to their segregation. In Los Angeles, tracking students by ability was
believed to be a progressive technique that would lead to better educational outcomes
(Gonzalez 1990). Gonzales (1990) details how tracking was documented as early as
1915 and was commonplace by the 1940’s. He also shows how intelligence testing
contributed to the overrepresentation of Mexican students in low-ranking tracks, and
educators designated children who scored below a 70 on an IQ test as slow learners.
This sorting tracked students into vocational and industrial education that was
gendered—with female students subject to home economics and male students to

19
training in manual labor instead of quality academic preparation. Educators believed
that exposing Mexican children to vocational and trade skills was most beneficial for
them because of their early and high drop out rates and because during this time, the
designation of “slow” or “dull” learner was a fixed status that educators did not
believe would change. The subpar education of Mexican-origin students and tracking
into vocational education served to fulfill the economic needs of the dominant society
by socializing Mexican-origin students as workers first and pushing them into local
industries in need of laborers.
Despite the widespread practice of segregating Mexican-origin students,
Mexican origin families resisted with lawsuits since the 1920’s
3
(Valencia 2008). For
example, Adolfo “Babe” Romo, a Mexican-American rancher in Arizona initiated the
lawsuit that resulted in the 1925 Romo v. Laird case. In this lawsuit, plaintiffs argued
their children were given an inferior education because the school they were
designated to attend as “Spanish-Mexican” students was a training center for new
teachers who were not yet certified. Though the school district could not legally
isolate Mexican students by race, they argued that these students were best served in
segregated schools that allowed teachers to address their unique educational needs.
This case only benefited the Romo children as it was not a class action lawsuit and
while it had little impact, it foreshadowed the ongoing struggle to challenge the belief
that language justified educational isolation (Valencia 2008). Later, the Alvarez v.
Lemon Grove case in San Diego in 1931 would succeed in desegregating Mexican

3
For a detailed overview of educational segregation lawsuits involving Mexican origin
families, see Valencia 2008.

20
origin students and question the presumed pedagogical aims of segregation. Yet,
scholars note this case was largely unknown for many decades and only impacted the
Mexican origin students in Lemon Grove (Donato and Hanson 2012, Valencia 2008).
These resistance of Mexican origin families was not always successful—for instance,
the Americanization and purported pedagogical need to segregate Mexican children
was deemed legitimate in the Independent School District v. Salvatierra case in Texas
in 1930 (Donato and Hanson 2012).
Perhaps the most significant case in the segregation of Mexican origin
students was the Mendez v. Westminster case in 1946. Gonzalo and Felicitas Mendez
filed a lawsuit following the denied entrance of their children to Westminster
Elementary in Orange County, California, a school that was only for white students
during this time. While their cousins were allowed to enroll and attend the school, the
Mendez children’s were turned away and told they could not attend because they
were not proficient enough in English. Later, the court would find the school only
allowed their cousins to enroll because of their light complexion and French-sounding
surname. The Mendez family joined forces with five other Mexican-American
families and filed a federal suit. The judge in this case determined that the segregation
of Mexican origin students did not serve Mexican origin students because the
pedagogical aims did not match practices—educators and administrators claimed that
separation helped Mexican children learn English, but the court found little evidence
that language proficiency was a determinant in school designation for students.
Rather, students were relegated to the “Mexican school” based on Spanish surnames

21
(Donato and Hanson 2012). Moreover, the judge ruled that separation did not aid
students in learning English or adopting American cultural norms and argued
desegregation would better meet these goals. In using the equal protection clause of
the Fourteenth Amendment, this case would help set the precedent for Brown v.
Board of Education in 1954.
Overall, the widespread practice of segregating Mexican origin students in the
Southwest, and California specifically, reflected the notion that the Spanish language
was a deficiency for Mexican students and a problem to be dealt with. Moreover, the
practice of relegating Mexican students to inferior facilities and providing them with
inferior educations mirrored their “colored social status” despite their legal whiteness
and was not simply the product of “benign pedagogical decisions or the fortuitous
conjunction of where Mexican-Americans lived and where schools boundaries were
drawn” (Donato and Hanson 2012, pg. 221). Litigation challenging the segregation of
Mexican origin students would continue in the following decades and the intent to
segregate students became an important factor in determining the responsibility
school districts had in desegregating schools. While de jure segregation is imposed by
law and de facto is a result of other patterns (i.e. housing) for which intention is hard
to prove, the differences between these types of educational segregation were more
complicated for Mexican students. Donato and Hanson (2012) show that though some
scholars argued that Mexican educational segregation was de facto because it was
primarily a result of residential housing patterns and local customs, the practices
segregating Mexican origin children “intended to keep them apart from white

22
children, no matter the pedagogical or other rational provided, and should
retroactively be considered de jure segregation” (pg. 205).
Anti-segregation continued in the following decades, challenging both the
segregation of Mexican origin students and advocating for the language rights of
English learning students. Despite the legal triumphs of Mexican families and civil
rights legislation in the 1960’s and 1970’s, the segregation of Latino origin students
has worsened and Latino students are now the most segregated in the nation (Gandara
and Aldana 2014). It is against this historical backdrop of Mexican segregation in
Southern California that the uniqueness of dual immersion programs that voluntary
draw Latino and white families to a Spanish/English bilingual education comes into
relief. Given these historical patterns of segregation and separation between Latinos
and whites in California, why are white and Latino families seeking immersion and
what are their interactions with each other in these spaces?
Methodology and Description of Research Site
Dual immersion programs are ideal sites to examine race relations between
Latinos and whites, as they draw racially and socioeconomically diverse families by
choice, most of who are committed to diversity in education and are spaces of regular
interpersonal contact. Parents interact with teachers and staff, other parents and
children of varying racial/ethnic and class backgrounds on a daily basis. Three main
questions guide this dissertation:
1. What are Latino and white families’ motivations for choosing immersion and
integration?

23
2. How do Latino and white families experience immersion and what is the
character of their interactions with each other?
3. And, what strategies are used to negotiate difference and inequality in
immersion?
In order to examine everyday interactions between Latino and white families,
this project relies on multiple qualitative methods including over 20 months of
observation, participant observation and 66 interviews at Samuelson Elementary,
4
a
K-5 Spanish/English dual immersion school.
I began ethnography at Samuelson Elementary in the fall semester of 2010
and completed participant observation from October until May of the 2010-2011
academic year. To find a dual immersion program, I used the two-way immersion
database on the website for the Center for Applied Linguistics. I filtered for
Spanish/English immersion programs located in Southern California. I began
contacting programs, but was most interested in Samuelson because the program
comprised the entire school (rather than a strand program) and because it was a public
institution. After contacting both the principal and other school employees via email
about coming to the school, I did not hear back from them in a couple of weeks.
Because the school published the parent organization meeting schedule and parent
meetings were public, I opted to attend an upcoming Parent Teacher Association
(PTA) meeting. Once there, I approached Yaniz, the community liaison for the
school, and told her I was a student interesting in dual immersion education. She was

4
Samuelson Elementary and all participant names are pseudonyms.

24
responsive, told me I was welcome to attend parent organization meetings and
introduced me to the PTA president at the time. Yaniz also helped facilitate a meeting
with Principal Martell, who I met with and provided me with the necessary
paperwork to gain IRB approval and approval from the district to begin ethnography.
Because previous literature did not detail the role of parents or their
interactions with each other within schools like Samuelson, I began this project by
focusing on the interactions between Latino and white adults at the school. During
this initial period of ethnography, I conducted participant observation with Samuelson
parents in both formal and informal settings, attending meetings for the PTA and
English Language Advisory Council (also known as ELAC), including a district wide
meeting hosted by Samuelson, and PTA sponsored fundraisers for the school. I
helped with and attended special events such as Cesar Chavez Day celebrations,
fundraisers, parent support groups, weekly “cafecitos” or coffee time setup for
parents to chat amongst themselves, parenting support groups, health “promotora”
5

meetings, family movie nights hosted by the school and tours for prospective parents.
I helped set up for events, hung decorations, staffed food stations and any other area
where parents needed help. Detailed field notes were taken after each field session
and coded for emerging themes.
My research in dual immersion stemmed from a more general interest in
multiracial families with Latino and white intermarried couples. Originally, I assumed
that these types of programs would attract these families and thus my initial codes

5
Community health promoter

25
focused on the types of families enrolled at Samuelson. For instance, in my initial
observations at Samuelson, I met families who were monolingual Spanish speakers,
families who only spoke English as well as families with Latino-origin parents that
were seeking to maintain or learn the Spanish language. At the beginning stages of
this research, my codes centered on themes covered in parent meetings, parent
involvement in school parent organizations. Once in the field, these codes evolved to
include specific types of interaction between diverse parents, frequency of contact,
and more detailed codes for parent motives in selecting an immersion program for
children. For example, a broad code of “parental involvement” was further
categorized to distinguish between membership in the executive boards of parent
organizations and more informal volunteering within classrooms. Based on the initial
facet of participation and participant observations and existing literature, I generated
field hypotheses that were refined, refuted or confirmed through repeated visits to the
field.
Following this period of ethnography, I also conducted 15 interviews with
parents that summer in order to better understand their motives for selecting
immersion. While parents often mentioned their motives casually in the field, in-
depth interviews gave me an opportunity to ask them about their process in finding
and selecting Samuelson. Interviews also enabled me to meet with parents in a more
private setting and ask more personal questions about their opinions of other families
at the school, their experiences within the school and their hopes for their children. I
recruited parents via the contacts I made during participant observation and then used

26
snowball sampling to obtain samples of parents who were not as actively involved in
the PTA or ELAC organizations at the school. All of these interviews were audio
recorded, transcribed in the language in which they were conducted and coded. For
interviews conducted in Spanish, only excerpts used in this dissertation have been
translated to English.
I expanded the scope of the project to include students and in-class
interactions and resumed ethnography at Samuelson in January of 2013. Principal
Martell and some teachers and parents remembered me, and I was able to re-enter the
site and continue with observations at parent organizations. In order to complete
participant observation and observation in classrooms, I served as a volunteer
teacher’s aide in six classrooms throughout the spring and fall semesters of 2013.
Because parents and teachers had expressed that divisions between students cemented
as they grew, I purposely conducted ethnography in one classroom in each grade to
examine if and how divisions between Latino and white students changed as they
grew older and became bilingual in Spanish and English. Yaniz and Principal Martell
recommended me to teachers-- introducing me as a source of additional support for
them in class and announcing my background as a native Spanish speaker and
Spanish/English bilingual. Within classrooms, I helped with a range of tasks
depending on the preference of each teacher. Some teachers granted me time to sit at
the back of class and observe, while others allowed me to help students with writing
papers, math projects, supervising recess and game time and reading to younger
students for story time. After each visit to parent organization meetings or the

27
classroom, I immediately took detailed field notes and have used coding and memos
to analyze my data as outlined in qualitative research methodology (Strauss and
Corbin 1998, Berg 2001).
Adding to the sample of parent interviews from 2011, I conducted an
additional 51 semi-structured interviews with parents and employees at the school,
asking them about their motives for enrolling and experiences with other families.
Though literature on dual immersion speaks to the potential these programs have for
creating cross-cultural friendships among students (Cazabon et al. 1998, Christian
1996, Freeman 1998, Christian et al. 2000, Lewis 2003), the role of adults has been
largely overlooked (for an exception, see Linton 2004). Analyzing the motivations of
parents and parents’ roles at the school is important because it is parents who decide
to enroll children in immersion and because, unlike students, parents are not regulated
to interact with parents of different racial/ethnic and class background by teachers and
other school employees. Interview participants were recruited through
announcements at parent meetings, in the classroom and the school newspaper, and
several respondents agreed to participate in an interview after seeing me in the
classroom and at school events repeatedly. Snowball sampling, where previous
participants refer other possible interviewees was used to obtain access to parents
who were not as actively involved in parent organizations or who possessed specific
characteristics (Berg 2001). Snowball sampling is not a probability method and does
not yield a random sample, but it helped me find Spanish dominant parents who were

28
not typically on campus because of their work schedule and African-American and
Asian respondents underrepresented in the school.
I used a semi-structured interview questionnaire to ask respondents how they
found out about the school, why they opted to enroll their children and their
experiences with other families enrolled. For example, I asked, “How would you
describe parents at Samuelson?” and “Do you spend time with any Samuelson parents
outside of school? If so, with who and how often?” Teachers and other employees
were asked about their children (as many of them are enrolled in immersion), their
trajectory to teaching immersion or working at the school, and experiences working
with diverse students and their parents. Interviews were conducted in Spanish or
English, depending on the interviewee’s preference. Typically, interviews lasted an
hour and all interviews were audio recorded and transcribed verbatim. Most
interviews were conducted in the respondents’ homes, with only a few at coffee
shops, local parks or the respondent’s office. After each interview, participants were
asked to fill out a demographic information sheet that asked about their racial/ethnic
identification, children, education, occupation, family income and languages spoken.
Sixty-one participants were women—reflecting the parents most actively
involved at Samuelson. Five participants were males and two other men joined their
spouse during interviews. The bulk of the sample is parents with children enrolled but
also includes 11 teachers at the school. Of these 11 educators, 7 of them had their
own children currently enrolled at the school and an additional 2 teachers had
children that had attended the school in previous years. Of those teachers who did not

29
have children at Samuelson, one did not have any children and the other had enrolled
her son in private school elsewhere. I also attempted to interview school employees
including but not limited to office and janitorial staff, as well as school counselors
and other support staff. Only 2 non-teacher employees are a part of the sample, and
another participant is both a parent and a cafeteria worker. Recruiting these adults
was more difficult as they did not usually have all staff meetings and they were less
likely to sign up for meetings—citing their later, after school work schedule. Racially,
my sample is representative of school demographics-- 42 interviewees identified as
Latino, 19 as non-Latino white, 3 as Asian and 2 as African-American. Though some
were in interracial marriages and had multiracial children, none self identified as
multiracial.
There is a sizeable Latino middle-class population at Samuelson and half of
Latino respondents were college educated and/or in white-collar work. Class and
nativity were strongly correlated—almost all middle-class Latinos were U.S. born and
despite exceptions, race, class and nativity were often conflated. Class disparities
between families at Samuelson were evident in self-reported incomes, occupations
and neighborhoods, as the majority of interviews occurred in their homes. White
mothers typically lived in two-story homes with large yards and ample living spaces,
while the majority of the Latina immigrant women interviewed lived in small
apartments with extended family members. Some middle class Latina middle class
respondents lived in the area but most of their interviews took place at the school or
in their offices at work. Many of the Latina origin teachers at Samuelson were middle

30
class and thus interviewing them at the school was often the most convenient option
for them. Incomes varied greatly—most Latina immigrants reported annual family
incomes below $25,000 while whites reported incomes between $50,000 to $100,000
or higher. Incomes for U.S. born Latina’s families varied. See Table 1 for detailed
interview participant demographics.
Samuelson Elementary
Samuelson Elementary is a K-5, Spanish/English immersion school program
in the greater Los Angeles area that seeks to develop students who can read, write and
speak both languages. Samuelson became a dual immersion school in the late 1980s
as a result of community task force efforts to include high numbers of Spanish
speaking children as an asset and increase enrollment that would temper the ethnic
and racial isolation at the school. Samuelson has since gained significant popularity in
the area and often has a waiting list for native English speakers. Samuelson is a
“school of choice” and thus functions as a language magnet—drawing a significant
amount of families all over the L.A. area that must obtain district permission to
enroll. Parents must also attend an orientation to tour the school and children must
take a language test to classify them as native English or Spanish speakers before
enrolling. Families who live in the neighborhood have priority enrollment and other
students are selected based on the language needs of the school and a lottery program
that selects families randomly. Samuelson aims to have half native Spanish-speakers

31
and half native English speakers
6
in order to maximize language learning and
operates as a 90/10 model that begins with ninety-percent Spanish instruction and ten
percent English instruction in kindergarten and increases English instruction each
grade.
Samuelson is a racially/ethnically, socioeconomically and linguistically
diverse school: of approximately 500 students, 63% of students identify as
Hispanic/Latino origin, 25% are non-Latino white, 4% are African American, 2% are
Asian and 7% identify as multiracial. Half of the student population qualifies for
free/reduced lunch and half are English Language Learners. Due to the high amount
of low-income families at the school, Samuelson is designated as a school wide Title
1 school. Title 1 is a federal program that provides funding for schools serving large
low-income populations When I asked the principal about the racial/ethnic
backgrounds of the students who qualify for free and reduced lunch, she relayed that
most are Latino and that white working-class or low-income families are rare at the
school.
Samuelson is not blind to the economic disparities and inequality between
groups outside of the school and acknowledges them to an extent. For example, in
their promotional materials, Samuelson explicitly states, “teachers and staff work to
create equal status for both languages (and speakers of both languages).” Moreover,
celebrations at the school are often based on celebrations of Latino culture, such as
the Day of the Dead Festival. Parents are highly involved and are encouraged to

6
Many families speak both languages to varying degrees. I use English speaker or Spanish
speaker to denote the families’ first and often dominant language for simplicity.

32
volunteer at least 20 hours of their time per year and participate in parent
organizations, committees, fundraisers, special events, and volunteer in the
classroom.
The school itself is an older building situated in the middle of a residential
block. The building has several separate bungalows that serve as classrooms, a small
yard reserved for preschool children, and a larger recess area for kids in higher
grades. The school is very colorful, as it is covered in artwork by parents, including
several wall murals of ocean landscapes and sea animals. There are also tile artwork
collages by previous students and areas displaying the artwork of current ones. A
large courtyard with foliage and picnic-like tables connects the library, cafeteria and
classrooms. At the time of data collection, the school was undergoing a 2-year
construction project for a new and larger school building.
Samuelson is located in the Westside of Los Angeles. The “Westside” of L.A.
includes cities such as Santa Monica, Culver City and Beverly Hills. Though its
borders are not clearly defined, it is commonly referred to as the area west of the 405
Freeway and recognized for its affluence, and lower percentages of racial/ethnic
minorities. For example, while Latinos comprised 49% of LA, they were only 12% of
those living in the Westside city where Samuelson is located (American Community
Survey 2009-2013). For comparative sociodemographic information for the Westside
and Los Angeles, see Table 2.
The neighborhood in which Samuelson is embedded, however, is known as
the “poor” area and the school was previously known as the “ugly stepsister” of the

33
district. One neighborhood resident and participant cited living “in the hood of
[Westside city].” Samuelson parents and residents noted the diversity of the
neighborhood as a positive asset but also shared that the neighborhood had previously
experienced problems with gangs and crime. Parents also noted increasingly
expensive housing, coupled with diminishing affordable housing, and the growth of
white residents as important changes. Mrs. Martell, the principal, illustrated this with
a comparison—stating that while many white families lived in “ridiculously
expensive condos,” some Latino families shared apartments with other families or
even rented garages “on the hush hush” in order to remain in one of the most racially
diverse and affordable pockets of the Westside. See Table 3 for details of this
demographic change.
Dissertation Overview
This dissertation uses a Spanish/English immersion school as an empirical site
to examine voluntary contact and integration between Latinos and whites in Southern
California. Despite a shared interest in raising bilingual children and voluntary
contact, racial and socioeconomic divides between Latino and white families persist.
These divisions manifest in segregated parent organizations, friendly but minimal
interactions at communal events and limited time together outside of the school
setting. Though some scholars have posited that a shared interest in Spanish/English
bilingualism is evidence of blurred boundaries between Latinos and whites, families
at my site do not seek immersion or bilingualism because they feel they are similar to

34
each other. Rather, they seek to enroll children in immersion to expose them to racial
“others” and this pursuit of difference results in voluntary contact.
Chapter 2 outlines the varied motives parents have for enrolling children in
Spanish/English dual immersion. In describing the reasoning behind selecting
immersion by race/ethnicity and class, this chapter illustrates how the motives for
seeking bilingualism and immersion reflect the differences between Latino and white
families at the school. Chapter 3 focuses on the everyday interactions between Latino
and white parents and shows that despite an overall politeness and civility between
them, their contact with each other is fleeting. Parents do not exhibit negative racial
attitudes towards each other, but even with sustained regular interpersonal contact, a
shared goal of bilingualism and shared class status for some, their interactions are
characterized by what I term symbolic integration. Symbolic integration is enjoyable,
voluntary and additive for those in power and while it reflects positive intergroup
relations, it maintains the status quo of inequality between Latino and white families
at Samuelson. Chapter 4 examines the intergroup interactions between diverse
students and how these unfold in the classroom. This chapter highlights that contrary
to adult claims about class and racial blindness, children recognize difference and
assign categories of race/ethnicity, class and language status that manifest in their
friendship groups and activities. Moreover, this chapter elucidates how the very
celebration of diversity limits the ability of teachers and adults at the school to
directly address issues of power and inequality with Samuelson students. Finally,
chapter 5 outlines the strategies adults use to temper disparities between families at

35
the school and showcases how these strategies are necessary precisely families do not
come together organically. Chapter 6 summarizes the main findings and broader
implications of this dissertation.

36
Chapter 2: Choosing Immersion and Integration

“Bilingual education in so important. We are such Neanderthals in the
U.S., and here in California, even though the benefits of bilingual
education have been shown. I mean, we are just so, such
Neanderthals.”
-Erin

Erin, a white, middle-class mother at Samuelson shared the above sentiment
during a meeting at the school to prepare for the upcoming fall festival. We had just
met and Erin was curious about my presence at the school. The other mothers there,
many of who already knew about my project, explained that I was conducting
research. Erin was excited to hear that I was interested in immersion and her
comment, along with her choice to enroll her son in a Spanish/English dual
immersion school, demonstrates her support of bilingual education and interest in the
Spanish language. Erin is not alone. Spanish is the second most spoken language in
the U.S. by both Latinos and non-Latinos. According to a report by the Pew Hispanic
Research Center in 2013, over 37 million people in the U.S. are Spanish speakers
(Lopez and Gonzalez-Barrera 2013). Of these, about 2.8 million are non-Latino and
demographers project the Spanish language will continue to rise in popularity in
coming years.
Despite the increasing presence of Spanish, controversy remains about the use
of languages besides English in other arenas like public schools (Crawford 2007).
Historically, language was an oft-cited justification for the segregation of Mexican
origin children (Gonzalez 1990) and hostility towards bilingual education has resulted

37
in its eradication in states like California, Arizona and Massachusetts. Demographic
projections estimate that Spanish will continue to rise in popularity but projections are
complex--as they forecast that Spanish language ability will decrease among Latinos
overall but may survive longer than other non-English languages in the past
(Gonzalez-Barrera and Lopez 2013). Though these projections are tied to
immigration and the rate of Latinos in the U.S., they are unprecedented in that the
U.S. remains a “graveyard of languages” where most languages do not survive the
third generation (Rumbaut, Massey and Bean 2006). Given this context, why might
parents, both Latino and non-Latino, be interested in having children speak Spanish?
This chapter examines why parents of different racial/ethnic backgrounds and
class statuses seek bilingualism and enroll their children in Spanish/English
immersion. Parent motives are important to analyze because it is parents who decide
to pursue bilingualism for children and make decisions about schooling. All parents
in this study believe children will benefit professionally and personally from learning
two languages. Parents view bilingualism as an asset and a talent that will allow their
children to exceed expectations. However, the motives vary significantly by race,
nativity and class and reflect relative levels of power within and outside of the
Samuelson context.
Parent motives for enrolling children in Samuelson illustrate how interest and
enrollment in dual immersion education for children do not reflect blurred boundaries
between Latinos and whites as previous scholarship would predict (Alba and Nee
2003, Linton and Jimenez 2009), but instead illustrate the marked distinctions and

38
disparities between them. While Latino working-class parents highlight the familial
and cultural advantages of speaking Spanish to communicate with family, middle-
class Latinos were likely to express concern that children would not take pride in their
cultural background and wanted to instill in them a positive Latino identity. White
parents, most of which were middle-class or affluent, prioritized their desire for
children to learn to thrive in multiracial contexts and enjoy diversity. For these
parents, immersion provided an ideal context for their children to interact with peers
that did not share their racial/ethnic or class background—and that they might not
otherwise interact with given the prevalent segregation in U. S. schools (Orfield et al.
2011, Gandara and Aldana 2014) and the larger demographic context of the
Samuelson neighborhood.
Previous Research
Bilingualism, American Identity and the Effect of Immersion on Incorporation
The English language is symbolic of American identity, and when it comes to
immigrants and their children, language use is an important indicator of incorporation
into American society. Newcomers are expected to learn English in order to
communicate with the native born and the use of other languages by immigrants and
their children is often interpreted as an opposition to incorporation into the American
mainstream. Efforts to enforce English as the official language of the U.S. and
hostility against the use of other languages emerge from fears that immigrants and
their children will remain loyal to their countries of origin and cause cultural
divisions in the U.S. Concerns about divided loyalties are exemplified by Huntington

39
(2004), who argues Spanish-speaking immigrants, primarily Mexicans, are not
incorporating linguistically and threaten the U.S.
Bilingual education is one context where fears of immigrant assimilation, or
lack thereof, Latinos and America’s future collide. Bilingual education, or instruction
in two languages, ranges from transitional bilingual education to dual language
programs
7
(Freeman 2007) and continues to face antagonism across the country. For
example, bilingual education was eradicated in California with Proposition 227 in
1998, Arizona with Proposition 203 in 2000 and Massachusetts with Question 2 in
2002. Yet, there is a paradox when it comes to the use of two languages in public
schools—while bilingual education has faced extreme opposition, native-born
students in the U.S. are encouraged to learn a second language. Globalization has also
resulted in a demand for professionals who speak more than one language (Portes and
Rumbaut 2001). Most contradictory is that Spanish/English dual immersion programs
that simultaneously teach English Language Learners (ELL’s) and English native
speakers, like the site of this dissertation, have experienced unprecedented growth in
the last two decades (Potowski 2007). But, what can the fast growth of dual language
immersion programs and a growing interest in the Spanish language tell us about the
boundaries between Latinos and whites?

7
Transitional bilingual education refers to programs that aim to have English
Language Learners acquire and achieve educationally in English and are understood
as subtractive bilingualism, while dual language programs seek bilingualism and
achievement in two languages and are considered additive bilingualism (Freeman
2007).

