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being fobulous on multicultural day
Tara has been looking forward to multicultural day since she started at Mercer. She
met many of the girls in her popular clique as children in her Gujarati community.
Tara lives in the maze of streets atop the Fremont hills. Her parents moved to Fremont
from Gujarat via Chicago in 1981, when Silicon Valley was beginning to become
world renowned for its technology work. For years, Tara and her friends have kicked it
in their six-girl clique on a bench in the quad at lunch. Now that they are seniors, they
meet in the parking lot to go out to lunch in the new cars they received for their
sixteenth birthdays. Although some of her friends understand Gujarati and can speak
it to each other, they do so only for gossip or jokes, like her friend Sheetal’s ‘‘dead gai’’
joke, discussed in the previous chapter. Compared to the parents of the other girls in
her clique, Tara’s parents place the fewest restrictions on her social activities and allow
her to stay out late and date boys—taboo activities for nearly all her friends. Tara
knows how unique her relationship is with her parents. She explained, ‘‘Me and my
parents are so close. Actually I am lucky to have them. They are so liberal, they let me
do anything I want. I guess that’s a good thing. I won’t be doing things that they
don’t want me to be doing.’’ Her father expressed his viewpoint on his daughter’s
social life: ‘‘I told Tara, ‘Keep your eyes open, if you like someone, go for it!’ If they
don’t find someone by that time, we will try to find them. I have no problem, Black,
White, Chinese.’’ With her friends unable to party and with no boys worth dating at
her school, Tara confides that there is seldom a worthwhile outlet for her freedom.
Tara has been pouring her e√orts into their multicultural day dance. All six girls are
Hindi film fans and love to choreograph and perform dances based on Bollywood
dance sequences. They have cinched top prizes with their amateur troupes at regional
Desi dance contests.
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Being fobulous on Multicultural Day
Multicultural day performances like the one Tara and her friends are planning are carefully conceived and enthusiastically received by school audiences. Their choreography and music—painstakingly selected to incorporate a wide range of cultural forms—flow seamlessly together. What
such short performances obscure, however, is a broad range of enduring
inequalities of race and class that dominate the everyday lives of students.
As the only sanctioned space for cultural expression in high school, multiculturalism draws attention to complicated issues of equality, participation, and who is responsible for upholding its tenets. Although multiculturalism’s ideologies of equal rights and representation grew out of
various civil rights and postcolonial struggles, they often lose their potency during implementation. Silicon Valley high schools have created
annual events that reflect the egalitarian spirit of multiculturalism, but
execute them in inconsistent ways that o√er little support to ensure equal
access. The rhetoric of these programs suggests that they are open to all,
but little is done to include interested students.
In Silicon Valley high schools, multicultural initiatives overshadow historically produced systems of advantage and disadvantage among particular racial groups and obscure socioeconomic cleavages that exist within
them. In this chapter I focus on two performances, the politics of representation that precede them, and the responses that follow them. The first
discussion examines representation across racial groups at Mercer High
School, and the second highlights tensions that can emerge within a racial
group at Greene.∞ Both interrogate questions of rights, meanings, and
representation for students. Moreover, they draw attention from the sanctioned emphasis on Culture with a capital c—which includes food, clothing, music, and dance—to the dynamics of inequality that underpin different racial and ethnic groups.
Despite all their flaws, multicultural programs are valued spaces of
representation for Desi youth. Indeed, these spaces are rare and cherished
opportunities for Desi teens to define themselves to their peers. Choices of
music, costume, choreography, and other stylistic elements enable them
to display Desi teen culture to their schools. Such choices are far more
complex and nuanced than the reductive stereotypes of Desis in the media
or in their curricular lessons about ‘‘Indian Culture.’’ Yet it is often this
very essentialist notion of South Asian culture that their peers and school
faculty expect to see during these programs. Indeed, the reductive charac∞≤≠
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ter of multiculturalism often lays to waste students’ e√orts as audiences
anticipate cultural representations they consider to be authentic or traditional. Negotiations of what it means to be Desi come to a head in these
programs, as do broader questions of race, class, and gender equity.
multiculturalism in america
Multiculturalism emerged in the United States in the late twentieth century
as a response to the European cultural hegemony that prevailed in American universities from the late nineteenth century onward (Goldberg 1994;
Stam and Shohat 1994). This Eurocentric perspective was in harmony with
prevailing policies and attitudes toward immigrants during that period,
which included the eventual cessation of Asian immigration and denial of
citizenship to Asian Americans. In contrast to the attempts to acknowledge and respect diversity that mark present-day constructs of multiculturalism, the late nineteenth century and early twentieth favored a ‘‘melting pot’’ model of assimilation (Glazer and Moynihan 1963) that required
immigrants to relinquish any cultural values or language practices that
conflicted with Anglo-European monoculturalism and English monolingualism. This pressure to assimilate came under increasing attack during the second half of the twentieth century, a period marked by emerging
postcolonial nations worldwide and ardent civil rights movements in the
United States, as well as a relaxation of U.S. anti-Asian immigration laws.
Although multiculturalism emerged out of movements for greater civil
rights and freedom, its nature has been a site of contentious debate.
Conservative critics oppose the idea outright and have railed against curricular reform, a≈rmative action, and political correctness. Dinesh D’Souza’s
(1998) Illiberal Education typifies this perspective. Others invested in furthering the call for substantive economic, political, and social reform have
noted that multiculturalism is most often recognized in a purely celebratory manner through festivals, fairs, and other ‘‘ethnic’’ events. This critique acknowledges that multiculturalism focuses on how immigrants,
people of color, and other minorities add diversity to American society
without actually addressing the power relations that contribute to inequality between and within these groups (McLaren 1994; Takaki 2001; Taylor
1994; Wallace 1994). In any case, it is essential that multicultural e√orts not
challenge White hegemony (Frankenburg 1993; Lipsitz 2006; Perry 2002;
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Being fobulous on Multicultural Day
Winant 1997); indeed, diversity is tolerated in these contained displays
insofar as it does not disrupt the racial order. This norm of Whiteness is
one on which multiculturalism is premised—a point that is evident in how
teenagers discuss the meaning of this term and align themselves with their
high school’s multicultural initiatives.
multiculturalism in silicon valley high schools
While the ethos of multiculturalism is about unity, equality, and cultural
expression, its implementation can exacerbate and reinforce race-, class-,
and gender-based divisions among students. Neither Mercer nor Greene
High School o√ered any ‘‘formal’’ or politicized multicultural e√orts in
their curricula. While race and ethnicity are examined to some extent
through class work or projects, multicultural programs stand alone as the
designated space where racial di√erence within the student body receives
public attention. Showcasing dance, music, food, and art, these carnivallike programs o√er day- or weeklong displays of Culture for general consumption by students and faculty. When this type of public expression is
quarantined to a single day or week of the entire school year, all ‘‘cultures’’
appear to exist in harmony next to one another and disparities between
them are erased. Dance and song productions, along with ethnic food and
music, are displayed as representative of entire countries, regions, and
even continents, such as in ‘‘African Culture’’ or ‘‘Latin American Culture.’’ In actuality, such monikers barely even represent the diversity of
students from these groups who attend the high school. Moreover, such
parsing of time and attention overshadows historically produced systems
of advantage and disadvantage between racial groups and ignores cleavages of class that exist within them at schools.
At Mercer High School, ‘‘Multicultural Week’’ began in the mid-1990s
and evolved into its present format of a weeklong festival. Each of the first
four days is dedicated to a di√erent racial group—African Americans,
Asian Americans, Latinos, and European Americans—and students are
encouraged to dress in corresponding ethnic clothing. Friday is Unity Day,
when the week’s events culminate in an hour-long assembly of performances held in the gym and performed twice to accommodate the oversized student body. During an extended lunch period on Unity Day, student clubs are invited to play music and sell ethnic foods and crafts.
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‘‘Ethnic’’ food at Mercer means choosing between egg rolls and samosas
instead of the ‘‘normal’’ fare of bagels and burritos. While eating a kabob,
students can get a henna tattoo bearing the name of their favorite NSync
band member or purchase woven goods from Central America. Similarly,
at Greene e√orts focus on food and dance but are condensed into an
extended lunch period on a Friday. All ‘‘International Day’’ activities are
staged in the quad, the least diverse area of the school campus.
At both schools, students believe that multicultural programs amount to
little more than entertainment. Nonetheless, students of color at both
schools describe these days as the only ones over which they feel a true
sense of ownership. Compared to other school productions such as homecoming and school dances, which Desi teens usually refer to as ‘‘White’’
events, Multicultural Day can truly be theirs. Taahir, a geek boy who likes to
wear his sherwani suit (a long, fitted coat) for Asian Day at Mercer, commented, ‘‘I think Multicultural Week is cool because we can express ourselves in another angle that people usually don’t see us through. . . . We’re
able to dress up, it helps show who you are.’’ Likewise, José, a Latino boy,
describes the vibrant character of the week and exclaimed, ‘‘I find it extremely interesting. Everyone is kinda representin’, like, this is what I am!’’
