Mexican-Americans: The Ambivalent Minority.

AuthorMartinez, Mark

The media, the public, our schools all refer to Mexican-Americans as a single ethnic group with a common culture and common goals. Even Mexican-Americans often accept this umbrella identity. Yet the Mexican-American experience in the United States is ambivalent and diverse. We do not speak with a single voice. Peter Skerry, director of Washington Programs for the UCLA Center for American Politics and Public Policy, probes this ambivalence in Mexican-Americans: The Ambivalent Minority.

Mexican-Americans, he notes, often remind us that "some of us have been here for three hundred years, some for three days." Some are fully assimilated into mainstream America; others have just begun that process.

Assimilation, says Skerry, will occur, even for newcomers. The key question, however, is how the newcomers will blend into the broader American culture. In answering this question, he raises some fundamental dilemmas faced by today's Mexican-Americans. His analysis is largely on target, though the reader wades through a lot of sociological mumbo-jumbo on the way to absorbing his message.

Skerry sees the Mexican-American community deeply divided between two paths to assimilation. One is a path through which Mexican-Americans gain a foothold in mainstream local political and economic institutions. This is the traditional immigrant path of empowerment. The other is a path of playing--permanently--the role of victim, of "racially oppressed minority."

Skerry explores these two alternatives by looking at the Mexican-American political culture in San Antonio, Texas, and contrasting it with that in Los Angeles. This tale of two cities underscores the two dramatically different models of assimilation. Mexican-Americans in San Antonio have followed the traditional immigrant story of generational success. In Los Angeles, paralleling the experience of African-Americans, they increasingly cling to the image of victim of oppression and segregation.

Skerry's description of this contrast is both accurate and troubling. In part the split is responsible for tensions between Latino youths and their parents. The latter, according to public opinion surveys, still tend to adhere to the American dream of participation in mainstream economic advancement and in the larger American political arena. Latino parents, for the most part, still believe that hard work leads to success.

Youths, by contrast, are increasingly inclined to blame racism for their troubles. As a result...

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