Posted on 07/28/2007 10:02:08 AM PDT by Altura Ct.
The Senate’s phone system crashed last month during immigration reform debates, when thousands of people and anti-immigrant activists called their senators to protest the legalization of millions of undocumented immigrants.
The massive, unprecedented telephone campaign was sparked by a range of complex motives based on social and economic issues. Among them was a theme that promises to reappear if the issue is revisited: the perception that Latinos are too different to assimilate, do not learn English, and are unraveling the fabric of the identity of a nation that was, ironically, created by immigrants.
“It is one of the ideas that anti-immigrant forces take advantage of: the notion that immigrants today do not assimilate and that other generations did. But it is not true,” says Cecilia Muñoz of the National Council of La Raza.
In fact, both sides are right.
Latinos are assimilating, but in their own way, keeping much of their identity. Tamales at Christmas. Turkey and menudo at Thanksgiving. English at work and Spanish at home. Dual loyalties to the San Diego Chargers and Guadalajara Chivas. The Fourth of July. Cinco de Mayo.
“Latinos are ending the concept of the proverbial racial salad,” wrote renowned journalist and writer Jorge Ramos in his book, “The Latino Wave: How Hispanics Are Transforming Politics in America.”
The big difference between European and Latino immigrants, according to Ramos and some sociologists, is that Hispanics live next to their countries of origin, allowing them to maintain ties with their family, culture and language.
In addition, there exists today an extensive network of Spanish-language media.
“Culturally, Latinos are never going to totally assimilate. Latinos are creating their own space in this country. And the characteristics of Hispanic culture are changing forever the face of the nation,” Ramos wrote.
This phenomenon plays out each day in the home of Cristóbal Castro, a naturalized U.S. citizen and son of a “bracero” who migrated to the United States in the middle of the last century to work.
“It is going to be very difficult to assimilate, at least for the first generation. What there is is a negotiation,” he said. “There will be things that we accept, like the manner of dress or the education here, and things that we don’t, like kicking your children out of the house when they turn 18, like ‘gringos’ do.”
Latinos’ tendency to cling onto their culture has led them to gradually redefine the American identity.
Assimilation, according to Tomás Jiménez, a sociology professor at the University of California, San Diego, “no longer means you have to disown your culture and adopt a new lifestyle identified with Anglo-Protestant culture.”
In an essay published in the Los Angeles Times, Jiménez said that due to Latinos, “multiculturalism and the appreciation of diversity are much more accepted than before.”
Defining assimilation is as complex as reforming immigration laws.
Can you speak Spanish and be assimilated? Do you have to like hamburgers more than grilled steak tacos? When can you say you have achieved assimilation?
“It is not easy to define,” confessed Ira Mehlman of the anti-immigrant organization FAIR (Federation for American Immigration Reform). Many Americans resent the fact that Hispanics insist on speaking Spanish and maintaining ties with their countries of origin, he said.
“But I would say that (assimilation) is when someone feels American,” he said. “And to me, people that march, yelling, ‘Nosotros somos América’ (We are America), waving the flags of other countries, are not assimilated.”
Richard Rodríguez, a writer who has published various books about the adaptation of Latinos to U.S. culture, said that assimilating is absorbing the individuality of the United States, and that this is precisely what Hispanics are doing.
“The reality is that the country is becoming more Mexican, and that everything is changing, our food, customs, music and religion,” Rodríguez said. “As Latinos continue incorporating themselves into society, Americans feel they have to learn fragments of Spanish. And there will be weddings, hatred, friendship, solidarity, curiosity and competition.”
What’s certain is that many Latinos live with one foot in each culture, and that they flow like water from one side to the other, something you can see each time the Mexican national soccer team faces the United States in the fiercest sporting rivalry in North America.
Ricardo Castro, brother of Cristóbal and also a naturalized U.S. citizen, said he considers himself 100 percent Mexican. But he could sit and watch the soccer game calmly, he said, because he had no fear of losing.
