The Other Side of Assimilation by Tomas Jimenez

Author:Tomas Jimenez
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780520295698
Publisher: University of California Press

Well, they had special, at least in my world of EPA, they had schools in particular that was geared for African American teachings. Like they had [Afro-centric school], which I went to but I was real young. I went there when I was like fourth grade. And then my son went there when he was in the eighth . . . . So they had schools available for that type of resources in general and when I was growing up, I don’t know if they do it now with kids. But we had field trips where we used to go to this, I think it was the African American library up in San Jose somewhere. So they just had more things available or resources of teaching more of the foundation of being an African American . . . . Soul food for the most part. A lot of barbecue places. Like here on this main street here, I think this is University [Avenue], mostly now you see most of the markets are Hispanic or just some of the restaurants are mostly to me Mexican restaurants. But where before it was a little nightclub and they had more barbecue restaurants and just more black-owned businesses.

The growing prevalence of Latino institutions and the declining number of black ones presented an assimilation challenge posed not by a putative white mainstream, but rather by a Latino population whose symbols and practices had grown visible in inverse proportion to black culture.

The invisibility experienced by blacks in East Palo Alto locally is not necessarily an indicator of the invisibility of blackness more generally. Indeed, there is ample evidence that blackness remains a highly “marked” category with largely negative consequences. However, the specific role that East Palo Alto once played as the black cultural hub of Silicon Valley was a key reference point for how respondents there evaluated its symbolic prowess today. The centrality of place comes into clearer focus when the views of East Palo Alto black respondents are compared with those of Berryessa’s middle-class blacks. Whether in the neighborhood, workplace, or school, Berryessa’s established blacks were perpetually navigating nonblack spaces where their blackness was highly visible and not always welcomed. Respondents reported harassment by police, disrespect in everyday social interactions, and feelings of isolation in the workplace. The rare times when these middle-class blacks found themselves in largely black contexts stood in stark contrast to their usual lives. Consider Natalie Hayes, whom I introduced in the previous chapter. Natalie grew up in Berryessa, but attended high school in Sacramento, a city 120 miles away with a much larger black population. The visibility of her blackness in Berryessa was a sharp contrast to the sense of comfort she felt living in Sacramento:

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