Latinos Assimilate on Their Own Terms

New America Media ^ | 7/27/2007 | Hiram Soto

[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.”

[Regulator]

Well, PB, you're running true to form. When ya gonna tell the rubes youza Eeeespannic? Oh, yeah, who has Civil War ancestry an' all that.

By the way, unless you are now of 100% "Old American" stock

Actually, other than me maternal granny who was an Ulster Scots-Irish woman (grandpapa met her while he was posted to Glasgow by the State Department), they all go back about, mmmm, 10 generations or more to, yup, the "Old Americans"....and the Germans you forgot, the Pietists and Anabaptists who came to America in the wake of the Thirty Years War and the War of the Spanish Succession ( Rhine-Westphalians, mostly). But they're the original Americans too, sweety -- you'd know that if you wuz one of us.

And yes, I have a ton of relatives in the North Carolina Piedmont, down the Smoky's (a lot of them were in the original Wautauga Association, on my Mom's side especially) and all across the mountainous part of the South - "Appalachia". Hey! One of my relatives is even prominent in the old Foxfire series!

And if you're driving through the mountain towns of North Georgia, that jowly Suthrun' Sheriff is....one of my cousins.

Dayum, PB, you hit it, man! Ah is one of them.

The Evil Anglos.

[norton]

Ooooh, I’d entirely forgotten that one.

[Wolfie]

Boy are we in trouble.

And how. What I don't think people realize is that America is already lost. The lust for cheap labor and cheap imports is destroying the middle class. The tipping point for illegal immigration was reached 20 some years ago with Reagan's first amnesty. It really is too late to change the outcome.

[Wolfie]

I had to chuckle at that guy’s pics. Body piercing and tattoos? Puh-leaze. The white trash shopping at Wal-Mart are covered with that stuff too.

[dennisw]

You can post all kinds of numb skull trash about the “Anglo” United States but at the end of the day the United States is a successful nation and Hispanic nations are mostly chaotic and failed nations. “Anglos” are not leaving here to jam uninvited into Mexico, Cuba and other Hispanic nations.

In fact the reverse is true. Hispanics are illegally jamming into the United States with its Anglo culture you ridicule. You came here legally did you not? From Cuba. Castro has made a mess of that island. Cubans want out and they always seem to want to get to “Anglo” America. Not Mexico with it’s more similar Spanish culture.

[Jakarta ex-pat]

Assimilate.

What a disgusting verb.

Why would anyone want to assimilate?

Either you share the vision or you become hyphenated.

Of course you could be illegal though.

[Polybius]

Well, PB, you're running true to form. When ya gonna tell the rubes youza Eeeespannic? Oh, yeah, who has Civil War ancestry an' all that.

Hey, Grand Wizard! Most people on FR who do other things besides spend all their time on immigration threads spewing hatred and bigotry against all Hispanics, legal or illegal, instead of sticking to the point of ILLEGAL immigration already know that I was born in Cuba, am an M.D., and served 20 years on active duty and Reserves as a U.S. Naval officer.

As far as Civil War threads, everybody with reading skills on those threads knows that I am Cuban-born, had no ancestors in that war but that I have always defended the honor of the Southern soldiers on those threads from bigots who spew anti-Southern hatred on those threads just as gleefully as you spew out anti-Hispanic hatred on this thread.

But, don't take my word for it. Ask "stainlessbanner".

Actually, other than me maternal granny who was an Ulster Scots-Irish woman (grandpapa met her while he was posted to Glasgow by the State Department), they all go back about, mmmm, 10 generations or more to, yup, .....

Oh, yeah, you claim you are so isolated that you never had a single Irishman in your family tree which the bigots like you caricatured with ape-like faces in the 1880's.

Is that why you now need to feel better about yourself by wallowing in bigotry against all Hispanics?

To make up for the fact that, in the 1800's, one of your ancestors was routinely caricatured in newspaper cartoons as a drunken ape by bigots like you?

.....and the Germans you forgot....

