The bell sounds at a high school in Los Angeles. A bright corridor fills with students, echoing the squeak of rubber sneakers. Three Black teenagers are laughing together on the front steps. A group of Latino kids chat in Spanish as they wander home. Tonight they’ll stand together and sing the national anthem, walk one by one to the stage in cap and gown, open a hand, and receive a piece of rolled-up card tied with a ribbon.
At another graduation, little more than two hours drive away from the city and into the farm belt, the ceremony will start with a traditional Mexican dance. The American flag will whip in the wind to the sound of “Guadalajara.” 
Girls in traditional dresses will whirl and stamp to the rhythm. Parents who never made it as far will smile and clap as the sun sinks behind the football stadium.
This is multi-cultural California — the open-minded, open-armed melting pot, and the vision of success the world over. If you’re here — you made it. You’re on the edge of the western world with nothing but the ocean left to conquer.
Except that, in reality, the milk and honey in the Golden State is running low. It’s harder than ever to catch a break, especially if you happen to be starting at the bottom of the social ladder.
LOS ANGELES — Yesenia Zamarripas trips over words. It slows her down, but she repeats herself until it comes out right.
“My teachers tell me that I speak perfect English,” she says. “But I do not.”
In fact, Yesenia still has trouble with the alphabet. She repeats ‘J’ twice and then skips to ‘P’
.
“Now I know my A, B, C’s, won’t you come and sing with me?” she sings at the end, smiling bashfully.
Yesenia is the child of Mexican immigrants. Her parents came to the U.S. from Jalostotitlan in central Mexico and speak very little English. Without being able to practice at home, it’s been hard for Yesenia to keep up with her peers. Now that she’s preparing to enter her sophomore year at Crenshaw High School, the pressure is on. Time is running out, and Yesenia says that her English is a major concern.
Today, she sits in her usual place at the front of the classroom, eyes down to her textbook, reading aloud to herself. Her long, wavy hair is pulled into a low pony-tail and tied with a scrunchie. She pushes the small, clear-framed glasses higher on her nose and answers the teacher’s questions slowly, but with perfect recall.
Her teachers say that Yesenia is a hard-working and capable student. Her sad brown eyes show that, despite her endearing shyness, she’s very aware. In fact, she’s more aware than most of the kids in her class. Too aware, one might say, for a 14 year-old. She knows the economy is bad, and that it’s taking a toll on her hardworking parents. She knows that by seeking a future for herself, she has to neglect her family. She knows that if she fails, she will have wasted the opportunities her parents spent their entire lives struggling for.
But in those repects – Yesenia is pretty typical. She lives in a city with the biggest Latino population in the nation. More than half of L.A.‘s growing count is made up of second-generation immigrants. These children, born to those who crossed borders to get here, carry the burden of their parents’ sacrifices and the threat of their disappointment.
The load is a heavy one.
Yesenia, like millions of others in the same situation, is expected to climb the social ladder at breakneck speed, from bottom to top, in the space of one short lifetime. Her parents depend on it. So, too, does the fate of the entire state.
Coupled with the exodus of prosperous Californians in recent years, and a retiring baby-boom generation, the success of second-generation immigrants is imperative. But waning resources and growing hostility toward illegal immigrants and their children is reinforcing the barriers to social ascension with titanium. If the children of immigrants can’t find a way to break through, the future is pear-shaped. The labor market will suffer a shortage at the top, and a huge bulk at the bottom.
Education: The Great Divider
Yesenia’s mother is a high school drop-out, and her father has never spent a single day in a classroom. Yet Yesenia needs to complete high school with high enough grades and a dazzling-enough resume to get accepted to college. Even then, she’s not in the clear. Getting through college will be tough, and essential, if she wants to fulfill her dream of becoming a social worker.
But Crenshaw High School, along with the majority of schools in the Los Angeles Unified School district, is suffering severe budget cuts. If Yesenia wants extra help – she’s going to have a tough time finding it.
This year, the LAUSD announced budget cuts of $1.3 billion and sent lay-off notices to more than 2,000 teachers. But even before the recent financial chaos, Yesenia had to go above and beyond to get noticed. Back in elementary school, when she first noticed she was falling behind her classmates, Yesenia petitioned her teachers for extra support.