For many students, securing a place in the schoolwide program is
important precisely because of this scarcity of ongoing opportunities for
public expression. Although Desi teens admit that these venues are primarily about displaying dance, music, and food, they nonetheless value
them as one of the few spaces they can call their own in an otherwise
White high school culture. Indeed, even though White students are a
numerical minority at Mercer and Greene, events such as homecoming,
rallies, school dances, and prom that Desi teens regard as White dominate
the public space of school and rarely take into consideration the music or
aesthetic choices of non-White groups.
By contrast, multicultural programs allow a space for Desi teens to
carefully craft representations that reflect aspects of their heritage as well
as their lives in California. These expressions di√er from the static, timeless notions of South Asia that they may learn about in their classrooms
and instead mark a more time- and place-specific way of being Asian
American. Desi teens can use these spaces to convey more heterogeneous
and potentially radical versions of themselves than they otherwise can in
high schools, and than their peers would likely learn about in class.
∞≤≥
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While Multicultural Week may not appear contentious, in a teenage world
it is fraught with multiple layers of political and social significance. Indeed, if
high school is considered a microcosm of society, then multicultural programs provide a staging ground for rights and representation. ‘‘Cultural
citizenship’’ draws attention to the political underpinnings of quotidian
struggles; Renato Rosaldo and William Flores (1997: 57) define this concept
as ‘‘the right to be di√erent (in terms of race, ethnicity, or native language)
with respect to the norms of the dominant national community, without
compromising one’s right to belong, in the sense of participating in the
nation-state’s democratic processes’’ (see also Ong 1996; Siu 2001). As one of
their students’ only public forums, high schools necessarily serve as sites in
which to examine the dynamic struggle for rights and representation (Kymlicka 1996; Werbner 1997). In this sense, organizing a dance for a multicultural performance is illustrative of broader dynamics that position as well
as empower students to advocate for particular rights and viewpoints.
Although numerous teens want to participate in Multicultural Day and
seek greater representation in schools, only some have the cultural capital
to actualize their visions. Indeed, how students gain access to these programs and find their way onstage is reflective of the broader ways students
of di√erent racial and class backgrounds are able to use the school to meet
their needs. Going backstage, so to speak, to examine the casting, creating, and rehearsing of these performances reveals how these expressions
of racial and cultural identity are sites of negotiation and exclusion for
many students. At Mercer this struggle occurred between various racial
groups; at Greene it occurred among Desis themselves. Both cases are
fraught with a similar twofold tension of students vying against one another for performance time while also attempting to challenge essentialized notions of cultural identity.
asian american dominance at mercer
Should students from all ethnic groups be included in Multicultural Week?
The issue of whether the program should take to heart multicultural ideology about equal access and representation or instead prioritize the requests of the majority of the student body spawned debates and school
newspaper editorials for months. The controversy began with the way the
student committee in charge of the multiculturalism program handled
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Being fobulous on Multicultural Day
auditions, which were necessary to manage the overwhelming student
interest in participating in the hour-long program. The planning committee appointed an entirely White panel of teachers to judge auditions scheduled three months prior to the April performance.≤ Chosen primarily
based on their willingness to stay after school for the auditions, judges
were asked to evaluate each act on content, choreography, and overall
‘‘entertainment value.’’ Although students were alerted about the audition
in early November, little information was o√ered as to how to prepare.
From this early stage onward, di√erences in cultural capital among
students became apparent. Hopeful participants Tara and her friends were
able to draw on the experiences of friends and siblings who performed in
previous assemblies as well as their own knowledge of school activities.
Nonplussed by the school’s lack of directives on how to ready themselves,
they asked the girls in their clique, some members of the fobulous Six,
and a few other girls to join their dance. Having won several Desi community dance contests, they were no strangers to how dances are choreographed, rehearsed, and costumed. The hard part was choosing from the
spate of popular Bollywood songs and dances currently en vogue. A dance
popularized by beauty queen Aishwarya Rai was a must. Determined to
make it into the program, the girls held regular practices at various homes
after school, as well as during weekends and winter break, and ten girls
slowly mastered the dance. As the audition drew closer, one of the experienced dancers in the group had her mother shop for matching tops at
Ross Dress for Less specifically for the audition.
When asked how they knew to prepare so thoroughly, Tara explained that
they had watched seniors in previous years go through this and that they had
heard about how competitive the audition could be. She added, ‘‘We really
want to get selected for the program. We have always wanted to do this
during senior year. If our group gets in, we can make up the rest of the dance
however we want.’’ Serious and focused, they even appointed me as an
understudy since I had watched countless practices, in case they needed a
last-minute replacement for the audition (thankfully, they did not). Motivated by the prospect of representing themselves to their school, they invested significant time and e√ort to procure what they knew would be a
highly coveted spot. By January, Tara and her friends had successfully trained
and costumed their fleet of ten girls into nearly flawless audition material.
Only some groups, however, were able to draw on the knowledge of
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seniors and their own past performances. While some groups had the
advantage of already being well versed in school events as well as having friends who schooled them about the ins and outs of this particular
program, others approached it cold. On audition day, such di√erences
were apparent in the auditions of the Asian American, African American,
and Latino groups. In a lengthy a√air in which ten groups vied for four
places, a number of Asian American groups arrived with costumes and
props alongside a smaller number of representatives from the Black Student Union (bsu) and the Latino student group mecha (Movimiento
Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán).≥ These two groups together make up less
than 7 percent of the school’s population, and they sought to increase
their visibility and presence in the school by representing themselves in
this forum. Their audition was enthusiastic but without costumes and
their full cast of performers. Unfortunately, it was passed over in favor of
ten Desi girls in matching outfits, the Chinese girls who performed a
traditional ribbon dance using props owned by their families, the Filipino
boys and girls who did a dance with lit candles that they had performed at
community shows, and a uniformed Japanese martial arts group doing a
number based on karate. Additionally, two outside acts would be hired by
the school to supplement student performances.
Issues of Inclusion . While generally accepting of an audition framework, some students, faculty, and parents were outraged that the school
would hire outside performers and turn away interested students who
were not represented in the program. This outcome evoked widespread
discontent and frustration for African American and Latino students, who
regarded the day as their only space for cultural expression in a school
where they were vastly underrepresented. The bsu decided to take action
against this decision. They called on their advisor, Monique Albert, a
young African American math teacher, who spent much of her busy first
year at Mercer helping them with this struggle. Quick to mention that she,
along with another African American and an Asian American woman,
were the only teachers of color at this school, Ms. Albert was forthcoming
and articulate about the perceived inequities underlying this process.
On the day I spoke to her, she and the only other African American
faculty member, who was also a young woman, were staying after school
to compose a letter to the school newspaper outlining their grievances
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with the multicultural audition and selection process. Their main critique
was the lack of detailed information about the audition. Standing behind
her colleague, who typed into the classroom computer, she looked over
her shoulder at me and exclaimed, ‘‘I didn’t know that it was a full-on
audition! I was completely unfamiliar with the whole setup. We sent representatives to the meetings, but not enough info came out of them.’’ Despite her frustration, Ms. Albert was somewhat accepting of this outcome,
and graciously added, ‘‘The [bsu] leadership is all new, all young freshmen. So how could I really prepare them? I’m new too! We weren’t prepared, and we accept that fact.’’ Her protest, however, stemmed from
mecha not being chosen, despite four acts they had prepared. They were
exasperated that despite their e√orts and working hard for the audition,
the Latino group was still excluded.
The African American and Latino students I spoke with were magnanimously supportive of the chosen performers and instead took issue with
the school administration for not advocating on their behalf over professional adult performers, and for leaving the program in the hands of four
Asian American students whose priorities were not inclusion of all interested parties. Students also expressed their frustration by writing letters to
the editor of the school newspaper. Juanita, president of mecha, submitted a provocative letter to the paper that summarized the student position
on this situation. She argued that audition flyers did not call for costumes
and polished pieces. She especially took issue with the vague concept of
‘‘entertainment value,’’ asking why, if it was not an important criterion in
other schoolwide programs, it was important for Multicultural Week. Was
Multicultural Week inherently less interesting and in need of special efforts to make it more appealing? She emphatically concluded, ‘‘If students
are proud of their heritage and are willing to share it with their fellow
students, they should be allowed to.’’