Ah, yes, the Germans that were mocked in the 1860's by bigots like you on BOTH sides of the Potomac as stupid, incompetent and cowardly, especially after what happened to the Union Eleventh Corps at Chancellorsville.

Chancellorsville and the Germans: Nativism, Ethnicity, and Civil War Memory

Dayum, PB, you hit it, man! Ah is one of them. The Evil Anglos.

Even the weapons-grade sarcasm icons that I used when mocking reverse bigotry against "Anglos" did not seem to penetrate your dull intellect, did they?

What is being mocked here (and you are swallowing the bait hook, line and sinker) is your mindless and low class bigotry.

Whether you want to admit it or not, you and your ancestors in the mountainous part of the South were and are also the targets of bigotry.

Even in the South and especially in the South.

But you already know that.

Here is my Cuban great-great-grandfather in the late 1850's.

He, like the others from the rest of the branches of my family, was a man of wealth, education and distinguished pedigree. At the time, when traveling to places such as Charleston, South Carolina to conduct business, such a man would be received at the mansions south of Broad Street as a fellow gentleman.

By contrast, because of the social class bigotry that was the norm in the 1850's in both the U.S. and Cuba, a mountain man like your ancestors would have been asked to state his business at the mansions south of Broad Street at the back door.

That may not have been right but that was the way it was.

Somebody who is now truly secure in who they are and what they are has no need to constantly spew out bigotry in order to make up for the social class bigotry his family unfortunately experienced in the past.

Somebody who is now truly secure in who they are and what they are has no need to constantly spew out bigotry against those they call "n#ggers" and those they call "Eeeespannics" in order to say to themselves, "At least I am better than a black man and at least I am better than a Mexican."

When a white man needs to do that in order to build himself up, he qualifies for the time honored Southern expression of "White Trash".

Goodbye.

[SaintDismas]

Thank you Polybius. We are all for the rule of law, its the American way. Unfortunately there are some real racists amoung us that take that as an excuse to angrily demean, and it’s not just “them” that is degraded when that happens, but they demean themselves as well, as well as diminishing all their sober arguments. This discussion is denigrating into something vile, ugly, and pretty disturbing. Hate will never solve this problem.

I have to say that as a Catholic, sometimes I do feel more connected to some in the hispanic culture than my own. As with anybody from any culture, there are evil people.

Pray for us, Our Lady of Guadalupe!

[ken21]

sounds more like a threat than an analysis of the facts.

[Altura Ct.]

Seems that some here want to acquiesce to the invasion and think we should kowtow to the the invaders.

You’d think they’d have learned by now that the old hypocritical socialist/Marxist ploy of “shame the white man” no longer works except on those of little character and backbone.

[Polybius]

... Hispanics are illegally jamming ......

As in "Jews are (fill in the blank)" ?

or as in

"Blacks are (fill in the blank)" ?

May I suggest "Illegals aliens are jamming"?

Mexicans are coming over by the millions because Mexico happens to be on the other side of the Rio Grande.

If Nigeria were on the other side of the Rio Grande, black Nigerians would be coming over by the millions and if Russia were on the other side of the Rio Grande, blonde Russians would be coming over by the millions.

..... with its Anglo culture you ridicule.

See Post 67.

Sometimes you have to wonder how much of a more of a SARCASM tag you have to put behind a comment before people recognize when bigotry is being mocked with reverse bigotry.

Were the SARCASM tags too subtle?

A poster who would post "Ask the women in the hispanic family if the father has a few putas on the side" when shown a photo of a Hispanic woman and her family at Church at a First Communion simply because the family is Mexican mostly likely would have no qualms about posting an equally insulting slur regarding your family when shown a photo of your family at the Synagogue simply because your family is Jewish.

Once you head down the road of "Hispanic men all have putas on the side" or "Jews will cheat you blind whenever they can" or "Insert hate-mongering slur here", you know where that eventually leads.

