Jack lopez of cholos and surfers

596 CONSTRUCTING RACE

READING THE TEXT 1. Explain in your own words Price's definitions of "white trash

country folk."

2. What is the logic behind Price's analogies between white trash and th • between good country folk and the superego?

3. Summarize in your own words the evolution of cinematic depictions of whites from the 1970s to more recent years.

4. What does Price mean by "a battle against your own heritage is d i f f i cu l t best, and usually impossible" (para. 12)? - at

Poor

READING THE SIGNS \. Watch a recent movie that has working-class white characters, and analyze it according to the stereotypes that Price describes. Do you find depictions of "white trash" or "good country folk," or do the characters have traits that Price does not discuss? ^

2. At your school's media library, watch an episode of one of the TV shows Price mentions, such as The Dukes of Hazzard or The Beverly Hillbillies, or 'watch one of the films she describes. Then write your own analysis of its portrayal of the characters. Is the portrayal hostile or affectionate toward working-class white characters?

3. Write a reflective essay responding to Price's assertion: "The hatred and con- descension of the poor seems to be the last available method of prejudice in our society" (para. 14). Support your essay with reference to current popular entertainment. p> *

4. In class, discuss why the "white trash" stereotype persists, even in an. age o heightened sensitivity about racial stereotyping. Use the class discussion as^a springboard for an essay proposing your own explanation for this pheno ^ non. lr ."

5. Compare and contrast Price's argument about how class is depicted m ^ media with that of Michael Parent! in "Class and Virtue" (p. 368). How_ ^ account for any differences you discern?

JACK LOPEZ

C Of Cholos and Surfers

1

I ,.'. if you want to be a surfer, L.A.'s the place to be, but things can get com- ' plicated if you come from East Los Angeles, which is not only miles from

the beach but is also the home turf for many a cholo street gangster who may not look kindly on a Mexican American kid carrying a copy of Surfer Quarterly and wearing Bermuda shorts. This is exactly what hap- pened to Jack Lopez (b. 1 950), as he tells it in this memoir of growing up Latino in the 1960s— but not to worry, the beach and the barrio are not mutually exclusive, and, in the end, Lopez was able to have "the best of both worlds." A professor of English at California State University, Northridge, Lopez is a short-story writer and essayist whose books include Cholos and Surfers: A Latino Family Album (1998) and Snapping Lines (2001).

The only store around that had this new magazine was a Food Giant on Ver- mont Avenue, just off Imperial. Surfer Quarterly, it was then called. Now it's Surfer Magazine and they've celebrated their thirtieth anniversary. Sheldon made the discovery by chance when he'd gone shopping with his mother, who needed something found only at Food Giant. Normally we didn't go that far east to shop; we went west toward Crenshaw, to the nicer part of town.

1(1 We all wanted to be surfers, in fact called ourselves surfers even though we never made it to the beach, though it was less than ten miles away. One of tlle ways you could become a surfer was to own an issue of Surfer Quarterly. Since there had been only one prior issue, I was hot to get the new one. To be a surfer you also had to wear baggy shorts, large Penney's Towncraft T-shirts, ^ ^° Darefoot, no matter how much the hot sidewalks burned your soles. th T'lat summer in tne ear'y sixties 1 was doing all sorts of odd jobs around ^ e house for my parents: weeding, painting the eaves, baby-sitting during the ^ ytirne. I was earning money so that 1 could buy Lenny Muelich's surfboard, tw° Wa^ to kg a sur^er- Ir was a Velzy-Jacobs, ten feet six inches long, ^er>ty-four inches wide, and it had the coolest red oval decal. Lenny was my the°ss~tne-street neighbor, two years older than I, the kid who'd taught me grrn acts °f ''fe. the kid who'd taught me how to wrestle, the kid who'd played M ^With me when we were children, still playing in the dirt. rne A°w We no longer saw much of each other, though he still looked out for Li|^e strange i^-mg happened to Lenny the previous school year. He grew. gu'ys Green Giant or something. He was over six feet tall and the older wear. Qu^ 'et him hang out with them. So Lenny had become sort of a hood, Fren ?^ nui>e Sir Guy wool shirts, baggy khaki pants with the cuffs rolled, and

"toed black shoes. He drank wine, even getting drunk in the daytime

598 CONSTRUCTING RACE

with his hoodlum friends. Lenny was now respected, feared, even h *̂ •' the parents, and no longer needed or desired to own a surfboa d -SOrTleof going in the opposite direction. There were two distinct paths in m 'he was hood: hood or surfer. ^ n£'ghbor-

