July 28, 2006
Mixing
Mexicans and Muslims
By
Joe Guzzardi
By the time the spring semester at
the
Lodi Adult School ended in May, I was down to a
handful of pupils—the
typical annual pattern of my English as a Second
Language class. (Take note John McCain and others
pushing amnesty who promise that amnestied
aliens will learn English and civics.)
Most of the
Mexican students had left to work in the cherry
orchards and shacks. The
Muslim pupils—almost all Pakistanis, now a larger
percentage of the class than Mexicans—stuck it out to
the end.
Watching the evolution of my class
from
predominantly Hispanic to
mostly Muslim has given me a unique perspective on
how
multiculturalism works in the real world.
In three words:
not so well.
Multiculturalism is most
immediately thought of as
Western societies acknowledging other cultures and
languages as their equal.
Certainly the
multicultural agenda in
California K-12 schools always sees to it that the
burden of “tolerance” falls on American students
and teachers.
But while
California prides itself on its "diversity,"
a truly multicultural society would be one wherein
people of all races and religions intermingle
effortlessly with each other.
An adult school like the one where
I teach in Lodi is the perfect environment for painless
interaction among students with diverse backgrounds.
They all have in common their
recent arrival into the U.S., their need to learn
English, and their status as non-working parents with
school age children
And unlike
high-school students, adults are not burdened down
by teenage angst. So the give and take between my
English language learners should be free-flowing.
But it isn’t. The Mexican students
form small groups with other Mexicans. The
Muslims also sit together.
From time to time, I’ll arrange the
room so that an Urdu-speaker sits next to a
Spanish-speaker or a
Cantonese-speaker next to a
Vietnamese.
But, sensing discomfort and
persuaded somewhat by the argument that students sharing
a common language can more easily help each other, I
allow them to drift back to selecting their own seats.
As a practical matter, small
student groupings of the same ethnicity work well at the
basic ESL level. Invariably, one in the group will have
more advanced skills and can convey to his peers the
point of grammar or the definition of a particular word.
But it isn’t much of an endorsement
for
multiculturalism. The simple fact is that the
students are more comfortable among each other—whether
they are in the classroom or mingling outside during the
daily twenty-minute break.
And how else could it be? The
Mexicans know nothing about Islam. In
Mexico, a country of nearly 100 million people, less
than .001 percent is
Muslim according to the
Islamic Institute for the Study of Islam.
And the percentage of Mexicans
living in
Islamic countries is certainly smaller than that.
What, except waving a
miracle multicultural wand, would bring these two
cultures together?
During school’s last weeks, when
the class was exclusively Muslim, my students asked me
to teach them Spanish as well as English.
Despite how their request may look
at first blush, it did not represent a grand
multicultural gesture.
As my students explained it, they
require English to "get ahead" but
they also
need Spanish to "get along".
The
Mexican and
Muslim students live primarily on
Lodi’s east side where
gang crime is the city’s main concern.
Unable to communicate with their
neighbors in English, since the
Hispanics don’t speak English, my Muslim students
wanted to have Spanish conversational skills so they
could be
understood when the need arose.
In addition to the practical aspect
of teaching Spanish to Muslims, the exercise also was
also an effective way to
teach English. The students had to repeat in correct
English the phrases they wanted me to explain.
For the last month, I spent one
hour a day translating from English to Spanish the basic
commands the class requested. Here are a few:
And so it went. As the Spanish
lessons continued, my Muslim students—legal U.S.
residents, the result of uncontrollable chain migration
triggered by our ridiculously liberal “
family
reunification” laws—admitted that they are often
afraid. And they will not, under any circumstances, walk
alone in their neighborhood.
In the event of an incident, my
students wanted to fall back on Spanish to help get them
out of a jam.
And that’s good strategy.
Earlier this week, according to a
Lodi News-Sentinel story, a group of Hispanic
males shot two
Muslim men at a
violence-plagued apartment complex near the adult
school. (Two
Shot At East Locust Apartments, By Ross Farrow,
Lodi News-Sentinel, July 24, 2006).
Since few in the neighborhood speak
English, the police investigation is moving slowly.
While open borders advocates sing
multiculturalism’s praise, my slice of real life
interface between Lodi’s two largest ethnic blocks
reflects what’s happening throughout America.