“In fifth grade, I realized that I needed help,” said Yesenia. “So I would go every day and tell them ‘I need help, I need help.’”
The teachers finally agreed that Yesenia was struggling and put her forward for special education classes. But then when Yesenia started middle school, she was put back in regular classes.
“They didn’t read my I.E.P papers that I need to be in special ed.,” said Yesenia.
She was switched back mid-way through sixth grade, and stayed in special education classes for the next three years. Yesenia says that it helped.
“In special ed. they explain it well and take their time,” said Yesenia.
Then, in December last year, Yesenia’s counselor called her out of class to talk about her progress.
“She said, ‘oh my God. You’re the first Hispanic girl in special ed. having all straight A’s’,” explained Yesenia. “She said it had been a mistake to put me in special ed. for so long.”
Now, Yesenia is back in regular classes and on the honor roll.
The classes are more intense and the stakes are higher. Yesenia is rushing to start filling her high school resume with activities and achievements. She has to work on her portfolio, and write personal essays about her goals. She has to think long and hard about what she wants to do, who she wants to be and where she’s going to go. Her schedule is full and the stress is building.
“I feel like I want to rip my head off,” she says.
She slouches into her black and white striped hoodie, which has a pink skull and hearts on the front. “I’m just right now out of balance. Too much things and activities. I’m just stressed out.”
She fidgets and rolls her eyes when she finishes speaking, tired, or unsure, or both.
Breaking the Unspoken Rule
Latino students make up three-quarters of the population in the Los Angeles Unified School district. More than 200,000 children are classified as English as a Second Language (ESL) learners, and far more are bilingual or come from Spanish-speaking homes. Yet resources for these students are slim, according to teachers. Bilingual education programs continue to be cut, along with bilingual coordinators and teachers. Schools are rarely even able to provide translators for parent-teacher conferences.
Just trying to cover the basics in many of California’s public schools is tough enough. The state is 47th in the nation for per-student spending, leaving little room for the more expensive, intensive or specific resources and programs, like bilingual or special education.
Ironically, L.A.‘s poorest schools are the least able to provide these “extras” as well as the most in need of them. The LAUSD has a drop-out rate of 50 percent. And conditions inside the classroom are getting worse. At Crenshaw High School, the number of students who reach graduation has dropped by more than 20 percent since 2004. Then, in June, L.A.’s schools took another blow. LAUSD board members agreed to increase class sizes across the district. High school students in the poorest parts of the city will now face jam-packed classrooms of up to 42 pupils to one teacher, and even less one-on-one attention than ever before.
For the children of Latino immigrants in Los Angeles, the vast majority of who are enrolled in public schools, limited resources will make it much harder to break the cycles of poverty and low-education levels initiated by their parents. The “fat” being trimmed from the education budget contains the very nutrients that second-generation immigrants need for social ascension. After-school programs, intensive classes, field trips and free extra-curricular activities help to bridge the class divide between poorer children and their middle class counter-parts, according to Professor Ricardo Stanton-Salazar of USC’s Rossier School of Education.
“Middle class kids begin to realize that there is a system in the larger community that is organized around their continual success within the school and in terms of their human development,” said Stanton-Salazar. “Whereas it’s the very opposite with regards to the kids that are working class or working poor. They don’t experience what that system is like. So, there’s a level of alienation.”
Instead of support through the community and education system, children in poor neighborhoods experience “cumulative deprivation,” according to Stanton-Salazar.
“The setbacks you begin to experience early in life result in a continual cycle of failure,” said Stanton-Salazar. “Unless there is some kind of intervention.”
But providing extra academic or social support requires resources beyond the reach of many schools in the LAUSD. Teachers are stretched thin just trying to run a basic curriculum, let alone find funding or time to implement extra services to students in need. For the children of immigrants trapped in the lower rungs of the education system, there is barely room to accommodate the fundamentals of the American academic experience, let alone explore avenues of bilingualism and multi-culturalism.
