There was no allyship with the undocumented folks. Because I was a green-card holder, I could create that distance, even when I found more in common with those newer immigrant students than with the more assimilated ones.
I remember hearing students talk about college; it was an “us” conversation that I knew I had to infiltrate. I was not really part of the assimilated crowd in my high school. I was not part of the few undocumented-immigrant groups at our school either. I did not have many friends. But for my future, I knew I had to latch myself onto the college-bound crew. Those kids were different; they were who the gates helped protect. The AP students and gifted students were the prized children of the school. They had the help of teachers and faculty who defended them against foreign invaders.
I knew I was a foreign invader in more ways than one, despite the historical irony. So, I learned to utilize the skills I had gained and applied them again; I watched and I listened and I learned to adapt. I remember hearing some of my peers talking about college, and many sounded matter-of-fact about their college prospects. Meanwhile, I had never even imagined such a thing for myself. I watched and I listened and I learned to adapt. I spotted the gatekeepers, and I learned to work around them.
During my junior year of high school, with a laughable grade point average of 2.8, I marched into my school counselor’s office and told him that I was going to enroll in five of the college-bound classes known as Advanced Placement classes. I was already enrolled in two that year, and it had been quite a shift for me in terms of teachers and peers. But there seemed to be a difference between dabbling and total immersion in these classes, something I would realize once I got full access. You could tell these students were valued by the school. To solidify my “us” status, I had to emulate the “us” students and enroll in as many AP classes as I could. The “us” students, the college-bound students, did not slack off in their senior year; they fluffed their transcripts. So, I wanted to enroll in five AP classes for my senior year, to reflect my moral goodness and, hopefully, get the keys to open new gates and new opportunities.
This was a big leap for someone like me, someone who did not excel academically and had never before expressed college aspirations. My counselor denied my request and told me to take more electives and give my GPA the boost it needed through easier classes. He implied that I was dumb; he told me that being book smart was not a skill everyone had, and maybe I would excel at sports instead. I remember feeling really embarrassed, but learning to move past shame had already been normalized in other ways for me, so I knew to move past the shame in this instance as well.
Being a working-class, Brown, immigrant Latina, I knew by then that I had to become my own biggest advocate. So, I went to the one person who could convince my public school counselor at one of the biggest high schools in the country to change his mind: my mami. I spotted a gatekeeper, and I knew his weakness: parents. So the next day, I brought my mami to school to force him to put me in those AP classes.
As we were sitting there, I told the school counselor that mi mami wanted him to put me in the AP classes, even though she was not asking for this and did not even fully understand why she was there. I was the interested party, not mi mami.
The counselor then had the audacity to tell me that he felt it was not a good move because he would be setting me up for failure. He said I would need help with these classes, and then he looked at mi mami and said that her lack of English proficiency meant that she would not be able to help me. This gatekeeper upped the requirements for entering this classroom and made them personal.
My high school counselor had all the power in his hands to either make a path for me to attend college or rob me of that opportunity entirely. He was saying I shouldn’t have such high aspirations for myself, all because we were immigrants and my parents did not speak English. I had not imitated proper indoctrination into the American school system, which my grades reflected but was not indicative of my potential.
He had devalued my abilities and my resilience, and had overlooked the simple fact that I had already learned to assimilate in the United States without the help of my parents. This gatekeeper decided to reinforce the walls that should have been doors, as gatekeepers do.
My counselor underestimated me and my ability to win. I had been paying attention, I knew that the AP students were college bound, and I had to be around them to get to college. I knew that the AP students were the ones college recruiters courted, while the other students were approached by predatory military recruiters during our lunch hour. The school made concerted efforts to support the AP students, and I knew that I needed that support when it was not provided at home. I knew that the AP students were the ones who got recommendations, networking opportunities, and preferential treatment from teachers and school counselors. I knew that AP students were coveted because they got the school more funding; a teacher had told me to my face that AP students were worth double what regular students were worth. What I learned was that if I was an AP student, the school would place a higher value on my Brown immigrant body, and they would invest in my future. The gatekeeper knew this and saw me as unworthy. The school counselor failed to see that having no support at home meant that the school should provide that support instead of penalizing me. I was a child, and the adults around me were failing me because of their own internalized biases.
As I sat there contemplating how I was going to build my rebuttal against the counselor’s xenophobic and classist remarks, I remember mi mami turning to me and attempting to negotiate with me to listen to the counselor. I remember my heart breaking, because I knew mi mami did not understand the gravity of this moment, the gravity of this refusal. Mi mami seemed to believe that this gatekeeper was telling only truths and not reflecting a larger, more fucked-up narrative, which was meant to keep us down simply because we were not white and middle-class. I knew—I had been paying close attention—that if I did not overturn my counselor’s opinion, I was going to struggle to get into college. The gatekeepers in society just get more heartless and harder to outsmart; this high school counselor was relatively low-hanging fruit that I knew I could reach.