After several letters to the school newspaper, mecha requested to take
the place of the professional Latin group and represent themselves. Juanita
recounted in frustration that the committee told her they favored keeping
‘‘the Brazilian or Bolivian dance group.’’ In a state with thousands of
Chicano students, having a dance from South America barely seemed like
representation, about which Juanita parenthetically wrote, ‘‘We are still not
sure because the committee can’t distinguish the two diverse countries.’’
The administration’s hands-o√ stance left the program entirely under the
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jurisdiction of the activities coordinator and leadership students, whose
priorities were di√erent from those of the excluded students.
Despite their best e√orts, the two young African American female
teachers and their students were unable to overturn a decision that rested
firmly in the hands of Mr. Watson, the young White male activities director
who had worked at the school for several years. When I asked him about
the controversy, Mr. Watson shrugged and said, ‘‘This is the first year
we’ve ever had any complaints, and really those came from those groups
that performed in the tryouts and weren’t chosen. Of course they were
bitter about that. And they had a di√erent viewpoint—their viewpoint was
that we do a kind of quota-type thing, that you take people regardless of
how well they perform, and you just put them in because you want to get
all the ethnicities that you can. Again, there is no way we can possibly do
that, nor is that our point.’’
Mr. Watson’s comments echo a familiar hue and cry against a≈rmative
action, which is that only those who achieve on their own should progress. His stance suggests that the school is in a postracial society where
such di√erences have been erased and e√orts toward inclusion are not
necessary. Not only does his position do little to further equality, but it also
confirms that access is actually not a cornerstone of an event that, by its
very nature, is designed to be culturally inclusive and unifying. Mr. Watson
silenced groups seeking representation and turned the school into a microcosm of familiar dynamics of exclusion and resentment about a≈rmative action that run rampant in colleges and in the workplace. Especially in
California, where the uc system did away with a≈rmative action in their
admissions policy in 1997, attitudes like Mr. Watson’s make multiculturalism’s inclusive agenda seem unimportant. With the school administration
showing no indication of intervening and with no other teachers who
wanted to advocate, the program went on as planned and Multicultural
Week finally arrived.
Showtime at Mercer . On a sunny morning in April 2000, a gymnasium
packed with eleven hundred students and their teachers rose as a student
sang the ‘‘Star-Spangled Banner’’ with electric guitar accompaniment that
fell a bit short of Jimi Hendrix but was respectable nonetheless. In the
adjacent locker rooms, Desi girls fidgeted with their shiny golden head
jewelry and generously applied makeup while Desi boys enacted Star Wars–
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style fights with their dhandiya, the decorated sticks they would use in their
dance. The national anthem ended and students settled onto the bleachers
in noisy anticipation of the hour-long multicultural program that had
replaced their third- and fourth-period classes that day. Elaborately costumed groups of enthusiastic students began to perform their well-rehearsed dances and martial arts routines. When the Indian student club
was introduced, six Desi girls struck a pose in a circle at the center of
the gym while a multiracial group of thirty-four other performers stood
poised and ready to enter on cue. The inner circle of Desi girls began to
dance gracefully to ‘‘Taal,’’ the title song from Aishwarya Rai’s Bollywood
hit.∂ Fourteen more girls in coordinated green and gold skirts joined in
and were soon followed by their twenty male partners. The gym echoed
with a reverberating bass and the howls of kids cheering for their friends
while the performers enjoyed their moment in the spotlight. The music
quickly segued from one lively Bollywood song to another, and the choreography toggled between bhangra and hip-hop-influenced moves and
filmi flirting and courting rituals.∑ The dance closed with a dramatic pose
that sent the audience into wild cheering.
After watching the full show of Asian students and two professional
acts of Chinese acrobats and Bolivian folk dancers, students expressed
appreciation for the assembly. Although they enjoyed the performances,
many could not discern if the assembly had a larger purpose. Rekha, a
fobulous Six member who did not dance but liked watching her friends
perform, remarked, ‘‘It’s a good opportunity to learn about other cultures.’’ My question of whether she had learned something elicited a long
pause. She eventually replied, ‘‘Somewhat. We’ve had it every year. You
don’t really learn anything, but you get to see what other cultures do. It’s
fun to see that. A lot of people don’t really know about other cultures, so
it’s a good chance to learn . . . I guess.’’ Rekha articulated the commonly
held student viewpoint, which is that multicultural programs do not adequately convey knowledge about other cultures. Feroze, an active member
of the Muslim Student Association, paused from selling kabobs for his
club and remarked, ‘‘It’s all right. It could be better. Put more e√ort into it!
Right now it’s food, that’s all we do. There isn’t any entertainment until
Friday, when we actually do something. They don’t do anything throughout
the week.’’ Other students who felt like spectators rather than participants
in this program shared his sentiment.
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Students noted that the groups chosen for the assembly closely mirror
the racial composition of the school. About the Asian-dominated program, Stephanie, a White student who enjoyed the assembly, commented,
‘‘That’s about as multicultural as it’s going to get here. Even though it’s a
relatively diverse school, there’s only a handful of di√erent cultures. There
isn’t exactly something representative from every part of the world. But for
us, it’s a pretty good program.’’ Likewise, José, a Latino and a member of
mecha, asserted that there are hardly any African American and Latino
students in the school, so it is not surprising that they are underrepresented in the program. Being in the minority, however, does not diminish
a group’s desire to be included. Shaniqua, president of the bsu, admits
that their group was ‘‘prepared but unorganized’’ at the audition, but also
added, ‘‘I don’t think the rest of the students like us very much. This
school is very di√erent from other schools. We’ve just had a hard time. It’s
not diverse, we don’t feel a lot of support.’’
Shaniqua’s comment, as well as others, betray the lack of ownership
African American students feel over the program. Along with Monique
Albert, Alicia, a bsu member who had tried out for the program, is among
the few who challenged the notion that having several Asian acts this year,
as in years past, is not considered repetitive, whereas two years of African
American acts would be. She generously commented, ‘‘I liked it this year,
it was really good. But the only thing that kind of made me sad is that
nothing was there to represent the African or African American culture,
and when we proposed it and said, ‘Look, we’ll hire someone to come in,
just like you hire people for other cultures,’ they said, ‘No, that would be
redundant to have something from the African or African American cultures two years in a row.’ So I just really did not like that, especially
because that’s what it’s all about, you know? But other than that, I thought
it was great—the students, the acrobats, they were all great.’’ When I asked
her how the problem could have been handled better, she reflected for a
moment and then replied, ‘‘I think instead of having the Chinese acrobat
people—because they didn’t represent anything for culture, it was more
just a goofy side show—that’s where we could have . . . not we . . . there
could have been an African or African American anything.’’ Alicia’s comment, especially her shift from ‘‘we’’ to ‘‘not we, there’’ underscores how
little ownership African American and Latino students feel over school
activities and functions.
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Mercer High School’s multicultural program served to reinforce existing race-based hierarchies in the school. Those groups historically underrepresented at the school remained so, and Asian Americans, already the
majority at the school, dominated the public display time at this program
as well. By the same token, having an hour-long assembly serve as the
year’s primary public arena for cultural expression in a school with an
Asian American majority is problematic in itself. This predicament is
further complicated by the entertainment-centered character of this program, which leaves little room for deeper understanding of the very issues
that caused this unequal situation. An analogous situation emerged during International Day at Greene that also challenges the premise of unity
and understanding that underlie this day. Here, issues of class and gender
among Desis manifest as obstacles for students who want to use this
space for cultural expression.
fob-free at greene
Should students in the same ethnic group be assured equal access to
multicultural programs? While Desi teens at Greene did not have to compete with other groups to secure a place, they did battle among themselves
to perform on International Day. The events that unfolded received no
school press coverage or parental intervention, but were problematic all
the same. At Greene, there were no auditions. There was no policy against
having two dances from the same ethnic group. In fact, there was not even
a stipulation that groups had to be a≈liated with a student club. In other
words, there were no rules. A perplexing situation resulted from this
seemingly open invitation: although there was plenty of room for all
interested students to participate, only some were able to do so.
When the International Day program was announced, there was widespread interest among fobs. Yet popular girls Jaspreet and Amanpreet
announced their intentions to do a dance on behalf of the Indian Student
Club before any other groups had properly mobilized. For these two popular sisters, International Day is yet another program in the endless roster
of school activities they dominate. Though they are Sikh Punjabi like the
majority of Desi teens at Green High School, they are notably di√erent.
Unlike their peers, these upper-middle-class girls live in a posh home in
the hills and are avidly involved in school leadership, pep rallies, fashion
∞≥∞
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shows, proms, and other social events. They are even the self-appointed
leaders of the Indian Student Club, an organization fobs at the school
know little about. Along with their clique, they occupy prime real estate on
the grassy steps of the school’s quad, a space they unquestioningly call
their own. Jaspreet and Amanpreet are especially concerned that they not
be mistaken for fobs, which, to their dismay, has happened on occasion.
