Mexifornia: A State of Becoming by Victor Hanson (books for 7th graders txt) 📗

ready to rumble in the emergency room. This is a growing phenomenon resulting in part from the fact that, according to some studies, almost 40 percent of both Hispanic aliens and Hispanic citizens of immigrant background do not graduate from our state's high schools within the normal four years, while over 90 percent of Mexicans of all statuses have no B.A. degree. Hundreds of gang-bangers venture out into the rural counties to fornicate, shoot drugs, steal, rape and murder. I pick up their needles and condoms, brandy bottles and tampons nightly near our farm pond. Some have tried to break into my house. At least a dozen have brazenly carted away farm equipment, stolen fruit in front of my home, or simply beached their cars and walked away. I confront them monthly - scowls, threats, bad looks and all - and usually reason with foolish logic as in the following propositions: "How would you like it if I drove onto your front lawn and stripped your orange tree?" "Would you like me to drive my tractor to your front door and park it there?" "Can I go over to your house and take what I find lying around the yard?"

Sometimes the Chicano studies lore has filtered down to the gang member: I have had block-lettered gang graffiti painted on our irrigation standpipes demanding, "Help the helpless." Once I caught a thief red-handed with over a hundred pounds of pilfered Elberta peaches. This young proto-Marxist replied to orders to put the boxes down or face the sheriff this way: "Hey, stupido, how you gonna eat all that fruit now before it rots? So just give it to people who really need it."

These roving criminals offer a stark contrast to their hardworking fathers and mothers - and make us wonder what is wrong with Mexico or America, or both. How can some men and women who venture north with nothing and work twenty years to near decrepitude rear children who not only will not labor, but instead fight and maim? All sorts of cheap answers are proposed from the left and the right: racism, the brutality of American capitalism, the emptiness of our popular entertainment, the pathology of Mexican culture, or the laxity of our own welfare state. Yet in the meantime, the social costs of having so many who turn so criminal, remain uneducated, and need highly trained doctors and professionals to clean up their mess has become exasperating. Consider a random litany of recent experiences in my hometown:

• A young alien ran a red light, hit my truck and attempted to flee before I called the police on my cell phone. He had no identification, registration or insurance, and was clearly intoxicated.

• Not long after this I was in a bank where I watched an older gentleman sign his name with an "X." As I waited, three customers directly ahead of me argued with the teller over bounced checks, missed car payments  and insufficient funds - two in Spanish, one in an Indian dialect that not even a Hispanic employee could quite decipher. Forty minutes later I went home without reaching the teller. No economist calculates the billions that are lost in time and efficiency in California daily when thousands of aliens must have translators and be instructed in the basics that millions of Californians take for granted. Instead, we all obliviously go about our business and hope the old system can transform a Native American from central Mexico into a suburbanite - without impinging on his indigenous culture and heritage, of course.

• A visit to the Department of Motor Vehicles is an hour-long disaster. English seems not to be spoken on either side of me; the line does not move; and the customers cannot understand the myriad forms to be filled out for their trailers, vans and cars.

• My daughter's car was hit in an intersection by a young Mexican who ran a stoplight, propelling her vehicle into a neighboring yard. The Mexican-American policeman took no report, issued no citation and let the driver off - after getting her phone number.

• In a car parked deep in our orchard, a man of about forty was slapping and cursing a younger woman. Was he armed? Was she in danger? I approached the car, asked him not to hit the woman and then to leave. He did - as both cursed me on the way out, the victim far more than her abuser.

Such are the whirling images that now surround someone living in California, at the epicenter of illegal immigration. The other day I went up to my office at CaliforniaStateUniversity, then to the library, and at last to the department office. It was late summer and the campus was largely deserted after summer school had ended - except for hundreds of young grade-schoolers, the vast majority of them Mexican and Mexican-American. Race seems the unspoken prerequisite for participation. There are literally dozens of programs for such underprivileged, geared for kids from kindergarten through high school, all well-intended and inspirational: classes and workshops in self-esteem, remedial English, Chicano pride, vocational training, SAT preparation, Mexican history, Mexican grievances. Lunch, tutors, teachers, the use of computers and classrooms are provided free of charge. The message that I glean from the literature describing their efforts is one involving the primacy of self-esteem, a certain obligation on the part of others to accommodate Chicanos, the need for racial solidarity, and a vague notion that the spoils of California, for a variety of sinister reasons, are not being divided fairly.

My classics students, with a good knowledge of two or three languages, European history and Western literature, and with impeccable English, often find tutorial and guidance work in these programs, which all seem to have titles that include buzz words like "Help," "Pride" or "Diversity." The irony, of course, is that our assimilated Mexican classics majors make both perfect tutors and imperfect role models for these state-mandated programs. Their commitment to education has given them the skills