40
DIP programs that draw Latino and white families bring to light questions
about their shared interest in Spanish-English bilingualism. Some have interpreted
the rise of immersion as confirmation that Latinos are remaking the mainstream
(Linton and Jimenez 2009). They argue that a shift from Americanization ideology to
multiculturalism has occurred as a result of a growing cosmopolitan identity and has
elevated the status of Spanish language. That is, the growing interest in Spanish by
the “mainstream” (i.e. middle-class whites) and enrollment in Spanish/English
immersion programs is seen as evidence that the mainstream is inching closer to
Latino immigrants and their children rather than simply function as a dynamic target
for them to melt into.
Other scholars have considered the effects these programs can have on Latino
families. Linton (2004) argues that dual immersion can help families experience a
selective or paced acculturation that values Latino culture and allows Spanish
monolingual parents to retain parental authority. Linton echoes previous work that
argues the rapid acquisition of and preference for English among the children of
immigrants can negatively affect family relations (Portes and Rumbaut 2001). They
posit limited bilinguals are more at risk for dissonant acculturation, whereby parental
authority may weaken and parents may feel inadequate to help their children in their
new environment. In turn, they argue second-generation individuals who are fluent
bilinguals fare better because they are better able to communicate with their parents
and can thus partake in selective acculturation, even if their parents do not speak
English well. For U.S. born Latino students, dual immersion programs that

41
demonstrate a value for the Spanish language may be a positive alternative to
schooling that promotes “Americanization” among Latino students and devalues
Latino culture (Valenzuela 1999).
8

Choosing Immersion
All parents interviewed, and presumably all of those enrolled at Samuelson,
believed bilingualism was a valuable pursuit for their children that would yield
increased educational and labor opportunities in the future. Daisy, a Latina immigrant
mother, shared, “it will be easier and better for her when she grows up, she will be
able to speak two languages and she will be able to get better jobs.” Another
immigrant mother, Lilian,
9
explained that she wanted her children to speak both
languages to get
Better work, it gives them more options, more opportunity in the
workplace, in their life ... I feel that learning other languages gives
them an advantage that many others do not have. And more in this
state of California that has many Hispanics and even now I see that
the Americans want to speak Spanish for the same reasons.
10

Lilian, along with all of the parents in this study believed Spanish/English
bilingualism would result in tangible gains in school and the workplace. Grayson, a
white, middle-class father, noted: “in the future, looking at employment opportunities,
we think that having a second language is very valuable.” The motives illustrate a

8
In her book, Subtractive schooling: US-Mexican youth and the politics of caring
(1999), Valenzuela defines subtractive schooling as “subtractively assimilationist
policies and practices that are designed to divest Mexican students of their culture and
language” (20).
9
All names cited are pseudonyms.
10
Italics indicate excerpts in Spanish that have been translated into English by the
author.

42
significant shift in the perceptions of bilingualism, as bilingualism was historically
seen as a link to mental retardation and delayed speech development (Portes and
Rumbaut 2001). In examining parent motives for enrolling children in immersion,
Latino and white families at Samuelson share the common goal of seeking future
educational and labor market opportunities for their children.
Yet, no parents gave only one reason for pursuing bilingualism for their
children. Instead, all parents in this study gave multiple motives for enrolling in
Samuelson and these varied by race, nativity and class background. In this chapter, I
outline the most common reasons parents gave for selecting dual immersion for the
largest parent groups including immigrant Latino families, middle-class Latinos and
middle-class and affluent whites. It is important to note that while most immigrant
Latino families at Samuelson were working-class, and most middle-class Latinos
were native born, these categories were not mutually exclusive. Due to the overlap,
these categories are often conflated at the school. Here, I note variances in the
descriptions of interviewees whose excerpts are included. A closer examination of
parent motives reveals the sharp distinctions between Latino and white families and
how these schooling choices are both constrained and enabled by their relative levels
of power within and outside of the Samuelson campus.
Working-class Latino immigrants
The motives that most working-class, Latino immigrant parents gave for
enrolling children in a Spanish/English bilingual school reflected their marginalized
status within the larger societal context. These parents wanted children to speak both

43
languages because they believed speaking both English and Spanish enabled them to
prepare for worst-case scenarios like leaving the U.S., because they had cultural and
racial expectations of children that they believed would protect them from unwanted
stigma and because bilingualism and speaking Spanish specifically helped them
maintain connections with family that remained in their country of origin. Monica, an
immigrant mother from Mexico, explained, “my family, my parents and my
grandparents speak Spanish. So, I think it’s better so that he can communicate with
them and so he can communicate with me too.” Though Monica knew some English,
she was more comfortable speaking Spanish and wanted her child to effectively
communicate with her and their extended family. Lisandra, an immigrant mother
from Peru, shared:
My family speaks Spanish, they do not speak English, and it's
important to me that he can communicate with his family because my
family is his family, too. That is one thing. Two, I want him, every time
he goes to my country I want him to feel comfortable talking to people,
with the family.

Lisandra feels that Spanish is a vital skill while she did not have plans to return to live
in Peru, she wanted to prepare her child for future visits to the country.
Communicating with extended family and going to their country of origin were
perceived by Latino immigrant parents as way to foster and foment ethnic identities
in children. Lorena, an immigrant mother from Mexico, shared her perspective:
For me it is important not to forget the roots. The roots of where we
are from, where they come from. My son would look at maps and say
“look here mom, I was born here but I am from there. I am from
Jalisco.”

44
For Lorena and other immigrant parents in this study, learning Spanish and
English was about opening doors but was also a way to teach them about the ethnic
and cultural heritage and instill an ethnic identity. Most of the parents who gave this
motive did not elaborate, rather, they replied nonchalantly that it was part of “nuestra
cultura” [our culture]. In addition to these cultural expectations, Latino immigrant
parents expressed a desire to have children’s linguistic abilities “match” their skin
color and phenotype. For instance, Dulce, a Latina immigrant from Mexico, shared:

My children are not white, nor tall, nor do they have white skin or
blonde hair. My children are brown, even more brown than me. So not
many Latinos see them as American born, but instead like they come
from Latin-American countries and sometimes I would see, not with
mine because it did not happen personally, but I would see with
others—oh you look like this and you don’t speak Spanish. It’s a bit
ridiculous that you are Latino and you cannot speak Spanish.

Previous studies show how Latinos origin peoples use language ability and the
knowledge of Spanish and/ or English to demarcate boundaries amongst each other
(Jimenez 2010, Ochoa 2004, Garcia Bedolla 2003), and Dulce does the same. Her
comments illustrate the stigma faced by Latinos who do not speak Spanish, which she
herself holds and which she hopes to protect her own children against. Dulce is well
aware that her children are not perceived as white or even American despite their
nativity and acknowledges that their looks will lead to a particular set of racial
expectations. These racial expectations are a result of the skin color and overall
phenotype of Latinos, or the somatic norm image of what Latinos look like (Golash
Boza 2006) and result in a set of assumptions that include Spanish language ability

45
and knowledge of particular Latino customs and culture by both Latinos and
outsiders.
In another instance, several Latina immigrant mothers gathered in the library
after an ELAC meeting and were rehashing topics discussed earlier, particularly that
the school was in need of Spanish speaking students. After several women noted the
importance of these students and their own children learning Spanish fluently, Marta
asked, “Imagine my grandchildren with a cactus (on their forehead) and without
speaking Spanish?” Marta and all of her friends laughed. Marta insinuates that her
descendants will remain recognizably different from non-Latino whites because they
will have a nopalote, or cactus on their forehead. Having a “nopalote” or cactus is a
phrase used to denote Latino heritage or a Mexican background and usually refers to
darker skin and other phenotypical characteristics deemed “Mexican.” These
comments showcase how parents internalize the external racialization that they and
their children experience and exacerbate the stigma of not speaking Spanish while
Latino for future generations. Both Marta and Dulce’s comments complicate
narratives of choice among Latino working-class and immigrant families by
demonstrating how their choice to enroll children in Spanish/English immersion
stems from pride in their heritage and a fear of discrimination they hope to counter
with bilingualism.
These racial expectations were often mentioned in conjunction with other
reasons distinct to Latino immigrant families. For example, in the instance described

46
above, Marta jokingly expressed concern about her grandkids losing the language but
she posed the following hypothetical situation to her friends:
What if we go to Mexico and the child does not want "cheese".... what
is that? They don’t even know what’s going on… No. What if
something happens and we have to go back? You never know.

Marta and several of her children are undocumented and thus her comments
highlight the precariousness that many Latino immigrant families at Samuelson
experiences and which is unique to this population. Marta realizes that bilingualism
and her children’s ability to speak Spanish may prove useful in the event that her
family will have to leave the U.S. involuntarily. Her fear of deportation and the use of
bilingualism as a tool to have children ready for a worst-case scenario allude to the
marginalization many of the Latino immigrant families’ experience.
Parents did not openly talk about their legal status, but many Latino working-
class parents made it clear that they were unauthorized in subtle ways and during
interviews. Parents would share how they had not seen family in years because of
their inability to return to the U.S. and would often share fears that their children
would not be able to attend college. The importance of legal status also surfaced
when asking if bilingualism was important to them and why. One Mexican immigrant
mother, Gladys, shared:
I tell my kids – we don’t know if we will stay here all of our life or if
we will go to Mexico. So, if we were to go to Mexico and they arrive or
we take them and they are not yet of age to stay here and they do no
speak Spanish, and they arrive to Mexico speaking only English, it
would be very difficult for them. It would be a very difficult life where
they would suffer a lot, like I said, we don’t know because we don’t
know if we will stay here all the time.

47

Gladys’ decision to have her children learn both languages well partly
stemmed from a fear that she could not remain in the U.S. and thus bilingualism was
one strategy to prepare her children for this difficult possibility. She felt it necessary
for her children to have Spanish language knowledge “just in case” and felt it might
serve to aid in their adjustment to life in Mexico. These excerpts emphasize the
instability of these families’ experiences and the distinctiveness of their situations. No
U.S. born Latino parents cited concerns about having to leave the U.S., either
voluntarily or by force.
Finally, part of the desire parents had for children to be bilingual was a result
of their own experiences of learning English in the U.S. and their experiences as
immigrants. These parents narrated the difficulty of navigating life in the U.S. while
learning a second language and did felt bilingualism empowered their children to
bypass these obstacles. Mayra, an immigrant mother from Mexico, shared:
People like us, Latinos, we go to a place and if you do not understand,
you ask to speak to someone who speaks Spanish. So if you speak
Spanish and English it’s easier. It’s easier to find a job or to be
something in the future.

Mayra’s own English language abilities were limited and she described having
a hard time dealing with employers and school officials in the schools her older
children attended. She did not want the same limitations for her son and felt
bilingualism empowered him to become “someone” in ways that speaking only one
language, Spanish, would not allow in the U.S. Lorena had similar concerns and
believed that speaking Spanish and English was critical because, “for me it is very

48
important because they can defend themselves. Here in California there are a lot of
Hispanics but there is also a lot of güeros and it helps to have the two.” While Lorena
acknowledges the demographic diversity of Los Angeles, her comment alludes to the
separations between these communities and how this might require her son to be able
to navigate both and “defend” himself. Taken together, the motives given by Latino
immigrant parents for selecting immersion showcase the vast disparities between their
lives and those of the middle-class Latino and middle-class white families at the
school.
Middle class Latinos
Middle class and often U.S. born Latino parents also believed that
bilingualism and enrolling children in immersion would yield them important benefits
in their future. However, they noted distinct reasons that were not about preparing for
an unstable future like the immigrant and mostly working-class Latino parents at the
site. Rather, these parents expressed desires to raise bicultural Latino origin children
that could successfully navigate diverse contexts. Moreover, these parents wanted to
maintain ties to Latino family members and worried about teaching children Spanish
and instilling in them a positive Latino identity whilst embedded in and English
dominant context. For example, Gloria, a second-generation middle-class mother,
worried that without immersion, her kids would “not get the same effect” with her
teaching them Spanish only at home. Though Gloria was bilingual, she was married
to a white man who did not speak any Spanish and thus speaking Spanish at home
was a challenge. She later added that for herself, and parents like her, it was hard to

49
make sure children did not “completely forget about their Spanish, and I think a lot of
these parents really want to keep, make sure their kids do not forget about where they
came from, their heritage and their Spanish because it is really important.” For Gloria,
Spanish is a way to foster a Latino identity among her children and the context of
immersion provides support for them to learn both languages. Eva, a second
generation mother and teacher at the school echoed Gloria’s concerns:
I always knew I wanted my kids to speak Spanish, but I wasn’t sure
how I was going to do it because it was really difficult for me to be the
Spanish model at home and my husband just be the English. He speaks
Spanish, but not fluently, and we speak English to each other at home,
so I knew it was going to be difficult. I thought that if it was at school,
then it would be easier, plus they would have more of a, like they
would appreciate their language more because if it’s just me speaking
Spanish to them and nobody else, then I knew they weren’t going to
value the language and they weren’t going to appreciate it. If it’s at
school and everybody else is speaking it-- their teachers, and they’re
surrounded by it, then I thought it would be better for them.

Eva’s husband is a Mexican-American man with some knowledge of Spanish, but she
acknowledges that their varied levels of bilingualism and use of English in the home
challenge their ability to raise bilingual children without the support of immersion. In
many ways, Eva’s family situation reflects statistics that show that while Spanish has
a longer mortality rate than many other languages in the U.S., use of Spanish in the
home and fluent bilingualism decline with each generation (Rumbaut, Massey and
Bean 2006). However, she, and other families at the school differ in that they are
actively seeking to retain or teach future generations of Latino origin children
Spanish.

50
Eva’s comment also highlights how she uses Spanish language ability as a tool to
inculcate an appreciation for the language and Latino culture more broadly in her
children. Like Eva, other middle-class Latino parents were also concerned that their
children would not value Spanish without the context of Samuelson and would be
exposed to negative depictions of Latinos and Spanish speakers in traditional schools.
Nadia, a second generation Mexican-American mother, felt immersion was important
because it “validates [Latino kids] in a way that they would not be validated in
another mainstream school. I think it validates them to feel that their culture has
meaning beyond just the language.” This validation aided this mother in her goal to
have her kids “appreciate and value the language, not just to learn the language as a
way to be more marketable.” This mother chose Samuelson intentionally to counter
the Anglo-centric focus in schools and to help foster a sense of Latino pride in her
children. Both she and the other mothers cited acknowledge the power of the English
dominant context in which they live (McCollum 1994, Potowski 2004). They
recognize that for Latino children who are born and grow up in the U.S., learning
Spanish is a challenge, one that they worry may also affect their pride and status as
Latinos in the U.S. and chose enroll in dual immersion in an attempt to counter these
narratives.
Like Latino immigrant families, the desire to have children speak Spanish was
tied to both a pride in the Latino culture and desire to maintain their heritage and fears
about protecting children from stigma in the Latino community for not speaking
Spanish. Middle class parents relayed that having children speak Spanish would

51
facilitate communication with family members who did not speak English, spoke
limited English or lived in their family’s country of origin. Marisol, a second-
generation mother and teacher, explained:
I just couldn’t imagine them growing up not being able to
communicate with my family because my parents are-- they speak
English, but very limited and I still have a lot of family in Mexico and
I just couldn’t see them not being able to communicate. I still go visit a
lot to my family in Mexico and I just wanted them to be able to have
that connection with them.

Marisol feels Spanish is needed to maintain family connections between her parents
and children. Moreover, because she has the legal status and resources to visit family
living in Mexico, she wants her children to be able to community with family there
when they visit. Monica, second-generation mother, shared similar motives:
My family mostly speaks in Spanish. Everyone she knows speaks
Spanish. I want her to be able to have fluent conversations with them.
It's very different to be respectful with someone in English than to be
respectful with someone to Spanish. In English, everyone is the same.
In Spanish, you have certain words that show respect. I want her to
know that and I want her to have those conversations with other
people.

She added:
I wanted to put my daughter in that school because I wanted her to
keep her Spanish. I have a lot of family members that don't know how
to speak Spanish or read Spanish. It's just really embarrassing. I didn't
want that for my daughter because I know she knows how to speak
Spanish.

Monica illustrates the importance of Spanish ability for maintaining familial
relationships but also reveals the negative perceptions of Latinos who do not speak

52
Spanish. Not only does she think this is “embarrassing,” she chose to enroll her
daughter at Samuelson in order to shield her from the same stigma she holds against
these coethnics. Another mother and teacher, Sandra, shared:
My Dad doesn’t speak very good English. I want her to communicate
with her dad’s family in El Salvador. My daughter communicates very
nicely with her grandmother when she comes and there are a lot of
little cousins in our family that don’t know how to, they don’t speak to
her very much at all. They just hug her and walk away from her
because they don’t have that language as a connection.

Sandra, a second-generation mother and teacher, shared that for her, Spanish was a
means to connect with her Mexican grandmother who primarily spoke Spanish when
she was growing up and stated, “I want my daughter to be able to connect with her
family like that, and it’s part of who she is.” Sandra viewed Spanish as vital to
maintaining connections with extended family who did not speak English well and
those living outside of the U.S. Sandra continued:
I think she has a look, too! A lot of times, you assume someone speaks
a language because you see them and then it turns out they don’t and
it’s like, “I want my kid to match that assumption.

Sandra’s understanding of the connection between her daughter’s phenotype and her
language abilities are very similar to those expressed by Latino immigrant families
and show how Latinos of all generations experience racialization (Vasquez 2011,
Golash Boza 2006). Sandra believes having her daughter speak Spanish will protect
her from the stigma of not speaking Spanish in the Latino community. Her comments,
akin to those cited by Latino immigrant parents, demonstrate that looking “Latino”
comes with a set of cultural and racial expectations that occurs regardless of

53
socioeconomic background and is recognized by both immigrant and native-born
parents.
Previous work on the Latino middle-class finds that middle-class Latinos
often straddle heterogeneous class contexts and maintain relationships with poor kin
and coethnics (Agius Vallejo 2012). This pattern holds true for the middle-class
Latinos in this project, many of which were second-generation and did not grow up as
a part of the middle-class. Because many had grown up in working-class families and
had only recently achieved some upward socioeconomic mobility via college
credentials and work as white-collar professionals, they were well aware of the
disparities between contexts and viewed bilingualism and Samuelson as a way to
teach children to navigate between them. Ruben, a middle-class father, was sharing
his opinion on the class divisions at the school when he shared that he felt he
occupied a unique position at the school, as he was seen by “both sides, both
communities-- the Hispanic, lower income class and then the Anglo speaking,
middle-class -- as a bridge between the two as I'm a native Spanish speaker.” Ruben
continued to explain:
I came here as an immigrant and my parents, we all worked really hard
and I was able to get an education and so I made it into the "middle-
class." I'm educated. But then I also, I was illegal here for six years
and I did a lot of manual labor with my family. So I understand and I
saw that. I lived that life. And then now I'm living a different life
which is, I was fortunate enough to get an education like I said, and
become a professional and have work and be better paid, etc. And so
then I relate to the educated, Anglo sort of speaking section of the
school, and what I realize is that it's difficult to belong to both, because
it's almost like, you know, the groups want you to define yourself as
one or the other, and not kind of float back and forth. And I always

54
tried to. I never wanted to define myself as one or the other because I
feel very comfortable with both.

I'm comfortable at a park, at a picnic, I'm comfortable at a party, you
know, eating shrimp and drinking champagne and so I didn't have to
belong. I didn't feel like I had to just be in one or the other, and it's
funny because some parents would be like, hey are you going to the
birthday? So-and-so's birthday at the park, and if you are, I'd like to
come with you. This would be an Anglo speaking family that was
going to step into a Hispanic party with a piñata and a soccer game and
barbecue, and they wanted to go but they wanted to kind of come with
me because they felt like, well if I'm with you, I'm in. Not that there
was ever any evidence that they wouldn't be welcome but I think there
was a comfort level, and they felt if I was there, I could bridge some
sort of gap between them and the Hispanic community.

I've [also] found myself at parties, up in the Palisades or Brentwood, at
a fancy house with a big pool, and seeing how the Hispanic families
would sort of, it wasn't their comfortable environment. They were
there, they were invited, but they felt a little bit like, wow, this is not
where I belong, this is not my world. And so I was hanging out with
them, trying to make them feel like it’s no big deal, we're invited here
and this is our world for now.

But I always have this, I understand that it's difficult…difficult to
make that leap, and to say, I'm going to feel comfortable here even
though this is not the world that I live in, and…this is the rich people's
world, it's not my world. And so, even though we all try to mingle and
coexist, there's always a little bit of a divide, there's always a little bit
of a gap.

Ruben is a now a successful entrepreneur and shared that for his own daughter,
speaking Spanish was enabling her to successfully navigate these distinct worlds just
as he had. Ruben shared that bilingualism to him, meant “an ability to live within two
worlds that normally don't mix” and in enrolling in immersion, “you gain the insight
of the language as well as the cultural understanding, then you're comfortable in both,
and you can move back and forth between the two and not feel awkward.”

55
Previous scholarship finds Latinos use language as a symbolic boundary to
draw distinctions among themselves and knowledge of Spanish is perceived as a
marker of authentic ethnic identity (Bedolla 2003, Ochoa 2000, Ochoa 2004, Jimenez
2010). Middle class Latinos realize Spanish language ability is critical for children to
have access to the “world” of immigrant coethnics, and seek to guarantee them entrée
via bilingualism. In line with previous research, many immigrant and native born
parents held negative opinions of Latinos who did not speak Spanish and believed
enrolling their own children in immersion would protect them from this stigma in the
Latino community. Moreover, Ruben and other middle-class Latinos seek the
diversity of being around coethnics, many of which are working-class and being in
school with middle-class and affluent families in order to foster in them bicultural
identities and teach them to be competent in each. Because Ruben feels he can serve
as a sort of cultural broker (Lee 1998, Agius and Lee 2009) that facilitates
interactions between these communities, he wishes the same for his daughter.
Middle-class and affluent whites
Like all of the parents at the school, middle-class and affluent white parents
spoke about the benefits they believed bilingualism could reap for children. No
parents in this study gave only one reason for enrolling children in immersion and
white parents often mentioned the importance of learning multiple languages, how
Spanish was practical given the unique Latino majority context in Los Angeles and
how it enabled children to learn how thrive in diverse environments. Yet, learning
another language, was also perceived as a benefit for the academic development of

56
children and white parents were the most likely to talk about the benefits of
bilingualism for the brain. When I asked Grayson, a white father, why he chose to
enroll his son in immersion, he replied:
We know that research shows that having a second language is
actually good for the brain, as far as intelligence goes in other areas. In
academic achievement, also it staves off Alzheimer's and what have
you. So there are a lot of benefits to having a second language.

He continued:
For learning Spanish, in my opinion, from the reading that I've done,
the research that I've done, the program that they have established is
one of the best in the country, and possibly one of the best in the
world. Based on research from Fred Genesee and people like that, to
Lambert and Jim Cummins, and people like that. I mean, looking at
language development and strengthening people's languages at the
same time.

Grayson, like many other parents in this population, commonly cited studies on
bilingualism showing the benefits for the brain development of children. These
comments are important because they were distinct to this group and show how the
positions they occupy outside of Samuelson are reflected in the motives they give for
selecting immersion. Like all parents in this study, white middle-class families
wanted to provide children with the best education possible. However, these parents
had the know how and resources to not only research the best practices in education
for children but also had a wider range of choices for them. Allison, a self identified
white mother from the United Kingdom, concurred: “I think there's been a whole
wave of information about children who study bilingually doing well in all subjects
and I think that's one of the main reasons that the English-speaking population

57
apply.” Allison believed in bilingual education and dual immersion so much that she
rented a home she knew would allow her to have the Samuelson as her home school.
When I asked to verify is she moved for the school, she replied “Oh yeah, we moved.
Absolutely. What's more important than your kids' education? Nothing. There is
nothing more important than your kids going to the best school you can pick.”
Allison’s was able to make the choice to move to the area because she had the means
to rent a home in an expensive area and thus pursue her conviction that this was the
best education for her child.
The challenge of learning another language was attractive to parents who
understood Samuelson as a type of gifted and talented program for native English
speaking, and mostly white students. Holly, a white mother, had lived in DC for
several years before moving her family to California. During our interview in her
spacious home, she shared her frustrations with public education and the difficulties
she had in terms of finding programs she felt were rigorous enough for her children at
both Samuelson and other public schools In D.C.:
Unfortunately the curriculum at Samuelson is not exciting. I remember
one time he was showing me, at a back to school night... stuff they've
done. He was really excited to show me. I was almost crying, because
it was so not anything. It was just depressing...they do a lot of
worksheets, it was stuff that wasn't as creative and as meaningful. I
think he was happy to be showing it to me, but there wasn't as much
there. The language acquisition is what out weighs that. The language
acquisition.

Holly believed that learning another language was a built in challenge for her son,
and that the advantages of learning Spanish were enough to keep him in a program

58
she did not find particularly exciting. Later, Holly explained that in terms of
language, “if you study it as a young kid, you will learn it.” She shared her older son
had studied Japanese in high school, but had not been able to master it because he
began to learn it as a teenager rather than in elementary school. Holly wanted her
younger son to master Spanish and believed it was the perfect time to learn a second
language because “you don't have competing interests” like “orchestra, or band, or
drama, or computer whatever, or athletics, or whatever.” Holly, Grayson and many
other middle-class white parents enrolled in Samuelson because learning a second
language and having children in the context of immersion provided an added
academic challenge for children and was in line with increasingly popular research
showing the benefits of speaking more than one language for your brain. This
perception was exacerbated by the principal and other school employees who referred
to the school as a gifted and talented program for English speakers during school
tours, often referencing the high test scores of English dominant students relative to
the scores of similar students in nearby monolingual schools.
For middle-class parents, however, the desire to provide children with the best
education possible was tempered by the expense of private schools in the area. While
the families had more resources available for children, Samuelson was a practical
alternative to private schools for families with multiple children. April, a white
mother married to a French man, explained that she wanted to have her children
speak French. Though they had spoken French at home since their birth, and their
oldest daughter had gone to a private school with French instruction but when her son

59
started school, they “realized we couldn't really sustain two children in private school
so she came to Samuelson.”
Practicality was an important reason white parents enrolled children in
Spanish/English immersion. As noted above, because it is a free public school,
Samuelson served as an accessible alternative to private schools. But, more often,
parents mentioned the practicality of speaking Spanish in a majority Latino Los
Angeles. Kelly, a white mother, shared that she believed everyone should speak a
“foreign language” and shared:
I think in this country, especially in this state, everybody should be
bilingual and speak Spanish in addition to English because of the
population…I feel that Spanish is more useful and I also feel like if
you learn it, you're going to be able to keep it up because there's so
many people here who speak Spanish.

Michelle, a white middle-class mother, described her own upbringing in Boston,
where she did not know many people who spoke Spanish despite the population of
people of color and contrasted that with the upbringing her children were having in
California. She felt Spanish was the most “helpful” language to know whilst living in
California for both herself and her family:
I just run into so many people that if I were able to speak Spanish, first
of all its fun to speak another language, but in my work I come up with
a lot of contract workers, contractors, sub-contractors and house
keepers and gardeners and I would just love to be able to make sure
that we each were clear on the other persons intentions.