Amanpreet recalled one such incident in which she and her clique were
kicking it near the library rather than in their usual spot in the quad and
someone called them ‘‘the Indians.’’ She admitted, ‘‘We just forget and
just think about ourselves as whatever, but not really Indians. . . . We are of
a really di√erent crowd that are not just Desi-oriented.’’ Drawing on the
cultural capital of their upbringing along with expertise in school events,
Jaspreet and Amanpreet began to e√ortlessly organize their dance.
Meanwhile, several cliques of fobs solidified their interest in performing as well. Yet they were perplexed by the general lack of information on
how to participate. Janvi and others were reluctant to approach popular
Desi teens or to visit the leadership o≈ce for information. Although
Avinash, Charanpal, and other boys spoke enthusiastically about the possibility of doing a bhangra dance, no one took the initiative. In all, four
di√erent groups of fobs expressed their intention to dance, but none was
able to mobilize. It soon became clear that International Day was no
di√erent from the other school programs toward which fobs felt general
discomfort. In its present form, the program seemed more like an obstacle than an opportunity. With little cultural capital and even less clout in
school, the fobs’ ability to plan a dance was limited from the outset.
Politics of Participation . While Jaspreet and Amanpreet had no logistical trouble, they encountered a di√erent type of dilemma: in order to
achieve their artistic vision, they needed more Desi girls in their dance
than their exclusive popular clique a√orded. With their original four, they
needed several more, and quickly realized they would have to involve at
least a few fobs. Finding the prospect of visiting the back corner more
awkward than they had expected, Amanpreet decided to ask some of the
fobby girls she knew from her classes. Nidhi and her two close friends
convinced one another to join. Gurinder, who kicked it with the fobs but
also enjoyed many school functions, decided to join as well. The rest of the
fobby girls and boys shied away from the prospect of joining the dance.
∞≥≤
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Although Janvi kicked it with Nidhi, she still felt out of place and commented, ‘‘I wanted to join their dance, but they’re kind of snobby and live
way up in the hills, so I don’t really want to do it with them.’’ Rather than
forming a second group, interested fobby youth resigned themselves to
not participating because Jaspreet and Amanpreet were doing the dance.
My gentle reminder that there could be more than one Desi dance was met
with uneasy shrugs and mumblings about how it wouldn’t be tight to have
two dances from the same country.
Problems soon arose that highlighted the socioeconomic di√erences
between popular and fobby girls in the dance. Although most of the girls
are Sikh Punjabi, middle-class fobby girls have far more restrictions on
where they can go and what they can wear, and none of them owns a car.
This made attending rehearsals, which the sisters decided to hold in their
home rather than the easily accessible school grounds, a major hassle. To
further complicate matters, the popular sisters choreographed and outfitted a dance that o√ended the sensibilities of fobby girls and even some of
their popular friends from more conservative families. Gurinder expressed her objection: ‘‘You have to do all this motioning across your chest
and spread your legs. It’s like, some kind of seduction dance.’’ Other girls
agreed, and to make matters worse, the ‘‘slut dance,’’ as it was quickly
dubbed, was to feature what were considered excessively revealing outfits.
Gurinder further remarked, ‘‘The lehengas have slits in them up to here
[pointing to her midthigh], the blouses have a hole cut out of them. I told
my mom about these lehengas and she asked why they don’t just wear
miniskirts.’’ With moves and costumes that they regarded as too sexually
suggestive, several girls, including some of the popular girls in the dance,
decided to drop out. Frustrated, the popular sisters decided to compromise rather than cancel the dance altogether. They would tone down the
dance and let performers wear their own lehengas, which exposed as
much as each girl deemed appropriate.
Showtime at Greene . On a warm spring day in April 2000, International
Day finally arrived in the quad. The stage area was adorned with decorations, including a colorful banner naming the event, surrounded by handpainted flags from various countries and an arc of helium balloons that
stretched from one end of the concrete stage to the other. As the bell rang
to signal the start of a lunch period specially extended for this event,
∞≥≥
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students packed onto the steps surrounding the quad and spilled over
onto the grassy area facing the stage. Only a handful of fobs came to
watch the program—some to show support for the few friends who made
it into the dance and the rest to keep those spectators company. ‘‘I heard
the dance is gonna suck,’’ Umber proclaimed loudly, having earlier admitted that she had badly wanted to perform as part of her secret ambition to
become a Bollywood actress. Avinash remarked that he came only to see
his girlfriend and loaded film in his camera while I set my video camera on
a tripod. One of Avinash’s friends sco√ed that the Indian flag was all the
way at the bottom and was not even painted accurately. Upon closer examination, we discovered that several of the flags were depicted incorrectly
and others were altogether unidentifiable.
When the ‘‘Indian Club’’ was announced, eight Desi girls in colorful
lehengas—some featuring more fabric than others—took their places with
their backs facing the audience. As the bass from their remixed music
reverberated through the quad, they gyrated and swayed to a popular
remix of a song from the Bollywood film Taal. While Jaspreet and Amanpreet seemed to enjoy the appreciative cheering of the audience, especially
when they spun around on the ground into a series of slithering, snakelike moves, the other girls appeared to be less at ease with these provocative undulations. When their five-minute dance ended dramatically, the
girls exited the stage onto the grass and laced up their sneakers. They
watched the remainder of the program while the fobs beat a hasty retreat
to their back corner.
Responses to International Day were decidedly mixed. Although friends
of Jaspreet and Amanpreet were duly congratulatory, the few fobs who
saw the dance were critical and immediately o√ered their reviews to their
friends. Several fobs who claimed they were not interested in the performance jockeyed for position to watch it on the small lcd display of my
video camera. As they huddled around the tiny screen, a barrage of critiques ensued: it was too slow; it contained slutty, hootchy moves; and it
was not nearly as good as in past years. With a hint of smugness, Janvi
remarked, ‘‘It would have been amazing if we had done bhangra.’’ Having
just danced their best, Nidhi and her friends were hurt at overhearing their
friends saying ‘‘It sucked.’’ Nidhi retorted, ‘‘What do they know, they
didn’t even do anything!’’ Had the dance been more inclusive, perhaps the
fobs would have been less critical. Unfortunately, popular Jaspreet and
∞≥∂
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Amanpreet were far out of earshot and these scathing critiques fell on the
fobs who had struggled to be in the dance.
When I attended the performance the following year, only two fobs
joined the dance that Amanpreet had organized alone while Jaspreet was
at college. No other Desi dances were planned. Janvi, who had vowed to be
in the program for her senior year, admitted that she was not in the dance
this year either. When I asked her why, she shrugged, ‘‘I don’t know. I
didn’t feel comfortable. I didn’t know [Amanpreet] and I didn’t want to go
to her house.’’ The same dynamics of class and cultural capital that marginalized Janvi and others in the previous year had once again edged
them out.
That popular Desi teens continued to dominate this and other events
even though they are far outnumbered by fobs reveals that some students
feel a sense of ownership and privilege over school resources while others
remain excluded. Class di√erences between fobs and populars are divisive at Greene but receive no public attention. While Mercer’s struggles
were publicized and aired, Greene’s dramas took place under the radar
and went widely unnoticed. Excluded students did not even consider approaching school faculty or administrators for help; such a move was
thought to be intimidating or pointless. Their only recourse was to criticize their own friends who had the courage to participate.
representing desi teen culture
Should multicultural programs be about performing something ‘‘traditional,’’ or should they reflect dynamic, locally constructed identities? Desi
teens avowedly went with the latter but faced numerous criticisms as a
result. Both Desi performances distinguished themselves by their original
choreography and choice of music and costume. Unlike their Chinese
American peers at Mercer who did a ribbon dance or those at Greene who
did a tinikling dance from the Philippines, Desi teens shied away from
known Desi dance styles such as garba and bhangra and chose instead to
choreograph their own dance moves. Their music and steps were largely
influenced by Bollywood but also included interludes from hip-hop and
pop music. At Mercer, negotiation centered around outfits and performers. Tara and her friends created a medley incorporating three di√erent
songs and dance styles. Rather than wear typical South Asian outfits, the
∞≥∑
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girls wore a close-fitting black top of their choosing with either a green or
gold piece of fabric tied to look like a lehenga. Tara explained that they
wanted something pretty and cute that didn’t look ‘‘fobby’’ and that they
could get for twenty girls. To accessorize, they crafted head jewelry from
plastic bead curtains they tied together and spray-painted gold. Each girl
paid $10 for her costume and outfitted her partner in kurta-pyjama sets
borrowed from male family members.∏
While these style choices were acceptable to some participants, especially non-Desis, they drew sharp criticism from other Desi girls in the
dance. The fobulous Six in particular took issue with these aesthetic
selections. Shabana, who has her finger on the pulse of everything stylish,
commented, ‘‘I don’t know why they bought the material in the first place
without asking everyone, ‘Oh, is this nice?’ You know? Why didn’t they ask
me?’’ Shabana’s friend Rekha piped up in agreement: ‘‘They should have
gotten red instead of those dull colors.’’ Shabana added, ‘‘It was so drab,’’
and went on to reveal that so many Desi girls in the dance criticized the
outfits that Tara considered changing them the night before the performance. Notably, none of the participants from other races or ethnicities
voiced any protest about their own costumes. In fact, many of them were
so enamored with their outfits that they wore them for the rest of the
school day. In the end, the girls kept the outfits as planned. The process of
representing a group, however, was fraught with tension and debate about
what would be the tightest Desi style.
