I thought this was kind of a weird topic. Write about my experiences with a minority group? Like: I knew this Hispanic guy once. He had a sweet car. Like that?

I thought about writing about how in Envi Club and Young Democrats last year we always had our weekend events on Sundays. This was because the majority of both clubs were Jewish, so Saturday was off limits. But that is actually all I could think of about my experience with Jewish people, (besides Fiddler on the Roof last year, which was amazing but an entirely different group of people… and I’ve been to a few Bat- and Bar-Mitzvahs).

So while sitting here thinking of my experiences with minority groups I thought, “hey, some of my best friends are minorities!….cool.” I feel weird about writing about them, but I’ll try.

Ruben Palacios grew up in South Central, Los Angelis. His parents are from Mexico. I met him in my freshman science class when he would sit by me and try to copy my homework at the last minute before the teacher came by to stamp it. I didn’t really like him at first because he’s one of those people who will babble on incessantly whether they think you care or not. I was in science with Ruben again when we took biology sophomore year. In that class we became better friends. He thought I was amusing because I called him Ruben and everyone else called him Ru. We sat next to each other and could commiserate over Ms. Schat’s ridiculous tests and massive amounts of homework. Although he had trouble his freshman year, he was determined to work hard and get good grades this year. That class was one of the hardest classes I took in high school and although I was a bit resentful at the time, I’m happy now to say that Ruben got a better grade than me.

The science theme was repeated again in the second semester of my junior year when we were both in an Environmental science class. Through all of these classes Ruban continued to talk…and talk…and talk. Amid all the small talk, he would tell me stories about when he lived in LA. About how he was in a gang, how he had to take care of his younger brother when his mom wasn’t around. He told me once that one night while he was watching TV a drunk man came into the front door of their house, shot his dog in the head and ran out the back. His storied were shocking to me, but he explained that for him it was just growing up. Although I didn’t have any classes with him my senior year I saw a lot of Ruben because he dated another one of my friends. I worried about him a lot. He was still taking care of his brother and lived in an apartment complex known for nightly visits by the police. I’m sad to say I haven’t talked to him since the end of school last year, but I’m happy that he graduated with my class. I know he realizes that he’s lucky to have gotten out of the area he grew up in, and that he’ll make the most of his life.
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Isabelle Shankar has been one of my best friends since second grade. I vaguely remember her first day of school in America. She sat a few seats down from me in our second grade classroom and I could hear her dad speaking a language I’d never heard before in an oddly quiet and gentle voice. From then to know it’s almost all a blur, but in that blur I learned many things. That language I heard was Swedish. Isabelle’s dad is from India, her mom from Poland. They met in college in England, moved to Sweden where they had three kids and then moved everyone to the US because they wanted them to grow up there. I don’t remember how I found all this out, because we never really talked about it.

The Shankar’s story seems a bit like the typical immigrant story. They came here for a better life and worked their way up. One of my most vivid memories of Isabelle from elementary school is of her wishing on fluffy, white dandelions that the bank would approve a loan so her parents could finally buy their house instead of renting. Now that all three of their kids have graduated college or are currently there, the Shankar’s are back in an apartment, this time only temporarily while the house they bought years ago is being remodeled.

I always felt welcome at Isabelle’s house. Both of her parents were always eager to make guests feel at home, usually by cooking food, (oooh delicious food). They also made you feel like a part of their family. Isabelle’s mom would constantly ask us about how school was going, how our families were, and if you ran into her at the bakery in the grocery store where you worked she’d ask you why you hadn’t been around as much lately.

Growing up half Indian, half Polish, in a household with a devout Catholic and a practicing Hindu didn’t make Isabelle as different as people might think when they first hear that. She told me one time that she sometimes wished she could be more European, like her cousins, but is most definitely, in her words, “All American.”
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My friend Rian would like to say that he is also in a minority, “I'm a pale, skinny, effeminate, Irish-Swedish Latinist! Go me/us!” So, there you go. (That's him in the picture).