Latino Assimilation

“Don’t think that because we are here you can act like those fast American girls” the girls mother screamed. She did not want her daughter, a recent Puerto Rican immigrant, to resemble other American teenagers. She wanted her daughter to keep her Puerto Rican heritage, even as they immigrated to the U.S. and her daughter attempted to fit in with the other girls in school. This story, discussed in further detail later, describes the real challenge of assimilation for immigrants of different immigrant generations. This paper will discuss the assimilation of various groups of Latinos and different generations in the U.S. The level of assimilation of these different groups of Latinos to U.S. mainstream society depends on the location from which

they immigrate, as well as the generation in which they grow up. By looking at the depiction of the struggle of assimilation in the novel Almost a Woman and various articles that discuss different Latino groups and the general trend of assimilation for recent Latinos and this paper will offer evidence for this case. This pattern of assimilation is important to understand as the U.S. becomes home to more Latino immigrant groups and the debate on immigration issues continues.
The novel Almost a Woman by Esmeralda Santiago describes the life of a young Puerto Rican immigrant named Esmeralda who struggles to balance her Puerto Rican identity with her new life in the U.S. Esmeralda immigrated to the U.S. with her mother and her younger siblings as she grew up, making the move at a critical time in her life developmentally. As she grows up in this new country, she tries to adapt to the new culture in multiple ways. First, she begins to learn English by visiting the local library and checking out children's books. One day, Esmeralda’s mother takes her to the welfare office and has her translate for her and help her with the forms, since the mother does not speak English. Besides the struggle for work, the family also lives in poor housing, where cockroaches infest the apartment and there has no heat or running water. The family also becomes sick their first winter in the U.S. and their mother creates a drink to make them feel better. She even feeds her children American food for a while, in an effort to make them as healthy as Americans, but then gives up on the concept and switches back to Puerto Rican food. With this situation in mind, Esmeralda struggles between adopting American culture and remaining completely Puerto Rican like her mother wants. She reads Archie comic books and sees the differences between her life and the typical American teenager’s life. She tries to resemble American teenage girls and wear makeup, her mother catches her and reprimands her. She misses home and she feels caught between two different worlds and she thinks about her father, who they left behind. She dreams about living back in Puerto Rico and not having to worry about fitting in in America and feeling like a family again. But Esmeralda finds out her father has remarried and they no longer have any connection to Puerto Rico. Through this reading, the author communicates the struggle Esmeralda faces in adjusting to her new life in America, which is a struggle many immigrants face.
In the passage when her mother surprises her in front of her school, the reader sees how Esmeralda feels caught between two different cultures and does not quite fit into either one. Esmeralda’s mother decides to surprise her daughter and shows up at her school to take her shopping. Esmeralda however, attempts to fit in with her peers and has tried to make herself look more American. Esmeralda has rolled her skirt up, put on makeup, and even tried to beehive her hair. She would do this every morning on her way to school with her friend, who also had a strict mother. Then the girls at school would share their lipstick and help the two girls with their hair. After the school day ended, the girls would immediately change back, so that their mothers would not realize they tried to make themselves look American. In this way, the girls try to fit into both the American space at school, as well as the Puerto Rican space at home. As soon as Esmeralda’s mother sees her, she drags her away from school and Esmeralda feels embarrassed and mad at her mother for spying on her. Her and her mother fight all the way home and Esmeralda’s mother grabs her hair and roughly reprimands her. Esmeralda’s mother then yells at her and tells her that just because they live in America, does not mean that she can act like an American girl. Esmeralda then lies on her bed on her sisters paper dolls and after noticing the dolls have blonde-haired and blue-eyed typical American girls, she stomps on them in rage. This passage illustrates the struggles of assimilation for immigrants and their children in the U.S.
In terms of assimilation, Puerto Ricans do not follow the typical immigrant model of assimilating to American culture. According to Douglas Massey and Brooks Bitterman in their article “Explaining the Paradox of Puerto Rican Segregation”, regardless of socioeconomic factors, Puerto Ricans experience segregations from the Anglo population. This separation, not based on socioeconomic factors does not fit the traditional assimilation model for both European ethnic groups and other Hispanic ethnic groups. The authors claim that at first glance, this could result from the generally low socioeconomic status that many Puerto Ricans hold, or perhaps because of their black ancestry. However, the authors conclude that no easy explanation exists of why Puerto Ricans differ in their level of assimilation from other Hispanics. To try to explain this phenomenon, the authors propose two theories, the ethnic solidarity theory and the Anglo prejudice hypothesis. The ethnic solidarity theory proposes that Puerto Ricans purposely do not seek to assimilate with the Anglo population, but rather they attempt to preserve their culture in ethnic enclaves. In this fashion, their strong ethnic identity keeps them from assimilating, even if they achieve some social mobility. The Anglo prejudice hypothesis claims that Puerto Ricans try to assimilate, but the Anglo population prevents them from assimilating. Anglos prejudice against Puerto Ricans causes this and Anglos discriminate against Puerto Ricans by methods such as discriminatory housing policies and it is based purely on racial lines. As the authors propose, though there are different theories about the reasons for a lack of Puerto Rican assimilation, regardless of the reason, Puerto Ricans remain separated from the U.S. general population and do not assimilate.
According to Scott South, Kyle Crowder, and Erick Chavez in their article,“Mobility and Spatial Assimilation Among U.S.