My brother is two years older than me but four school years ahead of me because I was behind academically. He had graduated from high school before I even started, and he struggled trying to figure out what to do next. I remember he worked in the roofing industry for a year or so and then decided to enroll in the local community college, but he was navigating this school system with blinders on. FAFSA, applications, class selections were all foreign concepts to us, and we had not received any help on how to navigate it all. It was assumed that all families just inherently knew how to jump through those hoops. That assumption cuts opportunities out of the equation. I knew I needed the help, even when I did not know the exact details of what kind of help I would need, and I was going to get what I needed even if I had to fight for it.
Internalized isms taught many of our parents that they could not fly even before they were aware that they had wings. I remember seeing mi mami trying to find common ground, trying to accommodate this man over her daughter, and trying not to cause a scene. I also remember not caring that they did not believe in me; I knew I could do it. What I did in that moment was commit to believing in my unreachable dreams. I purposefully mistranslated what mi mami said and insisted that she believed in me. I used all the conviction I could muster to tell this counselor that I was getting into these AP classes. I insisted that mi mami was not going to back down.
My school counselor sighed and rolled his eyes, and then he quickly typed out a short contract on his computer and printed it out. The contract stated the risks associated with my taking this many rigorous classes. The contract stated that mi mami had been warned and had decided to ignore the counselor’s suggestions. The counselor was wiping his hands clean of us; he was ensuring he was safe in case I failed. This gatekeeper used every tool in his tool kit, and winning for me meant knowing all his tools—and findi
ng better ones.
I was never his concern; he was protecting those inside the gates from me. I remember mistranslating the contract to mi mami and having her sign this document that, quite frankly, should never have been made. That senior year, I was put into my AP classes and ended up applying to and attending a four-year university after high school.
All of which would not have happened had I listened to those voices and low expectations that are meant to keep us down. All of this would not have happened had I been intimidated by this gatekeeper or believed what he believed about me. The assumption was that success looks white and middle-class, and I defied that not because I am smarter but because I rejected his perception of me. I did not work harder than my college-bound peers; I did not work harder than the hundreds of students in my grade who were not given the access I had demanded. I know a lot of brilliant Latinas who should have been in those AP classes with me, but were not because they had believed the lie that the school counselor had told me: the classes would be too hard and they would fail. They believed that the gatekeeper had their best interests in mind, when that was a lie. That is how gatekeepers win, and continue winning. As an immigrant, I was constantly taking notes and constantly observing what was meant for me and what was not, and then I decided to defy gatekeeper after gatekeeper and take their power into my own hands. None of that came easily, because it is a broken system and it leaves a lot of brilliant people behind.
In my AP government class, during the first week of school the teacher had us raise our hands to see how many of us worked when we got off school, and no one raised their hand. Then he told us how he had asked that in his regular government class, and over half the students had raised their hands. I remember feeling that in my gut, because I knew I was just a stone’s throw from that context, and while I had no after-school job, I also knew that there was a difference between me and my new peers in these AP classes. And that reality was palpable.
Their differences were not that they were smarter than other students; rather, they simply had the financial ability and support at home to be solely students. Resegregating schools between AP students and regular students was a way to separate by class and race. This system benefits white, wealthy parents because their kids are isolated in a bubble of privilege, and it benefits schools because they get more funding. The only people who lose are the “regular” children, whose potential will never be tapped because their parents are poor, immigrant, Brown, or Black. They lose because they cannot outsmart a system meant to reward their docility and punish any resistance.
When I graduated, I still had a 2.8 GPA, because I was the same student. I never did find community in those AP classes; there was a lot of elitism and a lot of open name-calling of those who were considered dumb. Our school prioritized us, and many of these AP students believed that made them better people. We were all creating identities; we were all trying to become the capital “US” of USA. We were all sheep in wolves’ clothing, trying to become American, trying to become the standard, white. We were kids learning to be the predators and not the prey. We were being taught to become gatekeepers in our own right. We were being taught that we deserved to be treated better because of our assumed class status. We were being taught that we deserved access, but were given no tools to critically think about why others do not get this same access.
And while it was lonely, I still managed to find the help I needed during the college-application season and was able to get into what the AP students regularly called their “safety” college, Florida International University. This Hispanic-Serving Institution was my top and only choice.
Lying about my class, my family’s finances, became important when I sought community with people whose families clearly had more money than we did. There is also a taught shame around poverty that is hard to undo, so lying became easier. We are taught that being poor is a reflection of your own laziness. In my church, we were even taught by the prosperity gospel that poverty was a moral failing, reflecting your lack of devotion and bendición from God. So, I began to lie about my class. I began to lie about what my parents did for a living. I did not want people to know my mami and papi could not afford what my peers’ parents seemed to have no problem affording. I did not want to be any more different than I already was. Mi mami knew about this and would call me Julieta, from the Soñadoras novela. Julieta was a character who came from the projects and pretended to have more money than she did to fit in.