I was entering junior high school in a month, and my best f • to Sheldon Cohen and Tom Gheridelli. They lived by Morningside u^5 Were their fathers were the only ones to work, and their houses were m' S> and sive than mine, and they'd both been surfers before I'd aspired tow^n6^6"" life. Sheldon and Torn wore their hair long, constantly crankinq th""'" SUCh a back to keep their bangs out of their eyes. They were thirteen years old twelve. My parents wouldn't let hair grow over my ears no matter how* ' W3S argued with them. But I was the one buying a surfboard. Lenny was for me. My parents would match any money I saved over the summer'*-

Yet Surfer Quarterly was more tangible since it only cost one" dollar* Lenny's Velzy Jacobs was forty-five dollars, quite a large sum for the time The issue then became one of how to obtain the object of desire. The Food Giant on Vermont was reachable by bike, but I was no longer allowed to rride up there. Not since my older brother had gone to the Southside Theatre one Sat- urday and had seen a boy get knifed because he wasn't colored. Vermont was a tough area, though some of the kids 1 went to school with lived up there and they weren't any different from us. Yet none of them wished to be surfers, don't think.

What was needed was for me to include my father in the negotiation, wasn't allowed to ride rny bike to Vermont, I reasoned with him. Therefore, he should drive me. He agreed with me and that was that. Except;! had to wait until the following Friday when he didn't have to work. fa fr>

My father was a printer by trade. He worked the graveyard shift. l_watched rny younger brother and sister during the day (my older brother, who was fif- teen years old, was around in case anything of consequence should arise, but we mostly left him alone) until my mother returned from work — Reaganomics had hit my family decades before the rest of the country. Watching niy younger sister and brother consisted of keeping them quiet so my fat could sleep. .H Ttually

In the late afternoons I'd go to Sportsman's Park, where 1 d.vi ^ grown up. I made the all-stars in baseball, basketball, and football., ̂ opponent on the path to the city championships was always Will Rog in Watts. Sheldon and Tom and I had been on the same teams. So; ̂ ^ I'd see them in the afternoons before we'd all have to return n°mj.)|eachers ner. We'd pore over Sheldon's issue of Surfer while sitting in t lnedjng pool, next to the baseball diamond. If it was too hot we'd go in the w ^ though we were getting too old for that scene, since mostly worne used it. ered and

When Friday afternoon arrived and rny father had show . ̂ mother had returned from work, I reminded my father of ou •- We drove the neighborhood streets up to Vermont, passing was

Jack Lopez / Of Cholos and Surfers 599

*' . Normandie Avenue, Woodcrest Elementary School, and so on. :n°° ' _- . r . , ~F rv»o was i innUincf forward to attending Henrv Clav ju

fcfcTJ

We mostly of me. Was I looking forward to attending Henry Clay Junior

sp°^ Wou|d i still be in accelerated classes? My teachers and the principal talked with my parents about my skipping a grade but my parents

ft3 ..-,

said,nst as my father had exhausted his repertoire of school questions, we • d at the Food Giant. After parking in the back lot, we entered the store

^(Tr-nade for the liquor section, where the magazines were housed. I stood in t of the rack, butterflies of expectation overtaking my stomach while my

fr°her bought himself some beer. 1 knew immediately when I found the mag- • e It looked like a square of water was floating in the air. An ocean-blue

aZyer of a huge wave completely engulfing a surfer with the headline BANZAI PIPELINE. I held the magazine with great reverence, as if I were holding some- thing of spiritual value, which it was. j| "is that it?" rny father asked. He held a quart of Hamm's in each hand, his Friday night allotment.

"Yes." I beamed. At the counter my father took the magazine from me, leafing through it

much too casually, I thought. I could see the bulging veins in his powerful ' forearms, and saw too the solid bumps that were his biceps. 4 "Looks like a crazy thing to do," he said, finally placing the magazine on the is counter next to the beer. My father, the practical provider, the person whose closet was pristine for lack of clothes — although the ones he did own were styl- ish, yet not expensive. This was why he drank beer from quart bottles —it was cheaper that way. I know now how difficult it must have been raising four

y children on the hourly wages my parents made. •4$ The man at the counter rang up the purchases, stopping for a moment to