Latino Immigrants”, socioeconomic, social, and cultural factor affect the ability of Latinos to move into Anglo neighborhoods.Within these categories, factors such as the level of income, the fluency in English language, and the embeddedness in Anglo cultural values are main determiners for geographic mobility. This is based on the classic sociological model of assimilation, which states that the minority adopts the attitudes and cultural traits of the majority, which then leads to assimilation. In the case of U.S. Latinos, the authors state that Latinos experience segmented assimilation, meaning that Hispanic groups of different origin have different rates of assimilation. This is evident when comparing ethnic groups such as Puerto Ricans and Cubans. In his article “Adjustment and Assimilation the Cuban Refugee Experience”, Michael Wenk ascertains, based on data collected, that Cubans adjusted quickly to life in the U.S. and assimilated successfully into new communities. The author sent out a questionnaire to Cuban families asking them to self-report on their educational, economic, and occupational status. The survey found that most families were well-educated, middle to upper class, and felt well integrated in their communities. The survey also found that most families tended to move to cities based on their occupation and therefore could assimilate better within the community. Because of all these factors that made the Cubans more similar to average Americans, according to the author they could assimilate easier. In contrast, the Dominicans do not fully assimilate like the Cubans. The article “Competing Identities? Race, Ethnicity and Panethnicity among Dominicans in the United States” by Jose Itzigsohn and Carlos Dore-Cabral argues that Dominicans identify as Latino in the U.S. in order to better assimilate, however they still retain a strong

national identity and ties with the Dominican Republic. The authors argue that Dominicans identify as Latinos only when they reside in the U.S. and face the U.S.’s binary racial categorization system of black and white, which they do not encounter in the Dominican Republic. Still, despite these racial and ethnic categorizations, the Dominicans do not fully assimilate to American life, but rather maintain strong ties to the Dominican Republic. This transnationalism functions both to preserve their culture, as well as for economic considerations. Based on the situation of Latinos in general and specifically Cubans and Dominicans, the determining factor in assimilation is where Latinos immigrate from and the economic and racial factors that come from their country of origin.
The article “America’s Assimilating Hispanics” from the Wall Street Journal claims that Latinos do assimilate and move up the economic ladder like previous immigrants in U.S. history. Though the continuing influx of immigrants can make it harder, when looking at a long study of the same group of immigrants, they assimilate similarly to previous generations. Indicators of assimilation, such as language and education, rise with each subsequent generation. For example, 88% of U.S. born children of Latino immigrants speak English very well, while only 23% of their parents speak English very well. Other indicators of assimilation, such as owning a house, earning above the federal poverty line, and marrying outside an individual’s specific ethnic group, are also present. With a similar conclusion, in his article “Hispanic immigrants are assimilating just as quickly as earlier groups”, Dylan Matthews says that there is no evidence that Latinos assimilate slower than other waves of immigrants. He provides evidence for this by examining the use of the English language. According to data collected by political scientists, Latino immigrants actually acquire language skills faster than their Asian or European counterparts. Though a gap between English language skills for first and second generation immigrants does exist, by the third generation this gap does not existent. However, although Latino immigrants generally assimilate quickly in later generations, new immigrants struggle to assimilate, as discussed in Ginger Thompson’s article “Where Education and Assimilation Collide”. In the article, the author examines a school in Virginia that has a large population of both recent immigrants and non-immigrants. In the school, there exists a large divide both educationally and socially between the two groups causing the groups to rarely interact. The immigrants went to different classes in order to learn English better in essentially a segregated school. When the two groups of students did meet, their meetings were often tense and recent immigrants likely would not interact with a non-immigrant, showing a general lack of assimilation. As evident from these articles, new data and trends suggest that currently Latino immigrants as a whole assimilate to U.S. culture, through assimilation still depends on where these groups of Latinos originate from and moreover how long they have lived in the U.S.
One of the main arguments against immigration is that “immigrants do not assimilate”. This argument has been stated by many prominent political figures as the debate on immigration continues, however, perhaps one of the best known critics of immigration who has used this argument is Donald Trump. In the article “Nothing Donald Trump Says on Immigration Holds Up” by Sally Kohn, the author examines the idea that immigrants do not assimilate further. In her article, as previous articles in the this paper also proved, the growth in the use of English language, often used to measure the assimilation of immigrants, has grown. The article also suggests the the notion that Latinos do not learn English to assimilate could be based on racial prejudice. The author concludes by arguing that anti-immigration arguments based on assimilation are purely a way to discriminate against immigrants of a different racial background. This article illustrates the importance of studying immigrant assimilation for an individual to properly form an opinion on immigration. Historically, Latino immigrant assimilation has followed a similar pattern to European assimilation, only in a different time period. This reveals that though some may use a supposed lack of assimilation as an argument against immigrants, factually this argument does not hold for most Latino groups currently and cannot be a valid excuse for prohibiting immigration.