It was a known fact that I created distance from my background, but it was to survive the cruelty of a society that ranks people based on their financial status. One way I hid my class was through school lunch. I had been on free and reduced lunch for all the years I had been in American schools. I noticed when entering high school that those who relied on free or reduced lunch ate inside and away from everyone else. Those who ate inside were the Black students and the undocumented students. It was an unspoken rule and created a lunchtime segregation based on class, race, and citizenship status. My school had a courtyard, and the pizza was sold outside. The kids who could afford the $1.75 would pass on paying for the cafeteria lunch and opt to eat pizza instead. If you ate the pizza, you could eat outside, in the courtyard. I stopped eating school lunch, and since I couldn’t afford the pizza, I basically just stopped eating lunch. All this, just so I could be a part of the outdoor social culture of the school.
This is how I actively attempted to erase my working-class background, and it seemed to mostly work. People just accepted that I did not eat lunch, and lunch hour at our school was functionally a social hour anyway. Being a kid who ate inside the lunchroom meant social isolation.
I continued to pass somewhat as middle-class through certain acts that kept my class identity ambiguous. That ambiguity meant social capital. I was mostly able to manage and hide my class status—that is, until graduate school. At that advanced academic level, at that elite institution, there were distinct class differences. I couldn’t disguise my disadvantages, and I almost flunked out of my first semester.
For undergrad I had attended a Hispanic-Serving Institution. It was one of the most affordable colleges in the country. Few students paid for on-campus room and board; most of the students were commuting from their parents’ homes. Each credit cost roughly $100, and my financial aid covered all tuition costs, a laptop, and even sorority membership fees. I was brilliant at maneuvering class and finding spaces for myself, for a working-class person.
Graduate school was truly the first time I knew I could no longer hide my class. I was sitting between two peers from my cohort, both absolutely book smart. And they started talking about Michel Foucault, and then about Judith Butler. They were laughing and referencing literature that we had not even read yet—heavy theory we had not been introduced to—but they had already read it. I even recall one of them saying he read Foucault because he found his books in his father’s library. I remember the shock and panic that overcame me. I knew none of those theorists; I had no clue then. But my peers did. Their socioeconomic upbringing had given them access to knowledge I could never dream of and I could never even pretend to know.
With the Latinx AP students I had encountered years earlier, there was this performative aspect of their class entitlement. That same entitlement felt different in white spaces; it felt dangerous here. These white students were not trying to perform their advantages to differentiate themselves above other students of color. Instead, they were so clearly from advantageous life circumstances that their blatant privilege viscerally made me feel sick to my stomach.
In my home, a simple traffic citation could set our family finances off course for weeks, if not months. Cavities went untreated until teeth fell out or broke in half, readers were used as regular glasses by both my parents, and the black market was often used for prescription medicine we could not access or afford. I felt so out of place at Vanderbilt, in ways that I did not even know how to describe to anyone else.
And so, I resigned myself to
reading faster, taking more notes, and starting papers at the beginning of the semester that weren’t due until the end. I resigned myself to believing that hard work would pay off, to believing in meritocracy. Much to my surprise, all of this did not work. This was not a competition for who could work harder to get an A; this was about whose parents had provided their kids with enough access to succeed at this academic level. This was about whose parents even had the ability to know where to supplement their children’s education with home libraries, tutors, extracurriculars, after-school enrichment programs, summer school, and so on. This was about competing with students who never even understood the concept of gatekeepers. This was about students who felt entitled to extensions, help, compassion. This was about students whose teachers had invested time and energy in them. This was about students who had mentors before I even knew what that meant. These students were all the chosen ones, and I felt alone.
I remember one small-group discussion, when I was attempting to describe a paper I was planning to write. The teaching assistant asked for a volunteer, and in an effort to outsmart a gatekeeper, I attempted to outsmart her. Except this gatekeeper was smarter and way more prepared to gatekeep than my high school counselor had been. I wasn’t ready, and when I stumbled, she ridiculed me and said I clearly did not know how to write. Maybe to her I was just another entitled student she needed to break, but I was not. I needed encouragement, because I was already drowning. But that did not happen. Instead, the teaching assistant proceeded to tell me that I was welcome to write my paper in Spanish, since clearly English was not my forte. Telling me she had majored in Spanish in undergrad and was comfortable grading my paper in my first language.
I did not have the heart to tell her in front of everyone that, while Spanish is my first language, I speak a slang Spanish and never learned to write in proper Spanish. I was not ready to write a graduate-school-level paper in Spanish. I was not even ready to write a graduate-school-level paper in English, but here I was scrambling, trying to find the door to access and insider knowledge, and it seemed to be fading into the distance.
For Brown Girls with Sharp Edges and Tender Hearts Page 8