Outcasts United Essay Questions

Compare and contrast the hardships the refugees in Outcasts United faced before and after coming to America.

Different situations faced the families of refugees depicted in Outcasts United when they lived in their home countries; the most common circumstance that forced them into refugee camps and then to Clarkston, Georgia was political unrest. Thus, the refugees faced violence, discrimination, and fear while in their homeland, and then often had to deal with a lack of access to water, food, shelter, education, and communication while living in refugee camps in countries nearby. For many of them, placement by a non-profit specializing in refugee resettlement was an end goal of sorts; it was seen as a solution to the problems they faced in the refugee camps.

However, new problems arose for the refugees when they reached America. Clarkston's citizens were not happy with the influx of immigrants to their formerly homogeneously white, Southern town, so there were problems with police profiling and the funding of community programs for refugees like Luma's soccer team. Lack of language skills and education also affected both adult and child refugees. Clarkston's schools did not have the resources or staff to provide high-quality ESL education, and many of the students were also behind in other subjects due to living in refugee camps for a number of years. For adults, a lack of English skills impacted their ability to get and keep a job as well as interact with people when they were in need of help or guidance. All of the refugees still needed to deal with the trauma they faced in their countries and the refugee camps, but they were often forced to deal with some of the same situations as they faced violence in their city and struggled to keep out of poverty.

What preconceptions about America do you think refugees brought with them? What preconceptions do people have about refugees?

The refugees came to America with a number of preconceptions. While there were some pleasant surprises, such as Bien finding out that he and his brothers would not be the only refugees or Swahili speakers in their school, there were also some nasty shocks. Many of the Fugees players' families viewed America as a solution to their problems and a place without violence or poverty. Beatrice Ziaty learned that this was not the case on her first day at work; on her way home from a long shift cleaning hotel rooms, she was mugged, losing her family's money and documentation and feeling a sudden shift in her perception of their new home.

Outcasts United also shows and refutes some major misconceptions held by Americans about refugees. The main misconception would probably be that all refugees come from the same background or have the same experience. The book shows the many national, religious, linguistic, and cultural backgrounds the Fugees came from, and how this even created divisions between the refugees at times. Certainly, not all of the Fugees came from the Middle East or were Muslim, two identities American media often equates with the refugee crisis, and some Fugees even grew up speaking English. Even Luma, a foreigner herself, had to learn about the resources available for helping refugees and grapple with how to help a community suffering from trauma, poverty, and an incredibly new and difficult situation.

How did varied ethnic and religious backgrounds affect the refugee community as a whole?

The varied ethnic and religious backgrounds within the refugee community in Clarkston meant there were divisions and hierarchies even within a group of people all struggling to adapt to the same new situation. This is shown mostly through the cliques that formed on the Fugees. As the author writes, "Luma noticed that when she would tell the boys to divide into groups for drills, they would split up according to ethnic backgrounds or common languages. In scrimmages, boys would always pass to their own kind. And each group, she learned, had bad thoughts about the others. 'The Afghan and Iraqi kids would look down on the African kids,' Luma said. 'And kids from northern Africa would look down on kids from other parts of Africa. There was a lot of underlying racism and a lot of baggage they brought with them'" (53). Luma attempts to deal with these problems by requiring players to mix up during practices and by modeling equal respect to players regardless of their nationality, religion, or language.

The diversity of the Fugees also helped the team in some ways. The boys had to learn one another's strengths and weaknesses, and this made them a highly alert and dynamic team. They also found ways to bond over their differences; before one soccer game, the players decided to offer up a Muslim and Christian prayer in two different languages, which seemed to give all the players a sense of community and strength.

Compare and contrast Luma's experience as a foreigner with the experiences of the refugee families she interacts with in Clarkston.

Luma comes to the United States on a student visa, and she notes that she was treated much like an American because of her unaccented English. She was able to speak English at a very high level because of her Jordanian family's wealth, which allowed her to go to an international school. Her situation changed drastically when she decided to stay in America. Her family cut her off financially and she was forced to take jobs with low status and low pay like waitressing due to being in the country illegally (or without documentation). When she moved to Decatur, she had a choice of where to live and what job she wanted, and even without her parents' money she was not living in poverty.

In contrast, the refugee families in Clarkston did not choose to leave their home countries, but were forced out for political, social, and economic reasons. Like Luma, many of them had been split up from their family members, but this was also out of their control. And, while they were in the country legally, they still faced many roadblocks to getting jobs above minimum wage due to their lack of language skills or valid certification, meaning many families lived in poverty. Luma's experiences as a foreigner helped her to understand some of the struggles faced by her players and their families, but some issues were as new to her as they were to the US-born residents of Clarkston.

What can a reader learn about the American education system from Outcasts United? What, if anything, would you change about American education?

Outcasts United shows the United States' educational failure with regard to English as a Second Language (ESL) learners. Luma sees that adequate teachers and supplies are not being devoted to teaching students with low levels of English, especially because the demographics of Clarkston changed relatively quickly. Refugee children were given ESL classes, but they were generally mainstreamed for the rest of their subjects, meaning it was much more difficult for them to understand subjects like history or science. This poor system of educating foreigners led to students either getting failing grades or having their scores inflated so that they passed but would be unprepared for higher education or the job market.

Reading about this makes me feel that more schools should have programs where ESL teachers team up with teachers of subjects like math, science, and history in order to make those subjects accessible to students. In this way, they can build their content knowledge while their language skills are still developing. Our education system should reflect that diversity, including diversity of nationality and linguistic background, can be an asset to students and an asset to schools so long as the proper structure is in place.