[quadrant]

Please, not all those from Latin America celebrate Cinco
de Mayo. I have friends from Cuba who scorn the idea of celebrating from Mexico.

[quadrant]

Please, not all those from Latin America celebrate Cinco de Mayo. I have friends from Cuba who scorn the idea of celebrating anything from Mexico.

[dennisw]

You should ask yourself why regulator writes the way he does. He and his people have been practically driven out of the Los Angeles area. I’d say he’s entitled to be enraged at the people who have done this. And those people are from Mexico and Central America. I read once that 20% of all Salvadorans live in Southern California

To be blunt:
Am I against the Hispanicization of America? Answer is yes when I see what kind of Hispanics are flooding in here. These Mestizo lower classes and peasants are being driven here by the pale face Spanish oligarchy of Mexico. You are very probably pure Spanish enough to have married into it

It’s low down and unfair to try and turn this Anglo oriented nation Hispanic when the Hispanics have so many nations to live the way they want to.

[teawithmisswilliams]

Here's the dire state of affairs in California: http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_6492635

We are being forced to "assimilate" to Latino culture. Unfortunately, "Latino culture" has been incompatible with decent living: look at corrupt, failed, Mexico for just one example. Our politicians and our courts have sold us out.

[Nea Wood]

like kicking your children out of the house when they turn 18, like ‘gringos’ do.”

I don't know whether to laugh or cry at that. I live in LA, and I don't know any gringos who kick their kids out at 18. It would be impossible. Rents are so high here, due to the illegal invasion, that I know "kids" in their 30s and even 40s who are still living at home, or their parents are helping them to pay their rent. The average rent for a one-bedroom is $1,400-$1,500. Sure, the illegals can afford that...just crowd six or more people in one unit. My own apartment building has had a vacancy for months. When I asked the manager why, he said everybody who applies want to put six people in each bedroom, and thank God, my apartment manager refuses to disobey the law.

The days of American kids being able to strike out on their own at 18, getting their own apartments, are over.

[Polybius]

You should ask yourself why regulator writes the way he does. He and his people have been practically driven out of the Los Angeles area. I’d say he’s entitled to be enraged at the people who have done this.

Let us assume that, back in the 1950's, my family in Cuba was devastated by the actions of the Jewish gangsters Meyer Lansky and Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel.

Let us further assume that I am "entitled to be enraged" as a result.

Should I vent my rage at "gangsters" and "crimminals" and "thugs"?

Or

Should I vent my rage at "the Joooos" which would also include you and all other Jewish people?

You might want to excuse somebody so full of hatred and bigotry that he feels compelled to post:

"Ask the women in the hispanic family (pictured in a Catholic Church at a family First Communion) if the father has a few putas on the side."

and

"Well, PB, you're running true to form. When ya gonna tell the rubes youza Eeeespannic? "

I, on the other hand, will never defend a person, no matter how "enraged" he may be for whatever reason, who posts to you:

"Well, dennisw, you're running true to form. When ya gonna tell the rubes youza Joooooo? "

or

"Ask the women in the Jewish family if the father was a gangster on the side."

[dennisw]

LOL are you sure you got through medical school? Your line of argument fails to make any sense. There are no Jews standing in the way of any Hispanic nations becoming successful. Y’all have what? 22 of them to try and make a success? Instead you clamp onto one of the two Anglo nations in the hemisphere and try it turn large swaths of it Hispanic

My Jewish grandparents came here in 1900. I’m real glad they came here instead of Argentina or some other Latin nation. Back then many Jews did immigrate to Argentina

I’m not referring to you but the mass immigration, legal and illegal from Mexico and points south. If I were king all Latino immigration would be cut off for twenty years while we let others, especially educated English speakers, have a chance to immigrate here

[Myrddin]

I just went to Lowe's to purchase some specialty light bulbs. The packages were labeled in English and Spanish. The only problem was the 2-pack that I was trying to read was wrapped in plastic with the English inside. Only the Spanish was exposed. I did buy any of those.