Another contentious decision was whether to include students of other
racial groups. While there were ample Desis at Mercer to take part in the
dance, many popular Desi boys decided that dancing in school was fobby
and refused to join. Only a few popular Desi boys were willing to participate, even though many know how to dance from years of participating in
community festivals. Only a select handful of Desi geeks were asked.
Determined to have a coed dance despite their apathetic Desi male peers,
the girls broke from the previous years’ tradition and opened the dance to
boys of any racial background as well as a handful of their non-Desi
female friends. One of the Desi girls in the dance described the benefit of
this approach: ‘‘Everybody feels connected to it. You know how, when
sometimes people are dancing, it’s just that group. But when they see
people of their own race and ethnicity in it, they’re like ‘Oh wow, I can do it
too!’ ’’ Her tall, stocky Latino partner with bright blue eyes and dyed red
∞≥∏
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hair confirmed his excitement about being included and relayed how he
overcame his initial discomfort: ‘‘Basically I’m a fat guy who doesn’t know
how to dance. At first when I heard the Indian song, I was like, ‘What is
this?’ And we started doing the dance, and I was like, ‘This is crazy!’ But
now I know all the steps and the song is actually really cool to me now.’’
Even teens who would have preferred to perform something from their
own cultural background but had no critical mass enjoyed participating in
the Desi dance. One male participant explained, ‘‘I’m from Afghanistan.
We have our own cultural dance. I would like to do an Afghani dance, you
know, just to show my culture and what we do, but there’s hardly any
Afghans in our school.’’ Being in the Indian dance was as close as he could
get. Although the group was diverse in some ways, few African American
and Latino students participated in the dance.
At Greene High School, gender-based notions of propriety became the
point of tension in debates about style. When Jaspreet and Amanpreet
began choreographing the dance, they alone made decisions about the
music and moves. Here too Bollywood films were a prominent influence,
and the sisters also chose to splice together a medley of popular film
songs and choreograph a dance. Several of the girls in the dance had
assumed they would choose bhangra since the two sisters were Sikh Punjabi. Although some fobby girls argued for the inclusion of a more traditional bhangra song, their love of Bollywood made filmi music an acceptable second choice. Even though the sisters were in charge of the dance,
they had to engage in unexpected negotiations around gender. The sisters
crafted a style of choreography and costume worthy of any Bollywood
starlet but one that was too racy for the average Desi teen. Amanpreet
explained, ‘‘We want to do something that represents our culture, but
something tight—not something fobby and boring.’’ What the sisters
regarded tight, however, drew sharp criticism from more conservative
Desi teens who knew that Bollywood stars can gyrate in skimpy clothing
in ways that mere mortals dare not consider. All these factors made the
process of creating a tight dance far more challenging.
Gender is also significant here because girls undertook all of the program organizing. At Mercer, Desi boys were by and large uninterested in
participating, let alone planning anything. This left interested Desi girls as
well as female participants of other ethnicities on their own to search
for partners for the dance. Unlike at Greene, however, rehearsals, dance
∞≥π
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moves, and other aspects of the dance were not an issue. In fact, the
rehearsals were a space of fun and socializing. As they were generally held
at a Desi student’s house, most Desi parents felt comfortable allowing
their kids to attend on weekday nights because they had met the other
teens’ parents at school or community functions. At Greene, popular girls
did not even attempt to make their dance coed, and boys did not take any
initiative on their own. Holding the rehearsals at their home when the
participants did not have cars and were not allowed to visit homes outside
families in their communities only worsened these matters. While it
would perhaps be too broad a statement to suggest that without girls,
these performances of culture would not materialize, in the programs I
witnessed this certainly appeared to be the case.
Managing Critiques of Authenticity . While Desi teens use these programs as an expressive space in school, faculty and other students consider the programs a space for learning about an ‘‘Indian Culture’’ that is
pure and untouched by anything recognizably Western. Especially during
multicultural programs, essentialized, timeless notions of culture triumph as authentic; such depictions reify cultural di√erences and bind
them into homogeneous, separate units that erase their texture and di√erence (Turner 1994: 407).π While audiences at Mercer High School certainly
enjoyed the Desi dance, questions of authenticity were raised, including
the decision to include non-Desi participants, using remixed music and a
range of innovative dance steps, and wearing nontraditional costumes.
One White boy in the dance expressed his doubt: ‘‘[The dance] seems a
little whitewashed. The ending that they have now seems a little less
cultural than I hoped. It seems like it’s been dumbed-down, Whitified. I
don’t know if I know what I’m talking about, but that’s what it seems
like.’’
Other youth similarly remarked that they had expected something more
traditional but were unable to articulate specifically what they thought the
dance was lacking or what it should have been instead. Tara and her
friends were somewhat disappointed by these criticisms, but on the whole
pleased that they had been able to do a tight dance that represented their
style. Questions of authenticity also arose at Greene, but from other Desi
students who would have preferred to do a bhangra number in outfits that
covered more skin. As rumors about the dance circulated through fob
∞≥∫
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cliques, a prevailing sentiment arose that one fobby girl summarized this
way: ‘‘It’s, like, become an American dance. We want to do something
more Indian, you know.’’ By calling the dance inauthentic for an entirely
di√erent set of reasons than Mercer’s students o√ered—that is, their own
exclusion from the process of creating representations—they managed to
claim some sense of ownership over how Desi teen culture should be
conveyed.
fade to white
Students’ negotiations of multicultural ideology reflect their local struggles with race, class, and gender. The school-based initiatives through
which they are able to do so both constrain kids’ e√orts as well as reveal
multiculturalism’s fragmented implementation. I conclude with a discussion of the finale from the Mercer multicultural assembly to underscore
the power dynamics exposed in these laissez-faire school programs. The
final act was a ‘‘flag parade,’’ in which students walked around the gym
holding flags from various countries while the emcee announced the corresponding country names. The parade included a random assortment of
flags that students brought from home in hopes of being excused from
class for both assemblies. As the finale to this procession, five White boys
carried a giant U.S. flag accompanied by the song ‘‘God Bless the USA.’’∫
Rather than taking a customary round and standing with the other participants, they circled the gym a number of times and engaged in fist pumps
and other victorious gestures. They were encouraged by wild cheering
from the audience and remained oblivious to expressions of discomfort
and disbelief from other participants.
Five White boys parading a supersized American flag as the last word
created a hostile ending to what had already been an exclusive program.
After the program, several students expressed their disapproval. The following is an excerpt of a conversation between José and Alicia:
alicia: The only part I think I hated was the whole usa flag part, where they
ran around the [gym] three times, with that stupid ‘‘I’m a proud American’’
song. Aaaahh! It just aggravated me.
josé: That pissed me o√ too. I don’t know why . . .
alicia: I know why it pissed me o√. It pissed me o√ because the whole point
∞≥Ω
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is that even though we are di√erent cultures and even though we’re not all
White, we’re still Americans. So I think instead of having the big four White
guys go up there and parade around with the damn flag . . . [laughs] Sorry!
They should have had, like, maybe an Asian person . . . and José, or somebody!
josé: I ain’t goin’ up there!
alicia: [laughs] You know, someone to represent di√erent races. I still think
the whole flag parade is kind of dumb and I wish they’d cut it out.
josé: It’s just supposed to represent unity, you know? Let’s get everybody out
there, walk around with the American flag, you know? Not just a bunch of
hokey, sexist, sweaty men!
José, Alicia, and a number of other students felt that this finale undermined the other performers’ e√orts at cultural expression. As if to reclaim
control of a space that had been temporarily surrendered to other groups,
these White boys asserted what they considered rightfully theirs.