\k at the Surfer. He smiled. gjjl "lEres mexicano?" my father asked him. ^B "Si', icomo no?" the man answered. ^ Then my father and the store clerk began poking fun at my magazine in

Spanish, nothing too mean, but ranking it as silly adolescent nonsense. fc *# When we got back in the car I asked my father why he always asked cer- 20 . tain people if they were Mexican. He only asked men who obviously were,

^us knowing in advance their answers. He shrugged his shoulders and said e didn't know. It was a way of initiating conversation, he said. Well, it was

, etT1°arrassing for me, I told him. Because I held the magazine in my lap, I let • f, y father off the hook. It was more important that I give it a quick thumb-

t r°ugh as we drove home. The Surfer was far more interesting for me as a , elve-year-old than larger issues of race.

*• i*n ' SPent tne entire Friday evening holed up in my room, poring over the ' On ^azine' not even interested in eating popcorn or watching 77 Sunset Strip, ' evr familial Friday-night ritual. By the next morning I had almost memorized

an ry Photo caption and their sequence. I spoke with Sheldon on the phone '''jjt..-. e and Tom were meeting me later at Sportsman's Park. I did my chores

miim

600 CONSTRUCTING RACE Jack Lopez / Of Cholos and Surfers 601

in a self-absorbed trance, waiting for the time when I could share m ~ with my friends. My mother made me eat lunch before 1 was f ina l i treas 1=™,= v, ableleave. ,

Walking the long walk along Western Avenue toward Century ^' ing at the photos in the magazine, I didn't pay attention to the ch i^ glanc-X I passed on the sidewalk. I should have been more aware, but was ?"° Wll0n:i cupied. So there I was, in a street confrontation before I knew wh r°h° pre°c- pened. Td hap-.

"You a surfer?" he said with disdain. He said it the way you sta ^ chocolate, Ch, like in choc — churfer. But that didn't quite capture it eith t0 Sa^

I stopped and turned to face him. He wore a wool watch cap pullerfd onto his eyebrows, a long Sir Guy wool shirt with the top button buttoned^" all the rest unbuttoned, khaki pants so long they were frayed at the bott ̂ and so baggy I couldn't see his shoes. I wore Bermuda shorts and a larg5 Towncraft T-shirt. I was barefoot. My parents wouldn't let hair grow over rnv ears. Cholo meets surfer. Not a good thing. As he clenched his f is ts ' I saw a black cross tattooed onto the fleshy part of his hand. Jk ^

His question was not like my father's. My father, I now sensed, wanted a common bond upon which to get closer to strangers. This guy was Mexican American, and he wanted to fight me because I wore the outfi t of a surfer. +>

I rolled the magazine in a futile attempt to hide it, but the cholo viewed this action as an escalation with a perceived weapon. It wasn't that I was overly afraid of him, though fear can work to your advantage if used correctly. 1 was big for my age, athletic, and had been in many fights. The problem was this: 1 was hurrying off to see my friends, to share something important with them, walking on a summer day, and I didn't feel like rolling on the ground with some stranger because he'd decided we must do so. Why did he get to dictate when or where you would fight? There was another consideration, one more utilitarian: Who knew what sort of weapons he had under all that baggy clothing? A rattail comb, at the least. More likely a knife, because^n those days guns weren't that common. r • <

At Woodcrest Elementary School there was a recently arrived Dutch In^ ̂ sian immigrant population. One of the most vicious fights I had ever se ^ the one when Victor VerHagen fought his own cousin. And the toug. ^ere> I'd ever been in was against Julio, something during a baseball ga -^ ̂ must be some element of self-loathing that propels us to fight t o ^. own ethnicity with a particular ferocity.

Just before the cholo was going to initiate the fight, I said, ^ ^ American of Mexican descent, actually. , j S0rneone

He seemed unable to process this new information. How c .^ seejng be Mexican and dress like a surfer? He looked at me again, this ' ^ beyond the clothes 1 wore. He nodded slightly. . t[ne'years l°

This revelation, this recognition verbalized, molded me mfraC£s "!"in8 come. A surfer with a peeled nose and a Karmann Ghia with s »*.

5 0 '

A/hittier Boulevard in East L.A. to visit my grandparents. The charmed ^ .-,. -,~ rv-,0 mirlsr nf cholos.*Ja VVniLUC1F a surfer in the midst of cholos.

life o , Kortan Bending iunior hi f a surfer in the m i s t o co .

