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Forum tackles migrant worker issue

Section: Business

Molly Reid

like immigrants -- some of them. New Orleans is packed enough," said Aisha Taylor, a high school freshman at New Orleans Charter School for Science and Math.

"I disagree. People need to learn to appreciate the work they do for us," responded Joleen Phan, Taylor's classmate.

A ring of parents, teachers and students surrounded Taylor, Phan and three other students conducting a "fishbowl" discussion group. The question was: "Migrant workers have nothing in common with locals: agree or disagree?"

Tameko Benjamin, whose daughter, Darione, was in the group of debating students, joined the discussion. "All immigrants are not bad people. Some of the choices that some of them make I don't agree with. But you can't stereotype all people."

The forum was part of Science and Math's Culture and Migration Community Night, an evening for teachers, family and the public to explore the complex questions arising from marked demographic shifts in New Orleans' population post-Katrina. More than 100 high school freshmen organized, promoted and hosted the event as part of their social studies class.

Sarah Burgess, the students' social studies teacher, said the event was the culmination of an eight-week unit on culture and migration that was designed to give students a historical and cultural perspective on the effects of large- and small-scale population shifts.

"We're very focused on migration because it is such a relevant issue in New Orleans right now," she said.

Over the course of the eight-week unit, students conducted oral histories with family members to explore their own heritage, recorded conversations between two members of different races, and wrote letters to family in a fictional homeland. Working through racial stereotypes was a strong part of the unit, Burgess said.

"One theme has been about how stereotypes cause conflict in culture. There's a sense that there's some negative things they've heard before," she said.

The students addressed some of those stereotypes early in the evening with a skit portraying a racial confrontation between a group of African-Americans and two Hispanic nationals. "There is a stereotype: that immigrants are lazy and poor," the narrator said, also pointing out the common mistake of calling Latin Americans "Mexican," though only a small portion of the Hispanic population comes from Mexico.

The school's auditorium was filled to near capacity with family and students, and the chatty crowd gradually became pin-drop silent during remarks made by Daniel Castellanos, a guest worker and member of the Alliance for Guest Workers' Dignity.

Flanked by seven other guest workers of Hispanic nationality, Castellanos explained through a translator how he and his comrades paid more than $5,000 each to receive a guest worker visa but were sorely deceived.

"After struggling a lot to get the $5,000 to come here, I realized that all the promises that had been made in my home country were completely false," Castellanos said. Instead of giving them comfortable living quarters as promised, "they brought me to a hotel that was half destroyed with animals and rats running in the halls."

Castellanos appealed to the mostly black audience by paralleling the trials of post-Katrina migrant workers to that of slaves 250 years ago, and said that conflict between the two minorities is often the result of miscommunication and misrepresentation.

"Our managers would tell us, 'We don't want black workers. Black people are lazy.' They're trying to divide us," Castellanos said as several members of the audience nodded their heads. "Some of my friends have even seen money change hands, selling one group of guest workers from one company to another. What does this sound like to you? What we're seeing is that the old slaves are being replaced by the new slaves."

Exploring such difficult subject matter and re-creating a pedagogical way of approaching it was something the students hoped to share with their parents, Burgess said.

"The students have been amazingly excited and positive about doing this," she said. "They want to share what they've learned."

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