As the flag parade and other power struggles indicate, cultural citizenship remains a highly contested process. Teens engage in a wide spectrum
of e√orts, some more successful than others, to claim a space for themselves in the public sphere of their high schools. While the problematic
nature of this finale and the program went unaddressed by the administration, the general discontent prompted a more equitable flag parade the
following year. During this assembly, flags hung from the ceiling and the
flag parade was more unified in response to complaints of the prior year’s
program, in which some students disrespected flags by clowning around
with them or inattentively dragging them on the gym floor. Students carried in a limited number of flags and stood in a circle with them, and the
U.S. flag was one among many. Two boys, one White and one Asian American, carried the American flag, and students cheered while ‘‘Imagine’’ by
John Lennon played and flowers were given to performers. There were still
no Latino or African American performances, but at least the program
ended on the more positive note of ‘‘Imagine all the people, sharing all the
world’’ rather than the jingoistic anthem of the previous year.
In these Silicon Valley high schools, multicultural programs do little to
challenge or even draw overt attention to the socioeconomic structures
that maintain inequalities between and within racial and ethnic groups.
While it seems as though Asian Americans dominate in multicultural
∞∂≠
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programs, it is di≈cult to say what one hour out of an entire school year
can accomplish by way of deeper understandings about race. Coupled
with the reality that only popular teens make it into the program, the
question is all the more salient. Although Desi girls at Mercer have the
cultural capital to perform for the audition judges, the African American
and Latino students are at a distinct disadvantage in this regard. Unlike
these upper-middle-class Desi girls, they do not have inside information
and resources easily available to them. Likewise, middle-class Desi teens
at Greene are at an apparent disadvantage compared to their popular Desi
peers. With very little knowledge about school activities, fobby girls are
reliant on popular girls who already dominate school events.
Cultural celebrations of this sort rarely enable true transformations of
the social order. They o√er some empowerment, however, to participating
youth. Desi teens are able to exercise their cultural citizenship and display a
sense of ownership over public space. While their representations are
subject to criticisms of being inauthentic, they are willing to fight for their
versions of their culture. Indeed, to not do so would be to validate an
orientalist gaze that seeks homogeneous representations of non-European
cultures. That these schools rely on students to create cultural representations that will educate peers and faculty is not only wholly unreasonable,
but encroaches on the one space in which Desi and other teens can freely
craft their own versions of cultural expression. Indeed, such reception
underscores the need for more substantive education about Desis and
other diasporic populations in the United States, rather than about South
Asia or other homelands alone. For these teens, being fobulous, not
fobby, is central to shaping what it means to be Desi. In the next chapter I
continue to examine how cultural capital positions teens di√erently as they
manage cultural and linguistic expression in the face of the model minority
stereotype.
∞∂∞
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Cultural Citizenship and Educational Democracy
Author(s): Renato Rosaldo
Source: Cultural Anthropology, Vol. 9, No. 3, Further Inflections: Toward Ethnographies of the
Future (Aug., 1994), pp. 402-411
Published by: Wiley on behalf of the American Anthropological Association
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/656372
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Cultural Citizenship and Educational
Democracy
Renato Rosaldo
StanfordUniversity
The term cultural citizenship is a deliberate oxymoron, a pair of words that do
not go together comfortably. Cultural citizenship refers to the right to be
different and to belong in a participatorydemocratic sense. It claims that, in a
democracy, social justice calls for equity among all citizens, even when such
differences as race, religion, class, gender, or sexual orientation potentially
could be used to make certain people less equal or inferior to others. The notion
of belonging means full membershipin a group and the ability to influence one's
destiny by having a significant voice in basic decisions.
The term citizenship includes the legal definition where one either is or is
not a citizen and where all citizens should receive equal treatment and enjoy
equal opportunity.Yet the term moves a step furtherto embrace a notion that is
at once more subtle and more familiar. People often speak of citizenship, not as
an either/or matter, but along a continuumfrom full citizenship to second-class
citizenship. Most people in the United States probably would agree that democracies aspire to achieve full citizenship for all their members. Nobody should
have to settle for second-class citizenship.
The term culture introduces vernacularideas about first-class citizenship.
If you want to know about first-class citizenship, don't run to a dictionary. Go
instead and ask the person concerned.In low-income neighborhoods, the people
concerned will speak of goods and services, jobs and wages, health care and
housing, education and income-segregated neighborhoods. Without the material conditions that give people reasonablelife chances, other questions of vernacularcitizenship may recede into the background.In more favorable material
circumstances, people will speak about well-being, thriving, dignity, and respect. Or, by contrast, they may speak about feeling unsafe, violated, humiliated, and invisible.
The process of learning vernaculardefinitions of full to second-class citizenship involves the art of listening attentively to how concerned parties conceive, say, equity and well-being. For example, a man must listen attentively,
Cultural Anthropology 9(3):402-411. Copyright? 1994, American Anthropological Association.
402
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CULTURAL CITIZENSHIP 403
and curb his culturally conditioned tendency to make authoritativepronunciamentos, as a woman talks about what gives her a sense of well-being and dignity. To do otherwise would be like hearing somebody say that he or she felt
thirsty and then trying to convince him or her that they were mistaken.
Consider, for a moment, how cultural citizenship appears when set within
the official version of the national community promulgatedby the nation-state
since its relatively recent invention in the late 18th century. In its official pronouncements, the state emphasizes its capacity to enfranchise and plays down
its twin capacity to disenfranchise. Liberty, equality, fraternity-the slogan of
the FrenchRevolution-can, perhaps,convince all citizens of their membership
in a horizontally organized egalitarian community. Does one routinely notice
that the fraternalideal of equality excludes women? Can one imagine the alternative slogan: liberty, equality, sorority? The nation-state's original exclusion
created the conditions for the women's suffrage movement and present day
feminism. Similarly, the North American failure to grantvoting rights, not only
to women, but also to nonwhites eventually led to antislavery and civil rights
movements. Lines of exclusion drawn by democracy in the United States have
in the long runproducedmovements by the once-excluded and now-"new"citizen-subjects who demand recognition as full citizens.
The 19th centurysolidified a model of the national communitythat was socially homogeneous, spatially continuous, and well defined in its outer boundaries. The ideology of the melting pot made assimilation a coercive nationalproject in which, by the end of the 19th century, every citizen had to learn English
only and become partof the mainstream.From the nation-state's point of view,
diversity was a threat.
From a Chicanoperspective, one cannot help but notice thatthe doctrineof
sameness fails to consider the possibility of polyglot citizens. Why is it thatfiveyear-old children are at risk if they are fluent in a language other than English?
And why is it that at the age of 21 they are not at risk but are becoming cultured
as they struggle to learn anotherlanguage? At the Monterrey,California, MilitaryLanguage School, for example, officers touted their language instructionin
classrooms where, with only six months of instruction, soldiers had learned to
speak heavily accented Spanish. Yet on nearby streets I heard children who
spoke both English and Spanish with a high degree of fluency. Why squanderlocal linguistic resources?
It is as if this nationalcommunity imagines that language is a finite goodone citizen, one language, no more, no less. The notion of the monolingual citizen implies a hydraulic model in which the more Spanish one speaks, the less
English, and vice versa. The polyglot citizen works with anotherlinguistic economy, one where language is an expandable good, not a finite one. In certain
cases, the more Spanish one speaks, the betterone's knowledge of English, and
vice versa.
It may help to recognize that all people have various speech registers and
speak at various levels. "Git"real. We're all, if only we recognize it, polyglot
citizens. Try to follow a few Chicano registers. Consider the beginning of a
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404 CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY
poem by Jose Montoya called "El Louie." It begins: "Hoy enterraronal Louie."
(Today they buried Louie.) That line is fine; it passes muster in a textbook, in
Mexico City, or in Tucson, Arizona. It is so-called standardspeech. But then,
speaking in anotherregister, the poet shifts to a more colloquial mode, the slang
of street talk: "Wacha,va a haberpedo." (Watchout, there's going to be a fight.)
Speakers can also mix and blend, code-switching, like this: "Me compre unos
calcos y me costaron fifty nine ninety five. Hiiiijo, prices sure have gone up." (I
bought some shoes, and they cost me 59.95. Geez, prices sure have gone up.)
Shifts in register can be more subtle and involve English words pronounced as
Spanish and vice versa. Gestures and body language furtherenrich the range of
registers.
Curriculum Debates
The frameworkjust sketched, particularlythe workings of culturalcitizenship in the national community, provides one explanation for the intense public
interest in news about university debates regarding curriculum, political correctness, and affirmative action. One reporter,for example, called me from the
Christian Science Monitor. "We want," he said, "to hear about the Stanford
Western culture debate."
"Look,"I replied, "that's settled on our campus. It's over. It's not an issue
here anymore. Even the teachers who most vehemently opposed the changes in
the programnow support them. Why do you care about it?"
The reportersaid, "Well, that's a good question. I'm not sure about myself,
but I'm sure that our readersreally care about it."
Popular concern with issues of change in institutions of higher education
grows out of the parallels with issues of diversity and inclusion that pervade the
renegotiationof our national contract.Struggles to remake the nationalcommunity appearin miniatureon university campuses and mirrorthe hopes and fears
that accompanyany process of change. Transitionsare never easy, and their outcomes are never certain.
