In April, the New York Times published a piece titled, “Struggling to Rise in the Suburbs Where Failing Means Fitting in” that followed a U.S.-born, second generation Salvadorian girl named Jesselyn Bercian. New York Times reporter Jason DeParle describes Bercian as having “an eighth-grade education, a gang history and an ex-boyfriend in prison for murder.” At the time of the story, Bercian worked at a mall and was studying for her high school eqivalency exam, although both commitments were at risk of falling apart on Bercian’s end. DeParle defined her as “off the streets though not free of them.” DeParle writes:

“The problems of young people like Jesselyn are sometimes called failures of assimilation. But they can also be seen as assimilation to the wrong things: crime, drugs and self-fulfilling prophecies of racial defeat.”

It is a rising theory that “Americanization” or “assimilation” to the negative aspects of American culture plays its part in impeding social upward mobility for second generation immigrants. Becoming “American,” then, becomes the opposite of what many immigrants envisioned for their children: a detrimental rather than beneficial force.

The New York Times story would suggest that these children - the first generation in their families “growing up American” - are waylaid by their peers, who offer quick-fix alternatives in the struggle to fit in. They join gangs and embrace negative racial stereotypes as a means of empowerment. Their aspirations are stunted because traditional perceptions of what it is to be “American” do not include speaking Spanish, listening to Latin ska or having brown skin.

But somehow all of this feels familiar… The struggle to redefine what it means to be “American” in an age of rainbow citizenry; the allure of gangs for those cast adrift by white America; the embracing of negative racial stereotypes in a counter-intuitive attempt to defeat them. This isn’t a cycle exclusive to the children of Mexicans, Indians, Haitians, Cubans, Filipinos or the Chinese. It isn’t a problem pertaining only to recent arrivals. The African-American population of the United States has been struggling against cycles of social rejection since the beginning of the transatlantic slave trade. And consistently, in inner-city schools like the Los Angeles Unified School District, African-Americans have a higher drop-out rate and lower test scores than any other race. Although Latino students usually aren’t far behind, there is little reason to suggest that recent immigrants and the children of immigrants are more susceptible to the ills of Americanization than any other group of teenagers.

There is something else, however, that pertains particularly - although, yet again, not exclusively - to the children of recent immigrants. Their experience of America differs greatly from that of their parents. Their worries are less immediate and, arguably, less severe. They will not be carried away in the night by the “migra.” Rarely do they have to work 13-hour shifts in the fields, factories or standing on the corner at Home Depot, where their rights are diminished by a lack of legal power and voice. They do not have the impediments of monolingualism in a non-native country.

In cities like Delano, California - the heart of the San Joaquin Valley and the birthplace of the immigrant farm worker’s movement in the 1960s - the struggles of recent immigrants sit side-by-side the opportunities of the second generation. Here, many children are fueled to succeed because of the existence of a motivational force that is a very tangible in their daily lives. They see their parents, tired and baked from plucking grapes all day in the hot sun, forced each day to work harder and faster in order to keep up with the mounting pressure from thrifty labor contractors, coming home each night only to spend time cooling off and preparing for another day. It is precisely because of their parents’ struggles that these children aim high, obligated to excel and reach back. Some of their parents hiked through desert wasteland to expand the horizons for the next generation. They left loved ones and familiarity for alienation and toil. Now, the burden of success rests heavily on the shoulders of their children.

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