








suburb near Oakland.  Hey, cholita,  he teases.  Go get a suntan. We ll put you in a barrio and see how much you like it. 
A large, sandy-haired man with  April  tattooed on one arm and  Kelly  the name of his older daughter on the other, Miller spent 21 years working in a San Leandro glass factory that shut down and moved to Mexico a couple of years ago. He recently got a job in another factory, but he expects NAFTA to swallow that one, too.
 Sooner or later we ll all get nailed,  he says.  Just another stab in the back of the American middle class. 
Later, April gets her revenge:  Hey, Mr. White Man s Last Stand,  she teases.  Wait till you see how well I manage my welfare check. You ll be asking me for money. 
A once almost exclusively white, now increasingly Latin and black working-class suburb, San Leandro borders on predominantly black East Oakland. For decades, the boundary was strictly policed and practically impermeable. In 1970 April Miller s hometown was 97 percent white. By 1990 San Leandro was 65 percent white, 6 percent black, 15 percent Hispanic, and 13 percent Asian or Pacific Islander. With minorities moving into suburbs in growing numbers and cities becoming ever more diverse, the boundary between city and suburb is dissolving, and suburban teenagers are changing with the times.
In April s bedroom, her past and present si layers, the pink walls of girlhood almost obscu N  Roses and Pearl Jam posters overlaid by rap and Ice Cube.  I don t have a big enough attiti black girl,  says April, explaining her current ethnic identification.
What matters is that she thinks the choice i April and her friends, identity is not a matter of come from, what you were bom into, what colo is. It s what you wear, the music you listen to, you use everything to which you pledge alle matter how fleetingly.
The hybridization of American teens h; talk show fodder, with  wiggers  white kids and talk  black  appearing on TV in fu regalia. In Indiana a group of white high si raised a national stir when they triggered ar race war at their virtually all white high schc simply by dressing  black. 
In many parts of the country, it s televisior not neighbors, that introduce teens to the allui difference. But in California, which demograpl will be the first state with no racial majority by th the influences are more immediate. The Califc schools are the most diverse in the country, white, 36 percent Hispanic, 9 percent black, 8 pe Sometimes young people fight over their Students at virtually any school in the Ba; recount the details of at least one  race riot  conflict between individuals escalated ini between their clans. More often, though, ti rather join than fight. Adolescence, after all, od when you re most inclined to mimic the p< at hand, from stealing your older sister s clotl ing the ruling clique at school.
White skaters and Mexican would-be g listen to gangsta rap and call each other   term of endearment; white girls sometimes all accents; blond cheerleaders claim Cherokee
 Claiming  is the central concept here. A teen in Hayward, another Oakland subur Oakland and by implication blackness  lived there as a child. A law-abiding white ki< Mexican gang he says he hangs with. A bro
From Utne Reader, March/April 1995, pp. 87-90 Excernted (mm __ 	-
Mercury News, November 13, 1994.   1994 by Nell Bernstein. Reprinted by'^XtonTtheau^ '   he
246
48. Goin  Gangsta
girl with a Mexican father and a white mother  claims  her Mexican side, while her fair-skinned sister  claims  white. The word comes up over and over, as if identity were territory, the self a kind of turf.
At a restaurant in a minimall in Hayward, Nicole Huffstutler, 13, sits with her friends and describes herself as "Indian, German, French, Welsh, and, urn...American :  If somebody says anything like  Yeah, you're just a peckerwood,  I ll walk up and I ll say  white pride!   Cause I m proud of my race, and I wouldn t wanna be any other race. 
 Claiming" white has become a matter of principle for Heather, too. who says she s  sick of the majority looking at us like we re less than them." (Hayward schools were 51 percent white in 1990, down from 77 percent in 1980, and whites are now the minority in many schools.)
Asked if she knows that nonwhites have not traditionally been referred to as  the majority  in America, Heather gets exasperated:  I hear that all the time, every day. They say,  Well, you guys controlled us for many years, and it's time for us to control you.  Every day. 
When Jennifer Vargas a small, brown-skinned girl in purple jeans who quietly eats her salad while Heather talks softly announces that she s  mostly Mexican,  she gets in trouble with her friends.
 No. you're not!  scolds Heather.
 I m mostly Indian and Mexican,  Jennifer continues flatly.  I m very little...I'm mostly... 
 Your mom s white!  Nicole reminds her sharply.  She has blond hair.
 That s what I mean,  Nicole adds.  People think that white is a bad thing. They think that white is a bad race. So she s trying to claim more Mexican than white.
 I have very little white in me,  Jennifer repeats.   I have mostly my dad s side,  cause I look like him and stuff. And most of my friends think that me and my brother and sister aren t related,  cause they look more like my mom. 
 But you guys are all the same race, you just look different,  Nicole insists. She stops eating and frowns. OK, you re half and half each what your parents have. So you re equal as your brother and sister, you just look different. And you should be proud of what you are every little piece and bit of what you are. Even if you were Afghan or whatever, you should be proud of it.
Will Mosley, Heather s 17-year-oldbrother, says he and his friends listen to rap groups like Compton s Most Wanted, NWA, and,Above the Law because they  sing about life that is, what happens in Oakland, Los Angeles, anyplace but where Will is sitting today, an empty Round Table Pizza in a minimall.	.
 No matter what race you are,  Will says, if you live like we do, then that s the kind of music you like.
