Page 95 - Cultural Studies A Practical Introduction

Ethnicity 79

mock comic version of the White urban gangster wannabe and did fake

interviews with famous political figures such as Newt Gingrich (a former
US congressman). To some, Ali G might be offensive; he portrays White
working - class urban youth as buffoons. But Cohen also uses the fi gure for
critically satiric purposes.
Mobile ethnic signs can also become a form of currency especially in
urban settings in the US where ethnic groups live close to one another and
mix in schools especially. Because many Latin American immigrants are
perceived as being “ backward ” by other youth, they seek to acquire
“ Blackness ” by dressing, acting, and speaking like their African American
schoolmates. In part this phenomenon has to do with the acquisition of
urban competence, an ability to survive psychologically and socially in a
terrain marked by hierarchy, exclusion, group identity, and coded lan-
guages. But it is also a traditional survival mechanism for immigrants that
in the past took the form of “ becoming White, ” of acquiring new names
and of acquiring new forms of behavior and speech that shed all signs of
one ’ s immigrant ethnic roots. For many Latin American youth in places
like Newark, New Jersey, becoming Black is the equivalent of becoming
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American. They try not to appear Hispanic because “ it ’ s not the cool thing.
You have to be hard, trying to be like, you know, a thug, and so they
emulate that. Nobody wants to be White because that ’ s Portuguese and so
that ’ s un - cool and even looked down upon. ” What study of the students
in Newark high schools suggests is that kids can learn ethnicity by acquiring
ethnic style. It is theatrical, a rehearsed and repeated role. A Puerto Rican
girl recounts how “ [a Portuguese girl] once said, ‘ I would have never
thought in my life I would ever hang out with a Puerto Rican, because
they ’ re loud, obnoxious, ’ and you know. And it ’ s true because all Puerto
Ricans are loud [laughs]. Now she ’ s different. Now she ’ s loud like me and
she likes it. I taught her how to really come out and be out - going. ” Some
students who do not belong to one of the majority ethnic groups take pride
in being integrated into those groups by learning their style. One girl from
Cape Verde tells how she grew up entirely with Puerto Ricans “ and when
I got to high school all my close friends were Puerto Rican. My boyfriend
is Puerto Rican too. I have more in common with Puerto Ricans, and when
people look at me, how I dress, they think I am. ”
At the center of the high school culture of Newark, however, was the
Black youth community. They hung out on the second floor of one of the

high schools, which was called the “ ghetto floor. ” The third floor was for
immigrants, and the fourth for Brazilians. But many of these Hispanic kids