American Arrivals: Anthropology Engages the New Immigration

5. Becoming American Immigration, Identity, Intergenerational Relations, and Academic Orientation

Henri was born in Haiti and migrated to the United States with his family before he started school. He is a 1.5 generation immigrant; that is, he immigrated at a young enough age to be enculturated primarily in his adopted country. A star student throughout high school, he graduated from Harvard University in 2000 and spent the following year working for Americorps, “to help his community.” In 2002, Henri entered medical school. He has a brother now at Harvard and a brother who graduated from Northwestern University. His father is a janitor and his mother a domestic. The brothers attribute their success to their parents, who unfailingly pushed them to pursue academic excellence. Henri and his brothers personify the archetypal immigrant student, high achieving with a positive orientation toward education. Marie, also a 1.5 generation Haitian immigrant, was a high school English Honors student and an excellent gospel singer. Marie appeared to embody the ideal immigrant adolescent profile, an outstanding student, close to her parents, and deeply involved in church activities. Then she showed signs of assimilation—she acquired an African American boyfriend. In her parents’ eyes, a boyfriend, especially an 129 5 Becoming American Immigration, Identity, Intergenerational Relations, and Academic Orientation Alex Stepick and Carol Dutton Stepick 129 African American boyfriend, meant that she was no longer serious about her education. In their eyes, Haitian girls are not supposed to express interest in boys until they have finished school. Her parents, supported by their church, suspended all her privileges, accused her of no longer being Haitian, and ultimately forced her to move out of the house. Not surprisingly, Marie’s grades dropped dramatically. In high school, Henri and Marie replicated the positive stereotype of immigrant students.1 Yet Henri continued to succeed and Marie was derailed. Marie’s parents, along with many other immigrant parents, blame the process of assimilation, particularly what they perceive as Americanization. Immigrant parents often feel that their children are rejecting them and their home-country culture. Increasingly, academic studies agree with immigrant parents’ evaluation of the negative effects of American culture on their children (Landale and Oropesa 1995; Landale, Oropesa, and Gorman 1997; Portes and Rumbaut 2001; Rumbaut 1997a). If you listen to the children, however, you hear a more complex, nuanced interpretation. The children of immigrants frequently articulate ambivalence toward American culture. As Louis, recently arrived from Haiti in the ninth grade, stated, “I don’t like the fact that the American culture gives children so much power over their parents. The parents’ authority is undermined. They can’t tell their children what to do.” Many immigrant youth present a paradox. The standard line, both in the academic literature and in immigrant communities, is that immigrant students outperform native minorities. Our work and that of others demonstrate that immigrant students typically have high educational aspirations and put forth considerable effort in school. Their educational outcomes, however, do not always match their aspirations. Many do excel, but the academic achievement of many immigrant students regresses toward the low mean for native minorities. In 2000, the first and second generations of immigrants and their children totaled 56 million persons—one out of every five Americans (Portes and Rumbaut 2001:xvii; Suárez-Orozco and Suárez-Orozco 2001:1). As the United States continues to accept large numbers of immigrants, most of whom are of school age or have school-age children , the integration of children of immigrants into the US educaALEX STEPICK AND CAROL DUTTON STEPICK 130 tional system continues to be important. The children of immigrants will continue to influence the constant efforts to reform the US educational system; their successes or failures in school will also affect their own lives and the general character of the United States. Moreover, many immigrant youth do not fit the positive stereotype of being high achieving and positively oriented toward education. An anthropological approach enables us to address this issue by moving beyond correlates of educational attainment that are readily measurable, such as GPA and parental education, to the concrete processes and interaction of factors that produce those correlations. This chapter concentrates on variation within minority groups and specifically explores the factors distinguishing individual students whose ethnic/national background is the same but who express different orientations toward school. Many forces may be involved, but in this chapter we focus on the youths’ relationship to American peers and culture...