Michelle’s comments showcase the inequalities between her and the Latinos she most
often interacts with in her everyday life—these disparities are further discussed in

60
Chapter 3. But for now, we see how Michelle, Kelly, and other white parent’s
motives do not necessarily reflect a blurring of boundaries between Latinos and
whites where they feel they are more similar to each other. Instead, these motives
illustrate the recognition of a changing California by white families and the hope that
Spanish language ability will prepare their white children to navigate this new
context.
Exposing children to diversity and people of different racial/ethnic, class and
linguistic backgrounds was one the driving motives white parents chose immersion.
Though middle-class Latino parents mentioned diversity as a benefit, and working-
class Latino parents said they enjoyed the multicultural aspects of the school, they
were less likely to cite this as the primary reason they enrolled in Samuelson. Tyler, a
white middle-class father, explained:
I think it's great for her to be exposed, I think it'll make her more
confident in life. To have any latent fears, you know, people naturally
have more fears of the unknown, and I just think this will help her, not
so much interacting with Hispanic people, but just in life in general.
To be thrown into an environment where so many kids there didn't
even speak English…it’s great. I like culture shocks. I just thought it
would be a good experience for her.

Tyler believes exposing his daughter to an environment where she is not a part of the
majority will incite growth for her and impede fears of racial/ethnic others. Culture
shock is a term typically reserved to describe extreme feelings of discomfort or
unfamiliarity. While Tyler thinks “culture shock” is good for his daughter, his use of
this term and comments shows how white parents perceive Latinos as distinct from
them and though they do not share negative attitudes towards them, they do not see a

61
loosening boundary either. Ashlyn, a white mother and nurse, also wanted her
daughter to be around “difference”:
I work in a community where it's so diverse. In fact, when we travel
we had a stop over in Denver and we get off and you automatically
notice the difference. There's not one person of color anywhere. I'm
Caucasian so I shouldn't feel awkward about it, but I do. I need to feel
like I'm in a community of people that come from different places to
really share and enjoy what life's about in the world, right? [My
daughter] needs to learn about other people and where they come from
and how to get along with different people.
Ashlyn enjoys the diversity she experiences in Los Angeles and feels her daughter
should be competent in similar settings. The use of “diversity” and praise for
environments with Latinos and working-class families was common among white
middle-class parents. Previous work has examined the differences between working-
class and middle-class parenting and finds that middle-class parents exercise a
concerted cultivation approach whereby parents structure children’s lives with a
variety of organized activities like sports and music lessons (Lareau 2003). More
recent work on class and parenting argues that in addition to structuring the activities
children participate in, parents also consume “the social contexts through which
children travel—neighborhoods, schools, day care and camps” (Pugh 2009, p. 178).
In her own work, Pugh finds that affluent African American parents in particular seek
experiences of difference for their children by having them interact with both lower
income coethnics and majority white spaces. Pugh terms this exposed childhoods, but
cautions that they are not totally integrated and can be problematic, as “low-income
people become sources of lessons learned and not relationships” (p. 210). In the same
way, most parents in this population viewed Samuelson as a space to have children

62
see and be in the presence of racial/ethnic others and few were intentional about
integration, segregation or racial injustice.
11

Conclusion
This chapter illuminates how parent motives vary by race, nativity and class
and reflect the distinct experiences of Latino and white families in the larger social
structure. Despite the hostility towards bilingual education in the U.S., all parents in
this study seek dual immersion education for their children because they believe
bilingualism is an advantage that will yield personal and professional opportunities in
the future. Yet, upon closer examination, the motives Latino working-class, middle-
class Latinos and middle-class whites give for enrolling in Samuelson reflect their
resources and power.
Some assimilation scholarship argues a shared interest in Spanish by Latinos
and whites indicates a lessening social distance between them (Alba and Nee 2003,
Linton and Jimenez 2009), but this chapter complicates this work by showing how
these parents do not see a blurring of lines. Instead, parents want children to learn
how to successfully navigate “two worlds” they deem disparate from each other and
part of the attraction of Samuelson is to expose children to racial/ethnic, class and
linguistic difference. This is evinced in parent’s’ comments about having children
know that not all people were like them and giving examples of difference and
“culture shock” rather than cultural similarities or “sameness.” This desire is most
pronounced among white middle-class parents, who see seek diversity and the context

11
See Chapter 5 for a discussion of parents who viewed immersion as a strategy to counter
racial inequality.

63
of immersion at Samuelson as a tool to help children thrive in what parents deem a
globalizing world. While all parents mentioned enjoying multicultural activities at the
school and the diverse student population, middle-class and affluent parents are able
to use the language of choice and seek these settings for children to consume because
they have the means and know how to access these experiences. In the following
chapter, we examine how these motives shape family interactions on campus and the
effects of voluntary, regular interpersonal contact between Latinos and whites at
Samuelson.

64
Chapter 3: Renegotiating New & Old Boundaries with Symbolic Integration
Even though we all try to mingle and coexist, there's always a little bit
of a divide, there's always a little bit of a gap. It wasn't fully integrated.
The two halves of the dual immersion experience were never really
completely integrated. There was always a little bit of, it's like oil and
water-- you can shake it really hard and they mix, but then if you let it
sit for too long it will separate because it's just different densities.
-Ruben, middle-class, Latino father

The election of President Barack Obama in 2008, coupled with the increasing
representation of people of color in the public eye and media, have led many to ask if
we are living in post-racial America. Yet, in 2014 exit polls, many Americans did not
believe that these changes were helping race relations in the U.S.—only 20% of those
polled believed race relations had improved in the past few years and 40% believed
they stayed the same. Moreover, about 38% of those polled believed they had
worsened (NBC News). Protests in Ferguson over the police shooting of Michael
Brown, continued calls for comprehensive immigration reform and the continuing
segregation in our nation’s public schools have likely affected these perceptions and
remind us that racial inequality remains a reality in America (Krogstad and Fry 2014,
Gandara and Contreras 2009, Alexander 2010) despite increasing racial/ethnic
diversity.
The growth of the Latino population is a major driver of this demographic
change. Currently, Latinos account for 16% of the population and this percentage is
29% by 2050 (Taylor and Cohn 2012). In Los Angeles, the site of this study, Latinos
are 47% of those in the city and 37 of those living in California (Taylor and Cohn

65
2012). Given these demographic changes, and the increase of multiracial
communities in the U.S., it is important to examine the race relations between
racial/ethnic groups and how these may affect stratification between them. But, what
characterizes race relations between Latino and white families in integrated spaces
like Spanish/English immersion programs? And, how do interpersonal interactions
between Latinos and whites affect inequalities between them?
In this chapter, I analyze everyday interactions between Latino and white
parents at Samuelson Elementary. Though literature on dual immersion speaks to the
potential these programs have for creating cross-cultural friendships among students
(Christian 1996, Cazabon, Nicoladis, and Lambert 1998, Freeman 1998, Christian,
Howard, and Loeb 2000, Lewis 2003), the role of adults has been largely overlooked
(for an exception, see Linton 2004). Analyzing parents’ role at the school is important
because it is parents who decide to enroll children in immersion and because, unlike
students, parents are not regulated to interact with each other in the classroom by
teachers. Building on existing scholarship on race relations (Dovidio et al. 2003,
Dixon and Rosenbaum 2004, Pettigrew and Tropp 2006, Dixon 2006, Ellison et al.
2011, Laurence 2013), I argue that the absence of negative racial attitudes does not
preclude racial stratification between racial/ethnic groups. Sustained regular contact,
a shared goal of bilingualism, shared class status and the absence of negative racial
attitudes does not ensure lessened stratification between Latinos and whites. Rather,
relations between Latino and white parents at Samuelson were characterized by
politeness, but they were fleeting and parents engaged in what I designate symbolic

66
integration. Symbolic integration encompasses interactions that are enjoyable,
voluntary and additive for those in power. Symbolic integration is mostly superficial
and while this integration exemplifies lessened prejudice and positive racial attitudes,
it does not challenge inequality or stratification between Latinos and white families.
Previous Research
Interracial Contact and Its Effects
Previous studies on race relations argue that contact between racial/ethnic
groups can yield positive patterns and lessened prejudice, and some have argued that
contact increases perceptions of competition and threat between groups that can
produce conflict between them. Theories focusing on conflict between racial/ethnic
groups generally argue that threat or perceived threat results from competition for
access to resources and power (Blumer 1958, Bobo 1983, Bobo and Zubrinsky 1996).
In group position theory, for instance, groups have strong understandings of where
they feel they should be in relation to other groups and conflict arises when groups
feel their position is at risk (Blumer 1958). Existing studies using group position
theory argue the U.S. has a fairly clear cut racial hierarchy that places African
Americans at the bottom and non-Latino whites at the top, and that symbolic racism
remains even when “realistic” conflicts no longer exist (Bobo 1983, Bobo and
Zubrinsky 1996). These racial hierarchies are reflected in Black-white relations and
multiracial contexts, with groups who feel most alienated and oppressed most likely
to see other racial/ethnic groups as threats (Bobo and Hutchings 1996). African
Americans, followed by Latinos, are most likely to see other groups as competitive

67
threats, and whites least likely to feel threatened, presumably because of their
continued dominant position in the racial hierarchy of the U.S. Moreover, whites
perceive Latinos as less threating than other racial/ethnic groups like African
Americans (Dixon and Rosenbaum 2004).
Other literature on race relations focuses on the positive outcomes that
intergroup contact may yield. Intergroup contact theory broadly argues that contact
between racial/ethnic groups can lead to diminished prejudice and a reduction in bias
(Allport 1954, Dovidio et al. 2003, Pettigrew et al. 2011). Allport (1954) outlined
several conditions needed for contact to diminish prejudice towards the subordinate
racial/ethnic groups (i.e. racial minorities), including a shared socioeconomic status,
shared goals, contact by choice rather than force and that racial/ethnic group
interactions take place in supportive and collaborate environments. Recent studies
highlight how these prerequisites can facilitate contact between groups but not all
conditions are necessary for lessened prejudice to occur (Pettigrew et al. 2011). For
instance, though most studies examine how shared socioeconomic status can aid
contact between racial/ethnic groups, shared status as minorities can also facilitate
relations between racial/ethnic groups like African Americans and Mexican
immigrants in the South (Jones 2011). Studies specifically on the relations between
Latinos and other racial/ethnic groups find that personal contact can lessen prejudices
about Latinos as a group and positive interactions are more likely to occur when they
share a similar socioeconomic standing (Dixon and Rosenbaum 2004, Ellison et al.
2011). These type of interactions, however, are less frequent as Latinos are

68
overrepresented in low wage work (Catanzarite and Trimble 2008) despite their
growing presence.
A growing minority population and presence of people of color may increase
the threat felt by the superordinate group with more power (Oliver and Wong 2003)
and increase prejudice between racial/ethnic groups (Schlueter and Scheepers 2010).
Conflict may also occur between subordinate groups who must compete for access to
resources like employment (Lee 2002, Oliver and Wong 2003, Vaca 2004, Foley
2010). Recent studies showcase how contact and threat occur simultaneously and how
contact can serve as a buffer to lessen perceptions of threat that increase as
demographic changes take place at the macro level (Laurence 2013). Yet, even as the
nation becomes increasingly racially diverse, challenges remain, as coexistence
without interaction is possible (Valentine 2008, Ellison et al. 2011).
Finally, self-selection bias, or the idea that those who are least prejudiced
towards other racial/ethnic groups are most likely to have contact with other
racial/ethnic groups, limits the generalizability of contact theories (Pettigrew et al.
2011). This limitation directly links racial attitudes and prejudice to behavior and
interactions by illustrating how those with more prejudiced racial attitudes are likely
to avoid contact. This linkage, however, does not address the changing nature of
racism and ideologies about race in the U.S. Colorblindness, or the idea that race is
irrelevant, is now the prevailing philosophy and claiming a racist identity is no longer
socially acceptable (Bonilla-Silva 2006).

69
Parent Interactions
Parent interactions at Samuelson Elementary were mostly courteous between
Latino and white parents of varying socioeconomic backgrounds. Parents were
friendly to each other and greeted each other in the hall, at events and made small talk
in between dropping off or picking up children. In interviews, parents of all
racial/ethnic backgrounds spoke of the feeling of community and family at the school
and cited diversity as one of the reasons they enjoyed being a part of Samuelson. For
instance, Eva, a Latina immigrant mother, explained:
You will find everything here—Latino, American, African
American…there is even Japanese people here. That is why I like
Samuelson…it is very, how do they say? Umm multicultural and you
will find everything here.

Vanessa, a U.S. born Latina, concurred, “there is undocumented, citizens, and
professors and doctors. So you have economic diversity. You also have cultural
diversity with economic and social diversity, so it’s diversity rich school and that
can’t be faulted.” Eva and Vanessa, like many other parents, acknowledged the
differences in social status, race/ethnicity and language present and believed these
were a positive asset to the school. Spanish “doms” is a localized label for Latino
immigrant families which signals language preference, along with immigrant status
and working-class background. Not all Latinos at the school are immigrants and not
all immigrant Latinos are working-class, but because class, racial/ethnic background
and nativity are closely correlated among families at the site, they are often conflated
in everyday life.

70
While parents and Samuelson employees evoked the language of family and a
tight knit community to describe the school, interviews and ethnography
demonstrated a more complicated pattern. Interactions between Latino and white
parents were polite and friendly, but they were also fleeting and rarely transcended
the school. Most parents participated in segregated parent organizations, had
friendship networks with families of the same race and class background and rarely
spent time with their “diverse” counterparts outside of the school. Though parents of
all backgrounds spoke to the benefits of diversity, polite interpersonal contact did not
lead to meaningful connections outside of Samuelson nor did it shift power disparities
between Latino and white families at the school. That is, the absence of negative
racial attitudes and a positive outlook on diversity did not impede stratification
between Latino and white families.
I argue this occurs because the contact experienced by the majority of Latino
and white families in the context of immersion is symbolic integration. Symbolic
integration refers to surface level interactions between racial/ethnic groups that are
polite and are based on three factors: interactions must be voluntary, enjoyable and
additive. Symbolic integration complicates literature on race relations by
demonstrating how the absence of intergroup prejudice and negative racial attitudes
are not always correlated with lessened racial stratification. Symbolic integration
allows racial/ethnic groups to experience contact with other groups and make claims
about increasing tolerance and the benefits of diversity, whilst allowing dominant
groups to engage in behavior that maintains the existing power distribution in place.

71
Here, I first describe the characteristics of symbolic integration and analyze how this
type of contact fails to challenge inequality between Latino and white families.
Symbolic Integration as Voluntary
During interviews and ethnography at Samuelson, parents of various
racial/ethnic and class backgrounds talked about the diversity of the student
population as a positive asset of the school. In interviews, I would ask parents why
they interpreted this as a benefit and many would respond that Southern California
was already a racially diverse context and that enrolling children in immersion would
expose them to “different” kinds of people. These narratives are significant for two
reasons: they illustrate how parents choose to actively seek diversity by enrolling
children in schools that are not necessarily in their own neighborhoods, and they point
to how racial diversity does not mean racial integration. Despite the significant and
growing population of people of color in California, intense racial segregation
remains (Orfield et al. 2011). In fact, today, public schools are more segregated than
in the past, particularly for Latino students (Gandara and Aldana 2014). Parents who
value diversity and seek this for their children are also showcasing how, despite living
in Southern California, the “exposure” to different types of people might not occur
sans intervention.
Contact in symbolic integration is voluntary because those engaged can opt in
or out of interaction. Of course, the degree of choice varies among parents with
different levels of power and resources. While most parent interviewees cited
enjoying the diversity of the school, only those who were middle-class or affluent,

72
talked about actively seeking this context for children. For those who have the power
and resources to seek or avoid interracial contact, symbolic integration allows them to
plug in and out. That is, participants can easily take a break from intergroup contact
by returning home to their largely segregated neighborhoods, spending time with
same race and class peers outside of Samuelson and participating in mostly
segregated parent organizations at the school.
The Parent Teacher Association, or PTA, was open to all parents at the school.
Yet, general organization and executive board members were almost exclusively
English speaking, white women. Latino immigrant parents occasionally attended PTA
meetings but would sit off to the side, rarely spoke and none of the Latina immigrant
mothers interviewed identified as PTA members. The majority of Latino immigrant
parents involved in parent organizations at the school were members of the English
Learners Advisory Council, or ELAC
12
. In one instance, before a morning PTA
meeting, Diana, a Latina immigrant mother, came into the library and sat down while
parents talked amongst themselves. When she saw Gloria, a U.S. born Latina, she
asked her in Spanish:
Diana: What is this meeting? This isn’t ELAC? I want to go to those
meetings.

Gloria responds: No, this is a PTA meeting.

Diana: Oh, and what is that? This is for the Americans then? And
ELAC is for the Latinos?

12
ELAC is mandated by law for schools with a certain percentage of English Language
Learners.

73
At the time, Gloria was the only U.S. born and bilingual Latina mother on the
executive board of the PTA. Gloria was taken aback by the comment, and scrambled
for an answer. After a few seconds, she told Diana neither meeting is for Americans
or Latinos, but that the PTA is for everyone and the English Language Advisory
Council (ELAC) is for parents who have children learning English. Diana’s confusion
about the meetings highlights how segregation between Latino and white parents
persists even within integrated contexts like Spanish immersion. Moreover, her
assumptions about the composition of the PTA and ELAC were common among
other parents –many parents believed these organizations were for different
racial/ethnic groups or believed language was the main reason for the separate
organizations despite available translation services. Some white parents did not know
ELAC existed and like Heather, a white middle-class mom who told me, “I don’t
really know much about them or what they do there,” many did not know the purpose
of ELAC.
This separation was also evident in parent volunteering at the school, where
white middle-class mothers were often in charge of meetings and charging entrance
fees for events, U.S. born Latino parents typically served as translators and Latina
immigrant mothers were responsible for food preparation and serving food at events.
Rosa, an immigrant mother, explained “most of the time, it’s not all of the Anglos that
help make the food, the majority of the time they buy the food or we feel that they do
the computer work or papers and we do the work by hand.” When I asked her why,
she told me she did not like paperwork, but that perhaps it was because “it has always

74
been like that.” The internal segregation of these organizations on campus limits the
interactions and relationships Latino and white parents can build to polite but
superficial ones, as parents can easily plug into or out of interracial contact on
campus. These types of interactions do not challenge the discrepancies between
groups—for example, the mostly white PTA decides how to allocate fundraising
funds even though ELAC also fundraises for the school.
The voluntary aspect of integration between Latino and white parents is also
evident in their ability to return to segregated occupations and homes in segregated
neighborhoods. Because Samuelson functions as a school of choice, many families
enrolled are not living near the school. Grayson, a white middle-class father,
explained how building community was difficult because “parents don't live all right
in the neighborhood very close to school like in some of the neighborhood schools,
many of them drive to get here, so it's not like everyone lives really close together.”
Samuelson is embedded in a changing neighborhood. Described by middle-class
parents as a formerly “sketchy” part of West Los Angeles, gentrification has led to
increased rents and property prices and lowered percentages of people of color.
Grayson described his own neighborhood next to the beach:
We really like our neighborhood. There's great restaurants, and if my
wife and I want to have a date, we can just walk and not have to worry
about driving ourselves back. That's been really convenient for us, I
guess. It's relatively wealthy, not maybe wealthy as other parts, but it's
relatively wealthy.

JM: What about racially/ethnically?

75
Grayson: It’s pretty white, pretty wealthy, but I mean our next-door
neighbor's Black. We have Black people in our building, there are
Spanish families in our building, so there's a little bit of diversity, but
predominantly in our neighborhood it'd be white.

When I asked him to described the Samuelson neighborhood, he talked at great length
about the gang activity in the area, a shooting that had occurred that year and how
“there's more poverty, some more social issues in the area.” He spoke about the
gunman in the shooting and continued to describe the area:
There are a lot of homeless people, so when we go to the park,
sometimes it's great, and sometimes we don't feel safe. It's kind of
between. It's not horrible, but it's not the most comfortable place, and
yet on the other hand, we also appreciate that diversity, and appreciate
being able to have our son in a neighborhood that is not exactly like
us. So we prefer living in a slightly safer neighborhood if you will, but
then being around an area that is a little different than him.

Grayson exemplifies the voluntary nature of symbolic integration: he can take his son
to play in an area that is different enough that he can learn from “others” but has the
resources to opt out when he goes home. But, the voluntary quality of symbolic
integration is not equally accessible to all families—those who have fewer resources
cannot easily leave certain neighborhoods or spaces to avoid contact when it becomes
tiring or feels unsafe.
The voluntary quality of symbolic integration between Latino and white
families was also evident in the friendship networks among parents and children.
Participants reported spending time with Samuelson families outside of school for
play dates, extracurriculars and leisure, but these activities were mostly with same
race peers. Claudia, a Latina immigrant mother, for example, explained the majority

76
of her friends were other Latinas:
In reality, want it or not, I think that Latinos, well they always become
more familiar with Latina moms and Americans amongst themselves.
Because the Americans also get together for play dates and things. The
Latinas in this case, we don’t have much money to pay someone to
pick up the kids and so we become friends and we help each other by
picking up the kids.

Claudia added that many American parents picked up children for karate or
swimming lessons, which she could not afford. Her comments demonstrate the
separation of parent networks at the school and show how the constraints of class
inequality shape these patterns. Cross-racial interactions between parents were
friendly and respectful, but these did not usually become long-term friendships that
transcended the campus. Evan, a white middle-class dad told me that the language
barrier between some parents limited his ability to interact with Spanish monolingual
parents but assured me it was “still friendly, hand gestures or whatever, "hi."
Language was a real barrier for some, but this does not explain why the same patterns
held with U.S. born and middle-class Latinos who were English dominant. Parents
noted the exception was birthday parties for children where they often invited most, if
not all, of the class.
Both teachers and parents believed language was the main divider among
children’s friendship networks. One father shared explained:
He plays with a cross-section of different kids, but the kids who are
predominantly Spanish I think he ends up playing with a little less.
The people who are culturally much more different than him? He likes
them, he'll play with them sometimes, but they're not his main
friends…there ends up being a natural separation that way.

77
The justifications of language as a primary factor for divisions between Latino and
white families, by both teachers and parents, are problematic, as the same patterns
hold for English speaking Latinos at the school. Moreover, once they learn English,
all students prefer to speak English during recess at both Samuelson and in other
studies of bilingual children (McCollum 1994, Valdes 1997, Potowski 2004, Palmer
2007). Language serves a proxy for race and class that helps conceal the racial/ethnic
separation on campus among both parents and students. The overall patterns between
Latinos and whites in neighborhoods, friendship groups and parent organizations
illustrate the voluntary quality of symbolic integration and elucidate how these type
of interactions and an overall positive view of racial/ethnic diversity do not
necessarily lessen stratification.
Symbolic Integration as Enjoyable
The second characteristic of symbolic integration is that contact between
racial/ethnic groups is enjoyable. Middle class, white parents interpreted contact
between Latino and white parents at Samuelson as fun and exposure to Latino
immigrant families was mostly pleasurable for them. Parents cited enjoying the food
available on campus events and learning about Latino holiday celebrations like the
Day of the Dead. The annual Fall Festival, based on Día de los Muertos, is the
school’s largest event and requires a great deal of preparation and volunteer labor
from parents who must help prepare altars, decorate and make tamales to sell along
with other foods and drinks. Heather, a white middle-class mother, describes the
preparation:

78
I think it’s just where everybody wants to be there and volunteer so
when it’s time to make tamales you have people who don’t speak any
English or people who don’t speak any Spanish (chuckle). Everybody
is, you know, chucking or mincing meat and corn and making
whatever and putting it together. Making all the paper flowers. For
weeks and weeks and weeks, there’s a group of women who sit down
and may or may not be able to speak to each other just making these
beautiful paper flowers together.

When I asked Heather how this went, she told me that they “just kind of sit
there and smile.” Despite this, she felt it was a great experience and did not think
anyone was excluded. Previous studies have shown how “heroic-folkloric” culture, or
the celebration of Latino food, holidays and heroes are implemented in schools but
more subtle cultural norms are harder to incorporate into institutions (Flores 2015).
In the same way, these parents enjoy the fun and festive cultural activities that come
with an immersion school with a significant Latino population. Heather’s comment
demonstrates the complexity of bringing parents together to interact and how these
efforts cannot ensure extensive communication between Latino immigrant parents
who primarily speak Spanish and middle-class whites whose first language is English.
Being in the presence of each other may provide exposure for parents to individuals
of other racial and ethnic backgrounds, but proximity does not guarantee the quality
of this contact. In her interview, Heather also talked about the socioeconomic range at
the school:
One of the other amazing perks of being at Samuelson, every walk of
life and everyone is the same at Samuelson. So you could be in the
Philharmonic or working at Trader Joes and everyone is the same.
Kids treat each other the same. There is no socioeconomic hierarchy
from what I can tell, everyone is sweet to each other and they’re all
sort of a Samuelson experience, it’s not an “other” experience.

79

She later added, “everyone loves that it’s different. From my perspective, they have
fun.” Heather recognizes the economic disparities at the school but does not think
these matter among children and does not believe they leave anyone feeling
ostracized. Because race, class, and nativity were closely correlated for the groups at
my site, comments about working-class and low-income families were also about
Latino immigrant families and school administrators verified that white working-class
families were “very rare” at Samuelson. Like Heather, Tyler was aware of the “big
gaps” between families:
It's just interesting, talking with some mothers who are in some cases,
a maid at a hotel, you know, "oh and what do you do?" "Oh well we're
lawyers." You know, it's kind of a big gap. Then there are some
people…they're part of the movie industry or something. It's just kind
of interesting, but it's more of just an interesting thing. I haven't seen it
manifest.

