Global High

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If you want to gaze into the face of San Diego’s future, stand at the flagpole of Crawford High School at 2:20 p.m. and absorb the cries, colors and costumes of America the diverse. Hold on to the flagpole, or you will be carried away by cheerleaders in pleated red-white-and-blue Colts skirts; sloe-eyed Cambodians with shining black hair; dark-eyed Somalis in flowing robes; Mexicanas in miniskirts and blue mascara; cholos in Pendleton shirts and baggy jeans; African-Americans in hip-hop gear; white punkers with dyed-green hair.

Erected in 1957, Will C. Crawford High (named for a former schools superintendent) is a comprehensive school serving 1,500 students from the San Diego neighborhood around 54th Street and El Cajon Boulevard. According to California Department of Education statistics, Crawford is the most diverse high school in the state. California is the most diverse state in the United States. America is the most diverse country in the world. If you could see the world through the eyes of Crawford students, what would it look like?

Nearly four years ago, at the end of a school day, Crawford students leaving the campus confronted a melee near the flagpole. Two guys had bumped into each other and started fighting. Friends joined in. Within minutes, dozens of Somalis were fighting a larger number of African-Americans, Samoans, Asians and Latinos. Girls in veils hurled shoes; girls in miniskirts shouted insults. The fight spilled down the steps into the street.

To one African-American, it looked like a rumble without reason. Homies called him to fight the Africans, but he hung back. Jowahir Mohamed, a Somali community aide, rushed to quiet tempers. In her view, it was a stupid fight that had gotten out of hand, not a reflection of deeper ethnic hatreds.

Within minutes the police came; the fight was brought under control. No shots were fired; no one was seriously injured. Arrests were made, ringleaders suspended. The crowd dispersed, kids sent home.

But that was not the end of the story. The media reported that a riot between Africans and African-Americans had broken out at Crawford High. San Diegans who tuned in to TV reports came to believe Crawford was an explosive, ethnically divided school. Although the fight lasted perhaps a half-hour, Crawford still bears the stigma.

By sheer coincidence, I arrived at Crawford to serve as a writing mentor a few days after the so-called riot. Julie Elliott, the principal then, was more upset by the exaggerated media accounts than by the relatively small number of students who had broken rules and were being disciplined. She was enthusiastic about Crawford’s culturally rich student body. The surrounding neighborhood was a landing zone for refugees from Asia, Africa, the Middle East and the Americas. In a world atlas, she traced their homelands; it looked like a Cold War map of U.S. military interventions from Vietnam to Somalia.

Ironically, children of war were relocated from the world’s most dangerous neighborhoods to one of San Diego’s most dangerous neighborhoods, where they competed with established residents for housing and jobs. No wonder Crawford High School was a flash point for cultural conflict. Yet Elliott claimed it was really the opposite. Who was right?

Over the next year, I navigated the passageways where cliques from Vietnam, Sudan or Mexico met before school. As soon as the bell rang, the cliques broke up and kids poured into classes. At lunch, new cliques formed, based on interests, from hip-hop to study groups. I was intrigued by the way the students flowed in and out of social categories. They looked like schools of brightly colored fish that cluster about an underwater coral reef. With my bow tie and briefcase, I might have seemed to them like a weird scuba diver. Yet they appeared unthreatened by my presence. As I marveled at their magical interactions, I felt utterly safe. Branded with a bad rep for riot, Crawford actually seemed friendly, comfortable and tolerant.

Beneath the coral reef lay a reservoir of pain and suffering that emerged in students’ writing. They had witnessed massacres, endured starvation, fled burning refugee camps, been hunted by la migra, survived drive-by shootings. When I naively directed students to “Raise your hand if you’ve heard gunshots near home,” nearly all hands shot up. I coaxed them to read their stories aloud. Their tales of abuse, abandonment, hunger and genocide left me trembling. Yet most were not bitter complainers. On the contrary, immigrants admired their parents’ sacrifices and appreciated America as a land of freedom, even as they struggled with harsh realities. Compared to the violence they had experienced abroad and at home, the “riot” was a bad joke.

I’ve had the privilege of teaching extraordinary students at other schools, but no campus has quite the ambience of Crawford High. What is Crawford’s secret? The magical formula is that when all students belong to minorities, no group dominates. (See the ethnic breakdown on the opposite page.) Imagine a society where everyone is different and all depend on good relations. Crawford is no Utopia, but it hasn’t had a disturbance since 1997.

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