Inda and the Classroom

Reading Inda's article, "The Value of Immigrant Life," has provided me with a new perspective on the place in which I encounter this issue the most: the classroom. Illegal immigration is an issue that most of my students either live with on a daily basis or which doesn't affect their everyday life at all. There is an obvious racial and class divide when it comes to this issue, and most of my students whose lives do not feature concerns about illegal immigration have a very different outlook than whose who do. This conflict between (mostly white) students who have been indoctrinated into the U.S.'s repudiation of immigrants as a threat, and students (mostly minority) who have life experiences that contradict the other point of view, makes for an interesting classroom environment.

It is often difficult to get the majority of students to appreciate that their opinions have (in some cases falsely) been influenced by a system of politics and government that has co-opted the bodies language, and terrain of an entire people (immigrants), and turned it into a threat. The effect that this co-opting has on real people -- my students for example -- is that they unknowingly begin to think about immigrants in terms of apathy or fear, instead of human compassion. It's a jarring wake-up call when students are forced to confront, and possibly dismiss, these ingrained ideas, one that they either embrace or reject passionately.

Last semester I assigned my students to read Jimmy Santiago Baca's (pictured left) "Coming into Language," a standard essay that is featured in the course's book, Writing as Revision. I assigned this reading with the goal of showing the students that even in the most extreme of cases, a person is capable of deriving enjoyment, solace, and identity from writing and language. What I didn't anticipate was that my students would take our discussion and turn it into a dicussion about race, rights, and illegal immigration. Many of the students were reluctant to even trust Baca -- a Mexican criminal, who writes this from his experiences in prison -- as a source. They felt he was blaming his situation on the system and refusing to take responsibility for his actions. Some students, of course, were persuaded by his story and had a kind of revelation. They were touched by the humanity that Baca brought to minorities and to prisoners. Others had a stronger reaction.

The class discussion was a heated one. Students on both sides were trying to convince students on the other side. Students who sympathized with Baca attempted to argue that Baca was in many ways a victim of the system. He hadn't learned to read or write at a young age because of his race and his social background, and that when given the opportunity and education, he made a name for himself. The other students were unable to see past their own (in my opinion, limited) view of the world. It was very difficult for them to understand such a foreign point of view. They received a good education, they had privilege, and they were taught from a young age that if you just tried hard enough, you would succeed. These ideologies just did not gel with the story that Baca had to tell them, and most refused to step outside the box of pre-conceived notions.

Overall, it was a good learning experience for me as a teacher, and the next time I teach that text I will be more prepared to handle this issue. The vehemence on both sides seemed to come out of nowhere for me. All I could do at the end of that class period was hope that some of the students who were so passionate on both sides had listened to the other side and absorbed some of it, and while Inda's text was a helpful lens for me to read, I'm not sure it would be helpful to my students. I find it hard to believe that freshmen would sit back and accept Inda's argument that their thoughts and ideas about illegal immigration have in large part been shaped by an impersonal system.

-Ashley