The Limited Vision of Prejudice

The bright, happy kids at Humphreys Avenue School in East L.A. helped me keep a promise last Tuesday. I had vowed that I would do whatever I could to convince inner-city kids that they can be anything they want to be.

They aren’t just destined to be day laborers, factory workers or, in my case, an auto mechanic.

I made that promise because of something I was told a long time ago when I was a fourth-grader at Hammel Street School, which isn’t all that far from Humphreys. A teacher, who thought he was steering me toward a worthwhile career, was giving me some advice. Knowing that my dad was a factory worker in a tire plant, he told me:

“Mexicans are really good at fixing cars, but not much else. Stay out of jail. Forget other jobs. Just fix cars, don’t steal them.”

*

I’ll never forget his words.

At the time, I was upset because I took his observation to mean that I couldn’t be like Davy Crockett, the TV hero of the 1950s that most Chicano kids at Hammel idolized. As the popular tune of the day noted, this guy must have really been something if he could wrestle a bear when he was only 3.

I eventually grew out of my Davy Crockett T-shirt and my fascination with him. He was, after all, an illegal immigrant who went to Texas to fight Mexicans.

In the years after Hammel, I have been trying to prove that teacher wrong. He had prejudged us, sold us short. He had consigned kids like me to the bottom of the barrel.

I wasn’t going to let him get away with that. I was going to talk to as many kids as I could. I’d tell them about Davy Crockett. I’d tell them about that teacher. And I’d tell them about my job at the L.A. Times.

So when the invitation came to visit Humphreys, I happily accepted.

Humphreys is a lot like Hammel. It’s in a working-class neighborhood where Spanish, tortillerias and a noisy Long Beach Freeway are permanent fixtures. The student body is overwhelmingly Latino--99.96%--but the kids’ dreams are All-American.

School officials decided to hold a career day for the fourth-, fifth- and sixth-graders as a novel approach to celebrating Cinco de Mayo. It’s a good way to “instill pride and respect for our children,” Principal Lydia Canales said.

Among those invited were an attorney, a firefighter, an airline reservation agent, two Hughes engineers, a court stenographer, the director of an anti-drug program and a banker.

It wasn’t long before I talked about Hammel and that teacher. The third- and fourth-graders in Room 18 got me started.

“What were your dreams as a boy?” one shy girl asked in Spanish.

“I wanted to be a cowboy,” I said.

The kids gave me a blank stare.

“Does anyone here know about cars?” I asked.

No one raised a hand.

“Good,” I said.

The kids listened as I told them they had talents and dreams no one could take away from them. They didn’t seem to react.

“How many of you speak Spanish?” I asked in English.

Each of the 20 or so kids in the room raised a hand.

“Do you realize there are more Spanish-speakers in this room than there are in the newsroom of the L.A. Times?”

Two little girls in the front of the room looked incredulously at me, as if to say, “You’re kidding, right?”

“You have the tools to be reporters,” I said. “You read. You write. You ask questions. You’re curious. And, you speak Spanish.”

The kids seemed to get the point. They smiled and joked with each other. They seemed to sit up straighter and talk with more self-confidence.

Room 18, however, needs to work on what is news. “Write that Humphreys is beautiful,” the youngsters pleaded.

“That ain’t news,” the cynical Hammel kid barked.

“ Somos bonitos . We are beautiful.”

The reactions were the same in Rooms 8, 10, 46, 47 and 48.

*

After The Times won a Pulitzer Prize last year for its coverage of the L.A. riots, I got a call from that Hammel teacher.

He complimented me, remembering that I’d also been involved in another Pulitzer awarded to The Times, this one back in 1984 for a lengthy series about Latinos living in Southern California.

I replied with the required “thanks,” but couldn’t help but tell him of the anger inside me, of why I wasn’t a mechanic and of my promise to talk to students today.

“I did what I thought was right,” he said finally, “and I’d do it again. Some people are meant to do certain things. There aren’t enough kids like you out there.”

I haven’t called him since then because I’m still angry at him. But after my day at Humphreys, I went looking for his number.

I want to tell him what Room 18 says.