Tyler noticed the “big gap” but did not believe this led to “clique-ishness or anything
like that” with parents or with kids. Heather and Tyler’s comments show how for
middle-class, white parents, interactions with Latino immigrants are enjoyable at best
and benign at worst, despite the sizeable economic disparities. Parents knew of and
acknowledged these differences, but rarely referred to them as inequalities or
referenced the power disparities between themselves and other families at the school
and in the larger context of Southern California.
Latino parent narratives challenged the idea that “everyone is the same” at
Samuelson and demonstrate how class diversity and interracial contact may not be the

80
same level of “fun” for all involved. Contact or coming together at events like the
Fall Festival increased the salience of these “big gaps” to Latinos. When I asked
Lilian, a Latina immigrant mother, to describe Samuelson parents she responded, “I
see that the Americans, most of them have careers and us (Latinos), we are
babysitters, housekeepers and some that are still studying.” Dulce, another Latina
immigrant mother, shared how she believed immersion was good for her kids but
knew that her kids were “limited” in comparison to American parents because “those
kids have always had the resources to pay for additional classes and programs.”
When I asked her if she thought this was apparent at the school, she replied: “yes,
very much yes.” None of the Latino immigrant parents I interviewed referred to
exposure or learning about these differences as fun. Contact between Claudia and
white mothers may be enjoyable for some, but these interactions also make less
privileged parents aware of how parents with greater financial resources can afford
activities for children and the limits for their own families.
In one instance, I attended the famous tamales making session a couple of
days before the fall festival. I arrived and helped old and young women cut chile and
whilst preparing tamales, the women talked amongst each other. Most of the
volunteers were Latinas who were speaking in Spanish, but as time passed, white
mothers also joined the event. As these mothers prepared tamales, they began to talk
in Spanish about the variations in tamales by country when a young, white, teenage
girl and former Samuelson student joined the group. She chimed in, saying she was
familiar with different types of tamales because her “babysitter and housekeeper

81
makes those kind of tamales, she always uses the banana leaves, she makes them for
us sometimes.” Her comment led to silence and tension in the room. Her comment
made the occupational hierarchies between parents more salient via interaction and
illustrates how class based inequalities seep into campus. In another instance, during a
Valentine’s Day celebration, a group of parents and I were eating and chatting when
Shelly, a white middle-class mother, commented how much she loved pupusas and
that she was lucky to have them because her housekeeper would occasionally make
and bring them to her house. No one responded, but her comment pointed to how
Shelly regularly interacts with Latina women outside of the school and the clear
status difference between her and her employee. Contact theory would predict that
unequal positions of power between working-class Latino immigrants and middle-
class whites would challenge their ability to connect and possibly result in conflict
(Dixon and Rosenbaum 2004). Tensions between these parents did occur, but rarely
resulted in overt conflict, and instead relationships between these parents were
characterized by symbolic integration.
Theories on interracial contact would also predict shared class status, along
with a shared goal of bilingualism and sustained contact, would facilitate relations
between middle-class, mostly U.S. born, and middle-class whites (Dovidio et al.
2003, Pettigrew and Tropp 2006, Dixon 2006). However, while these parents were
mostly bilingual and thus more easily able to navigate Samuelson as an institution,
tensions existed between them and whites. Tensions hinged on their disjointed
perceptions about the significance of race, the role of Latino immigrant families at the

82
school and middle-class Latinos tried to align themselves with Latino immigrant
parents in subtle and overt ways. In one instance, Isabel, a middle-class Latina,
pointed to the tamales prepared by the white women for the Fall festival
disapprovingly and proclaimed “estos gringos…” (these white people) to a group of
Latina immigrant women. Isabel was dissatisfied with their work, but also used this
disapproval to exercise a racial/ethnic boundary she imagined would align her with
other Latinas despite socioeconomic differences. This was common among other
Latino middle-class parents, who cited helping immigrant parents with translations
and information about various bureaucratic processes.
Tensions between middle-class Latinos and whites occasionally developed
into conflict. This friction is best illustrated by the disagreements and heated
exchanges resulting from a PTA sponsored comedy fundraiser featuring Carlos
Mencia. Carlos Mencia is a Latino comedian who is known for his crude humor and
is criticized for his jokes about minorities, particularly Latino immigrants. He was
contacted by a Samuelson parent in the entertainment industry to serve as headliner
for a comedy event fundraiser sponsored by the PTA. The PTA and district school
board approved fundraiser was to take place at a local high school and was expected
to bring in approximately $25,000 for Samuelson. As news spread about the event,
some parents were excited about the possibility of raising money, while others felt it
was inappropriate to host Mencia, as he is known to make disparaging jokes about
Latinos, immigrants and Mexicans in particular--a large proportion of the school’s
population. The event was cancelled the day of and middle-class Latinos were at the

83
forefront of the cancellation efforts. Though Mencia’s racially charged and
disparaging comedy affects they ways Latinos of all socioeconomic standing are
viewed, one U.S. born Latino mother believed it would offend immigrant families
and contradicted efforts to be “inclusive and respectful” at the school.
white parents were offended that their fundraising efforts were considered
racist and most did not believe race was a relevant factor. Michelle, an affluent white
mother, shared that the event was cancelled because “PC”
13
people got involved and
were saying a “white principal and the white PTA at Samuelson are bringing in this
man who is going to insult Mexicans. You know, he really played the race card.”
Heather, a middle-class white mom, shared:
I just don’t get it. I think it’s just drama for drama’s sake. I don’t care
what you’re saying is your issue, I don’t care if your pulling a race
card or if it’s because your poor or it’s because your rich, poor little
me, I don’t buy into it at all. So when they would say that, I was just
like “yeah, I’m white. What are you?” but there was so many non-
white people on that board that were bilingual that I don’t even know
how they could say that in good faith.

Heather continued, “I’m white. I’m the minority at this school. I’m blond and Irish,
hello?” She was frustrated to hear cries of racism from middle-class Latinos because
she felt whites were the minority at Samuelson. Previous work argues that the
presence of white middle-class families at urban and often disadvantaged schools can
further marginalize families parents of color and working-class parents by privileging
middle-class norms of parent involvement (Posey-Maddox 2014). Though Heather
interprets the significant Latino population at the school as a kind of shield against

13
Politically correct.

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racism and feels she is the “minority,” she overlooks how white parents and families
may have more power despite their smaller numerical proportion. Heather also
perceives their concerns as individual problems rather than systemic ones, stating
they were “just biting an old wound, picking at the scab, because no matter what you
did they would always find something, and it had nothing to do with race (chuckles),
it just had to do with who they were.” Similar to Bonilla-Silva’s (2006) participants,
Heather and Michelle minimize instances of racism to justify racial inequality at the
school.
In symbolic integration, interactions between racial/ethnic groups remain
pleasant and when these relations are not pleasant or enjoyable, participants retreat in
order to avoid facing uncomfortable situations. Various parents noted how middle-
class Latino and white parents fought with each other and recounted that relations
between them worsened. Moreover, despite efforts to advocate for immigrant
families, none of the immigrant mothers interviewed knew about the disagreements or
the event—further leaving them at the periphery of decision making at the school.
These less than pleasant interactions highlight how a shared class standing does not
render race irrelevant at the school. Instead, instances like this illustrate the
distinctness of symbolic integration that is enjoyable and not necessarily driven by
concerns of social or racial justice and how less than pleasant interactions can lead to
increased division.

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Symbolic Integration as Additive
Symbolic integration does not lessen stratification because interactions are
superficial and only increase when contact between racial/ethnic groups is pleasant.
As the Mencia event illustrates, interaction lessens when it makes participants
uncomfortable and despite a shared goal of bilingualism, regular contact and shared
class status for some, the power inequality remains and reproduces at the school.
While white families are the numerical minority at the school, the largely white PTA
has the power to distribute fundraising moneys, make decisions about programs at
Samuelson and white students fare better academically than Latinos. The final
characteristic of symbolic integration is that interactions are additive for those in the
dominant position—in this case, white families. Although most parents believed
personal contact with “others” had the power to lessen prejudice and make the world
a better place in an abstract sense, the contact that occurred between Latino and white
families at the school often highlighted the existing privileges of whiteness and
exacerbated them.
These privileges were evident when parents explained their motives for
enrolling children in dual immersion. When I met Frank, a middle-class white father,
before a parent meeting on campus, he asked me what I was studying. After
explaining my project, Frank went on to share that he enrolled his children in
Samuelson because one of his sons is “brilliant,” so he wanted to ensure his son was
challenged in his education. He went on to explain that he reasoned learning another
language would provided a challenge for his “super talented” son without the expense

86
and elitism of a private school. Another white parent explained, “this ends up being a
gifted program…and Caucasian children in the school actually score higher than the
other schools around, which are some of the best in the city.” All parents believed
speaking two languages would yield increased educational and labor market
opportunities in the future, but middle-class and affluent white parents repeatedly
explained that learning Spanish and dual immersion was an added challenge for their
already well performing students with access to good schools. School administrators
shared these perspectives. During a tour for prospective parents, the principal
described Samuelson as the “best gifted and talented school in town for English
speaking students” and compared its test scores to other high achieving, monolingual
schools in the district.
For these families, immersion and learning to speak Spanish is an extra that
may aid students in distinguishing themselves from other good students in the future.
No white, middle-class parents interviewed expressed concerns about the education
their children would receive if Samuelson did not exist. Enrolling in immersion posed
little risk for their child’s education and in this way, immersion and the contact it
provides was additive for their families. Moreover, while some parents viewed
Samuelson as a “shabby” school relative to other primary schools in the area, they
had the means and information to supplement gaps in their children’s education with
after school tutoring and extracurricular activities. For example, Michelle shared:
You know, he really played the race card and when it comes right
down to it, my kid doesn’t need reading support—I’m working my ass
off on the PTA to raise money for academic intervention that my child

87
doesn’t need. You can accuse me of whatever you want but my kid is
not going to suffer.

Michelle was visibly upset recalling how she was called a racist after the Mencia
event. She explained how difficult it was for her to navigate these accusations and
that she subsequently decreased her involvement with the PTA. Because most parents
are aware that white students outperform Latinos at the school, Michelle does not
need to explain that the students who do need the academic support are of Latino
origin. Michelle is well aware that her choice to participate with the PTA and help
with fundraising does not threaten her own child’s schooling. This was not the case
for many Latino immigrant families who traveled from all over Los Angeles to seek
better schooling for their children. As an example, Dulce, a Latina immigrant mom,
obtained district permission to exit the Los Angeles Unified School District and spent
an average of 3 hours driving each day to get her daughters to and from Samuelson
because “education here is much better than there.”
Having children learning Spanish at Samuelson was also additive for white,
middle-class families in their everyday interactions outside of the school. White,
middle-class parents commonly shared that learning Spanish was “handy” and
practical. One white, middle-class parent shared that his kids were excited about
Spanish because “they see the application because in L.A. there are a number of
people who just speak Spanish, like the people who, construction or the people who
clean our buildings. They see a number of workers all around who speak Spanish,
they hear it on the streets as we're walking.” In a majority Latino city, knowledge of

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Spanish becomes a useful tool for white, middle-class children to interact with a
diverse population. Of course, this parent’s reasoning also demonstrates how this
family typically interacts with Latinos outside of Samuelson and the wide gaps in
their occupational status and prestige. Other parents concurred that Spanish was an
added bonus for children studying in particular occupations. Suzanne, a white middle-
class mother and teacher at the school, explained how it benefits her daughter:
Spanish is an added benefit in the hospitality, tourism management.
Spanish has come in awfully handy when she works in kitchens, you
know, which was just a bonus, you know. It was nice when she’s been
doing internships and stuff. It comes in awfully handy.

Suzanne’s comments reflect the occupation inequalities between Latinos and whites,
where Latinos are overrepresented in low wage work (Catanzarite and Trimble 2008).
For these children, Spanish is additive because they do not face expectations to be
bilingual in Los Angeles despite the significant Latino population. For Latino
families, both immigrant and later generation, Spanish/English bilingualism is not
additive in the same way because they simultaneously face expectations to be fluent
in English and to demonstrate their ethnic authenticity by also Speaking Spanish
(Garcia Bedolla 2003, Jimenez 2010).
These racialized expectations were elucidated when parents spoke about the
pride children felt and praise they received for speaking both languages. White
families shared experiences of strangers and outsiders complimenting their children
when speaking Spanish at restaurants and in other quotidian activities. Kelley, a
white middle-class mother, provides an example:

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I would always say to the waiter or the bus boy, or the person behind
the counter “you can speak to him in Spanish, please just talk to him in
Spanish.” They would always say sort of the cursory thing, once in a
while you would get someone who would just be rambling on, talking
(chuckling) and he would be answering him and they would be just
amazed.

The majority of white parents and some African American and Asian parents
view bilingualism as an “extra” skill and these findings are in line with previous work
that shows how praise for bilingualism is higher for non-Latino children (Valdes
1997, Potowski 2007). In sharp contrast, no Latino parents cited similar words of
praise for their own children from strangers, only their own pride in their children’s
ability. Carla, a Latina immigrant mother, relayed “[my husband and I], we are both
happy and my two sons are both happy and we like that they are learning both
languages.” The gap in positive affirmations for bilingualism for children by those
outside of their immediate families does not mean Latino students were less talented
or capable. Instead, it speaks to the power of racial hierarchies that shape perceptions
of bilingualism so that white bilingualism is interpreted as an achievement to be
acknowledged, and Latino bilingualism one to be anticipated.
Parents in a position of power also benefited from symbolic integration.
Interactions between white, middle-class parents and Latinos were additive for them
because it aided them in constructing an identity that was “interesting” and the
knowledge they gained about Latino cultural practices made them feel special relative
to other whites. Valerie, a white, middle-class mother shared:
I get to know so many people and so many people bring their own
crafts and skills from their own background and we learn how el Dia

90
de los Muertos is approached in Peru, Oaxaca, and different states. We
learned about these bariletes, big kites of Guatemala and so we like to
make them together. I always learn something new.

Learning about the cultural practices of Latinos of different countries was something
Valerie enjoyed and which she believed was an asset to her life. Another parent and
teacher, Donna, shared that she had learned so much about food and different recipes
that she was now well trained in how to make tamales. Lisa, a Latina teacher’s aide
and I were talking to Donna during recess for her class and she told us she would go
“somewhere in South Central” and get the dough. She told us how there were “all the
little women, tiny women there” and her as she laughs and gestures that the women
were only as tall as her chest. After this, she shared that the women were making fun
of her and asking her things like “and you, güera
14
? What are you doing here? You
don’t know anything about masa. As she is telling the story, Donna exerts a pride in
being able to navigate a situation that might make other white parents uncomfortable
and brags that the women let her cut to the front of the line.
Donna and Valerie have gained skills in interacting with Latino families at
Samuelson, and presumably in other parts of Los Angeles, that allow them to
construct identities they deem as unique. This is not to say that Latino families did not
learn about white families’ lives, but rather, to note how this learning is embedded in
a larger societal context that places English above Spanish and expects the cultural
assimilation of Latinos to white, middle-class norms. The above examples show how
symbolic integration between Latino and white families at Samuelson is additive for

14
Spanish slang term for Anglo women, literally “blonde.”

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those in power because contact does not pose risks to their own culture, does not
lessen their access to resources or lead to stigma. Rather, this contact and the cultural
knowledge gained from it allows those in power to gain praise for their bilingualism
and yields in the construction of a unique white identity.
Conclusion
Previous research on interracial contact posits shared class status and a
common goal, such as bilingualism, improves race relations between groups (Dovidio
et al. 2003, Dixon and Rosenbaum 2004, Dixon 2006, Ellison et al. 2011). This study
cannot test interracial contact theories with the available data, but it does engage and
complicate previous literature by qualitatively showing how contact manifests in the
everyday lives of Latino and white families. I find that for parents in this study, who
have chosen to enroll children in bilingual and diverse environment, race relations are
overall positive according to both Latino and white families. Mostly working-class
immigrant Latinos and middle-class Latinos, along with middle-class and affluent
whites, reported enjoying the diversity of the school and found interactions pleasant.
This chapter, however, demonstrates how relations between mostly middle-
class whites and both working-class and middle-class Latinos are polite and courteous
in everyday life, but they rarely lead to relationships that are meaningful and
transcend the campus. Interactions between immigrant Latinos and whites were often
less tense than those between middle-class Latinos and whites, as middle-class
Latinos attempted to advocate on behalf of immigrant parents and whites perceived
these efforts as divisive and unnecessary. But, despite these tensions, parents engaged

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in a symbolic integration that allows those in the dominant position to engage in
voluntary, enjoyable and additive interactions with racial/ethnic “others” while
maintaining the existing power distribution. Symbolic integration also allows those in
the dominant position to take pride in valuing diversity and seeking exposure to
racial, cultural and socioeconomic “differences” while impeding them from
interpreting these gaps as inequality.
The context of immersion, which explicitly valorizes the Spanish language
and provides regular interpersonal contact, along with the families that self-select to
have children in a diverse environment represents a type of best-case scenario. Yet,
findings illustrate how symbolic integration does not lessen the institutionalized
racism that continues to benefit white families and these families do not disengage
from behavior that capitalizes on these advantages. The findings in this chapter
illustrate how the absence of negative racial stereotypes does not guarantee lessened
racial stratification. Although parents at the school do not express negative attitudes
towards racial/ethnic “others” or explicitly share prejudices about each other,
stratification persists and racial difference is reified via the racialization of the
Spanish language and the use of class and language labels as proxies for race. Though
a numerical minority, white parents maintained power at the school via leadership
positions in parent organizations, white students outperformed Latinos academically
and these families benefitted from Spanish/English bilingualism in distinct way that
was not available for Latino families. Ultimately, this work reminds us of the
complications in measuring stratification, much of which is the result of

93
institutionalized racism, in the behavioral practices of individuals embedded in a
larger societal context where colorblindness is normative. Next, chapter 4 delves into
the patterns of interactions between Latino and white students at Samuelson
Elementary.

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Chapter 4: Integrated Classes, Segregated Recesses

The first day I came to observe and help with Mrs. Bonilla’s third grade class,
there were files, books and educational toys all over the small classroom. She had just
transferred rooms and because of the upcoming construction of a new school
building, was instructed not to worry about decorating the temporary space she was
allocated. Despite this, Mrs. Bonilla had hung examples of cursive letters on the wall
and papel picado streamers on the ceiling. Her desks had assigned seating indicated
by student name tags arranged into clusters of six and were integrated by gender. Mrs.
Bonilla was Mexican-American, very light complected, tall and wearing a huipil with
embroidered flowers. Because it was the first day of school, Mrs. Bonilla allowed
students to play a series of name games before asking them to return to their seats to
copy “the rules.” Students were to illustrate examples of the classroom rules:
“respetar a mi mismo, respetar a otros, respetar al ambiente” (respect myself, respect
others, respect the environment). As I walk around to help students think of
examples, Declan, a white boy with light brown hair and blue eyes asks me to help
him think of an example for self-respect. I suggest he think of things he is good at and
he opts to draw himself playing basketball. In the same cluster of desks, Jose, a
Latino boy with dark brown hair and eyes is drawing a picture of how to respect
others by not hitting them.
Declan and Jose sit near each other in Mrs. Bonilla’s classroom but they live
in vastly different worlds. Declan’s parents are a part of the entertainment industry

95
and travel regularly to France, enabling Declan to learn multiple languages. Their
socioeconomic status also allowed them to host surfing themed birthday parties for
Declan at the beach, complete with wet suits, boogie boards and surfing instructors.
Jose, on the other hand, was carefully monitored during my time in Mrs. Bonilla’s
class, as he was experiencing significant changes at home. During back to school
night, Jose’s mother shared that she was struggling at home because Jose’s father had
been deported the week before and she was no longer working as she was nearly eight
months pregnant. Moreover, Jose did not know why his father was gone and he and
his siblings believed he would return home after a visit to see his grandmother.
That Jose and Declan attend the same school and share a classroom is a rare
occurrence in the U.S. Although school segregation was declared unconstitutional
following the 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education case, and outlawed in California
following the Mendez vs. Westminster School District case in 1946, segregated
schools remain the norm. Recent studies find that students of color at the present time
are likely to attend hyper segregated schools (Field 2013) and in places like Los
Angeles, segregated schools remain despite large demographic shifts and a growing
Latino population (Orfield et al. 2011). Latino students, in fact, are currently the most
segregated student population in the U.S. (Gandara and Aldana 2014). Given these
larger structural patterns, what do we know about the interactions between students
like Declan and Jose within integrated settings like dual immersion programs?
This chapter addresses everyday interactions between diverse students at
Samuelson within and outside of the classroom. I argue that while the parents and

96
teachers at Samuelson value diversity and attempt to incorporate it into the
curriculum and school culture regularly, the tensions between diversity and their
acceptance of all differences as “equal” limits their ability to address inequalities at
the school. Moreover, while teachers ensure that students of varying racial/ethnic,
class and linguistic backgrounds work together in the classroom, they cannot do the
same for student interactions during play time and outside of school. Instead,
divisions between Latino and white children during unstructured time at school and
outside of campus highlight how children perceive and assign status to particular
social categories, despite parent claims of racial and class innocence. These patterns
demonstrate that even among younger generations that are educated in integrated
settings, boundaries between them remain.
Previous Research
Student Experiences in Dual Immersion
The majority of research on dual immersion focuses on the efficacy of
programs in achieving bilingualism and student academic achievement. Contradictory
to early studies that connected bilingualism to mental deficiencies, numerous studies
find that students of both language backgrounds are able to handle learning two
languages at once and do well academically in dual immersion programs (Christian
1996, Cazabon, Nicoladis and Lambert 1998). While these programs vary in
instruction models, target languages and teaching approaches, common goals include
proficiency in two languages, high academic achievement and an environment of
positive cross-cultural learning (Christian 1996).

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Perhaps because many dual immersion programs draw high levels of
racial/ethnic diversity, previous scholarship on dual immersion takes a celebratory
note in speaking to the potential of positive intergroup contact between students of
different racial/ethnic and linguistic backgrounds (Cazabon et al. 1998, Christian
1996, Freeman 1998, Christian et al. 2000). Yet, mixed findings indicate there is
terrain left to explore. For example, while some scholars claim that friendships among
immersion students do form across racial/ethnic groups (Cazabon, Lambert and Hall
1993, Christian 1996), other scholars come to opposite conclusions. In her work on
race in schools, Lewis (2003) finds that voluntary interactions between diverse
students in immersion were rare. Instead, teachers at the school were aware of the
separations between students and felt the need to intercede in order for the diverse
student body to “coalesce.” These mixed findings leave us wondering about the
extent and character of interactions between diverse students and thus, the ability of
immersion to foster cross-racial and cross-cultural connections for children.
Moreover, in acknowledging the racial, class and linguistic diversity within
immersion programs, scholars have also acknowledged the importance of the relative
power each of these categories attribute to families within immersion programs. In a
comparative study of two dual language immersion programs, Scanlan and Palmer
(2009) examine the role of the role of race, class and disability in immersion and find
that while immersion programs often strive for social justice,
15
they do not always

15
They list “bilingualism, cross-cultural appreciation, and academic success for
Latino students who are typically underserved in schools” as social justice goals (pg.
4).

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address non-linguistic dimensions of diversity such as race, class and disability. They
advocate that these programs should explicitly address race and class so that they do
not solely “serve the needs of the dominant” (p. 22). These concerns echo Valdes’
(1997) work highlighting the power disparities between Latino and white students in
Spanish/English immersion programs. Valdes (1997) recognizes that learning in two
languages can benefit Latino and white students, but cautions that immersion benefits
white “mainstream” children in a different way –as they reap different rewards and
have different levels of power.
In terms of power and language, studies in linguistics find that while students
speak both languages in the classroom, both native Spanish-speaking Latino students
and native English speakers resort to English during “down” time or time that is not
supervised by a teacher (Potowski 2004). Potowski (2004) argues that language use is
tied to investment, which is developed in part to recognition that languages derive
different material and symbolic resources. As students learn that they live an English
dominant society and perceive English as the language of power (McCollum 1994),
they develop a preference for speaking English. Other scholars echo these findings
(Freeman 1998, Valdes 1997, Palmer 2007). Only some scholars explicitly state that
the U.S. is both an English dominant and white dominant society. This
acknowledgment is critical, as languages, and the value ascribed to them, are
inextricably connected to the value we place on their speakers. Palmer (2009) makes
this connection clear and contends that while white, middle-class interest in
immersion may serve to elevate the status of these programs and the Spanish

99
language overall, English speakers demonstrate a symbolic dominance in the
classroom. Though some scholars have called on immersion programs to challenge
the lower status ascribed to language minority speakers (Cummins 1998), in this case
Latinos who speak Spanish, immersion programs do not prevent economic, language
and racial inequalities from seeping into campus and it is in these large social
contexts that student interactions are embedded.
Celebrating Diversity and Difference
Teachers, administrators and select parents were not blind to the racial, class
and linguistic diversity at Samuelson, nor did they attempt to perpetuate
colorblindness in the classroom. Instead, learning about different Latino cultural
practices and those of other cultures from around the world was a part of everyday
life at the school. School assemblies, books in classroom libraries, food at special
events, music around the school and bulletin boards were full of examples of diversity
and multiculturalism at the school for students to see and experience. The following
ethnographic vignette illustrates this environment:
As I walked into the Samuelson lunchroom with Mrs. Campbell’s
kindergarten class, Principal Martell is at the front of the room with a
microphone welcoming all of the students. Behind her sit eight painted
portraits of racially diverse women. Later she would explain that
fourth grade students completed these art pieces and each represented
a woman who changed California history for Women’s History month.
She then explains that they will be learning about and celebrating
Cesar Chavez because of his work for justice, especially for
campesinos, and also about the women whose portraits are behind her.

The theater teacher, who prefers to be called by her first name, Ana,
comes forward with kinder students and tells the student audience they
will begin with a poem in Spanish titled “Viva Cesar Chavez”:

100

Viva Cesar Chávez
Luchaste por los pobres
Las niñas y los niños
Marchaste y marchaste
Para la justicia
¡A todos les enseñaste!

Live Cesar Chavez
You fought for the poor
Boys and girls
You marched and marched
For justice
You showed all of us!

Everyone claps and within a few seconds the entire lunchroom is
chanting “Cesar Chavez! Cesar Chavez!”

The fifth grade class follows with another poem in Spanish about
Cesar Chavez, praising his leadership and activism and everyone claps
after their performance. Principal Martell talks briefly about the refrain
“si se puede” and then goes on to instruct students to switch hats to
speaking English.

She tells them the women they will be talking about all worked “for
justice, justicia, for equality” and then asks the crowd to raise their
hand if they are a woman or a young woman. After we raise our
hands, she tells the boys this is very important for them too stating
“boys you are also super important, but in March we focus on women
in history.” Principal Martell then explains the definition of abolish
and suffragists to the students before introducing the portraits of
women like Sor Juana Inez de la Cruz, Eleanor Roosevelt, Judy Baca,
Dolores Huerta, Susan B. Anthony, Yuri Kochiyama and others. The
fourth grade class then comes and presents a short biography of each
of the women represented in the paintings. After about 30 minutes,
Principal Martell concludes the assembly and reiterates to students
each of the women in the paintings were “activists and being an
activist means to work hard on behalf of something, to work to change
something.”

