Part ii Learning to Belong
63
2 Mowing the Lawn
and Getting Pregnant
latinidad and eduCational exCePtionaliSm
Reggaetón remixes blasted from the Zumba class next door. I was in the
Succeeders office trying to finish up my interview with Sebastián. He
leaned in closer to my recorder in a surprisingly fruitful attempt to maxi-
mize his voice over the music. The blaring bass reve
erated through the
thin walls. Now practically shouting, I asked him to define what it means
to be Latino and if he identified as such. At the end of the interview, as
I clicked off the recorder, Sebastián told me that it was hard not to laugh
as I asked these questions when what he called “beaner” music rang out
from the room next door.1 On our way to the parking lot, we let out our
concealed laughter over the incongruity of talking about the personal
meanings of Latinidad—or Latino- ness—over a Latin pop soundtrack.
In the interview, with a poker face that didn’t betray his stifled laughter,
Sebastián had told me that he considered himself Latino: “I am, 100 per-
cent XXXXXXXXXXAt the end of the day, that’s what I am. At the end of the day, I’m
proud of my heritage.” He contrasted his pride to the attitude of his cousin,
Serena, who lived in a white- majority subu
and was “emba
assed” to be
Latina. He attributed her emba
assment and his pride to their different
schools and neighborhoods:
64 l e a r n i n g t o b e l o n g
Maybe because she goes to Eastlake High, where it’s majority white, and
maybe they make racist jokes XXXXXXXXXXShe grew up in a more American Ameri-
can, like Caucasian, area and I was born in a place where it’s a melting pot.
Being Mexican is actually cool here [in his neighborhood] kind of thing, but
at the same time, don’t be ashamed of who you are.
In the contrast between himself and his cousin, Sebastián pointed to the
importance of proximate influences (like neighborhoods and schools) and
social interactions (like racist jokes) in shaping ethnic identity. While rec-
ognizing the power of those influences, Sebastián held fast to the notion
that Latinos, despite racism, should be proud and not “ashamed” of their
heritage. He also demonstrated an understanding that being “American
American” meant being white, suggesting that his Latinidad may mean
only partial Americanness.2
In contrast to Sebastián’s assertion that he was “100 percent” Latino,
what composes Latinidad is not “100 percent” given, even for Latinos.3
The panethnic label of Latino draws together a diverse a
ay of national
identities, racial groups, and Indigenous languages into one social cat-
egory, resulting in both solidarity and subgroup tensions.4 The very terms
Latino/a, Hispanic, Latin@, and most recently Latinx are themselves
complicated signifiers imbued with shifting notions of inclusion and
exclusion. Moreover, as this chapter shows, youth’s definitions of Latini-
dad in reference to their own lives, educations, and families were varied,
multidimensional, and even contradictory.5 Succeeders understood being
Latino in interconnected terms: those of their families, as Sebastian did
with Serena; pervasive anti- Latino stereotypes; and positive but clichéd
notions of Latinidad, like the Zumba music that plays on the recording of
Sebastián’s interview.6
Exploring youth’s conceptualizations of Latinidad seems far afield
from US belonging and schooling. However, Succeeders lived under
the weight of pan- Latino stereotypes. Their perceptions of Latinidad’s
negative reception and experiences of Latino threat stereotyping by non-
Latino others formed the basis of their striving. It also came to form the
asis for their critique of the racial, moralized, and success- based terms
of US membership. As they strove to distinguish themselves as proper
Latinos, these efforts also illustrated how those most vulnerable to exclu-
sion from belonging can enforce its limited terms. In sum, the Succeeders’
m o w i n g t h e l a w n a n d g e t t i n g p r e g n a n t 65
understanding of their Latinidad suggests the bleeding edge of our collec-
tive notions of how membership is practiced, inherited, and linked to self.
Emerging from the Succeeders’ notion of Latinidad is a Latino respect-
ability politics where educational achievement is proof of the “good” Latino
personhood needed to belong. As youth viewed themselves in terms of
ethnoracial stereotypes, they began to see education as a circumvention
of the racialized exclusion that makes only whites “American Americans.”
Success became the way out of race and the way toward belonging. Suc-
cess was also an individual way out, one that relied on marking yourself as
distinctive from your community.