Yet according to educational theorists Ruben G. Rumbaut and Alejandro Portes, children who maintain the native language and culture of their parents are much more likely to be successful. The Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Study (CILS) was conducted from 1991 to 2006 and followed 5,200 children of immigrants from early adolescence to early adulthood. The results showed that children who grew up in environments that were politically and socially receptive to immigrants, providing support and encouragement to the community, were much more likely to pursue higher education and professional careers.
For children experiencing hostile and prejudiced environments, the likeliness of “downward assimilation” into crime, gangs and other negative forms of social behavior were significantly increased.
In Los Angeles, Latino culture is prominent and growing. But immigrant communities are also isolated, geographically and politically. The labor market is bifurcated, and the ethnic composition of the city looks more like a patchwork quilt than a melting pot. The result of segregated ethnic communities poses an inter-generational dilemma. For recent immigrants, moving into a network of peers provides ample benefits, including a shared language and culture, as well routes into manual labor jobs. But for their children, the effect can be confining rather than freeing. Networks beyond the working class labor market are non-existent and out of reach. Children become trapped in a world where dropping out of high school and taking a low-skilled job is the norm.
In this kind of urban dynamic, an unspoken caste system has persists. Becoming the exception is a near-impossible feat.
The Break Through
DELANO, Calif.—In winter, the fields of Delano look like forgotten graveyards. Wooden crosses span miles of farmland under an apocalyptic-like dark sky. The cracked, dry earth paints the world brown. All that remains of the fruitful, summer season are a few stray bunches of shriveled black grapes among the tangled vines. Roots reach upward like fields of disfigured limbs. Once in a while a car passes, and breaks the silence of the peopleless streets.
But turn a corner at the right time on a Delano afternoon, and the scene changes. Children and teenagers pour from the doors of the 17 schools in the city. The soaring youth population, growing up in 2009 as the second generation of farm-working immigrants, is busting the seams of the city’s school district. A few years ago, these teenagers were filling the 13 elementary and middle schools in the area. Now, new high schools seem to be being built on every corner to accommodate their coming of age.
Although Delano has been the capital of the immigrant farm working industry since the United Farm Workers union was established here in the 60s, the city experienced a population boom, along with the rest of California, in the immigrant-heavy decade of the 90s. According to statistics from the federal census bureau, it was within this decade that Delano added more than 15,000 residents to its populace, swelling by almost 70 percent. Since, the city has continued to race ahead of the state average in its population growth, experiencing expansion of 36 percent since 2000.
But despite the influx and expansion of its residency, Delano seems to have barely changed since Cesar Chavez was marching for farm worker’s rights across its sparse plains. There are very few signs of redevelopment. There are no corporate skyscrapers, no shopping malls, no fine dining or cinemas or bowling allies. Nothing rises above the irrigation pipes crisscrossing the fields like a giant Tinkertoy construction set.
It is a wondrous inconsistency, the disparity between the growing populace and the barren streets. Delano is both full, and empty.
Almost 30 percent of Delano families have a household income below the federal poverty threshold. On Garces Highway, low-rise, temporary housing provides a service to the migrant community. According to public health nurse John Hall, these cheap apartments are often overcrowded, with “multiple families, who don’t know each other, living together just to save cost.” A slumping economy has only worsened the situation. Fewer families are able to find seasonal work in the traditional “cycle,” which requires moving with the seasons from the San Joaquin Valley to Imperial Valley to Arizona, Texas and back again. “The migrant lifestyle is very difficult life to live,” said Hall.
Trying to break the cycle of poverty in a city like Delano is even harder. There are few opportunities for Delano youth to step outside the traditions of their parents. Job opportunities are bleak; 80 percent of the population is dependent on seasonal farm working, a career that requires no high school diploma or further education. In 2000, less than half of the population in Delano had a high school diploma. Just 5 percent held a Bachelor’s degree or higher.
But despite the obstacles, recent years have seen the API scores of the local high schools increase. More and more students are leaving the city to pursue college degrees. The children of farm-working immigrants, although brought up in poverty in a city with little else to offer than what the fields can bear, seem optimistic and inspired.
Whether it’s the close-nit community or hardship itself, something here is working to motivate social ascension.