Mrs. Campbell’s class is among the first dismissed and we walk out in
a line out to the classroom. As we get close to the room, Mrs.
Campbell tells the students it’s recess and they can leave for lunch. As

101
I walk closer, she smiles and says “shoot me,” gesturing a shooting
gun with her hand to her temple.

Mrs. Campbell, and older white teacher, did not enjoy the assembly preceding the
Cesar Chavez celebration. It is possible that it was too long, or that she did not
believe it was necessary, but her reaction to the performance illustrates an important
tension at Samuelson—that is, the tension between celebrating diversity and teaching
inequality. While Principal Martell and the theater teacher incorporated a discussion
of justice and social change while talking about women who have changed California
history, it was often the case at Samuelson that these attempts were interpreted as
inconvenient or too time consuming. Instead, the majority of teachers incorporated
diversity in a more celebratory manner. This meant including Latino foods at
meetings and back-to-school nights, music during festivals and imagery of Latino
icons like Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta. This type of cultural representation in
the classroom resembles that covered by Flores (2015), and which she categorizes as
“heroic folkloric culture.” For example, Nadia, a U.S. born Latina mother explained
how she saw teachers incorporating Latino culture on campus:
Some teachers love rock en Español and so you have these
predominantly European American, Anglo-Saxon teenage girls singing
rock en Español because Maestra Quiñonez introduced them to all
these rock en Español bands, you know? I think that’s interesting. I
think that’s unique, but it wouldn’t happen if this teacher was not
trying to penetrate these students consciousness on another level, you
know? For them to learn about Cantinflas, for them to understand rock
en Español and so forth.

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Cantiflas is an iconic Mexican comedian and actor who was the protagonist in
numerous comedies in the mid twentieth century. Nadia believes that exposing
children, in this case young white girls, to music in Spanish and to famous Mexican
comedies is a deliberate act by teachers who value these cultural practices. In her
work on Latina teachers, Flores (2015) explains that Latino food, icons, music and
celebrations have been instituted in schools across the U.S. following the civil rights
movement, but are mostly symbolic incorporations of Latino culture (2015).
Incorporating food, music and even film is common among Samuelson teachers and
throughout the school and were not exclusively about Latina culture. For example,
Mrs. Bonilla, a U.S. born Mexican-American teacher and immersion mother,
explained: “we bring in other cultures too. It’s like, so, we now have an Asian-
American group that brings in food to sell for the fall festival. Parents represent
themselves and say, "We want this," which is nice.” Other teachers were also open to
families coming to class and teaching students about the cultural practices for their
own families, including like things like a Chinese family coming to Mrs. Campbell’s
kindergarten class to celebrate the Chinese New Year and teaching students Chinese
characters, or an Irish descent mother bringing Irish soda bread for St. Patrick’s day.
Displays of diversity at Samuelson were also accompanied by praise from
both parents and educators about their love of the diversity on campus. As noted in
chapter 2, almost all parents interviewed noted and praised the diversity at the school.
For instance, Valerie, a white mother, explained:
We were concerned about [the diversity] too, we were like--would a
family, would kids with two moms, is that going to be a problem? But

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there are a lot of diverse families there, a lot of kids being raised by
their grandparents, single parents, there are several families that have
same sex couples, men or women as their parents. So I think that adds
to the diversity and there’s a real comfort level there, people feel really
comfortable there.

Valerie felt that the presences of same-sex parents and GLBT families at the school
added to the diversity of the campus and increased her own level of comfort in having
her children attend Samuelson. Moreover, Valerie and other parents interpreted
diversity at anything that made families unique or that was not the “norm”—including
having two moms or a family that did not otherwise have a mother and father
“traditional” family formation. When I asked Mrs. Bonilla if diversity was a part of
her teaching, she explained it was daily part of her teaching and echoed Valerie’s
perceptions:
[It’s important] because we're living in, we're not living in a
homogeneous setting. You're going to be exposed to a lot of people.
Even with my kid yesterday, she was saying, "Does everyone have a
dad, Mom?" because it was Father's Day. I was like, "You know what?
You know, yeah, kind of, because you need a dad in order to be born."
I didn't go into depth on that, but I also told her, "But then after that,
the raising of a child, some", I said, "You know Stacey, her friend,
she's got two Moms," and I said, "You know, Steve and Richard, they
have two dads, and blah-blah-blah just has one mom. The dad left, and
blah-blah-blah lives with her. Heidi, she lives with her grandpa." You
know Heidi from the mountains, you know that story?
She goes, "She lives with her grandpa?" I said, "Yeah, so there's all
kinds of different families." She's going to be in class with all kinds of
different people. She's going to meet all kinds of different people as
she grows up. She's not going to just think, "We're all like this" so,
right, it just makes people more accepting, I think. That's that my
reason why I think that kids should learn about different cultures.

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Mrs. Bonilla, like Valerie, sees the value in exposing her children to people who are
“different” and this can mean being around families that are not of their own
racial/ethnic group, families from a different social class or those families who have
two mothers. Yet, this acceptance of difference and celebration of diversity also
became about other characteristics including things like being from Argentina,
children who were multilingual and students who skateboarded or even children
whose presentation of self was not gender specific.
In her work on diversity in institutions of higher education, Ahmed (2012)
notes that diversity becomes a type of feel-good happy talk in institutions that allow
them to make claims about inclusion. In this way, diversity “can be both attached to
those bodies that “look different” and detached from those bodies as a sign of
inclusion (if they are included by diversity, then we are all included). The promise of
diversity could then be described as a problem: the sign of inclusion makes the signs
of exclusion disappear” (Ahmed 2012, pg. 65). At Samuelson, all differences were
interpreted as diversity and things to be celebrated, as parents and some teachers
believed this approach would positively impact students by teaching them that in all
being “different,” we all are really the same. This rhetoric, however well intentioned,
ignores the real and problematic ways that these differences are created. That is, in
teaching children to interpret racial/ethnic, class and even family formation as simply
choices that make us unique, parents and educators miss the opportunity to teach
children about power and the very tangible problems of inequality between students
enrolled. It also relays a false message that the sheer presence of Latino families and

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working-class families is a reflection of equity between Latino and white families,
particularly to white middle-class and affluent parents. Diversity and talking about the
diversity on campus, then, is a narrative meant to make people happy rather than a
vehicle to help students and families at Samuelson learn about the mechanisms and
processes that create such “differences.” For instance, Grayson, a white father,
explained that he believed his kids did not notice socioeconomic disparities at the
school and shared how he spoke to his sons about finances:
We tell them, "If there's something that you really," we have friends
who have year passes to go to Disneyland and go to Disneyland a lot.
We've been to Disneyland once, so they say "Why don't we go to
Disneyland?" I say "Well, if that's the choice and how we want to
spend our money, we can do that if we choose to spend our money that
way."

So, I think financially it's not a matter of some people are really rich,
some people are really poor, but we choose to spend our money
differently. We have to make different choice than people sometimes. I
don't think that we've emphasized gaps, even some people living in a
house or living in an apartment. We chose to live closer to the beach
instead of buying a house. So, we talk about choices rather than people
who don't have as much, but when we see someone in need we want to
help them, and they know that we have enough to help people.

Later in his interview, Grayson spoke about giving back and teaching his sons that it
was important to help people because of their religious faith. What is interesting in
Grayson’s comment, however, is how he acknowledges the class differences between
his own family and those of other people his children will encounter but opts to talk
to them about “choices.” Grayson does not address the many factors that may limit
these choices, and instead is teaching his sons that choices are the driving force

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between the differences that exist between people. Heather, a white mother, felt that
differences did not matter between kids at Samuelson because:
From what I see on the playground there isn’t an excluding factor so
it’s, I see other kids, my clients’ kids-- they’re either in or they’re out
or they’re an athlete or a geek or a nerd, I don’t see that at Samuelson.
I see kids with long hair hanging out with kids who are really good
with an instrument hanging out with a kid who’s good at soccer
hanging out.

Heather sees “difference” as anything that varies from student to student, including
things like social cliques common in American high school tropes of separations
between students who are popular and those who are not. These type of “differences”
are very distinct from ascribed categories like race and ethnicity and those that have a
significant impact on life chances like socioeconomic class or sexual orientation. The
general acceptance of any difference as diversity at Samuelson is important because it
contributes to the narrative that our differences, things like race or long hair, make us
the same and this diversity should be celebrated. But this leaves little space to discuss
how these differences are the product of constrained choices and larger structural
inequalities.
Like Grayson, many parents and teachers at Samuelson had conflicting ideas
about the importance of race/ethnicity, class and language in the lives of their school-
age children. On the one hand, they wanted children to experience an exposure to
these differences (as shown in chapter 2). But, on the other hand, parents believed
that children were innocent to race/ethnicity and class and did not attribute much
meaning to these categories. Claudia, an immigrant mother, shared that she believe

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the socioeconomic gaps between Latino and white families were obvious at the
school. Yet, when I asked her if this was the case among students, she responded,
“No, I don't think so. And if they do realize, I don’t think they take it into account.
When they are little, for them, it’s simply friendships, playing and having fun and
nothing more.” Claudia does not believe her child, or any children of this age, are
capable of making meaning out of differences at the school. While she acknowledges
they might notice them, she does not think they assign them value. In her interview,
Lana, a white middle-class mother, explained that because she had grown up in a very
homogenous and white setting, she valued the diversity that Samuelson offered her
children. When I asked her if she believed this diversity mattered to her children, she
replied:
My daughter will still say, and I don't feel like it's in a mean way--it's
kind of noticing, it's you know the “Mexican” kids, the “Latino kids
they all like this” or “the African Americans they all like that,” it
doesn't feel like it’s derogatory. It's just kind of noticing there's
differences which I guess there are, you know? But umm… so I feel its
successful, it's not sort of saying somebody's better than somebody
else.

JM: Not hierarchical?

Yeah, no. We all just kind of, there are just different things that people
like and do.

Lana prefaces her comment by stating that her daughter’s actions are not “mean” or
meant to harm other children and, like other parents, she gives conflicting comments
about children’s ability to decipher difference, particularly racial/ethnic difference.
She and other parents commented that children did not care or “at that age, you don't

108
really see, you don't so much distinguish between yourself and other people.”
16
But,
Lana acknowledges her daughter does indeed see the differences and also makes links
between racial/ethnic labels and behaviors. Lana believes that having children
together at Samuelson and interacting is successful because, despite their ability to
notice differences among each other, she does not believe the distinctions they make
are hierarchical. Rather, she, and many other parents, believes that their differences
make them all the same and that the linkage of racial/ethnic labels and behaviors are
harmless because we all like “different” things. The school context in which diversity
is celebrated but differences are all interpreted as equally important contribute to the
sense of “fun” that diversity brings to the school, but this approach leaves limited
space to challenge the individualistic explanations of choice and difference that are
shaped by larger structural factors. These adult narratives of children as racially
innocent and the seemingly benign racial distinctions they make are important to
analyze because they form the context in which student interactions take place.
Seeing Difference and Status
Despite parents’ claims of racial and class innocence for children, it became
clear that students at Samuelson were cognizant of racial/ethnic, class and differences
amongst themselves. Kids used ethnic and language labels and also occasionally used
nationality to denote other’s identities on campus. During my time at Samuelson, I
was never privy to hearing students use explicit racial slurs towards each other in
class or during their unstructured play time but teachers and parents would tell me

16
Tyler, a white middle-class father.

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stories of things that had happened between students in the past. Even after sharing
these incidents, most adults maintained that children were too young to be
intentionally harmful towards other people or to give racial/ethnic or class disparities
any importance. Yet, kids did see and comment about the differences in skin tone at
school. For instance, in the following vignette two Kinder students talk about and
compare their own skin color to each other:
While I am helping another student with the math assignment, Adela
asks me if a crayon is “color carnita” (skin color). It is a pink-beige
color crayon. I tell her I didn’t hear her whole question and ask her to
repeat it. She, again, asks if the light pink color is “color carnita” (skin
color). I tell her I don’t know and ask her what she thinks. She tells me
that it is “color carnita” (skin color) because it is “un color de cuerpo”
(a body color) and then holds it up against her own hand. The crayon
is lighter than her skin but she doesn’t say anything. I ask her who
taught her what the color was and she tells me “mi hermano” (my
brother). She uses the crayon to color where her math page is instead
of doing the equations. She then tells me that “color carnita no pinta”
(skin color doesn’t color) and shows me—you can barely see the mark
of the pink-beige crayon on the page.

She keeps coloring and grabs a brown crayon and says, “café también
es color de cuerpo” (brown is also a body color). She is not talking
directly to Cynthia, or me a friend sitting next to her, but I ask her
“¿si?” (Yeah?) and she says “si, café también es color de cuerpo” (yes,
brown is also a body color). She then says, “es como Cynthia” (it’s
like Cynthia) and the puts the crayon next to Cynthia’s arm. Adela
says “ese es el color de tu cuerpo” (that is the color of your body).
They both look at her arm and then look at me. Cynthia then turns her
hand and tells her that is a different body color too. She is referring to
the palm of her hand. Adela then uses the brown color to draw on her
page and Cynthia continues to do her math.

These two students were between five and six years old. Though Adela did not go on
to mention what the color meant to her, she did notice differences in skin color
between herself and Cynthia and also between the “skin color” crayons available.

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Both girls compare the colors of their own skin to each other despite their young age
and the belief that kids do not see these type of differences, even among students with
a shared Latino origin. These patterns are in line with previous work on children and
race which demonstrates that children as young as preschoolers are adept in noticing
the linkages between race/ethnicity and status and skilled at using these associations
to exercise boundaries with same age peers without adult sanctions (Van Ausdale and
Feagin 2001). While adults talked about kids not being able to create meaning of
these social categories, both parents and teachers provided examples of the opposite
in interviews. For instance, Mrs. Contreras, a Mexican-American teacher and
Samuelson parent, explained how she had noticed kids talking about skin color in her
class:
Sometimes at that age, they want to be something else--like the little
girls who want to get the little blonde dolls, blonde blue-eyed dolls or
even in the beginning of the year when we do our self-portraits and I
have the faces but in different shades. I’ll never forget one of my
students who is a darker-skinned student wanted to pick the really light
shade, and I said, “Put it next to your skin.” I said, “Look, this isn’t
your …” “Does this look like your shade?” “No, but I want that.” I’m
like, “No, this is your self-portrait. This is …”
JM: Did he say why?
He just wanted that. I said, “Why?” Then he just said, “I just want that
one.” I said, “Well, let’s pick one that’s to your shade.” I said, “This
should look like you.” I said, “Your shade is beautiful. You should
make it look like you.” He’s like, “Okay.” I just sometimes I think we
need to go there to talk about that.

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Previous work finds students learn whiteness has a higher social status in the U.S.
(Van Ausdale and Feagin 2001, Lewis 2003, Lee 2005). Mrs. Contreras shared that
she made sure to have crayons with multiple flesh tones in the classroom and
numerous shades of construction paper for students to complete a self-portrait that
would then be displayed on the wall, but providing choices did not always work.
Instead, she noticed that students with darker skin tones often preferred to pick shades
lighter than their skin and her comments allude to her belief that kids like the one
mentioned in the vignette learn that whiteness is superior. Though she tries to tell the
student, who was Latino and African American, his darker skin tone is beautiful, the
student did not seem content with being redirected to a darker colored paper. Mrs.
Contreras’ actions are reminiscent of work detailing how children of African-
American ancestry have less leeway in self-definition and are often perceived as
simply Black (Lee and Bean 2010, Romo 2011).
The assertion that children were innocent to racial/ethnic difference occurred
in two ways: the belief that students did not “see” race as adults did, and the notion
that even if they noticed race, it did not have any social significance to them. Parents
and teachers wanted to believe that children did not care about seeing race and that
they did not know how to tie race, and this specific case skin color, to categories of
status, but their comments illustrated a more complex reality. For instance, Mrs.
Carol, a white teacher and former Samuelson parent, shared that she had not noticed
kids talking about or racial differences. But, later in her interview, she shared how she

112
and another parent had some conflict because her daughter had called the Mexican
origin girl “negra” (black):
One of the Hispanic girls was very dark skinned, and my daughter
referred to her as black. But from a kindergarten point of view she was
just describing the skin, it didn’t, and the mother was just livid. She
confronted me. And you know, “we’re not black,” and you know,
“your daughter’s racist.” It’s like, you know.

JM: What happened next?

They were always a little distant with us, which I thought was
odd…because her best friend through school was Mike, a black kid,
who was just adorable. They’ve been best friends, first boyfriend. So, I
don’t think she’s racist, but I think she was just attempting to describe
her in a kindergarten sort of way. So that was an interesting lesson for
her to try to explain to her that some people don’t want to be called
black.

Mrs. Carol explained how she tried to tell the mother that her daughter was not racist
but was just “trying to describe her skin color, that it had nothing to do with being
racist, and, it was summer, she was very dark, she was Hispanic, but very dark-
skinned.” Mrs. Carol clarified that while she apologized to the mother, she was not
able to mend the relationship. She ended the story by claiming, “she was four and half
when it happened. Give her a break.” Mrs. Carol believed that her daughter was not
being malicious in calling the other student negra (black), but she did share that she
had to explain why the other family deemed the comment an insult. In this way, kids
learn race through interactions with each other, but also in watching adults handle
these “mishaps” where their awareness of difference leads to conflict. Mrs. Carol’s
comment illustrates the contradictions in what parents and teachers say children
notice and their own accounts of how students recognize racial and ethnic differences.

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Students at Samuelson were also adept to class status and their awareness of
socioeconomic disparities revolved around the display of material items such as
iPads, cell phones, brand name clothing and backpacks and other small toys.
Seemingly benign, students would compare their own belongings with those of other
students and in this way locate themselves relative to them. Students would show
each other toys they snuck into class and demonstrate friendships by allowing
particular students to hold them throughout the day. Research on children and
consumption finds that children’s desire for material items and their sharing of
possessions with each other may be more about connecting with peers than about
highlighting differences between them (Pugh 2009, Pugh 2011). In her work in
Oakland, Pugh (2009) finds that children talked about material items and experiences
in order to negotiate social belonging in what she terms economies of dignity. Pugh’s
work is comparative, analyzing how consumer culture operated in both low income
and affluent, and largely racially segregated, communities. Interestingly, the items
children yearned for and talked about in these contexts were largely the same (e.g.
Game Boys or Pokémon cards), but the difference was in how these families used
these items in their everyday lives. Akin to the children in this research, children at
Samuelson Elementary also use items, knowledge about popular culture and
experiences to belong in peer groups at the school. For instance, during group time
with Mrs. Campbell, Gael, a Latino origin-English dominant boy, was playing with a
pearl-like marble. Another Latino, English dominant boy, Brian, noticed the ball and
told him it belonged to Caitlin. Caitlin is a white girl with blonde hair who is English

114
dominant. Brian then yelled out to Caitlin, who was at another table, that Gael had her
ball and asked her if she gave it to him. Caitlin said no and then came over to ask
Gael to show her the ball. Gael did not pay attention to her and Alan, another Latino
boy, jumped in to tell Brian that she gave them to certain people in the class including
him and Gael. Brian told Gael to give it him and Gael responded “never.” Though
this ball/marble was probably inexpensive, Caitlin and the other young children used
it to delineate who belonged in the friendship group. Other times, groups of 2 or 3
friends would wear One Direction
17
shirts on the same day or compare their
Converse lace up boots. In this way, students used material objects like marbles to
outline the inclusion and exclusion of particular students, like Pugh (2009) argues, to
belong in their social worlds.
Trips to Disneyland, Legoland and family vacations also made socioeconomic
disparities between families more salient. During class, Mrs. Contreras, a first grade
teacher, had students write non-fiction pieces based on their own experiences for
“taller de escritura” (writing workshop). Students were given handouts that instructed
them to title their stories, draw a picture for the cover and subsequent pages were
lined for writing. Many students wrote about their summer plans or recent spring
break. For instance, Rosa and Diana, both daughters of Latino immigrants, told me
they would be going to Mexico this summer. Diana said she was going the next week
in order to visit her grandma. When I asked her what she would be doing, she told me
she would be at “el rancho” (the ranch) and playing with her cousins and coloring.

17
One Direction is a popular pop boy band.

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Rosa noted that she was going to visit Santa Ana Yareni, a town in Oaxaca with a
significant Zapotec population, so she could see her mom’s family. Many students
with Latino immigrant parents spoke about seeing family abroad but this, of course,
required a certain level of financial resources, time off from work and the legal status
to leave and return safely. There was a spectrum of class among Latino students, and
several had the means to go on vacations to locations besides their parents’ home
countries. For example, Jorge, a Latino and English dominant student, sat with me
during recess to finish his story for “taller de escritura” and told me about his trip to
Mexico with his mother to the ocean and drew a picture of he and his mother scuba
diving and swimming with dolphins. Other students talked about vacations to
destinations like France or Costa Rica, while some spoke about spending the summer
vacation playing with cousins or other family in town. Sharing these vacations and
out of school activities made class differences between students more noticeable
through interaction. Though the items kids have and talk about at my site are mostly
similar, class markers that allude to the differences between Latino and white students
also exist. For example, Latina girls from immigrant families almost all have their
ears pierced and wear gold jewelry. Some wear only earrings and others wear
necklaces and gold rings or bracelets, while white and Asian girls at the school hardly
ever wear jewelry. In her work, Bettie (2003) finds that class manifests among teen
girls in their aesthetics and style representations. It is possible that gold jewelry serves
as a display of race and class at the school among the mostly working-class and
Latino immigrant families and distinguishes them as a group.

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Students knew about class and were also able to locate themselves relative to
other students and their means. For example, during class in Mrs. Bonilla’s second
grade class, a student asked me how to say blowfish in Spanish. Because I was not
sure, I used my cell phone to look it up on Google translate (a common practice at the
school). As I was using my phone, Brad, a white student, got very animated and
asked me what kind of phone I had. He quickly asked if it was an iPhone 5, 5s or a 4.
I told him I’m not sure, and he assured me it’s a 4. Brad then told me he has an
iPhone 5 at home and that he plays games and calls people. When I asked him who he
calls, he responded, “people who actually have iPhones, my friends who actually
have phones and they are in Florida.” He told me, in front of five other students, that
his father has known the family in Florida for over twenty years. I asked him “do you
call your friends from school with your phone?” and he replied “no, because none of
them really have phones. I even know fifth graders who don’t have phones.” I asked,
“why is that?” and he tells me that “lots of people don’t have phones I guess.” Raquel
and Lety have been listening to us talk and Raquel jumps in telling us that she does
indeed have a phone.
Raquel: I have a cell phone

Brad: No you don’t, what kind of phone is it? Is it an iPhone? I bet’s
it’s not or if it is I bet it doesn’t call. Does it call?

Raquel pauses for a second and continues: Yes, it calls!

Brad: No. It’s like $1,000 and it’s not even in stores.

Raquel: Yes, it does. It’s a Samsung Galaxy.

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Other students in the group remained quiet during this interaction. Brad recognized
that there are differences between him and the other students at the school and used
this as a reason to explain why he did not call them. Moreover, Brad was policing
Raquel’s claims about having a cell phone that has service. In another instance,
during the HeadsUp, Seven Up game, I was standing next to one of the tables when
one little boy saw another’s molars as he yawned and asked “why do you have a gold
tooth?” Ben, the boy who was yawning, replied “they put it on me when I was
asleep.” He then asked him, “oh you have to be really rich to get gold teeth, huh?”
The other boy nods in agreement and they both put their heads down after they are
told to stop talking. Though kids realize that they have different access to things like
cell phones or trips to Legoland, their awareness of class is imperfect.
Finally, kids were aware of the status differences that accompanied Spanish and
English and preferred to speak English during non-regulated instruction time. Both
native Spanish-speaking and native English-speaking students regularly spoke
English during recess and in between formal class time. More importantly, students
seemed to realize that English held a higher status and parents and adults relayed that
many of their children resisted speaking Spanish or sought to speak in a very specific
way. For example, Gloria, a U.S. born Latina mother, shared that her children spoke
mostly English at home despite her attempts to speak Spanish in the house. She
explained that her mother, who only spoke Spanish, spent a great deal of time caring
for her children but even with the added time speaking Spanish, her son would
understand his grandmother and respond only in English: “my son will also answer

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me in English and I know he speaks Spanish.” Other parents echoed Gloria’s
experience by sharing how kids would revert to English any time parents or teachers
were not around. This also happened among native Spanish speaking families:
[With] me, clearly, that is pure Spanish because I do not speak
English. But, sometimes with my husband, my son wants only English
and just English. I would say, “no, speak Spanish. Speak in Spanish to
him.” And here with his dad we try to do only Spanish. Sometimes
when they watch movies they are speaking English because they do not
want to watch or hear movies in Spanish.

They say “no, no, no, no mommy put it on in English.” I say, “no you
are going to watch it in Spanish if you want to watch it, it will be in
Spanish.” “Mommy, but why?” “Because I say you should watch in in
Spanish.”

Rocio, a Mexican immigrant mother, went to great lengths to ensure her native
Spanish-speaking children spoke Spanish at home. She would enforce Spanish only
rules with her bilingual husband, remind kids to speak Spanish with family and with
each other and even went out of her way to provide children with popular movies in
Spanish. When I asked her and other parents why children did resisted Spanish,
many would say they did not know or that they believed it was the easier option for
them because English “is easier for them, I think. They practice it more because at
home it’s only mom and dad. And everything else that is around them is English.”
Other parents suggested that perhaps children had shame or were embarrassed about
their abilities. As noted in chapter 2, Latino and white children receive varying levels
of praise for bilingualism and families make connections about what type of speakers
speak each language. It is likely these perceptions and experiences affect children’s
own patterns of language use in school and at home. For instance, Nadia, a Mexican-

119
American mother, explained her own analysis of the preference for English among all
children at Samuelson:
I was the first one to go to school—college, and my older siblings
married other Spanish speaking, other immigrants, just like ourselves,
and I noticed that with their kids, even with Spanish speaking probably
being the dominant language between the parents, the kids somewhere
along the lines would up pick that speaking Spanish wasn’t cool. I
noticed that with my nephews and nieces and I thought to myself,
where are they getting that? If both their mom and their dad, who they
should idolize and look up to, are speaking the language, prefer to
speak in Spanish because that’s their main language, where are they
picking that up?

She added,

There is this dynamic that happens that somewhere along the line, my
kid, my son picked up that it’s not cool to speak Spanish and so he
wants to speak it with an accent. He wants to speak it with like an
English accent. Like, you know, instead of saying “Tio” (Spanish
pronunciation) he’ll say “Teeeoh” (English pronunciation). Your mom
speaks Spanish, where are you getting that? “Oh ma, you know,” he
starts laughing about it. I said, “that’s not funny to me.”