This and the next chapter focus on how Succeeders reproduced exist-
ing racial and moral terms of belonging through striving. In this chapter,
I show how youth linked academic achievement to belonging. As they
made this linkage, they asserted that Latino academic achievers were
“good” Latinos worthy of inclusion, whereas nonachievers, as “bad” Lati-
nos, were not. In this way, education is a sensible route for escaping racial
and moral stigma. This chapter provides a general outline of how stu-
dents linked educational exceptionalism with belonging and thus how
striving can promote the existing terms of belonging. In the next chap-
ter, I detail how this reproduction of exclusionary terms of membership
happened specifically in the medium of students’ speech in club meet-
ings and their college essays. Both chapters show how abstract aspiration
leads to real exclusion.
I also hint in this chapter at how Succeeders unraveled limited racial-
ized and moralized terms through family ties, a theme taken up in part III
of this book. In emphasizing their families, Succeeders showed that Lati-
nidad can also be about connections across nations and familial genera-
tions. This is not to say that these familial understandings of Latinidad are
not also limited, particularly around the contradictions of proving one’s
worth by potentially degrading that of other family members. In tracking
Latinidad’s meaning to youth, it is possible to see how the scope of belong-
ing is both tightened along the lines of success and race and expanded
through our connections to others. This tension between the castigated,
the cele
atory, and the consanguineous na
ows the scope of Latinidad
for youth and forces the distinctly Latino respectability politics present in
exclusionary educational striving.
66 l e a r n i n g t o b e l o n g
SPiCy and SPiritual: latinidad
and PoSitive StereotyPeS
Pedro told me that I should check out the Egypt booth since they “always
have a good vibe,” visit the El Salvador booth for the pupusas, and stick
around for his
eakdancing. The soccer- playing senior was cu
ently rep-
esenting Spain at Jackson Hills High’s International Day. A fundraiser for
the school, the event was a community highlight. Students created booths
in the gym complete with informative posters, household objects offered
as artifacts, and, to my delight, snacks. It was a micro- version of events
like Cele
ate Nashville or the InterNASHional Food Crawl that I high-
light in chapter 1. Most students were representing their or their family’s
nation of origin. I was initially surprised to see Mexican- born Pedro at the
Spain booth. Pedro told me that Mexico already had “a ton of people” and
that the event planners needed someone for Spain. They speak Spanish in
Spain—close enough—he figured.
Alejandro, one of the student planners of International Day and a
dedicated Succeeder, had previously told me that the music, clothes, and
dances on display all had to be approved as appropriate by the event’s
teacher sponsor. The food did not. As students danced to a mix of regional
music and hip- hop, they performed what it was to be a teacher- approved
Mexican, Honduran, or person from various other nations of origin. I con-
sumed it all with both my eyes and stomach.
Jackson Hills High’s International Day is emblematic of easy, or pas-
sive, multiculturalism—the kind that was also highlighted by city boosters
as a lure for u
an sophisticates to Nashville. This mode of multicultural-
ism works to highlight what Shalini Shankar calls “culture with a capi-
tal C . . . food, clothing, music, and dance” rather than to develop youth’s
understanding of “the power relations that contribute to [the] inequal-
ity” that necessitates International Days in the first place.7 The event is
also emblematic of something else: how youth define their ethnic identi-
ties, and their panethnic one, in cele
atory but stereotypical terms.8 In
school, work, and their
oader lives, the Succeeders learned what limited
parts of Latinidad would be approved of socially and institutionally.
Although a limited means of assessing youth’s conceptualizations of
Latinidad, my interview questions on it provide a useful map of how
m o w i n g t h e l a w n a n d g e t t i n g p r e g n a n t 67
youth think about these questions when asked to consider them. Many
students cited practices like the foodways, folklore, clothes, dance, and
Spanish- language skills on display at International Day.9 Javier, a junior
student who loved Japanese anime, shared a typical response: “The cul-
ture that you’re exposed to makes you Latino . . . the food, the language,
the holidays, all that.” Beyond language and cultural traditions, there was
also evidence of a heavy reliance on positive stereotyped traits in defining
Latinidad.10 As Lupita stated, being Latino means “being family- oriented,
having some sort of strong religion affiliation, being very driven and
determined.” Such responses emphasized the tropes of familism, religios-
ity, and “sweat equity” that circulate among the media, social scientists,
and others when it comes to defining Latino populations.11 There was one
more stereo type added onto this pile: being passionate, “spicy,” or having
“flavor,” or an attitude or style that is attractive. For example, class cutup
Courtney replied that “being Latina is just—I just have flavor in my blood,
Figure 2. Succeeders’ piñatas, made during a field trip. Photo by