The Harmonious Dissonance of Two Worlds:The Street and School Identities of Inner-City Latino Students

Sofia Mohammad and Nilda Flores-Gonzalez, University of Illinois-Chicago, Chicago, IL, 60607

Previous studies have shown that Latino students can only maintain a school identity without possessing "street-wise" traits in order to graduate from high school and pursue higher education. I hypothesized that there are students who maintain both identities to a certain degree without jeopardizing their education. These students have the capacity to pursue, if not already pursuing, higher education. This project focuses on the strategies utilized by "street-wise" Latino students to construct and solidify their school identity.
A qualitative research design was employed to identify students who adopted a "street-wise", "school-wise", or both identities. A 45 minute, open-ended interview was conducted with fourteen participants and composed of open-ended questions covering family background, school satisfaction, sources of support, and peer relations. Previous data, furnished by Dr. Nilda Flores-Gonzalez, operationally defined the strictly "school-wise" and "street-wise" identity and was utilized to classify the participant's degree of identity. All fourteen participants were identified as maintaining both identities at different degrees. I utilized Diego Vigil's four theoretical sub-categories of "street identity" to classify my participants and to facilitate examining the "cut-off" point for maintaining the street identity without jeopardizing their education. The four categories consisted of (1) Regular (2) Peripheral (3) Temporary and (4) Situational gang members/affiliates. Out of fourteen Latino college students, there was one regular member, three peripheral members, four temporary members, and six situational members. In conclusion, those inner-city Latino students who participated in my project were able maintain a low degree of their street identity without jeopardizing their school identity.