Nadia struggled to have children not only speak Spanish, but value it in the same
manner she did. Though she acknowledged that teachers at Samuelson do their best to
show kids that speakers of both Spanish and English should be valued, she was
cognizant that her children and other children at the school “picked up” that Spanish
was the language of lesser status and thus did not prefer to speak it despite their
family origin or native language skills. Her comment illustrates the reality that
Samuelson cannot operate in a vacuum and shield students from larger patterns of
inequality and perceptions about Spanish speakers despite it’s attempts to value
languages equally. Speaking Spanish with an English accent, as explained by Nadia

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above, was not uncommon among children and the patterns of language use among
Samuelson students are in line with previous work, which finds that children prefer to
speak English, discern that the English language is the language of power in the U.S.,
and that they live in an English dominant society (Potowski 2004, McCollum 1994).
Friendship Groups and Divided Play
Recall in chapter 3 that many parents claimed to enjoy that their children were
in a space that was full of “difference” and diversity. When I would ask parents if
they had ever noticed any patterns in who their children preferred to play with, most
of them quickly replied that they did not have preferences and played with “all kids.”
Yet, when I would ask parents to describe their children’s closest friends and who
they spent time with outside of the school, most would name children who shared
their own racial and class background. Gender, interestingly, did not seem to elicit the
same reaction from parents and they openly acknowledged that their play groups and
friendships circles were mostly gender segregated.
Interactions among children and the breakdown of children into smaller
play/friendship groups that fall along racial/ethnic and class lines illustrate their
awareness of differences. Though teachers and adults have noted that friendship
groups fall along language lines, students rarely speak anything besides English when
they are playing or working in smaller groups. Students usually break up into these
smaller playgroups during recess or breaks, but their ties are salient in other
classroom activities as well. In one instance, while playing Heads Up, Seven Up in
Mrs. Perez’s second grade class, I noticed that each round of student “pickers”

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selected someone who mirrored them in terms of gender and race/ethnicity. For
example, when Sandy, the daughter of Mexican immigrants, takes her turn, she
tiptoes carefully across the room and silently puts down Diana’s thumb. Diana is also
the daughter of Mexican immigrants and she and Sandy are good friends. Because
almost all of the children select kids within their smaller playgroups, those who are
chosen by the “pickers” figure out who selected them easily. Only a couple of
children selected students who they did not play with regularly and students seemed
genuinely confused when trying to figure out who the “picker” was in these instances.
The formation of smaller groups helps students finds others who have similar
experiences to their own and also limits exposure to peers that have significantly
more or less than them.
These groups are not as salient during formal classroom time, however, as the
structured environment of the classroom (e.g. assigned seats, formal groups, etc.)
guarantees that students will be integrated for at least portions of the day. But,
students noticed racial/ethnic, class and linguistic differences between each other on
campus and despite parent claims about their blindness to status, students played in
mostly same race groups at the school and spent time with mostly same race and
same class peers outside of school. Because of the diversity of the school, and the
integrated setting of the classrooms in which teachers promoted integration between
students, noticing the patterns of friendship and playgroups was difficult. Most often,
students would play with peers of the same gender during recess and most of the time
it would be with students of their shared class and racial/ethnic background. Yet, play

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spaces are not completely unregulated and teachers, along with other employees in
charge of watching children intercede on student decisions regularly. For example, a
group of Kinder girls began to jump rope during a short recess break:
They take turns and are singing in English “ice cream soda, cherry on
top, who’s your boyfriend, I forgot, is it a, b, c…” Mayra and I are
watching them and eventually more girls come to join. After they
switch a few times, Mrs. Campbell comes and offers to turn the rope
for them. She lets two of them jump at a time. She is singing in
Spanish, “la ma-ma-maquina de cocer, la tu-tu-tuya es de tejer, ay
mamá, no voy pa la escuela, porque tengo dolor de muela, ay papa, no
voy pal salon porque tengo sarampión.”
18

After a few turns, Mrs. Campbell heads back into the classroom and
has me turn the rope for the girls. Of the 5 girls there, the 4 that are
jumping are Latina but they continue to sing in English once the
teacher leaves. Each takes a turn while the others are in line next to
Mayra, the teacher’s aide. The other girl is white, and while she
watches, she does not join because she claims she is not as good as her
mom. Another white girl, Elizabeth, runs up to the lien and begins to
talk to the other girls. She then goes up to Mayra and tells us, “Cynthia
is mad at me because she doesn’t want me to have a turn.” Cynthia
runs up, upset and responds, “that’s not true, I didn’t tell her that!” in
Spanish. Mayra then tells Elizabeth to get in line and that she can
jump.

Mayra, one of the teacher’s aide, intervenes on behalf of Elizabeth so that she can
have a turn to jump with the mostly Latina girls. These types of interventions by
teachers, aides, parents and even recess supervisors were not uncommon and teachers
encouraged students to tell adults when they were not being include. Adults also
made it a point to ask students spending time alone during recess to join other groups
and students did not object to these suggestions. These interruptions, while ensuring
students are included in play, also change the course of students’ play and obscure the

18
“La Raspa.” Popular Spanish song used for bailables or dances by students in Mexico.

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divisions between them in the eyes of adults. Divisions between students also made
their way into the classroom, as demonstrated by the following vignette from Mrs.
Contreras’s first grade class:
While helping students with math, I noticed several girls huddled and
playing with something. Raquel was sitting next to Kimmy, who was
trying to finish her math. Raquel is Honduran/Mexican and English
dominant and Kimmy is Asian/white and also English dominant.
Kimmy had a pink pencil case out. At the table next to them, Ashley,
a white girl who speaks mostly English, had the same box and was
playing with it along with a couple of other girls. I asked Kimmy what
the box was and she told me it was a pencil holder. Raquel interrupted
to tell me that it’s a pencil holder but that it holds different things. She
seemed really excited and began to push all of the buttons to show me
the compartments the box had for paper clips, stickers and a pencil
sharpener. I asked them if it is the same one that Ashley had and
Kimmy says yes, that they got them at Disney. Raquel tells me it’s not
Ashley’s and that it belongs to her. She goes to the other table and
takes the box and brings it over to the table with Kimmy.

Raquel tells me that when Kimmy brought hers to school, everyone
surrounded her, that “todas las niñas de Mexico” (all the girls from
Mexico) were around looking at it and she told them she had the same
one. She continued, telling me that she brought hers in after “y no me
creían pero ahora lo ven” (they didn’t believe me but now they see). I
ask her why she thinks they didn’t believe her and she says she does
not know. She tells me everyone surrounded Kimmy but not her. I ask
why she thinks that happened and she tells me she is not sure. Kimmy
interrupts and tells me that she thinks it’s “because I brung it first” and
then shrugs her shoulders.

The “Mexico” girls that Raquel is referring are almost all U.S. born daughters
of Latino immigrants. Though Raquel’s mother is also Mexican origin, she
distinguishes herself from them Raquel also believes these girls were the most
captivated by the Disney case and does not seem to understand why they did not
believe she had the same case or why they did not give her the same attention. It is

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possible that these girls assumed Raquel did not have the means for this object and
shows how even among children, class boundaries are racialized. In my observations,
I also noticed Raquel repeatedly tried to join the playgroup of Kimmy and Ashley,
sometimes unsuccessfully. Raquel’s parents, who were bilingual and middle-class,
noted in their interview that they had tried to spend time with Ashley’s family outside
of school but they sensed the feeling was not mutual. Raquel’s mother, Camila, a
Mexican immigrant, explained how Raquel had talked about Ashley and how they
had spent a lot of time playing together last year, but they had never had a play date.
When I asked if she knew Ashley’s parents, she shared:
I know them, I know them but ahh, now no, they confuse me with
another Latina mom and it’s little things like that…ahh no. She gets
confused, or I don’t know what it is but there has not been an
opportunity with her yet. If she sees me with Raquel, sometimes she
does say hi because I think she locates me better but if she does not see
me with Raquel, no. She doesn’t know if I am Raquel’s mom or if I am
the mom of another girl, she wouldn’t be able to tell you. So there are
times when you think, what is this about? Ahh no.

Camila was hesitant to say that racism was present in the school or that the
interactions with Ashley’s parents were affected by their different racial/ethnic
backgrounds, but was upset recounting these experiences and sighing throughout
making her comments. Camila did not understand why Ashley’s mother could not
recognize her and explained that these types of interactions really made her wonder
about what was happening because she thought they were “weird” and because she
felt it was strange that “I know who she is, but she can’t locate me.”
Camila and Raquel were not able to penetrate the social circles of white

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families despite their middle-class status and access to the same consumer items.
Divisions between students, however, did not only occur between Latino and white
students. Latino origin students also made distinctions among each other in who they
chose to spend time within school and outside of campus. Nadia, a Mexican-
American mother married to and African American man, shared the following story
about her daughter’s birthday party in Kindergarten:
I remember distinctly her coming home and saying “Mom, I don’t
want to invite any of those Mexicans to my party.” (long pause).

After a long pause, Nadia continued:

And I looked at her, she said it in front of my brother because we were
going to go eat Mexican food, ironically enough, to a Mexican
restaurant, I said “mijita you’re Mexican, you’re not going to invite
yourself to your party?” And she just looked at me, I was like, what’s
your favorite food? “Beans and rice” (Laughs) and my brother is
cracking up so we’re getting out of the car as we’re having this
conversation and I’m like, what does that mean to you? I talk to my
kids like this, I said, what does that mean? “well, you know, the
Spanish speaking kids, I don’t want to invite them.”

Nadia was very upset that her own multiracial and Mexican origin daughter did not
feel a part of the “Mexican” kids and that she did not want to socialize with them. She
was particularly hurt that her daughter did not yet understand that “Your mom was
Spanish speaking, your mom was them, do you understand that? And I’m very proud
of being them.” Nadia used the opportunity to question her daughter’s perceptions
and meanings behind the label “Mexican,” but her comment illustrates how students
conflate labels to acknowledge racial/ethnic difference and assign it status in their
interactions with other children. These distinctions contribute to the differences in

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student interactions between formal and informal or out of school interactions—while
teachers and parents can mediate play time during recess, they cannot sanction that all
students be invited to out of school birthday parties or included in extracurricular
activities.
Teachers and parents seemed to be aware of this and tried to manage
expectations to be both inclusive of all students in the class and fulfilling children’s
desires to only invite their friends. Yet, adults mentioned the divisions between
students became more pronounced as they got older and as they engaged in
extracurricular activities. When I asked Mrs. Doster, a white teacher and former
Samuelson parent, if she had ever noticed divisions between students, she explained:
It’s hard to put your finger on it I think, but I think if you don’t have a
lot of money, it’s hard to have an equal relationship with other parents
who do have more money, and I think parents who do have more
money may not even know how poor some of our parents are, and so
it’s like, you know, when you want to do things outside of school,
some parents really have no extra money to be, “oh let’s take the kids
to the pier and go on the rides.” They don’t have that kind of money.
Or it’s just a very different way of thinking and I know that when my
daughter was here, one of her best friends lived in a little, it’s just like
a little one room…and that mom let me pick up her daughter all the
time, and she’d have my daughter over, because we had a really nice
relationship, but I don’t know if anybody else ever went over because
it was just a little tiny room…and a little bit embarrassed about maybe
how they lived.

Mrs. Doster made sure to note that her daughter did not care that her friend’s house
was so small or that they lived with extended family, but she speculated that their lack
of financial resources and cramped housing situation created a self-consciousness for
them that could limit the relationships this student could have with her more affluent

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peers. She added that as students began to participate in summer camps and engage in
sports, the divided playgroups became more cemented because it’s easy “to make
connections with families that are doing the same things you’re doing, and families
who don’t have that money and they don’t spend like that, they do other things. They
go to the park and play, or they go to their cousin’s house. It’s just easy to sort of
separate that way.” When I asked Mrs. Doster to elaborate, she shared:
Some girls from English speaking families, they have sleepover
parties, and parents have girls who speak Spanish sometimes don’t let
their kids go to sleepover parties. That’s just weird to them. Like why
would I let my child go sleep at somebody else’s house? So the
sleepovers become a certain group of kids.

Mrs. Doster identified one common example for divides between Latina and
white female students- the overnight sleepover. Her comment shows how divisions
occur outside of the school and outside of the realm of what teachers and Samuelson
administrators can control. Her comment also highlights how adults use language
labels to not only justify the segregation of Latino and white students, but also to
describe patterns that are about culture or race. While Mrs. Doster stated she did not
believe race/ethnicity mattered at the school, and instead believed class divisions
were most obvious, she proceeded to give examples about race/ethnicity and cultural
differences by using language labels. For instance, despite assuring there wasn’t
anything “racial” going on between Samuelson students, Mrs. Doster shared that in
the past students had made gestures mocking the shape of Asian eyes and noted how
teachers had to teach students that they could not do this because it was “not
respectful.” She also shared that instances like this had hurt students in the past that

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had come to her “crying about the eye thing.” Though Mrs. Doster believed everyone
learned from those type of incidents, framing these experiences and innocent allows
parents to avoid hard conversations about race with children by modeling how to talk
around race and allows them, particularly white parents, to talk about patterns tied to
race/ethnicity without the discomfort of talking about race openly.
Interactions between Latino and white students at Samuelson were parallel to
that between Latino and white adults—friendly but limited. Lana, a white mother,
shared her own perceptions about student friendships:
I know we start off in kindergarten play dates with everybody trying to
encourage these friendships. But once they get a little older and they
start, they, I just notice they kind of separate into their groups. So they
might all be friendly with each other, and not that they're rejecting
each other, but I notice the Spanish speaking kids from those families
tend to hang out more with kids from other Spanish speaking families.

She later added:

They might appreciate each other, they just gravitate toward who is
more similar, the extracurriculars they might do and things. As much
as we try to have relationships with everybody, I'm sure I try to
gravitate to the moms and the parents that are more similar to me and
then the kids probably feel the same way too. So as much as we try to
interact across all lines, I think it happens.

Lana added that despite her years at Samuelson, her own daughter preferred to spend
time with other English dominant white girls and “it would just end up being
Caucasian girls, it ended up being this little group of blond girls.” Lana realized her
children’s behavior mirrored her own in that she was inclined to spend time with
parents that shared her own racial/ethnic, class and linguistic background. In some
ways, these patterns—where children learn to appreciate diversity and navigate

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diverse contexts show that parents are successful in achieving at least some of their
motives for enrolling them in immersion. Students learn to speak the language of
diversity and difference, know how to navigate spaces that are diverse and are
friendly to each other. But, their childhoods remain segregated in many ways and the
integrated classrooms and overall experience of immersion become a part of the
context that families consume on behalf of children to help them thrive (Pugh 2009).
Conclusion
In this chapter, I have shown the context of immersion in which Latino and
white students interact on a daily basis. Despite parent and teacher claims that
children to not see the differences of race/ethnicity, class or language on campus,
children not only notice difference but demonstrate an awareness of the status that
accompanies these respective categories. Parents are hopeful that Samuelson students
play with diverse students and teachers intervene regularly during school to ensure
they are well integrated and work with each other in the classroom, but they cannot
fully counter the separations that exist among students and which are strengthened
outside of school.
While some scholars have argued that dual immersion and integrated settings
like Samuelson are successful in fostering cross-cultural relationships among
racially/ethnically and otherwise “different” types of students (Cazabon et al. 1993,
Christian 1996), my data nuances these findings by showing that these students are
learning how to function in diverse settings without fully integrating. That is,
students, like their parents, are friendly towards each other, but the majority of close

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friendships between children are with those who match them in race/ethnicity, class
and native language. Though there are exceptions which parents and adults like to
draw on to talk about the inclusive character of the school, by and large, their own
accounts show that children self-segregate by race and class during unstructured time
at school and in their play activities outside of campus. Moreover, children learn to
talk around race and use proxies like language labels to refer to the associations they
make between particular students and race/ethnicity and class. I argue this occurs
because of the celebratory approach the school uses to talk about difference and
which teaches students to talk about difference in a positive manner but often fails to
teach students about inequality directly. This method of teaching children
communicates that “difference” is not about power, but about choices and acceptance
of these “differences.” But, “difference” is not simply about choices and the framing
of all differences as diversity limits the ability of teachers and parents to teach
children about disparities and constrains their ability to challenge them. This situation
exposes children to racial/ethnic “others” and allows them to become aware that
families have different socioeconomic statuses, but it also sends the message that
having racial/ethnic and class “others” present is enough to guarantee against racism,
classism and nativism.

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Chapter 5: Spoon-fed Social Justice? Masking and Challenging Inequality

When I walked on to that campus, I saw other Latinas that were just
like me and I felt like I belonged, I felt validated. I saw everything,
you know? You see other parents who are very biased and stereotyped
and so forth, but they are there for a reason, I don’t know what, you
know as you’re questioning me, I think the reason is for their kids to
get ahead with language right? But at the same time we’re spoon-
feeding them something else. Or at least trying to.

JM: What is it you’re trying to spoon-feed them?

I think that consciousness. That consciousness that you do at least
have to respect those who speak Spanish, whether you see it as a
subordinate language or not, you do have to at least respect it.

-Nadia, middle-class Mexican-American mother

During her interview, Nadia, a Mexican-American middle-class mother, was
clear that her decision to enroll her multi-racial children in immersion was deliberate
and intentional. In detailing the dynamics of parents at Samuelson, however, she
seemed to realize that her own involvement at the school had also affected her and
given her a sense of validation and belonging as a Latina mother. Though Nadia
recognized that not all families at Samuelson viewed the program and curriculum in
the way she did, she was hopeful that being immersed in the context of immersion
would precipitate awareness among parents who were simply seeking to have kids
speak Spanish to give them an “edge.” Nadia’s own awareness and her plan to spoon-
feed consciousness to other parents exemplifies the strategic work select parents,
teachers and administrators do in order to foster a sense of community among Latino
and white families at Samuelson and temper the inequalities between them.

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Work on the educational experiences of Latino students and families finds that
traditional monolingual schooling devalues the Spanish language and Mexican
culture (Valdes 1996, Valenzuela 1999, Ochoa 2004, Gandara and Aldana 2014) and
often marginalizes Latino parents at school (Valdes 1996, Flores 2015). This chapter
addresses how Samuelson diverges from traditional schooling by detailing the
strategies teachers, administrators and select parents use in attempts to fulfill one of
the program’s goals to “create equal status for both languages (and speakers of both
languages).” The strategies Samuelson teachers, administrators and select parents use
range from concealing class disparities between families on campus, representing
Latino cultures in everyday school activities and ensuring the representation of Latino
parents in school happenings, to actions designed to foster consciousness among
parents and increase their understanding of inequalities on campus. While previous
chapters have shown how divisions remain between Latino and white families and
how they distinguish themselves from each other, this chapter shows how Samuelson
adults perform strategic work to bring families together and negotiate the inequalities
between them precisely because this does not happen organically.
Previous Research
Mexican-origin Students in American Schools
That Latino origin students face challenges in obtaining quality education in
American schools is not new—Latino students have been segregated and the
achievement gap has plagued students historically (Gonzalez 1990, Valencia 2008).
As noted in chapter 1, the segregation of Mexican origin students was a normative

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practice in the Southwest and students were relegated to inferior schooling facilities
and subjected to subpar education. Educators and administrators claimed the
segregation as necessary to address the language needs of Mexican origin students
and teach them American culture and norms via education that doubled as an
Americanization program (Donato and Hanson 2012, Valencia 2008). Forbidding
students from speaking Spanish on school grounds and teaching them that their
Mexican culture was incompatible with success in schools was a part of this
Americanization curriculum (Gonzalez 1990, Valencia 2005). As Gonzalez (1990)
notes, “the Mexican child was taught that his family, community and culture were
obstacles to schooling success. The assumption that Mexican culture was meager and
deficient implied that the child came to the classroom with meager and deficient tools
with which to learn” (1990, pg. 42). These beliefs reinforced stereotypes about
Mexican origin people as lazy and influenced how teachers evaluated both the
achievements and possibilities for Mexican origin students.
These perceptions of Mexican origin students remain. In her seminal study on
Mexican-American high school students in Texas, Valenzuela (1999) shows how
these students experience subtractive schooling that devalues their culture and
alienates them from their teachers. Valenzuela argues that schooling becomes a
subtractive process for Mexican-American students because it divests them of
important social and cultural resources like the Spanish language. She also details
how the disconnect between educators and Mexican origin families is due to their
different definitions of education—Mexican origin parents view education in a more

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holistic manner that goes beyond the classroom. Between students and teachers, care
and varying understandings of caring create tensions between them in school. For
instance, Valenzuela notes that students dislike school because they feel alienated
from their teachers and perceive they do not respect them or their culture. Teachers
interpret this, along with student’s personal style of dress and behavior, to mean that
they do not care about their education and as indication that they lack ambition. But,
Valenzuela highlights how students oppose schooling not learning or education and
yearn for relationships with teachers that reflect an authentic care and are based on
reciprocity and teacher’s acknowledgement of students as whole people.
Other studies examining Latino educational experiences have attempted to
debunk the myth that Latino families do not value education (Valencia 2002). They
have demonstrated how schools overlook the potential of Mexican-origin students
and families (Valdes 1996) and reward white middle-class modes of parent
involvement (Lareau 2003). For instance, Urrieta (2010) explains how “whitestream
schools” or schools that are “founded on the practices, principles, morals and values
of white supremacy and that highlight the history of white Anglo-American culture”
abound (pg. 181). Latino students now comprise one fourth of U.S. public school
students (Pew Research Center), and it is in these contexts that the bulk of them are
learning.
But, scholars have been particularly hopeful about the potential of dual
immersion programs to counter the challenges faced by Latino student and their
families (Linton 2004, Ochoa 2004, Gandara and Aldana 2014). For instance, Linton

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(2004) argues that immersion programs may benefit Latino immigrant families by
promoting a paced or “selective” acculturation that does not undermine parental
authority (Portes and Zhou 1993) and which values the culture of parents. Other
scholars, however, are more skeptical about the potential of these programs and the
barriers they face in providing Latino students with a quality education. The success
of these programs for Latino varies by quality of instruction and school resources, and
while immersion is beneficial for all students, programs may be more advantageous
for “mainstream” or white children as they reap different rewards and have different
levels of power (Valdes 1997, Cervantes-Soon 2014). Indeed, Cummins (1998)
cautions that immersion must challenge the lower status ascribed to particular groups,
language minority and Latino speakers, in order to successfully fulfill their goals and
Cervantes-Soon (2014) calls for an “emphasis on critical consciousness for all
students” in dual immersion programs (pg. 78).
Scholars are hopeful that dual immersion education can help Latino students
by providing a context in which Spanish is valued and where Latino cultures,
particularly Mexican culture, are viewed as compatible to academic achievement. But
how is this done at Samuelson? This chapter builds on this work by analyzing how
Samuelson attempts to equalize status for Spanish and English speakers and develop
students and families that are cognizant and sensitive to the inequality between
families on campus.

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Tempering Inequality
Concealing Class
Teachers, administrators and select parents deploy a range of strategies to
negotiate the inequality between Latino and white families at Samuelson. These
approaches range from concealing particular aspects about families to explicitly
challenging parents to be more conscientious about disparities between students and
families at the school. For instance, adults at Samuelson often downplayed the
abundance of economic resources of some families and talked around the lack of
financial resources for others. When I asked Doreen, an Asian-American mother and
PTA member, if class mattered at the school in any way, she explained how families
“gravitate” towards other families of the same socioeconomic class despite a lack of
conversations about economic status at the school. She felt that class was apparent in
how people dressed and even the type of shoes they wore. Doreen also shared how
the friends she had made at ELAC teased her about her own class background:

There was a guy, I was talking with a friend of mine, and I’ve known
them for five years, [my son’s] had class with him a few times, and so
I know them. We were talking and he said something like, “so what
are you doing today?” I said, “oh God, today’s Wednesday, today’s
cleaning day. I gotta go home and I gotta do the laundry!” And he’s
like, “what? You do laundry?” I said, “yeah every Wednesday.”

He’s just like, “well you surprised me, I would never have thought
that you would have done your own laundry.” I was like, “come on!”
You know? So, that was interesting. Maybe people, his friends all
thought that I was, I don’t know, a Hilton or something.

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Doreen reported an annual family income of over $300,000 a year with only her
husband working outside the home but insisted that she does “laundry like everybody
else” and even told me, “I wish I had someone to do my laundry.” She may not see
herself as wealthy—but the gap between her resources and those of the man who
asked her about her laundry (who she mentioned worked at a restaurant and had a
wife who was a “cleaning lady”) are clear to him despite her efforts to downplay
them. In another instance, ELAC needed pizza for an event and she asked how many
were needed. Someone in the group responded,
“Well, knowing you, why don’t you just bring the pizza parlor?” They
said something obnoxious like that…it was another parent, it was at an
ELAC meeting, we were all joking. And so they’re like “oh yeah,
you’re rich” and it was like “no, I’m really not, but I’ll make things
work.”

Doreen felt that their perceptions of her resources were not accurate, but her efforts to
downplay them during interactions with the mostly Latino immigrant members of
ELAC were clear. Parents were careful not to appear as if they were displaying their
consumer items or resources at the school and some even noted that they enrolled at
Samuelson because they wanted their children to avoid private schools that were
“elitist” and “snobby.”
Teachers also looked down upon conspicuous markers of class by either
students or parents. Mrs. Carol, a white woman and third grade teacher, shared that
while Samuelson was a tight-knit community, there were a “a few families that think
that they can do no wrong, that they are better than everyone else, they don’t have to
follow the rules.” As an example, she told me about a current student who would

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Talk about things that he’s done and places he’s been and how much
things cost. So, just a little odd because most people don’t go there,
you know? How much you spend on something or I’m gonna go here
on my vacation, I got to do that.

Money and the cost of experiences like vacations, trips and other luxuries was not a
polite thing to discuss at the school. Mrs. Carol felt that because of this student’s
showiness about class, other students did not “embrace” him and “rolled their eyes”
when he talked about these subjects. While much of the class inequality is between
affluent and middle-class whites and working-class Latino families, Mrs. Carol made
it clear that the “entitled” families were not always “white folks” and, in this instance,
the family was from Colombia. When I asked if she had talked to anyone about this
behavior, she laughed and shared that she had not yet thought of a way to tell the
mother, “you’re awfully entitled, aren’t you? Well perhaps you need to look at
everyone else around you.” Mrs. Carol implies that an awareness of the
socioeconomic diversity of the school would help this family understand why their
flaunting was bothersome and not appreciated.
Other teachers and employees also expressed more negative attitudes towards
students and families with resources when they perceived them to exhibit their
resources too freely. The following vignette of a meeting with Yaniz, a Latina
employee, illustrates these perceptions:
Yaniz and I are talking about where she grew up when a boy of about
9 or 10 years old comes in and grabs a granola bar from the counter
next to her desk. She tells him to go ahead and grab a snack but not to
forget to pack his own next time. As we continue talking, two more
children come into the room and ask, in very low voices, if they can
have snacks. Yaniz says yes, but seemingly more annoyed, tells them

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that they need to bring and eat their own snacks.