°A/v1en 1 began attending junior high school, there was a boy nicknamed *' who limped around the school yard one day. I discovered the reason for

' * *•" tV"=> hnthrnnm and he had a rifle pointed at boys and -f

^°- n when 1 went to the bathroom and he had a rifle pointed at boys and ri's.;' £ing their money. 1 fell in love with a girl named Shirley Pelland, the WaS der sister of a local surfboard maker. I saw her in her brother's shop after y° Q| but she had no idea I loved her. That fall the gang escalation in my SC -dhb'orhood became so pronounced my parents decided to move. We sold 06 house very quickly and moved to Huntington Beach, and none of us could Tep at n'Snt f°r tne cluiet- We were surrounded by cornfields and strawberry relds and tomato fields. As a bribe for our sudden move my parents chipped

much more than matching funds so I could buy Lenny Muelich's surfboard, l almost drowned in the big waves of a late-autumn south swell, the first time 1 went out on the Velzy-Jacobs. But later, after I'd surfed for a few years, I expertly rode the waves next to the pier, surfing with new friends. 4 But I've got ahead of myself. I must return to the cholo who is about to

' attack. But there isn't any more to tell about the incident. We didn't fight that summer's day over thirty years ago. In fact, I never fought another of my own race and don't know if this was a conscious decision or if circumstances dic- tated it. As luck would have it, 1 fought only a few more times during my ado- lescence and did so only when attacked. ''4| My father's question, which he'd asked numerous people so long ago,

% taught me these things: The reason he had to ask was because he and my t mother had left the safe confines of their Boyle Heights upbringing. They had k thrust themselves and their children into what was called at the time the ,. melting pot of Los Angeles. They bought the post-World War II American v dream of assimilation. 1 was a pioneer in the sociological sense that I had no , distinct ethnic piece of geography on which my pride and honor depended. , cast adrift in the city streets. Something gained, something lost. I couldn't . return to my ethnic neighborhood, but I could be a surfer. And I didn't have to

'§ht for ethnic pride over rny city street. The neighborhood kids did, however, st| together, though this was not based upon race. It was a necessity. The

* r Suys would step forward to protect the younger ones. That was how it t xwas done. ^ ^th- T'le most irnPonant tning ] learned was that 1 could do just about any- * w n§ J wished, within reason. I could be a surfer, if 1 chose, and even cholos " e , Aspect my decision. During my adolescence I went to my grandpar- * olrj5 nouse for all the holidays. They lived in East Los Angeles. When I was ' a'bl 6n°u§n to drive I went on my own, sometimes with a girlfriend. I was ' f0r p ° °bserve my Los Angeles Mexican heritage, taking a date to the placita

gi rj aster service and then having lunch at Olvera Street. An Orange County h ^° had no idea this part of Los Angeles existed. I was lucky; I got the

es

^ I

of both worlds.

602 CONSTRUCTING RACE

R E A D I N G THE TEXT 1 What symbolic significance did being a surfer have for Lopez and his fr ie ' 2 How did Lopez's attitude toward his Mexican heritage compare with that

his/her, and how do you explain any difference? 3 Why does the cholo object to Lopez's surfer clothing? ^ 4. How did Lopez eventually reconcile his surfer and his Mexican .Arneri

identities? W w 5 Characterize Lopez's tone and persona in this selection. How do they affect

' your response as a reader? 1L ft

'ican

IR E A D I N G THE SIGNS 1. In your journal, write your own account of how, in your childhood y u d

oped a sense of ethnic identity. Use Lopez's article as a model that pinpoints concrete, specific events as being significant. ^ ^

2. Compare and contrast Lopez's development of a sense of ethnic identity with that of Melissa Algranati in "Being an Other" (p. 613). How can you account for any differences you see? ik

3. A generational gap separated Lopez's and his father's attitudes toward assimi- lation. Interview several friends, preferably of different ethnicities, and their parents about their sense of ethnic identity. Write an essay in which you explore the extent to which one's age can influence one's attitudes toward

ethnicity. ^ 4. In class, discuss the extent to which your community is characterized by

tinct ethnic piece[s] of geography" (para. 33). Do people of different eth ties interact frequently? Or do people tend to associate primarily with those of the same background? Use your discussion as the basis of an essay in which you evaluate the race relations in your community, taking care to sug

gest causes for the patterns that you see. lj|

ac«*e the „„, YOU m.g« ng * sse

3. How would you .Mr styles say about