As Angel has moved on to college at St. Ambrose the one memory that he revealed to me of his freshmen year was during soccer orientation. “Fr. Bud told everybody to talk to one person on the team and that would be the guy I would bump with that season. The first thing he asked me was if I was in a gang. I was really pissed and quit a couple days later.” I asked Angel if he still sees this guy around campus and he just said, “Yah, I do but I know that he is a guy who grew up on a farm. I don’t think he knew what he was saying. I don’t talk to him still but I am over it.” Angel declared to me that he thinks that the only reason he was accepted to every school he applied to was because he was a Mexican. Overall, at St. Ambrose, he does not receive discrimination from any of the faculty; it is mainly the students who come from small towns. I asked if they had ever said anything negative to him, in response he said, “No one has said anything, I can just tell that they are all scared of me.” Angel is very excited to graduate, this is his fifth year at St. Ambrose and he says that he is ready to move on. He is hoping to either get a job in Chicago so he can be close to his mom, grandma and James. He is also going to look into applying for jobs out in California, he would really like to move back there and reconnect with his roots.

In saying this, I received a better understanding of the term familism, which is defined as a strong sense of family pride and loyalty to one another. I asked him if his family in Los Angeles ever speak of discrimination that they have experienced recently that you may not in Chicago, he told me that they really don’t talk about it much and that if anything he experiences more in Chicago than they would there. He did though state, “I know that people in my family who don’t have money and will never be able to get anywhere in life other than where they are now, they all live in the same neighborhood, some people have the same low paying jobs that there parents had and they will always have it.”

Angel spoke of two times when he and James were discriminated against by the public. The first time he was with James buying a bracelet for his mom in Chicago for their anniversary. In the store, the sales clerk was questing the way in which James was intending to pay for the bracelet. He said he first tried to pay with a check and the man said that they didn’t accept checks. He then he said that he would pay with a credit card, the sale person called to check on the credit card twice and when it was verified the sales clerk gave James and Angel a look like he was surprised. Then James ripped the credit card out of his hand before the bracelet was charged to his account and walked out the store.

Angel says that his extended family still lives in California and they are all still very close. When he visits them, he is brought back to his old neighborhood and his old friends. He is also brought back to his old traditions and beliefs that his mother tries so hard to help him hold on to. He explains that religion is a center in his life. His extended family in California all attends the same Catholic Church usually during the same service and then meets for a meal after. His grandmother, has lived with him and his mother, and also tries to ensure religion stays in his life. “My grandma calls me every Sunday night and talks to me about everything that went on in her week. She asks if I went to church and I always tell her yes because she would kill me if she found out that I missed one day.”

The second time that the public discriminated against Angle and James was an incident when Angle was pulled over for speeding when he was sixteen and James was in the car with him. The police officer was extremely rude, he asked to search the car giving no reason and then after finding nothing wrote Angel a ticket for speeding. He says that he was going forty-five miles

Some topics in this essay:
Los Angeles, St Ambrose, College Algebra, Angle James, Caucasian Protestant, United Caucasian, Catholic Church, English Hispanic, Black White, James Angel, los angeles, st ambrose, social norms, credit card, extended family, public school, family los angeles, family los, mexican kids, angeles age fourteen, “i don’t, married james, los angeles age,