After the kids leave, she complains that some of the kids who come in
to get a free snack are “Richie rich” kids that have families that can
afford to buy them their owns snacks. She then tells me that some kids
come in and grab snacks simply because they like what she is giving
out that day, rather than because they are really hungry. Yaniz does not
think this is fair, as those free snacks are actually intended to
supplement the diets of the children whose parents cannot afford extra
snacks and are “barely getting by.” She tells me parents donate all of
the snacks, but she notes that the “rich” families do not typically
donate. She tells me there are really only a couple of families/parents
that she can count on to donate. She notes, however, that most parents
should be able to donate even if they are not rich, saying that they can
donate, even if it is just “some tacos de frijoles” (bean tacos). She tells
me that some kids just come in and if she has two snack options, or
they see a packet of something they like on the countertops, they will
try to come and get those snacks but she does not let them pick
because she thinks that if you are really hungry, then you are not
picky—stating, “my mom used to say that when you’re really hungry,
you’ll eat rocks.” She explains that she cannot say no to the kids who
ask but seems irritated. She tells me that she knows those kids can
afford their own snacks and there are other kids who really need it and
whose parents “rely on them to eat at school” because they “cannot
afford extras.”

Yaniz’s comments reflect her working-class background and her negative perceptions
of “Richie rich” families who do not realize particular resources at school are for
those in need. When I asked Yaniz if class mattered at the school in any other way,
she shared that she knew that certain families at Samuelson, “some of these kids,
man, some of these kids have been to Paris on vacation and I haven’t even been to
Perris, California!” Yaniz is conscious of both the class disparities between families
and she, like other teachers and employees, is able to locate her own position relative
to her students’ families by assessing the trips, vacations and even food they bring to
the school.

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Adults on campus also took it upon themselves to try and conceal the vast
income gaps between families at Samuelson by limiting displays of class in the
classroom and between students. For instance, during a teacher appreciation
luncheon, teachers were sitting and talking amongst themselves when they began to
vent about the parents of the students in their classrooms:
Mrs. Contreras tells the other teachers about a parent who asked her to
babysit her daughter until 3pm on an early dismissal day. The other
teachers joke about how parents obviously do not read the policies that
ban teachers from watching children after school. She then tells them
the same mother also asked if she could bring a jumper and a popcorn
maker to celebrate her daughter’s birthday. They all burst out
laughing. Mrs. Contreras tells them how she told the mom that she
thought she was kidding and then had to explain that she could only
bring popsicles or muffins at the end of the day.

Through their joking about a lavish birthday celebration on school grounds, Mrs.
Contreras and the other teachers make it clear that the mother’s idea was “too much.”
Their reactions to Mrs. Contreras’ venting illustrate their disapproval of these
displays of class. School policies, along with their gatekeeping, ensure families that
are well off do not flaunt their wealth in lush celebrations for children on school
grounds. Another way school employees try to lessen the visibility of socioeconomic
inequality at the school is by providing all students with lunch cards that can be
loaded with money for students who must pay for lunch, or are pre-loaded to provide
lunch for students who receive free or reduced school lunch. Mrs. Briggs, a white
Kinder teacher, explained that all of the children had these cards to use and this way,
“no one can tell who has what.” While students may bring lunch from home, and the
effectiveness of this method for hiding class disparities between students is

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questionable, it is one way that adults at Samuelson try to limit displays of class on
campus. This, along with policies limiting celebrations for birthday parties, the type
of food parents can bring and their rules about bringing toys from home are meant to
diminish the visibility of class differences between students.
In the same way some teachers and employees are critical of “Richie riches,”
they are more sympathetic to families they assume have less resources. And though
parents, teachers and employees were aware of the class differences at Samuelson,
they used elusive language to talk about working-class and low-income families.
During an ELAC meeting, Principal Martell came to talk to parents and give school
updates:
Principal Martell began with school scores and then explained to
parents that the district may be changing fundraising practices soon.
Rather than raising money for each school, organizations like the PTA
would turn in their fundraising money, which would then be collected
and redistributed evenly to all schools in the district. Because of this,
one city was trying to create another district. Parents were listening
attentively while Principal Martell explained that at Samuelson, direct
donations by parents supplement the fundraising events hosted
throughout the year and that they encourage donations averaging a $1
a day, or about $300 a year per child. She then tells them: “yo se que
aquí no todos pueden hacerlo” (I know that here not everyone can do
it) and assures them any amount can help.

After the presentation, Claudia, a Latina immigrant mother, comes to
talk to her and tells her she did not know direct donations were best.
She tells the principal she will encourage the parents she knows to give
directly, “bueno, cada quien acuerdo a su economía” (well, everyone
according to their own economy). The principal smiles and tells her
that even $5 or $10 can help.

Principal Martell was trying to accommodate and encourage mostly Latino immigrant
and working-class families at ELAC meetings to donate to the school. While she does

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not explicitly communicate that Latino immigrant families are often the families who
are of a lower class status, she makes this clear by relaying this message in Spanish in
ELAC meetings. She did not relay a comparable message in PTA meetings to mostly
white parent attendees and acknowledgements of financial constraints were rarely
discussed in reference to “English dom” families. Using the language of “some
families” maintained financial disparities somewhat abstract. Though the correlation
between Latino immigrant status and working-class background was high, this type of
messaging to ELAC parents strengthens perceptions of Latinos as poor at the school
and overlooks the presence of Latino-origin middle-class families at the school. The
efforts to limit class displays and the elusive ways adults use language labels to
address class disparities illustrate how parents, teachers and employees they try to
show sensitivity about class disparities at Samuelson without explicitly talking about
class or the overall patterns of class inequality between Latino and white families.
Representing and Including Latinidad
Research on the educational experiences of Latina and Latino students shows
how traditional English monolingual schooling can subtract them of valuable cultural
resources and how schools are not welcoming to Latino culture they deem
incompatible with academic achievement (Valdes 1996, Valenzuela 1999, Ochoa
2004, Gandara and Aldana 2014). Teachers and staff at Samuelson did not typically
follow this pattern, and instead made sure that Latino cultures and the Spanish
language were visible throughout the school and weaved into everyday activities for
students. Moreover, staff and teachers went out of their way to ensure that Latino

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parents were represented in parent organizations, recruited them to school councils
and provided them with other resources in an attempt to bolster their status at the
school.
Classrooms at Samuelson, along with the campus overall, were full of images
representing Latino cultures and featuring important Latino-origin figures. Murals of
Cesar Chavez, paintings of important historical figures like Dolores Huerta and
Toypurina and famous Chicano poems were displayed across the school. In
classrooms, teachers often featured student work in both Spanish and English and
many also had posters in Spanish or images with phenotypically diverse people.
During her interview, Mrs. Bonilla, Mexican-American, began to cry as she shared
the importance of having positive images of Latinos at the school for students:
Kids need to feel like “someone's talking about me, someone did it.” I
get emotional when you talk about this…because I don't want a kid in
here who'll say, "why are they all just one color?" and I guess I could
never do that. Sorry, you've brought up a touchy subject, it’s big for
me.
Mrs. Bonilla contrasted this with her own experience growing up--
I went to a Catholic school, so we looked at a lot of the saints. "Look
at this saint, and how great this saint did this" and "This saint did a
great job" and "Look at Jesus and the way Jesus did this" and it's like
"Okay, the Jesus I'm looking at is all blond, blue-eyed" or "All the
saints are from Europe" so it's like, ok…
I don't know if I felt it then. I think I felt it more, actually, starting to
work here because that was my experience growing up. But I feel like,
wow, I didn't know that blah-blah-blah and blah-blah-blah did this.
You know, the color TV was invented by a Latino! It's like, "Ooh,
okay.”

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Mrs. Contreras felt it was important to have her Latino-origin students, along with
other non-white students, feel acknowledged in her classroom and unlike her own
experience in Catholic school, she wanted students to have positive representations of
Latinos and their accomplishments. Mrs. Contreras added that while she was
cognizant of the focus on Latino cultures and Mexican culture specifically, she tried
to include things that would resonate with her Central-American students. For
example,
When I say “es día de independencia de estos países en
Centroamérica" (it is independence day in these Central-American
countries), some of my kids perk up. The ones that hadn't been, "Wow,
somebody is listening and talking about my culture too."

This approach developed in part to critiques from parents that had complained
because they felt their culture was not represented. However, Mrs. Contreras and
other teachers had listened to the critiques and tried to incorporate aspects of other
cultures on campus in an effort to help students feel valued within the school. Mr.
Trujillo, Salvadoran, also incorporated aspects of different Latino cultures and unlike
the teachers described in previous literature that hold Latino-origin students in low
regard (Valenzuela 1999, Gandara and Aldana 2014, Ochoa 2014), he had very high
expectations for his students. In fact, Mr. Trujillo separated his students into groups
and each was assigned a name based on a college (e.g. Harvard, Princeton, UCLA,
etc.) and during observations, made it clear that one of his primary goals as an

145
educator was to push his Latino-origin students. During his interview, he explained in
more detail:
It is a very big gap, but I think that our kids who are struggling are
Latino low socioeconomic status kids. That's the group that we want to
help. I think that our white kids, 100% have professional parents,
100% of them. Based on the results, I think this program serves one
group better than the other. I think at the end of the day our Latino kids
are, not all the Latino kids, but the Latino ELL, low socioeconomic
status kids are struggling. That's a fact.
On the other side of the spectrum, we have the white kids that are
succeeding in a language that is not their own. They're, in my opinion,
benefiting the most. They're getting quality education. They're
becoming bilingual and being successful at it. The question remains
why? I think that a lot of it has to do with the resources that they come
with.

Mr. Trujillo felt that because of the ample resources white students and families had,
and the high educational achievement of their parents, white students were excelling
in the program and low SES Latino students needed the most attention and help.
Though Mr. Trujillo enjoyed the program and the community at the school, he was
attuned to the power and status differences of the Latino and white families at the
school and how their socioeconomic status gives white students an advantage even
when native Spanish speaking students are in a bilingual program. Test scores and
other measures of academic achievement of Samuelson students reflected these
perceptions and white, middle-class students had the highest scores in the school.
More importantly, however, Mr. Trujillo is aware of the societal structure that praises
and rewards white bilingualism differently than bilingualism among Latino-origin
students. He was not alone—during participant observations, another teacher who

146
asked to remain anonymous shared that she believed her students would not have the
same experiences later when entering the job market:
When they go into corporate America, who do you think is going to
get the job? Ashley or Marissa? This program benefits the white
families and we are giving them one of the only advantages we have.

These concerns echo those outlined by Valdes (1997) and are embedded in an
awareness that bilingualism does not occur in a vacuum, and is instead constructed in
a larger context that does not value Latino and white people or their achievements
equally. The critical lens these teachers hold differs significantly from teachers
detailed in other studies that espouse a colorblind approach and teach students that
their success is solely a product of their effort (Valenzuela 1999, Lewis 2003).
In order to create a context that values the Spanish language and ensures
bilingualism is happening across the school and in all school interactions, teachers,
employees and parents in parent organizations adhered to rules and norms that
promoted bilingualism among students and families. Samuelson alternates languages
for movie nights hosted at school, all signage at the school is in both languages,
translators are present at most meetings and all parent materials, flyers and
announcements are in both languages. This custom is so ingrained that the Samuelson
list serve does not send emails if they are not in both languages. In the classroom,
teachers built on these norms in order to counter English dominance at the school.
During interviews, teachers spoke about their attempts to teach students the value of
speaking Spanish and instill in them pride in being bilingual. For example, Mrs.
Contreras explained that she went out of her way to have books on hand that focused

147
on different racial/ethnic groups and which relay that “we should be proud of who we
are.” She described how students would ask her about segregation practices after
reading about Martin Luther King Jr.:

When we read the Martin Luther King books, they'll ask, “would I
have to be in the classroom for the non-whites?” I'll say, "Well, if
you're not white then yes, you would probably be in a different school
like the Latinos" because we do read books of Cesar Chavez and
Francisco, I forgot his last name. There's another book called La
Mariposa… it talks about how he was teased for speaking Spanish and
they made him put on a sign that said, "payaso" (clown) because he
spoke Spanish. So the kids, they would really feel bad and then I say,
"See how lucky we are that we can actually speak Spanish at school
and we encourage you to speak it. You're learning how to speak
Spanish in school. You can speak both languages."

Mrs. Contreras incorporates literature that addresses racism and the stigma of
speaking non-English languages in the U.S. so that her students know how things
have changed. While she recognizes that children feel badly learning about difficult
topics like educational segregation, she uses this as an opportunity to invert messages
about the stigma of speaking Spanish into something students should be proud of and
feel lucky to experience. In La Mariposa, the protagonist Francisco struggles with
learning English, adapting to his new school and the story uses the metaphor of a
caterpillar that becomes a butterfly to parallel Francisco’s own development over the
course of the school year. Mrs. Contreras used this book to then create an activity for
her students where each created and painted a construction paper butterfly and listed
the reasons they were proud to speak Spanish and English. Each butterfly said “dos
idiomas son dos alas y con dos alas puedo volar” (two languages are wings and with

148
two wings I can fly), with the prompt: “yo me siento orgulloso/a de ser bilingüe
porque” (I feel proud to be bilingual because) followed by a blank space for students
to fill with their reasons. Students wrote about the pride they felt in being able to help
people who don't speak two languages, writing in both Spanish and English and even
speaking Spanish in Mexico. See Figure 1 and Figure 2 for examples.
Other teachers did similar activities with students, asking them what made
them proud of speaking Spanish and English and reading children’s book dealing
with the difficult experiences Spanish-speaking students had in the past. And, while
teachers attempted to instill a pride in Spanish/English bilingualism for all children,
some felt this was particularly important for native Spanish speaking and Latino-
origin students. Mr. Trujillo explained how at Samuelson
Their language and their culture is being valued. I don't know if you
were here earlier and one girl asked, "How do you say this in
Spanish?" One of my ELL, low socioeconomic status said, "You say it
this way." It's like, she feels empowered. She feels like, "I know
something that you don't." Throughout the year, we do events where
their culture is being portrayed, being presented at a high level, be it
Día de los Muertos or other things. All the events that we do, it's
Spanish, English/Spanish. They're not second-class citizens like in
other schools.

Mr. Trujillo is aware that the cultures of Latino-origin students and their linguistic
abilities may not be valued in the same way in schools that are not immersion and/or
not like Samuelson. For him, teaching students to keep Spanish while learning
English becomes an avenue to help low income, English learning Latino-origin
students feel they have power at the school because they have knowledge that other

149
students do not yet have. Mrs. Contreras, Mr. Trujillo and Mrs. Bonilla and other
teachers exemplify how adults at the school negotiate inequality between Latino and
white families and draw upon different strategies to ensure Latino students are
represented in their classrooms.
Finally, teachers, staff and select parents work to have Latino parents
represented at the school by recruiting them to participate in parent organizations and
councils and giving them empowering messages about the importance of their
presence at the school. As noted in chapter 3, parents who are involved in parent
organization on campus partake in groups that are mostly segregated by race and
class. That is, while the PTA is composed of primarily white, middle-class and
English speaking women, the ELAC group is mostly Latino immigrant parents who
are working-class and are most comfortable speaking Spanish. Though these
organizations collaborate to an extent and there are a few parents that attend both
meetings, Latino-origin parents, particularly those that are low income and Spanish
dominant, are underrepresented in both the PTA and other school committees and
councils at Samuelson. Because of this, administrators often announced openings and
recruited these parents at ELAC meetings. For example, during an ELAC meeting,
Principal Martell, the principal told parents:
It is immensely important that we have representatives from this
community—your kids are 50% of the program…better to have
parents who speak Spanish too…it can be that 20 people make all of
the decisions for the entire school.

Principal Martell was recruiting parents to serve on the school site council and

150
warned parents that the “20 people” making all of the decisions for the school did not
necessarily include the ELAC community. She implies that parent participation is not
proportional and in urging Spanish-speaking parents to partake, she intercedes in
order to guarantee that parent participation mirrors its design for students (50/50
English-Spanish) more closely. Principal Martell, along with other school employees,
not only announced openings and urged ELAC parents to join other committees, they
occasionally asked specific Spanish dominant, Latino immigrant parents to fulfill
openings directly and ensured them that language would not be a problem for them
because they would provide a translator. Other parents, typically middle-class,
bilingual Latinos, would also attempt to recruit Latino immigrant parents to the PTA
with varying success.
During her regular announcements to ELAC parents and other meetings at the
school, Principal Martell also made sure to show appreciation to parents by
emphasizing their critical role in the success of the program. During an open house
for prospective Samuelson parents, she stated the program was not for “pobrecitos
and privilegiados” (the poor (diminutive) and privileged) or “rich kids and poor
kids,” but rather one where “each group brings its own language and cultural
resources.” Principal Martell makes it clear that Latino parents who are native
Spanish speakers are valued for what they bring to the program and necessary for the
immersion model to succeed. Messages like this also came from other parents,
usually Latino bilingual parents. Nadia, a bilingual, middle-class Mexican-American
mother who attended PTA and ELAC meetings explained her own relationship to

151
ELAC parents:
I try to, very much, if the opportunity lends itself where they are
asking me for advice or they are trying to navigate something that they
don’t understand…they’ll ask me…how do you think I should
approach [this] and I’ll say, you know, this is one way you can think
about it or whatever… but also keep in mind that you have a lot of
power in the situation and that just blows them away! It really does.

JM: To tell them they have power?

They have a lot of power (starts crying). It just blows them away.

Talking about Latino immigrant parents made Nadia very emotional and she detailed
how she tried to help Latino immigrant parents navigate Samuelson and any other
situation parents felt comfortable asking her about. Latino immigrant parents remind
Nadia of her own family, her immigrant parents and her own experience growing up.
Though she is now middle-class and holds a Ph.D., she sympathizes with Latino
immigrant parents on campus due to “shared sense of struggle for upward mobility
born out of the economic context of the immigrant experience” or what Agius Vallejo
and Lee (2009) call the immigrant narrative. Moreover, she wanted Latino parents to
know the power they hold in the program and as a middle-class, later generation,
bilingual Latina felt a sense responsibility to Latino immigrant parents. Jimenez
(2010) details how Mexican-Americans, including those who are upwardly mobile,
often help immigrant coethnics out of a sense of ethnic solidarity. Jimenez notes that
his respondents helped in small ways that were amenable to their own lives—such as
offering to translate at the store, challenging negative and derogatory speech about

152
Mexican immigrants and, similar to Nadia, trying to make schools more welcoming
for Mexican immigrant families.
Teachers, particularly Latina ones, were also protective of Mexican immigrant
families. One day during lunch, Mrs. Rodriguez, a Mexican-American teacher, shared
she was having a “rough” week because she had to deal with a parent that was
“abusive” and a “bigot.” According to Mrs. Rodriguez, the mother did not want her
daughter in her class because it was “smelly” due to “all those sweaty Mexicans,”
complained there were not enough white children in the class and because she did not
have a teacher from Spain and then requested her daughter be placed in a class with
students of higher socioeconomic status. Mrs. Rodriguez was very upset, rhetorically
asking, “it’s like bitch, then why are you here?” This mother’s actions made her
preference for European Spanish clear and were offensive to both Mrs. Rodriguez and
her Mexican-origin students. Mrs. Rodriguez’s reaction, however, illustrates her
protectiveness over the Mexican-origin families and her disapproval of those who
come to Samuelson believing they can experience immersion without interaction with
the significant Mexican-origin population in the program.
Occasionally, teacher, administrator and parent efforts to ensure Latino
parents were well represented and efforts to help them went beyond the classroom.
Parenting support groups, presentations by community clinics (from STI’s to eating
healthy), information on low cost mental health services are some examples of how
Samuelson staff tried to provide Latino working-class parents with access and
information to help them in their everyday lives. In one ELAC meeting, a presenter

153
from H&R Block came to talk to parents about filing taxes. When someone asked if
they were eligible for Earned Income Credit if they were undocumented, she
responded:
Well, there are many politicians that are jerks and do not want you to
get the EIC, but you can qualify for the Child credit. Just make sure
that they include all the kids because sometimes they don’t report all
the kids if there are 4 or 5 because of their own prejudice.

Later, she told them

It is very important to become a citizen and vote.

Although a Latina mother responded in a sarcastic tone, “But if you have an ITIN,
19

you can’t vote,” these comments by the presenter are laced with subtle critiques of
politicians and tax preparers whose own prejudices may affect tax preparation. While
some are not able to become citizens, those who can are encouraged to become
citizens in order to affect change. In another instance, in meeting facilitated by
“promotoras,” attendees were taught about different sexually transmitted infections
and told “que tu tienes que abogar por ti, yo he aprendido que yo tengo que abogar
por mi” (you have to advocate for yourself, I have learned that I have to advocate for
me). These services can be interpreted as ways to help Latino immigrant parents,
opportunities to “acculturate” them or both. For example, during a parenting support
group meeting, the counselor, a Mexican immigrant male, reminded all of the Latino
attendees that parenting has changed and that corporal punishment was not the norm
because “no estamos en otro país hace veinte niños” (we are not in another country

19
ITIN, or the Individual Taxpayer Identification Number, is used to pay taxes. ITIN
is for individuals who do not have a Social Security Number.

154
twenty years ago). The counselor’s statement is a critique of other, foreign parenting
strategies of the past and clearly implies that there are new, improved, presumably
“American” ways to parent. These efforts to empower Latino immigrant parents by
reassuring them that they are important to the program, recruiting them to partake in
school committees and councils and providing them with access to resources and
information are intended to help low income and immigrant families. In this way,
these efforts are meant to temper the inequalities between them and other families at
the school. This strategy, along with fostering pride in bilingualism, making sure
Latino students are represented in the classroom and recognizing the challenges
Latino origin students face are attempts to bolster the status of working-class, Latino
immigrant families at Samuelson.
Fostering Consciousness
The final set of strategies that teachers, administrators and select parents use
to negotiate inequality at the school are those that are meant to awaken an awareness
of inequality among both students and parents at the school. These are not solely
about recognizing the power disparities at Samuelson, but also teaching students and
families about the inequalities that permeate their social worlds outside of the school.
In the classroom, many teachers approach subjects like social science in a critical
manner and engage students in activities that ask them to consider diverse
perspectives. Several teachers mentioned that race/ethnicity and the problematic
history of California was not something they shied away from teaching to Samuelson
students. For example, Mrs. Carol, a white teacher and former Samuelson parent,

155
I do base a lot on history, and history has been cruel to a lot of
different races, and there have been some races that have been more
dominant than others. I think you have to discuss it, you know, and
what makes it, when you’re talking about the encounter going back to
Columbus or you’re talking about California and the Spaniards coming
to California, or the Mexicans, California becoming Mexican, and the
clashes between the United States and Mexico. I think you have to
discuss cultures and race. I don’t know how to do it otherwise.

Mrs. Carol noted that students were fascinated to learn about this history during class.
Talking about inequality when addressing the historical context of California was
much easier for teachers and other adults to talk about than the tangible inequality at
the school. Nonetheless, this approach to teaching illustrates how these adults teach
immersion students in a way that challenges the normativity of whiteness in the
classroom and includes experiences of subordinated peoples in the U.S. Mrs. Bonilla
echoed Mrs. Carol’s comments:

We talk about certain people that we look up to like Harriet Tubman
and we talk about what implications that her whole struggle had on the
way we live now. When we look at history in California, we talked
about the Chinese that were made to work on the railroads for nothing
and especially the Native-Americans. We really talked a lot about
Native-Americans this year because I was talking about the missions,
them being asked to build the missions, basically, and then changed
their whole culture and changed their language, changed everything
because the Spanish decided, "This is our land now." We talk a lot
about that and even when I taught younger kids, we'd still, when you
talk about in second grade, people who make a difference, you bring in
a lot of those people and you say, "Well, why do they make, why did
they, how did they make a difference?"

Mrs. Bonilla explained that for her, it was critical to incorporate the experiences of
various racial/ethnic groups throughout the year because “people don’t exist just in a
month.” More importantly, she taught elementary immersion students about aspects

156
of American history that are often passed over or taught in a more flattering manner
at traditional schools to show Samuelson students how people like Harriet Tubman
impacted their own quality of life.
Classroom teachers, along with theater instructors and other adults, also used
art to teach students about historical and contemporary inequality. During
observations, students in the fifth grade were preparing for their play performance at
the end of the year. The theater teacher, who preferred to be called Maestra Miriam,
was in charge of all of the plays and practiced with students a couple of times per
week. That year, the play performed by students focused on the experiences of
immigrant farmworkers who were being exploited by their boss in the fields. A fifth
grade girl, Rosalia, played the Anglo-boss who told a coyote
20
“Do you have any
more illegals for my ranch?” and later yelled at workers (played by 5
th
grade peers)
attempting to form a union “I’ve had enough of you, I am going to sick the migra
21
on
you! Now show me some respect!” Teaching students to perform a play about union
organizing taught students about past experiences and the injustices faced by Latino-
origin people, but it also created an avenue to talk to students about immigration and
legality. In fact, Maestra Miriam explained how many Latino immigrant parents
“come and tell me thank you for, for talking about these difficult issues with the kids
because they often cannot.” Students also created art projects like paintings and
special displays for assemblies and events. For example, a display with a pink

20
Spanish slang for a person who helps unauthorized migrants cross the border.
21
Spanish slang for Immigration and Naturalization Services (INS), now known as
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

157
skeleton next to two white skeletons was a part of the altars at the annual festival.
Attached next to it was a letter explaining that the skeleton was pink to represent the
GLBT community and detailing the recent suicide of a gay teen in the community.
Students also wrote about the importance of accepting those who are different from
us. Art and the other strategies used by teachers and other Samuelson adults are not
solely celebrations of diversity like those illustrated in chapter 3, but more intentional
efforts to use both historical and contemporary examples of inequality to foster
students’ awareness of the world around them and critical thinking.
Teachers, Samuelson employees and select parents negotiated the divisions
between Latino and white parents by bringing families to spend time together with
the assumption that this interaction will yield positive relationships between them.
One parent explained how most of the events throughout the year were
Really about community building. Samuelson is really diverse and so
the fall festival is meant to build community because of that. We have
to do several things throughout the year to keep everyone…well to
build that feeling of community.
22

In other words, in order to come together, parents must spend time together at events
like the fall festival, parties and even the creation of a community integration
committee shows how these adults strategize to build bridges between Latino and
white families. These efforts demonstrate awareness on behalf of parents that coming
together does not just happen, but requires active work, intention and energy by
involved parties.

