Personal Narrative: I Am A Minority Student

Coming from South Los Angeles, close to Watts, and raised by an undocumented, working class, single mother of Hispanic descent revealed to me the idea of how society is, for the most part, constructed to benefit some individuals over others. Due to the fact that I am considered a minority student in a low income urban atmosphere, I lived most of my life in an ocean of disadvantage. As any individually usually would, I had and continue to have bountiful amounts of goals that I hope have or hope to one day accomplish. Just to name a few, become a first generation high school graduate, attend a 4 year university and become financially stable. I faced many barriers and limitations as I attempted to fulfill my desires because of my social location, …show more content…
South central is known for being a low income, dangerous environment inhabited by mostly Black and Latino families. Due to transportation issues, my mother enrolled me into a small low funded charter school because it was the closest to home. My school was not part of the LAUSD district thus our funding was very low and we were constantly threatened of being shut down. Since my school poorly funded, it was exposed to structural violence, the quality of learning was poor and there was constant surveillance. (Abrego, lecture 1/20/16) Our campus was minuscule compared to other high schools, we did not have enough money for a gym, sports, computer lab or even a cafeteria. Any extracurricular activities and clubs had to be funded by the own students and staffs. When it came to classes, the rooms were in bad condition, rain dripping from the ceiling, broken windows etc. Courses offered were very limited, there were only a few AP classes to choose from and materials in the classroom were damaged, torn, and limited. In addition more money was invested into monthly drug searches and school police whom checked students appearing suspicious because of the social location. All these factors contributed to my disadvantages because I had limited access to a safe school environment and school materials such as textbooks or …show more content…
After my parent’s divorce, a wave of financial instability hit since my mother was the new head of household and we received no monetary help from my father. My father squandered most of his income on his alcohol and drugs addictions thus we could only firmly count on my mother’s scarce income to bring food to the table and keep a roof over our heads. At times she worked two jobs meaning after school I would need to rush home and babysit my younger brother, clean the house and at time cook thus this left me with very minimal time and strength for doing my homework or studying. As I moved into my senior year in high school, I felt the pressure to acquire a job of my own to try to bring home more money. At first this seemed like a perfect solution since I was receiving a decent income but this plan backfired because my job was stealing a lot of time from my educational responsibilities. Thus I had to cut my hours and was making less than what I wanted in order to help my mother. To add on, my financial impediment, inhibited my access to resources such as textbooks or extra tutoring. For instance, I was not able to attain a computer for my homework until about in middle of 10th grade because my mother was not able to afford it until then. This meant that for half of my high school years I had to stay extra hours to use computers at schools