And how do they live?
 We don t live bad or anything,  Will admits. We ive in a pretty good neighborhood, there s no violence or crime. I was just... we re just city people, I guess.
Will and his friend Adolfo Garcia, 16, say they ve outgrown trying to be something they re not.  When I was 11 or 12,  Will says,  I thought I was becoming a big gangsta and stuff. Because I liked that music, and thought it was the coolest, I wanted to become that. I wore big clothes, like you wear in jail. But then I kind of woke up. I looked at myself and thought,  Who am I trying to be?  
They may have outgrown blatant mimicry, but Will and his friends remain convinced that they can live in a suburban tract house with a well-kept lawn on a tree-lined street in  not a bad neighborhood  and still call themselves  city  people on the basis of musical tastes.  City  for these young people means crime, graffiti, drugs. The kids are law-abiding, but these activities connote what Will admiringly calls  action.  With pride in his voice, Will predicts that  in a couple of years, Hayward will be like Oakland. It s starting to get more known, because of crime and things. I think it ll be bigger, more things happening, more crime, more graffiti, stealing cars.
 That s good,  chimes in 15-year-old Matt Jenkins, whose new beeper an item that once connoted gangsta chic but now means little more than an active social life-goes off periodically.  More fun. 
The three young men imagine with disdain life in a gangsta-free zone.  Too bland, too boring,  Adolfo says.  You have to have something going on. You can t just have
everyday life. 
 Mowing your lawn,  Matt sneers.	,
 Like Beaver Cleaver s house,  Adolfo adds. It s too
clean out here. 	.............
Not only white kids believe that identity is a matter ol choice or taste, or that the power of  claiming  can transcend ethnicity. The Manor Park Locos-a group of mostly Mexican-Americans who hang out. iri San Leandro s Manor Park-say they descend from the Manor Lords, tough white guys who ruled the neig borhood a generation ago.
They  are like our...uncles and dads, the older ge -eration,  says Jesse Martinez, 14.  We* what they were when they were around, except we re Mexican
 Sthtee generations,- says Oso, Jesse s younger brothm  Them's Manor Lords, Manor Park Loeos,and W   Park Pee Wees   The Pee Wees consist mainly of Manor Park Pee Wees .1
the Locos y ^es and bragabout  punking people. 
Mke Will Mosley, the Loeos find Me glamour m  tv life They survey the changing suburban andscape
S lot  acdon  or  more fun  but frightening
eucalyptus: stands,	Asian group> waves
Jesse s fne .	few years ago, every bench
3ed hesay^
Sr^ S a"!        > * f ,h" ' ,J"S' hope this doesn t turn into Oakland.
247
9. UNDERSTANDING CULTURAL PLURALISM
Glancing across the park at April Miller s street, Jesse says he knows what the white cholitas are about.  It s not a racial thing,  he explains.  It s just all the most popular people out here are Mexican. We re just the gangstas that everyone knows. I guess those girls wanna be known. 
Not every young Californian embraces the new racial hybridism. Andrea Jones, 20, an African-American who grew up in the Bay Area suburbs of Union City and Hayward, is unimpressed by what she sees mainly as shallow mimicry.  It s full of posers out here,  she says.  When Boyz N the Hood came out on video, it was sold out for weeks. The boys all wanna be black, the girls all wanna be Mexican. It s the glamour. 
Driving down the quiet, shaded streets of her old neighborhood in Union City, Andrea spots two white preteen boys in Raiders jackets and hugely baggy pants strutting erratically down the empty sidewalk.  Look at them,  she says.  Dislocated. 
She knows why.  In a lot of these schools out here, it s hard being white,  she says.  I don t think these kids were prepared for the backlash that is going on, all the pride now in people of color s ethnicity, and our boldness with it. They have nothing like that, no identity, nothing they can say they re proud of.
 So they latch onto their great-grandmother who s a Cherokee, or they take on the most stereotypical aspects of being black or Mexican. It s beautiful to appreciate different aspects of other people s culture that s like the dream of what the 21 st century should be. But to garnish yourself with pop culture stereotypes just to blend that s really sad. 
Roland Krevocheza, 18, graduated last year from Arroyo High School in San Leandro. He is Mexican on his mother s side, Eastern European on his father s. In the new hierarchies, it may be mixed kids like Roland who have the hardest time finding their place, even as their numbers grow. (One in five marriages in California is between people of different races.) They can always be called  wannabes,  no matter what they claim.
 I ll state all my nationalities,  Roland says. But he takes a greater interest in his father s side, his Ukrainian, Romanian, and Czech ancestors.  It s more unique,  he
explains.  Mexican culture is all around me. 1 Mexican food all the time, I hear stories from my: mother. I see the low-riders and stuff. I m already j it. I m not trying to be; I am. 
His darker-skinned brother  says he s not prou white,  Roland adds.  He calls me  Mr. Nazi.   room the two share, the American flags and the duction of the Bill of Rights are Roland s; the Enemy poster belongs to his brother.
Roland has good reason to mistrust gangsta att In his junior year in high school, he was one of Arroyo students who were beaten up outside the at lunchtime by a group of Samoans who came from Oakland. Roland wound up with a split lip, cussion, and a broken tailbone. Later he was told t assault was  gang-related  that the Samoans wei ing up anyone wearing red.
 Rappers, I don t like them,  Roland says.   they re a bad influence on kids