“I knew that my country was going to win,” he said. “And effectively it won, because for me it was either of the two.”
bump
Dear Regulator,
You still don't get it do you?
In my last post I wrote:
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A “Klansman” hates O.J. Simpson not only because he is a murderer but also because he is black. A “Klansman” hates mobster Meyer Lanky not only because he was a criminal but also because he is Jewish. A “Klansman” hates an illegal alien not only because he is a criminal but also because he is, in your phrase, “Eeeespannic”.
In this thread, with weapons-grade sarcasm icons, I turned your slurs against “Eeeespannics” around and mocked reverse bigotry against “Anglos” to try to make you see how foolish such generalizations were but even that had no effect on you.
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Is the concept too subtle for you?
Does it really need to be explained to you in simpler words than that?
Do you still not realize that, just because Andrea Yates is a child killer, not all "Anglo" women are child killers?
Do you still not realize that, because O.J. Simpson is a loathful murderer, that that does not make it right for you to post racist remarks on Free Republic regarding all black Americans.
Do you still not realize that, because some Hispanics are crimminal illegal aliens, that does not make it right for you to post racist remarks on Free Republic regarding all black Americans.
As I also posted in my last post:
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I often mention other ethnic groups that contributed to what is now America. I have posted about the Buffalo Soldiers, the Irish Brigade, the Navajo Code Talkers, the Cajuns, the Jewish immigrants, the Japanese Americans units in World War Two, Southerners and even the Scots and the Scots-Irish of your own ethnic heritage.
The difference is that I celebrate their contributions to American History and do not spew out hate against those groups simply because of their ethnicity.
On one Civil War thread, I posted Robert E. Lee’s comment that the Scots-Irish were among the best soldiers he had.
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Do you not realize that, while I am praising the contributions to America of ALL ethnics groups that have contributed, you still say things such as "hispanics at their best and Americans at their worst" as if the mere fact that a person is Hispanic automatically precludes him from being an "American".
When I posted that photo of a woman with obvious Mexican mestizo racial features, you had no idea if she was an illegal alien or a native-born U.S. citizen with a son serving as a Marine in Iraq.
Yet, you posted racist filth on Free Republic about her and her entire family:
"Ask the women in the hispanic family (pictured at a Catholic Church at a family First Communion) if the father has a few putas on the side. .......38 posted on 07/28/2007 12:20:53 PM PDT by Regulator"
In other words, that fact that you are not Hispanic is supposed to make you better than them.
You, Regulator, are a racist.
That is your right.
However, you do not have a right to post your racist filth on Free Republic.
Since the Bill O'Reilly issue, people like you have become a serious issue since your hatred reflects on the rest of us Freepers.
I will be off to work now and, when I return, I will turn the matter over to the Admin Moderators as it it my belief that posters of racist filth like you have no place on Free Republic.
Once again, you show yourself to be a liar and a propagandist.
"hispanic" is not a race. Nor is it even a nationality. It's hardly an ethnicity. At most, it's a language group with a common culture.
But yet you want to wrap yourself in the Protected Class covers provided by the Leftists over the last 40 years.
And you post on FR and pretend to be a 'conservative'.
Like I said, bud, you have a rather different definition of that term than pretty much everyone else. And that attitude appears to be shared by people who you identify yourself as being with.
So you go right ahead and jump up and down and spew your self serving lies. And scream all the bad names at me that you care to. Doesn't bother me - I'll just fire back like I have been. Obviously you can dish it out, but you can't take it.
Especially when I'm winning.
BTW...recall that you're the guy who brought it up in the first place, with your racist propaganda showing white dopers engaging in their sick behavior. Once again, why do you reserve the right to engage in vicious stereotypes, but act with faux wounded outrage when it's turned back on you?
Ta-ta, PB. You obviously have an agenda, and you really don't like it when people call you on it.
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