In thinking about processes of change in higher education, one should remember the strange metabolism of universities. The student body turns over
every four years, and the faculty turnsover every 40 years. The contrastbetween
rapidlychanging studentbodies and slowly evolving faculties gives conflicts in
higher education a peculiar character.In times of especially rapid change, newcomers to faculty ranks must contend with powerful old soldiers who slowly
fade away, debating fiercely all the way to retirement and beyond. Change in
higher education has long been typified by contentious public debate that borders on the hysterical.
Universities make their sea changes throughheated verbal conflict because
of their distinctive metabolism. During the 1880s and 1890s, for example, the
debate concerned whethermoder languages as well as classical ones should be
in the curriculum.The question was not one of discarding Greek and Latin but
one of also including French, German, Italian, and Spanish. During the 1920s
and 1930s, the debate concerned whetheror not American literaturewas worthy
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CULTURAL CITIZENSHIP 405
of being taught in addition to European and classical literatures. During the
1980s and 1990s, the curriculumdebate concerns the inclusion of works written
by racialized minorities, women, and gays and lesbians. Despite publicity to the
contrary,currentcurricularchanges do not aim to exclude classical, European,
or white American literatures.
The changes of the present in fact are part of a longer trajectoryof greater
inclusion in the humanities thatdates back to the 1880s. The trendtowardthe democratization of culture has broadened the spectrum of materials available in
the classroom. In the larger process, yesterday's debates have turned out to be
today's common sense. Despite all predictions to the contrary, the sky has not
fallen.
During the Western culture controversy at Stanford University, faculty
members who argued against change, in my view, feared losing a monopoly on
the authority of determining what counted as great works. They felt anxious
about eliminating any books thatto them representedthe best of humanthought.
If one were to read a Mayan Indiantelling of the creation (the Popol Vuh) alongside Genesis, they claimed, it would dilute-not enrich-the mix. They argued
that education was like a building. "How," they said, "can people construct an
education without first laying a good foundation?"Students of this persuasion
carriedplacards that said, "Save the core." Certainfaculty members added that
one needed to teach "our heritage"before going on to teach other cultures.
A caricature of this view, one that reveals at the same time as it distorts,
would be that the university's mission was a civilizing one. The task of higher
education was to civilize the savages. Who were the savages? They were children who had been brought up in barbarianencampments otherwise known as
public high schools. Colleges and universities were to enlighten the barbarians
by introducing them to the best of universal thought and human reason. High
school graduateswould emerge four years later as civilized women and men. It
was, I suppose, a noble dream.
This line of thought reacheda particularlydifficult sticking point in the notion of teaching our heritage first. Students and teachers heard the phrase "our
heritage" and asked, "Who's the we?" Imagine, for a moment, the situation of
the classroom teacher explaining that the Western-culturecourse was about our
heritage. The entering first-year undergraduateclasses at Stanford were about
half female and about 45 percent nonwhite. The required reading list for the
Western-culture course, however, included no books written by nonwhite
authors. Nor did it include any women authors. Moreover, the list included no
citizens of the United States among its authors. Literary theorist Mary Louise
Pratthas suggested that the United States has succeeded in its political and economic decolonization but that it has yet to achieve cultural decolonization (in
press). How otherwise does one explain the pervasive conviction in the United
States thatthe here-and-now is a wasteland?True cultureonly exists elsewhere,
in anotherplace and in anothertime.
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406 CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY
Poet-essayist Adrienne Rich has posed the "Who's the we?" question from
anothertelling angle in a pithy essay called "Invisibility in Academe," in which
she says:
Butinvisibilityis a dangerousandpainfulcondition,andlesbiansarenot the only
peopleto knowit. Whenthosewho havepowerto nameandto sociallyconstruct
reality,choose not to see you or hear you, whetheryou are dark-skinned,old,
disabled,female, or speak with a differentaccent or dialect than theirs, when
someonewiththe authorityof a teacher,say, describesthe worldandyou arenot
in it, thereis a momentof psychicdisequilibrium,as if you lookedinto a mirror
andsaw nothing.Yet you knowyou exist andotherslike you, thatthis is a game
withmirrors.It takessome strengthof soul-and notjust individualstrength,but
collective understanding-toresist this void, this nonbeing,into which you are
thrust,andto standup, demandingto be seen andheard.[1986:199]
In creating a more inclusive heritage, educators refuse to place students in the
position of looking into the curricularmirror and seeing nothing. One should
not have to face the kind of indignities a Japanese-Americancolleague of mine
has often confrontedwhen well-intentioned people politely tell her, "You speak
wonderfulEnglish." She has learned to reply, "Thankgoodness. I'm so relieved
to hear that because, you know, it's the only language I've ever spoken."
In many respects, at least at StanfordUniversity, the curriculumdebates no
longer matter.The so-called culture wars drone on as media events that pose the
great questions of should we or should we not. Has nobody noticed that change
has already startedin both curriculumand classroom composition? I recall one
man who walked onto campus for the first time in years and said, "There are a
lot of students who look as if they don't belong here." Indeed.
One unintendedconsequence of these changes is that classroom teaching
has surfaced as an area of urgent concern. The question before us now is not
whether or not to change, but how to teach more effectively in changed classroom environments.The new classrooms are not like the old ones. The new students do not laugh at the old jokes. That is the surest sign of change. Standing
still is not an option. Those who try to repeat the old words find that they take
on new meanings in diverse classrooms. In diverse classrooms, the question of
"The Other"begins to dissolve. Who gets to be the we and who gets to be the
otherrotatesfrom one day to the next, depending on the topic of discussion. And
before long the stable us/them dividing line evaporates into a larger mix of differences and solidarity.
New classrooms and new readings often arouse strongerfeelings than the
old ones. One can be tempted into following the dominantculture's conditioning by separatingthought from feeling. On the other hand, one can ask: What in
the book or discussion has produced these feelings? Ratherthan wishing them
away, teacherscan use such feelings as startingpoints for analysis and intellectual discussion. Consider that matters that are deeply felt can also be deeply
thought, and vice versa. In my experience, matters that arouse strong feelings
often concern students deeply and can lead to more searching analyses than
other issues.
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CULTURAL CITIZENSHIP 407
In such classrooms there is also a dispersal of authority.Can a male teacher
speak with unquestionable authority about feminine consciousness? All members of a class can read a text, but they must listen with care to students who
speak from social positions different from theirown. It is in this sense thatclassroom authority becomes dispersed. The result is that classrooms become less
comfortablethan they were before. Insteadof seeking maximumcomfort, teachers should strive for tolerable discomfort. Educatorshave often reportedthattolerable discomfort often goes hand-in-hand with written work of exceptional
quality. The quality of the writtenwork, I think,grows out of the increasedrange
of perspectives with which students vex one another. Intellectual analyses become more thoroughly tested because they must meet more challenges than in
homogeneous environments.
One consequence of changing reading lists is that as the context changes
the text changes. Books thatI've taughtin othercontexts become fresh and challenging because of the new texts around them. Teachers must seek diversity
without sacrificing quality in classroom assignments (as well as in works cited
in lectures and publications). The idea is to change the search process and look
in new ways and in new places, so that a new arrayof authorsand books will be
reviewed for inclusion in a course. Changes in how one seeks out publications
does not mean settling for dull, second-rate teaching materials.
The resulting reading lists can seek out unaccustomedjuxtapositions. They
bring together books that normally are not read side-by-side. For example, I
taught Augustine's Confessions (1992) next to Son of Old Man Hat (Left
Handed 1967), a Navaho as-told-to autobiography.The meaning of Augustine's
inner struggle with paganism becomes more vivid because it is placed next to
the life story of a living pagan. Reciprocally, the Navaho man's life story takes
on new meanings as well. In its new context, Son of Old Man Hat includes both
familiar matters of kinship and sheepherdingand also fresh attention to the intricacies of local knowledge. It becomes a book of wisdom. The class explores
ideas of knowledge, ethics, and morality. And questions of how to read an oral,
ratherthan written, text come to the foreground.
Changing Human Composition
Thus far, I've spoken about cultural citizenship and curricularchange. Let
me now turn to processes of institutional change. Institutionalchange requires
a set of coordinated efforts. First, there's admission to the institution, letting
new people in the door. This is the green-card phase. Can more diverse people
enter the institution? During the green-cardphase, the institution seems to say,
"We have norms in this institution. You're welcome to come here as long as you
conform with the norms. Sit down and shut up! If you don't like our norms, go
someplace else."
In a later phase the institution becomes concerned with retention. It needs
supportservices and a critical mass of people so thatthe newcomers do not grow
isolated and disaffected. Otherwise new people enter the institution and then
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408 CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY
exit within six months, or somewhat longer if they have internal fortitude and
stamina. A revolving-door policy will not do.
