A community like National City, there’s two views of a place like this. There’s the way the community feels about itself, and then of course there’s the way others view the community. And I will say we were very aware that we were considered a sketchy neighborhood or the place you wouldn’t want to end up.
When you live in a community where maybe others don’t value what’s happening in that community, or they consider your community to be sketchy or lower class, maybe when you’re outside of the community and others ask where you’re from, you can be a little bit more vague because you don’t want to kind of just label yourself as a National City kid.
But there was a little bit of pride in the community because the families were tight. You know, I always tell the people, there’s different messaging in different communities for the younger generations and the messaging I got was very valuable to me. It was, it’s all about hard work and being loyal, looking out for your cousins and your family and being respectful to your parents. So those are great values. However, it’s impossible to see those values from the outside because nobody really wants to come in to the community.
Now I will also tell you, I went to high school in a completely different kind of community. It was kind of a small town, beach town community that was a little more evenly split between the Mexican-American population and the White population. It’s now a very wealthy community today. But when I was growing up it was sort of moving in that direction, but there were still real families that were just working working-class jobs. But I feel very lucky that I got to be in both communities to sort of see the difference. And I think I write from that point of view of having been an insider in both kinds of communities.