Learning to Be Latino by Daisy Verduzco Reyes

Author:Daisy Verduzco Reyes [Reyes, Daisy Verduzco]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, General, Ethnic Studies, American, Hispanic American Studies, Education, Multicultural Education, Higher, Discrimination
ISBN: 9780813596488
Google: BAC-DwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
Published: 2018-09-05T05:25:13+00:00

Regional Public University: National Origin Identification and Missing Interactions

As explained in Chapter 4, Regional Public University is quite different from both Liberal Arts College and Research University in many ways. First and foremost, RPU is a commuter campus. Students spend little time on campus beyond the classroom and interact very little with other students outside of the classroom. The two organizations I studied at RPU, Latinos United for Action (LUA) and Hispanics for Economics (HE), didn’t interact at all—they neither cooperated as at LAC, nor competed as at RU; rather, the organizations were autonomous and simply coexisted. Second, recall this campus is a Hispanic-serving institution, where over 45 percent of students are Latino; the next largest group are Asian Americans at 20 percent, followed by whites and African Americans at 8 percent. The Latino majority at RPU makes it quite distinct from Liberal Arts College and Research University.

This difference became especially clear when I asked RPU respondents to discuss their transition to college. In stark contrast to LAC and RU students, who described experiences of culture shock, racial isolation, and microaggression, RPU students reported no such experiences, even when probed further to discuss instances of discrimination or prejudice. They also did not express the need for a Latino space or a “home away from home” on campus. Instead, when prompted to discuss race, many members of Hispanics for Economics, in particular, emphasized the organization’s openness to non-Latinos and deemphasized the importance of ethnic identity on campus. As noted at the start of the chapter, these findings should not be taken as evidence that students at RPU have no experience with racism on campus; the findings suggest, rather, that such experiences are not a predominant characteristic of RPU students’ experience. In other words, though RPU students, like students at LAC and RU, are learning about who they are and where they belong, they are not doing so through experiences of racial discrimination and marginalization on campus.

Keeping Ethnic Boundaries Open at RPU

A common narrative reiterated by members and leaders of Hispanics for Economics was the importance of keeping their organization open to all students on campus regardless of their ethnic background. For example, during my interview with Yvette, the president of HE, I asked her to tell me why she joined the organization. She discussed the first meeting she attended: “I sat down and met people! I thought, ‘Oh, this is pretty cool.’ You know, they weren’t all Latinos so for me it was kind of like, it’s called Hispanic for Economics, but the diversity of the group really encouraged me. Even though segregation isn’t really big deal, you do see how certain groups are like, ‘Oh, here are the Asians, here’s the blacks, and here’s the Latinos.’ So, knowing that we can interact in a business kind of way, it really impacted me.” Members continuously described HE as a diverse organization. Of the approximately fifty registered members that HE had every term, about ten were not Latino.

According to Yvette, this openness

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