The next and present phase involves the question of institutional responsiveness. Can the institution change in ways that areresponsive to its new members? How should it change? How do the negotiations for change work? If a police force suddenly became 50 percentfemale, otherthings would no doubt have
to change. If the humancomposition of an educational institutionchanges, other
things must change as well. A few years ago, students sat in the president's office at Stanford and demanded an education that was responsive to the projects
of the new students.Institutions now are in the phase of negotiating responsiveness and change.
At this point, one probablyhas to say a word about affirmativeaction. Is affirmative action a great idea? No, it's not a great idea. I can thinkof a betteridea.
Economic democracy is a betteridea. Adequate income, health care, education,
housing, and an end to income-segregated neighborhoods would be a better
idea. Yet I supportaffirmative action until anotherplan is in place. When critics
bash affirmativeaction, one must ask, "Do you have a betteridea for creating diversity in our nation's major institutions?" Constructive criticisms that offer
positive alternatives("Here's how to make this work better")are welcome and
necessary in working for institutional change, but it will not do to throw away
the available tools until betterones are in hand. Negative carping from the sidelines is easy, but it does not help. Or do such carping critics really mean to say
that they oppose democratic inclusion and basic civil rights?
Affirmative action has producedan odd anxiety aboutquality and lowering
standards.To begin, one needs to think of plural, not singular qualities. A colleague, for example, combined Latinclassics with West Indianliterature;yet his
total range of capacities remained unrecognized because it fell between departments. When he helped organize and teach the new frosh culture course called
"Europeand the Americas,"his combinationof specialties proved invaluable in
drawing together a course syllabus. New scholars often combine fields in a plurality of ways that institutions do not readily value as long as they use a single
traditionalyardstick of quality.
Affirmative action also means changing search processes so that new
names enter the applicant pool. There's no single recipe for changing the process, but the result must be that new names enter the pool. In the early 1970s, for
example, my departmentsearched for an Africanist. The candidates who came
to give job talks turned out to be all men because the departmentfollowed the
standardprocess of the time and phoned colleagues asking, "Who's your best
Africanist?"The search failed, and the following year the people who phoned
listened to the names of men and then asked, "Do you have any women?" The
applicant pool happily changed for the better. No change will come if the process stays the same.
Who benefits from affirmative action? The institution first and foremost
stands to benefit from affirmative action. Colleges and universities gain by offering new analytical perspectives and valuable role models when they include
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CULTURAL CITIZENSHIP 409
more women on their faculties, at all ranks and with equal pay. During my undergraduateyears (1959-1963), I never once saw a woman give a lecture, and
my only two female instructors led discussion sections of French language
classes where the main lecturerwas a man. The tacit message about the impassable glass ceiling for women came through loud and clear. Institutionalself-interest demands changes in human composition.
In recent years, a number of people have claimed that affirmative action
stigmatizes women and people of color. It seems that somebody has confounded
cause and effect. Perhapsonly a young person could in good faith make such a
mistake. A noted Chicano novelist who grew up in El Paso, Texas, said that in
high school during the 1950s he already wrote well but was never given better
than a C in English. Why? Because Chicanos don't know English and, even if
they did, they're too dumb to do betterthan C work. Or so, it seems, the El Paso
teachers thought at the time. In sorting cause from effect, it helps to remember
which came first. Eliminateaffirmative action today and the stigma will remain.
The stigma and the impassable glass ceiling were among the reasons for institutionalizing affirmative action, not the other way around.
Institutionalchange also requiresan interplaybetween mainstreamingand
special programs. People often debate about whether to mainstreamor to continue specialized programs, such as feminist and ethnic studies. This dilemma
rests on a false dichotomy. Institutions need both mainstreaming and special
programs, not one or the other. Colleges and universities must mainstreamdiversity because such courses reach large audiences and confer institutional
authority on their faculty members and programs. Students benefit from the
broader range of perspectives brought to key areas of learning, and they take
heart from seeing how porous the impassable glass ceiling can become. Otherwise, new faculty membersand their subject matterbecome institutionally marginal. They become second-class ratherthan full citizens of their institutional
republics.
Special programs, on the other hand, guarantee that newcomers can become articulateabout their distinctive intellectual projects. Institutions thus tell
their newcomers, "Bring your gifts into the room. Do not leave them at the
door." Set-aside spaces allow faculty and students to work at the edges of their
thought without having to debate basic assumptions. The only way to become
articulateabout new projectsis by talking about them, hopefully in a stimulating
environment where ideas can be tested in debate without having to return to
groundzero at every turn.The price of admission in higher education is being articulate about one's project. When smart students lack special programs, they
enter mainstreamseminarswith something to say, but they remainunable to say
it. Being tongue-tied does not contribute to the life of the institution. Special
programs make mainstreamclasses richer because newcomers become articulate about their new perspectives. This is precisely the benefit one hopes diversity will bring to higher education.
Diversity and inclusion should eventually encompass most rooms, especially decision-making rooms. Always ask, "Who was not in the room when the
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410 CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY
consensus was reached?" Introducing diversity into decision-making rooms
makes them less comfortable and a consensus becomes harderto reach. In the
long run, however, the decisions usually prove more durablebecause they have
been tested against a broaderrange of opinions.
A New Ethic
Now I'd like to talk about an ethic thatcould inform institutionalchange in
a time of a politics of difference and coalitions. The two models that inform institutional change in the present could be called the ethic of the pie and the ethic
oflove. The ethic of the pie derives from institutionalpressureto divide andconquer, and watch the spectacle of people fighting over crumbs. In this ethic, the
image of limited good makes resources appearfinite so that, if the other person
has more, then you have less. Translatedinto the realm of self-esteem, the ethic
says that you can increase your self-esteem by capturing some from somebody
else. If the other loses, you win; if the other grows shorter,you appeartaller. No
doubt we all know the ethic of the pie.
The ethic of love says we are all in the same boat. It recognizes our shared
fate and the fundamentalinterdependenceamong members of a group or institution. If people think of themselves as connected, the other's well-being enhances yours. If they thrive, you thrive; if they suffer, you suffer. Love is also
an expandable, not a pie-like finite resource. If you love one person, that does
not mean that you have less love for another.It could be that your capacity for
love increases so that you have even more to offer somebody else.
Conclusion
Changes in higher education need to be understood as parts of long-term
processes of change. These changes have involved efforts to fully enfranchise
all citizens in accord with this nation's democratic ideals. The ideal of cultural
citizenship grows out of the conviction that, in a plural society, one groupmust
not dictate anothergroup's notion of dignity, thriving, and well-being. Cultural
citizenship also implies a notion of the polyglot citizen. Curriculumdebates
bring up questions of "Who's the we?" in a plural society and offer hopes of
bringing about culturaldecolonization by recognizing the value of culturallife
in the United States. Changing the human composition of institutions of higher
education raises mattersof admissions, retention, institutional responsiveness,
affirmative action, prime time, safe houses, and getting diversity in decisionmaking rooms. How can new processes enfranchise a greater plurality of people? Work for such institutional changes requires an ethic of love that emphasizes shared fate, connectedness, and attachment as an expandable, not finite,
resource.
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CULTURALCITIZENSHIP411
Notes
Acknowledgments. I would like to acknowledge my indebtedness to Brackette
Williams's critical commentary at the SCA Meetings, Washington, DC, May 1993, in
formulating and refining a number of issues in this paper.
References Cited
Augustine
1992 Confessions. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Left Handed,Navajo Indian
1967 Son of Old Man Hat: A Navajo Autobiography. Recorded by Walter Dyk.
Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
Pratt,MaryLouise
In press Decolonizing Cultural Theory. In Borders/Diasporas. James Clifford and
Jos6 Saldivar, eds. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Rich, Adrienne
1986 Blood, Bread, and Poetry: Selected Prose, 1979-1985. New York: W. W.
Norton.
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1. Multiculturalism Day at the Silicon Valley high schools provided an opportunity for
students to share their cultural heritages and these events were equally inclusive
of the schools' diverse minority groups.
TRUE OR FALSE
2. Drawing from the chapter from Desi Land, what are the author's criticisms
of "Multicultural Day"? How does "Multicultural Day" show both positives and
limitations of some multicultural policies and practices? Answer in 2-3 sentences
and cite the reading!
3. In your own words describe Rosaldo's concept of "cultural citizenship". How does
this concept relate to and/or differ from the concept of assimilation we discussed
in this class? Answer in 2-3 sentences and cite the reading!
4. What is the point Rosaldo is making about the need for diversity in higher
education? Do you think this argument can be extended to other areas/fields?
Answer in 2-3 sentences and cite the reading!
Purchase answer to see full
attachment