Out of the Barrio: Toward a New Politics of Assimilation.

• Author: Mujica, Barbara

Twenty-million strong, Hispanics are fast becoming the largest ethnic minority in the United States. If American Hispanics form an economic, social and educational underclass, as is often asserted in the North American press, then the United States seems destined to a dim future. However, in Out of the Barrio, Linda Chavez challenges the usual view, showing that most Hispanics, in fact, "rather than being poor, lead solidly lower-middle-class or middle-class lives."

Chavez makes an important contribution to our understanding of Hispanics' progress in the U.S. by drawing a distinction between native-born North Americans of Latin descent and Latin American immigrants. As obvious as the distinction may seem, it is rarely made by proponents of special aid for U.S. Hispanics. Chavez shows that aid-minded politicians often compare socio-economic indicators (median income, educational levels, poverty rates) of Hispanics today with those of thirty years ago to show that Hispanics have made no progress. They point out, for example, that in 1959 the median income of Mexican-origin males in the Southwest was 57 percent that of non-Hispanics, and in 1989 the percentage was exactly the same. However, the target population of the 1959 study consisted of a vast majority ( 85 percent) of people born in the U.S. while the more recent study focused mainly on immigrants. "When earnings of native-born Mexican American men are analyzed separately from those of Mexican immigrants," writes Chavez, "a very different picture emerges. On the average, the weekly earnings of Mexican American men are about 83 percent those of non-Hispanic white men - a figure that cuts in half the apparent gap between their earnings and those of non-Hispanics." Chavez analyzes a number of socio-economic indicators to show that U.S.-born Hispanics have indeed made great progress, even though the constant influx of immigrants skews the data.

The problem, argues Chavez, is that Hispanic politicians have made it advantageous for Hispanics to become a permanent underclass in the United States; "For the past two decades, Hispanic leaders have convinced politicians and policy makers that Hispanics want...