Omar Viramontes is a sophomore and doing very well in school. His days are often 12 hours long, including a dawn commute from on the nearby hamlet of Earlimart. His parents earn a family income of just $20,000. Yet omar is planning to apply to Harvard and MIT for college.
“My parents came from Mexico,” said Omar. “Right now they are working in the fields. They pick grapes. And they have been working there for about 20 years. It’s a very difficult job. The only inspiration that I actually get is by seeing them every day coming home and they’re tired, they’re exhausted and I tell myself, you know, I have to be better. They didn’t have the opportunity to go to school here and you know what? They’re giving me the opportunity. And I’m a fool if I don’t take it.”
As a member of the Math Club, the Chess Club, the Mathematics, Engineering, Science and Achievement club, and the California Scholarship Federation., Omar has a lot on his plate. After summer, he’ll also take his place as school president.
“I’m finishing high school in 3 years, so I can go to college early and have an advantage in life to help our my family and the community,” said Omar. “I think the key to succeed is sacrificing yourself for the benefit of others.”
What Doesn’t Break You…
Sometimes struggle is the strongest catalyst for determination. In fact, in Delano, the dynamic of the farm working culture itself seems to be motivating the children of immigrants to scale the social ladder. In the Delano Unified High School District, drop-out rates are less than half the state average. Academic scores are increasing, which might seem strange considering the dominance of the agricultural industry — notorious for its low wages and unstable working conditions.
However, a supportive community can potentially offset the detrimental effects of poverty, according to Ricardo Stanton-Salazar, a professor at USC’s Rossier School of Education.
“People tend to settle to areas where they are going to be able to find people they identify with, share some common background features and begin to build a support system so that you can have community,” said Stanton-Salazar. “And so as soon as you come as an immigrant, one of the first things you try to do is build a support group with people you feel some identification with.”
With ongoing immigration and high birth rates, Delano is almost 80 percent Latino. The community is immersed in a bilingual Mexican culture, which can also provide an advantage to its youth.
“If children are able to maintain their parents’ native language, and they maintain the language to a high level, it’s not only that they maintain the language, they maintain the traditional values that are attached to the language,” explained Stanton-Salazar. “So that acts as a buffer to assimilating the darker side of working class culture.”
The physical isolation of the city, coupled with an emphasis on education and family values, is creating an incubator for ambition. For the children of immigrants in Delano hoping to succeed, leaving the city to pursue higher education and professional careers is imperative.
Educational theorists Alejandro Portes and Ruben G. Rumbaut call the experience of the children of immigrants in this type of environment “selective acculturation.” A supportive community that retains cultural pride and bilingualism is more conductive to upward social mobility than the segregated, isolated communities of inner-city hubs like South Los Angeles.
Portes and Rumbaut conducted the Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Study from 1991 to 2006, and the results culminated in a theory about the influencing factors that determine upward or downward social mobility. Their conclusion, as explained in the book Legacies: the Story of the Immigrant Second Generation, was that a positive social reception, including government policies that actively support immigrant communities through educational resources and professional job opportunities, is much more likely to produce educated, successful second-generation immigrants than a society that is apathetic or actively ignores them.
While teenagers in Delano experience an inter-connected community with a shared history, high schoolers in Los Angeles face overwhelming diversity and overcrowding. The cacophony of culture in L.A. forces some communities to be sidelined, especially when it comes to education. Bilingual education, for example, is an essential component of Delano’s schools. In Los Angeles, however, district-wide budget cuts have affected these areas first.
“Educational funding here in the state of California has gone down as the rising number of Latino students has gone up,” said Jose Lara, a teacher at Santee Education Complex in South Los Angeles, which is populated almost solely by Latino students. Lara says that the decline in education funding is directly related to demographic shifts in California, and the issue of social mobility for second-generation immigrants is one inextricably tied to race. As the public school system swells with Latino students, the tax payers at the top rungs of society - a traditionally Anglo-American population - no longer see an investment. “That’s the elephant in the room that nobody wants to talk about,” said Lara.
Instead of confronting issues of race and the changing face of California, students in public education - the majority of whom come from immigrant families - are being sidelined, according to Lara.
“Multi-culturalism tends to be when we all just except each other and tolerate each other,” said Lara. “But we need more than that. We need justice.”