22
Nadia, a Mexican-American middle-class mother.

158
In addition to having parents spend time together, another strategy to negotiate
inequality was to agitate parents into becoming more aware and changing the existing
power distribution at the school. Some parents became more aware of inequality by
spending time with Latino immigrant parents and seeing or hearing about their day-
to-day experiences. Lourdes, a middle-class Latina, articulated how a man in the
neighborhood with mental health problems accidentally wandered into the Samuelson
lobby and began to harass a staff member. The “police came and [a Latina immigrant]
mother just happened to come to the counter and she got roughed up--the police not
knowing who the friend and who the foe was.” Lourdes added that later, the mother
told other parents about her experience, “she said it in Spanish, it’s going to make me
cry. She said ‘you have to understand that when the policemen treated me that way it
reminded me of my own experience in my own country, it took me right back there
and what I ran from and here I was experiencing it again.’” Hearing about this
mother’s experience affected Lourdes profoundly and while she, as a Latina in the
U.S., is probably no stranger to discrimination, she reiterated “this is shit other people
have to go through because of their culture.”
Agitations involved more than hearing about other parents’ struggles. Parents
also challenged disparities more directly through actions. A couple of years back,
several parents instituted bilingual PTA meetings as a way to recruit Spanish-
speaking parents. Meetings would be conducted in English or Spanish alternately and
translation would be provided. This did not go well. Meetings would take several
hours and PTA parents did not understand why meetings were conducted in Spanish

159
when all of the attendees, including some Latinos, spoke English fluently. Lourdes
and Candace, the librarian and a former Samuelson parent, explained that the purpose
of this was not simply to accommodate Spanish dominant parents, but to send a
message that “[they] are entitled as much as anybody else” and to teach English
“monolinguals an understanding of what the other language copes with every single
day in every single interaction.”
Aside from the Mencia event, the annual silent auction was most cited as
causing problems between parents. As explained previously, parents donate and then
bid on services and items donated by other parents. As a part of this, classrooms
would work on collective projects (such as a class collage) that were also included in
the auction. Economic disparities made it so that parents bidding on items were “the
upwardly mobile people with disposable income and guess what? you know, the
majority of them were white.”
23
In order to make the silent auction and the biddings
more accessible to working-class Latino parents, organizers debated, advocated and
changed pricing so that parents who were interested in bidding on the collective class
projects would not bid $50-300 but instead buy a $1 raffle ticket. Parents most
interested in the project could buy more than one raffle ticket if they so desired. This
small change created arguments, as some parents thought raising money was top
priority, but for parents like Valerie, changing fundraising practices to be more
equitable was a worthy risk. Additionally, Valerie claimed:
I’m real believer in those conflicts as being good conflicts that allow
us to have conversations that aren’t comfortable always and often

23
Valerie, a white middle-class mother.

160
grow, and you know, listen to one another and understand one another
and agree to disagree and I always think… I don’t think those conflicts
are trouble. I think they’re enriching, they bring up discussions that we
to learn how to have and learn how to respectfully.

Valerie believes in talking about class, race and disparity openly. Similarly, Erin, a
white middle-class, bilingual mother was acutely aware of the inequality between
white and Latino families. She shared an experience where all students were allowed
to walk around the book fair, making a list of the books they wanted and one girl, a
Spanish-dominant Latina, did not write anything down because “it was hard times for
people, you know?” She continued:
We organized this thing, the librarian knows who the kids are and we
basically raise money so that we can give every kid who probably
won't be getting a book a book, it's not official, but that means we're a
really diverse community in terms of economic and there is no way to,
even if you tried to do that, you can't make people equal. I mean, it
doesn't make her life any less difficult or my son's bookshelf any
emptier that she gets one book.

Erin and other parents also made it a point to talk to and take children on visits to
college campuses each year. In this way, select middle-class parents, both white and
Latino, try to increase low-income Latino families’ access to dominant social and
cultural capital that facilitates access to college (Carter 2005). Erin is cognizant of the
disparities between families and while she tries to lessen these gaps by helping raise
money to give all students books, she recognize the limits of these efforts in light of
the larger context Samuelson families live in.

161
Conclusion
In this chapter, I have detailed the varied approaches Samuelson teachers,
staff and select parents take in negotiating the inequality between Latino and white
families at the school. The strategies they use range from concealing economic
disparities on campus to explicitly challenging families to increase their awareness of
the unequal world in which they are all embedded. Moreover, while Anglo-centric
and English dominant schools devalue Latino cultures in the classroom, this chapter
illustrates how teachers and employees work to have Latino cultures and histories
represented and included in everyday lessons and school materials, the aesthetics of
the school and in parent organizations and committees. Because select parents and
Samuelson staff recognize that children are constantly immersed in an English
dominant context (McCollum 1994, Potowski 2004), they attempt to counter this by
instilling in them a pride in their bilingualism. For Latino-origin students who face
bleak educational futures (Telles and Ortiz 2008, Gandara and Aldana 2014), these
practices may lay a foundation for future academic achievement, but this is beyond
the scope of this study.
Though the adults described in this chapter cannot prevent inequalities from
seeping into and replicating within the school, this chapter elucidates how they try to
“create equal status for both languages (and speakers of both languages).” This work
differs from the celebrations of diversity outlined in chapter 3 because these strategies
acknowledge injustice and aim to lessen the gaps between Samuelson families by
addressing imbalances of power. These practices are necessary because coming

162
together does not happen organically between Latino and white families and because
the significant presence of a Latino-origin population is not enough to change the
existing unequal power distribution at Samuelson. Through their agitations to shake
up the status quo, efforts to provide access to information and resources to working-
class Latino families and teaching all students about the value of Latino’s cultures
and contributions, adults like Nadia try to raise the consciousness of other privileged
families at the school. And though parents who are primarily looking to build their
child’s credentials via Spanish/English bilingualism may not be seeking awareness,
their exposure to these ideas may affect them, albeit in minimal ways.

163
Chapter 6: Conclusion

A recent Washington Post article on bilingual education asked readers “Why
is bilingual education ‘good’ for rich kids but ‘bad’ for poor immigrant students?”
After contextualizing some of the research on the effects of bilingual education in the
U.S., Yale linguistics professor Claire Bowern explained how perceptions of
bilingualism depend largely on the status of the languages spoken and the status of
their speakers overall. In other words, bilingualism is interpreted favorably when
those learning more than one language are of middle-class status or higher. Among
immigrants and their children, who are often low income and working class,
bilingualism is construed as a problematic symbol of their divided loyalties and
bilingual education as a drain on American resources. Professor Bowern asserted that
despite these discrepancies, “bilingual education benefits all, not just the rich.”
Previous research argues that the praise bilingual students receive for speaking
multiple languages and the overall rewards bilingualism brings are not uniform
(Portes and Rumbaut 2001, Valdes 1997). And, this dissertation shows how the
benefits of bilingualism and bilingual education are not homogenous even for those
attending the same Spanish/English bilingual school. In terms of the motives driving
parents to choose Spanish/English immersion, all parents with children enrolled at
Samuelson believe that speaking both Spanish and English will lead to more
opportunities in school and later in the workplace for their children. Yet, their
motives for pursuing bilingual education vary greatly by race/ethnicity and class.
Latino working-class parents shared their desire for children to speak to extended

164
family in the U.S. and their respective countries of origin and expected them to speak
Spanish because they felt it was an important part of their culture. Latino middle-class
parents also had familial concerns, but were more likely to see Spanish and
Spanish/English bilingualism as an avenue to instill children with pride in their
racial/ethnic background and maintain ties to other Latino origin peoples. For affluent
and middle-class white parents, on the other hand, immersion was an opportunity to
have children experience class and racial/ethnic diversity in hopes they would learn to
thrive in the increasingly common multiracial contexts in Southern California.
Examining parent motives is important because it is parents who choose to
enroll children in Spanish/English immersion. These parent motives also reflect their
access to financial and educational resources and their social status in California and
the U.S. more broadly. Spanish/English bilingualism can be an opportunity to provide
children with an academic challenge for some families at Samuelson, while it is an
unquestioned expectation for others. For example, for working class and middle class
Latinos who speak Spanish as a first language, learning English is not a choice for
children but a strong expectation and necessary skill to successfully navigate
schooling in the U.S. For families who are native English speakers, bilingualism is
either viewed as an “extra” or a means to maintain an ethnic identity and ties to their
Latino heritage. In addition to illustrating the disparities in power among families,
these parent motives highlight how the boundaries between Latino and white families
who chose Spanish/English immersion are not blurred (Alba and Nee 2003, Linton
and Jimenez 2009), and distinctions between them are clear.

165
Despite the varying hopes for what Spanish/English bilingualism can provide
their children, the shared choice to enroll children in Spanish/English immersion
brings Latino and white families together to experience regular contact with each
other. This intergroup contact is a major focus of this dissertation. Although
assimilation scholars (Alba and Nee 2003, Alba 2009, Lee and Bean 2007, Lee and
Bean 2010) and race scholars (Bobo 1983, Bobo and Zubrinsky 1996, Dovidio et al.
2003, Dixon and Rosenbaum 2004, Dixon 2006, Pettigrew and Tropp 2006, Ellison et
al. 2011) have examined the outcomes and meanings of contact between racial/ethnic
groups, these literatures have not addressed why racial/ethnic groups seek interaction
with those of other racial/ethnic groups or the result of this voluntary contact.
Exploring parent interactions contributes to existing literature on the potential
these programs have for interracial student interactions (Christian 1996, Cazabon,
Nicoladis, and Lambert 1998, Freeman 1998, Christian, Howard, and Loeb 2000,
Lewis 2003) by showing interactions among adults who voluntarily opt into an
integrated school setting for their families but do not face the regulation of teachers
within the classroom. Everyday interactions between Latino and white parents on
campus were polite and friendly but mostly fleeting, and parents participated in
segregated parent organizations and time spent with Samuelson families outside of
school was with mostly with those of the same race and class. In illustrating how the
absence of prejudice and negative racial attitudes does not guarantee lessened
inequality between Latino and white families at Samuelson, this concept contributes
to extant research on race relations (Dovidio et al. 2003, Dixon and Rosenbaum 2004,

166
Pettigrew and Tropp 2006, Dixon 2006, Ellison et al. 2011, Laurence 2013).
Moreover, while interactions were described as pleasant by most parents interviewed,
these pleasant interactions maintained Latino working-class families marginalized by
allowing those in the dominant position to engage in what I call symbolic integration.
Symbolic integration illuminates how racial/ethnic groups can experience
voluntary, regular and friendly contact without altering the existing power
distribution between them. Symbolic integration allows those in the dominant
position, white middle-class and affluent parents at Samuelson, to interact with
racial/ethnic “others” in a manner that is voluntary, enjoyable and additive for them.
Symbolic integration also showcases how Spanish/English immersion and an
integrated educational setting comes at no social cost to white middle-class families,
as their children benefit the most. Symbolic integration is not as voluntary, enjoyable
or additive for those who are marginalized because they have less power and choice
in when they interact with “others” and how these interactions unfold. At Samuelson,
Latino families, and in particular Latino working class families, do not have the same
options to plug in or plug out of symbolic integration like middle class and affluent
whites. And, while middle class and affluent whites seek to expose children to
“diversity” via interactions with Latino families and students, they have the choice
and means to escape this diversity when it becomes uncomfortable. This symbolic
integration characterizes Latino-white relations at the school and is evinced in the
racially/ethnically segregated parent organizations, parent volunteering and friendship
groups. These findings demonstrate that despite voluntary enrollment in the program,

167
shared student attendance in integrated classes and regular interpersonal interaction,
divisions between Latino and white families remain.
Student friendship groups mirror these patterns and while interactions
between Latino and white students are more frequent than among adults, students’
friendships groups are mostly with those who share their class and racial/ethnic
status. Though scholars have been hopeful about the potential of integrated settings in
advancing race relations between students (Cazabon et al. 1993, Christian 1996),
chapter 4 takes a more critical approach to analyze interactions between Latino and
white students enrolled in Samuelson. Akin to the parent interactions, relations
between Latino and white students are friendly and there was no explicit animosity
between them during fieldwork. Yet, their friendship groups are comprised mostly of
those who share their racial/ethnic and class background and outside of school, they
spend time most often with same race and same class peers. Parents claim class and
racial innocence for children, but on the ground observations demonstrate how
children recognize the status that accompanies particular social categories and use
language labels as proxies to talk about these differences. This chapter also argued
that teaching students about “diversity” and differences without addressing power
limits the ability to teach them to recognize and challenge inequality.
Finally, chapter 5 concentrates on the strategies teachers, administrators and
select parents use to temper the disparities between Latino and white families on
campus, which range from concealing class to challenging other families to become
more conscious about these gaps. Previous work on Latino students and schools finds

168
that Latino students are continuously immersed in an English dominant context
(McCollum 1994, Potowski 2004) and often attend schools that devalue their culture
(Valenzuela 1999), but this chapter shows how Samuelson adults incorporate Latino
cultures into everyday schooling and attempt to teach students to take pride in being
Spanish/English bilinguals. Select adults also work to make parent organizations and
councils more welcoming to Latino working-class parents so that they can more
accurately mirror the school demographics. That select adults work to equalize the
status of Spanish and its speakers at Samuelson illustrates how Latino and white
families remain divided and do not come together on their own. Moreover, while
these adults try their best to make circumstances more equal, they cannot shield the
inequality between families outside of the school from penetrating the campus.
Future Research
Because of the qualitative approach and non-random sample used, this
dissertation is not generalizable and leaves many questions open for future studies.
This study cannot tell us how the trajectories of Latino and white students will pan
out in bilingual education, how likely they are to develop positive interracial
interactions with those of other racial/ethnic backgrounds in the future or their overall
success down the line. And while this was not the goal of this study, these are
important questions that should be further investigated. For instance, this dissertation
did not focus on the role of families who were not Latino or non-Latino white.
Though few in number, African-American and Asian families were a part of the
Samuelson community and future research should explore their motives in selecting

169
immersion and Spanish/English bilingualism specifically. The limited African-
American and Asian families I spoke with shared that they had opted to enroll
children in Spanish/English immersion because it was the program that was closest to
them and because Spanish/English dual language education was far more common
than immersion programs with other languages. Perhaps because of their small
numerical presence at the school, Asian and African-American parents were not well
represented in parent organizations or committees. Mr. Trujillo explained:
I wouldn't call [Samuelson] diverse. We have 2 groups-- Latinos and
whites. We do a very poor job of recruiting African-Americans and
other ethnic groups.

JM: Why do you think happens?

I couldn't tell you. I couldn't tell you, but I can tell you that the African
Americans and the Asian families that we get here are very affluent
families or they are the kids of educators that see the value of being
bilingual. Some of these kids will also go into education and they have
to deal with a large population of Spanish speaking kids, but I really
couldn't tell you why we do a very, very poor job of recruiting those
families.

JM: Someone said maybe it was the neighborhood. Do you think that’s
it?
I don't think so. We have a black neighborhood, but we don't get those
kids. We get the kids from outside the district of affluent families, of
affluent African-Americans or affluent Asians. We do not get the ones
from here.

Contrary to what most parents and teachers in this study felt about Samuelson, Mr.
Trujillo did not agree the school was truly diverse and felt they were not doing a good
job of recruiting local African-American students. His comments signal to other
important aspects of immersion that this study did not address—for example, why

170
African-American families might shy away from the program and the role of those
who do enroll.
As a harbinger of demographic change, Southern California and the race
relations between Latinos and whites described in this study may foreshadow the race
relations likely to take place in other regions of the U.S. experiencing an influx of
Latino origin peoples. Future studies on integrated school settings and immersion
should examine race relations beyond Los Angeles, as it is possible that the unique
history of Latino segregation in Southern California and majority Latino context of
the area may skew findings and settings with different demographic compositions
will yield different findings. This is particularly timely, as Latino origin students now
comprise one fourth of those enrolled in our nation’s public schools (Pew Research
Center).
Additionally, while it is clear that the experiences within immersion and the
rewards of bilingualism are not equal for Latino and white students, this dissertation
does not condone the eradication of bilingual education nor does it argue that
bilingual education is not beneficial to Latino students. Unequal experiences within
schools like Samuelson should not lead to recommendations to remove these
programs. Rather, educators and those working towards school reform should work to
create more programs that seek to teach students in two languages while
simultaneously challenging the disparities between them. While their efforts may not
always result in lessening all inequalities between racial/ethnic groups, their efforts to
are a worthwhile pursuit.

171
Though this study cannot answer all of the questions pertaining to the effects
of immersion for families who choose these programs, in many ways, it represents a
best-case scenario. The parents who choose Samuelson see value in diversity,
voluntarily opt to participate in an integrated setting where they will experience
regular contact with racial/ethnic and class “others,” some share a socioeconomic
status, and they all share a goal of Spanish/English bilingualism and have access to an
institution that strives to value the Spanish language and its speakers. Yet, despite
these conditions and a larger societal context where Latinos have become the
majority, divides between Latino and white families remain and the distinctions
between them are clear. That whites seek to have interactions with Latinos and have
children learn to speak Spanish is a major historical shift from the segregation of
Latino-origin peoples in Southern California, but white families in this study do not
pursue Spanish/English immersion because lines are blurry between Latinos and
whites, but because they see value in exposing children to diversity and difference in
a globalizing world.
These shifting attitudes towards bilingualism and diversity seem promising,
but we must remain critical of the way power shapes access to bilingualism and even
to settings where racial/ethnic diversity thrives. Symbolic integration may be a new
form of the existing power distribution among racial/ethnic groups and in its civility
and subtlety may become a more difficult form of post-racial ideology to combat.
Symbolic integration may be one way that racial stratification persists amidst
diversity in contemporary American society. In drawing from over 20 months of

172
observation and participant observation and 66 interviews with individuals in a
racially/ethnically, socioeconomically and linguistically diverse setting, this
dissertation elucidates the complex and shifting relations between Latinos and whites
in Southern California. Showcasing the processes that bring Latino and white families
together or maintain divisions between them in everyday life illustrates the
contingencies of acceptance for Latinos even within Latino-majority contexts. These
findings and a closer analysis of symbolic integration between racial/ethnic groups
nuance our understanding of race relations in this era of colorblindness (Bonilla-Silva
2006). Examining these new forms of interaction is increasingly necessary as the
Latino population continues to grow and the U.S. becomes a more ethnically/racially
diverse nation.

173
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183
Appendix A: Role and Reflexivity in the Field

As a young Latina ethnographer and 1.5-generation Mexican immigrant
whose first language is Spanish, I was both an insider and outsider at my site.
Because I was bilingual, I was able to secure permission to help within classrooms
where I might not have been able to observe if I did not help out or where I would not
have been able to accurately capture the subtleties of my site if I only spoke one
language. Moreover, my social background often facilitated my interactions with both
Latino immigrant and U.S. born Latino parents. Latina immigrant mothers often
asked me where I was born, where my parents were from and how we came to the
U.S. For instance, several of the women in the ELAC group often asked me about
moving from Colorado for graduate school and empathized with me about the
difficulty of being far from family. My status as an unmarried, young Mexicana at the
time also seemed to cause them concern and these mothers often asked me about
being on my own, offered to have their husbands help me with my car problems, and
would even share apartment openings near the school. For example, Maricela and
Claudia had both lived alone at different times after migrating to California and both
asked me how my parents felt about me living alone, and later, how they felt about
my romantic life. Immigrant parents would also ask me how I felt about speaking two
languages, whether or not I liked going back to Mexico to see family and even about
my own experiences learning English in school. I openly answered these questions

184
because I interpreted them as a normative aspect of relationship building and because
they helped me build rapport with parents.
Working in a site with great racial/ethnic, socioeconomic and status diversity
put me in an interesting situation of privilege, as my own educational opportunities
exceeded those of many Latino immigrant parents. For example, as each attendee
introduced themselves for the parenting support group in Spanish, I told parents that I
was a student and that I was working on a project on dual immersion. Parents then
asked me what university I attended and upon hearing I was a USC student, several
commended me for pursuing my degree. One woman in particular told me, in front of
the group, that she thought it was great that I was in school and that my mother must
be very proud. She then commented that I am a great role model and that all kids
should take advantage of the opportunities available here (in the U.S.). Interactions
like this helped cement my identity as a student on campus and, I believe, encouraged
parents to be more open to helping me with my research. They also illustrate the
complex insider/outsider position I held as a Mexican origin woman and academic.
With Latino middle class respondents who were mostly U.S. born, my
racial/ethnic background and college education often led them to believe that I was
already “in the know” about their experiences. It is probable that Latino parents felt I
was in solidarity with them and thus felt comfortable enough around me to make less-
than-flattering comments about “gringos” and “gabachos.” For example, after a PTA
meeting, the librarian and a former Samuelson parent began to tell me about conflicts
between parents in the past. When I asked her what the problems were, she responded

185
that “white people were (pause)…Well, you know how it is. But now, now it is more
united.” My lack of response went unnoticed because Candace continued to speak
and tell me about other parent tensions. But, her comments show the subtle ways I
was perceived as an insider with unique knowledge and solidarity with Latino
parents.
My interactions with white parents were more formal and they did not often
ask me about my family background. Instead, many would ask me about Denver and
make small talk about the weather, skiing, other activities they presumed Denver-ites
did. Middle class and affluent white parents were also more likely to ask me specific
questions about my advisors and what topics I was focusing on. Some even shared
their favorite pieces of research literature on bilingualism with me during interviews
or casual conversations at the school. It is possible that my racial/ethnic identity
affected my interactions with white parents who may have policed their comments
around me and during interviews.
Finally, my gender also shaped my experience in gaining entrée to Samuelson
and the interactions I had with participants in the field. Because almost all teachers,
employees and parents active at school were women, my gender helped me “blend” in
but also led many adults at my site to assume I was teenage mother with children at
the site. Upon meeting me, many mothers, Latina and non-Latina, would ask me my
name and the grade of my child. I would then respond by telling them my name and
that I was not currently a parent. This, of course, resulted in some interesting looks of
confusion about my presence at these events and I would then have to explain that I

186
was a student studying dual immersion at Samuelson. Being a young woman and
student in an elementary school setting was beneficial, as I was perceived as less of a
“threat” to the young children on campus and was often assumed to be a teacher or
teacher’s aide.
Conducting observation, participant observation and interviews in a
racially/ethnically, socioeconomically and linguistically diverse site like Samuelson
made me acutely aware of my positionality relative to my participants. My own
race/ethnicity, gender, class and educational status made me both an insider with
some groups of parents and outsider to others. This insider/outsider stance was
constantly in flux as I navigated interviews with parents, conducted observations with
teachers and students and in my participation at other school events. Yet, this shifting
positionality also made contradictions and problems in the field more apparent and
challenged me to not make assumptions about the trends and patterns I saw during my
fieldwork at Samuelson. And while it is impossible to be invisible and completely
neutral in any qualitative research project, I am confident that I represented both
white and Latino parents to the best of my ability.

187
Appendix B: List of Interview Respondents

Table 1. List of Interview Respondents

Pseudonym Role at Samuelson Race/Ethnicity Class Status
Sandra Teacher and parent Mexican-American Middle-class
Suzanne
Teacher, former
parent Caucasian Middle-class
Janeth Parent Hispana Poor
Alejandra Employee Latina Middle-class
Lucia Parent Latina
Upper middle-
class
Paige Teacher and parent White Middle-class
Doreen Parent Asian
Upper middle-
class
Emily Parent Caucasian
Upper middle-
class
Charlotte Teacher African-American Middle-class
Maribel Teacher and parent Latina Middle-class
Eva Teacher and parent Hispanic Middle-class
Daniela Teacher and parent Hispanic Middle-class
Sofia Parent Hispanic Poor
Ruben Parent Hispanic
Upper middle-
class
Veronica Parent Hispanic Poor
Camila Parent Hispana Middle-class
Stacey and George Parents Asian, Caucasian Middle-class
Lana Parent Caucasian
Upper middle-
class
Donna
Teacher, former
parent White Middle-class
Lisandra Parent Hispana Poor
Lisa Parent
Mexican &
Japanese Middle-class
Fabie Parent Hispana Poor
Annie Parent White
Upper middle-
class
Miguel Parent Latin/Hispanic Middle-class
Grayson Parent Caucasian
Upper middle-
class

188
Allison Parent Welsh/White Upper-class
Emma Parent Caucasian
Upper middle-
class
Tyler Parent Caucasian
Upper middle-
class
Valeria Parent Hispana Middle-class
Monica Parent Hispanic Poor
Mayra Parent Hispana Poor
Ashlyn Parent Caucasian Middle-class
Esmeralda Employee Latina Middle-class
Carolina and
David Parents Hispanic Poor
Ariana Parent Hispanic
Upper middle-
class
Misty Parent Hispanic Middle-class
Viviana Parent Spanish
Upper middle-
class
Montserrat Parent Latina
Upper middle-
class
Kelly Parent Caucasian
Upper middle-
class
Alondra Parent Hispana
Upper middle-
class
Amelia Parent Hispana Middle-class
Maricela Parent Latina Poor
Kim Parent Thai/Asian
Upper middle-
class
Molly Parent White/French
Upper middle-
class
Patricia Parent Hispana Poor
Carmen Teacher and parent Hispanic Middle-class
Clara Parent Hispana Poor
Carla Parent Hispana Poor
Lorena Parent Mexicana N/A
Omar Teacher and parent Hispanic Middle-class
Miriam Teacher Latina Middle-class
Daisy Parent Hispana Poor
Dulce Parent Latina Poor
Gloria Parent Hispanic Middle-class
Holly Parent Caucasian
Upper middle-
class
Nadia Parent Mexican-American Upper middle-

189
class
Josefina Parent Mexicana Poor
Heather Parent White
Upper middle-
class
Claudia Parent Mexicana Poor
Kayla Parent African-American Middle-class
Rocio Parent Hispana Poor
Lourdes Parent Latina
Upper middle-
class
Valerie Parent Caucasian N/A
Fernanda Parent Hispana Poor
Erin Parent White/Jewish Middle-class
Michelle Parent White
Upper middle-
class

190
Appendix C: Samuelson and Los Angeles Area Demographic Tables

Table 2. Demographic Characteristics of Samuelson Area, Westside City and
Los Angeles

Samuelson
Area*
Westside
City
Los
Angeles
Total Population 21,360

89,736

3,792,621
Median Household Income ($) 59,695

73,649

49,497
Median Family Income ($) 72,705

112,016

54,024
Below Poverty Level (%) 15

11

22

Race/Ethnicity (%)

Latino 25

13

49
Non-Latino 75

87

52
White 65

78

50
Black 8

4

10
Asian 11

9

12
Two or more races 5 4 5
Sources: 2009-2013 American Community Survey and U.S. Census (2010)
*Samuelson Area information obtained using neighborhood zip code.

Table 3. Racial/Ethnic Composition for Samuelson Census Tract by Year

1990

2000

2010
Total Population

5,957

5,624

5,867
Race/Ethnicity (%)

Latino

45

48

37

Non-Latino

55

52

63
White

32

28

36
Black

14

10

9

191
Asian or Pacific
Islander
9

9

14
American Indian

0

0

0
Other

0

0

0
Two or more races

-

4

3
Source: U.S. Census
*2000 and 2010 Censuses separate Asian and Pacific Islander into separate
categories but were combined for consistency.

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