Mexican Americans Across Generations

Immigrant Families, Racial Realities

Jessica M. Vasquez

• Publisher: NYU Press
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9780814788363
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Ethnic Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

While newly arrived immigrants are often the focus of public concern and debate, many Mexican immigrants and Mexican Americans have resided in the United States for generations. Latinos are the largest and fastest-growing ethnic group in the United States, and their racial identities change with each generation. While the attainment of education and middle class occupations signals a decline in cultural attachment for some, socioeconomic mobility is not a cultural death-knell, as others are highly ethnically identified. There are a variety of ways that middle class Mexican Americans relate to their ethnic heritage, and racialization despite assimilation among a segment of the second and third generations reveals the continuing role of race even among the U.S.-born.

Mexican Americans Across Generations investigates racial identity and assimilation in three-generation Mexican American families living in California. Through rich interviews with three generations of middle class Mexican American families, Vasquez focuses on the family as a key site for racial and gender identity formation, knowledge transmission, and incorporation processes, exploring how the racial identities of Mexican Americans both change and persist generationally in families. She illustrates how gender, physical appearance, parental teaching, historical era and discrimination influence Mexican Americans' racial identity and incorporation patterns, ultimately arguing that neither racial identity nor assimilation are straightforward progressions but, instead, develop unevenly and are influenced by family, society, and historical social movements.

1 Introduction

In fact, people do not acculturate into an entire culture, which only exists in textbooks. This is especially true in America, which is too diverse to be a single culture even for textbook purposes.

—Herbert Gans, “Second-Generation Decline”

Paul Zagada, a 62-year-old second-generation Mexican American lawyer, enthusiastically explained his “Coca-Cola, 7-Up, and Evian water” image of the way the racial identities of Mexican immigrants and their descendants change with each generation. To him, the Mexican immigrant generation is the “Coca-Cola” generation because they are rich in tradition and hold onto it in their new context. Their children are the “7-Up” generation because they lose some of the “color” of the culture and are more acculturated to the United States than their parents. The third generation is the “Evian water” because it has lost both its color and its carbonation, or cultural vibrancy, and has wholesale become a part of U.S. society. Note that when Paul discusses himself, his family, and his ethnic group, he does so in very racialized terms. One can easily interpret Paul’s observation about the loss of dark “Coca-Cola” color with each successive generation to refer to skin color, a common proxy for race. Then Simón, a thirty-something first-generation immigrant from Mexico who works in Paul’s office, entered the room. What makes Simón different from the majority of immigrants from Mexico is that he is educated and bilingual. Paul recapitulated his “Coca-Cola, 7-Up, and Evian water” theory to Simón. Simón asked, “Well, what am I?” Paul was stumped, puzzling over the fact of Simón’s education, occupation, and class level. He said Simón did not fit “Coca-Cola” because while he is steeped in tradition he has an atypical experience of immigration to the United States and life experience following immigration. “Maybe he’s Diet Coke?” I offered. Paul affirmed, “Oh, I love it! Yeah! He’s still Coke but a bit different.”

While this exchange among Paul, Simón, and myself implies dilution as each generation in a family metaphorically becomes weaker in color and carbonation, this conceptualization is oversimplified. Indeed, as Simón’s biography testifies, people migrate to the United States with different levels of human capital (education, occupational experience, skills) and enter through various institutional and social networks. Once on U.S. soil, furthermore, immigrants discover the truth behind Herbert Gans’s caution about acculturation processes at the beginning of the chapter—that the United States “is too diverse to be a single culture even for textbook purposes.” The many subcultures that comprise the United States offer a variety of cultures and social networks that immigrants could possibly join.

Centuries-old questions over the fate of immigrant groups still reverberate in American public discourse. Debates over immigration, bilingual education, multiculturalism, and American culture all boil down to questions of American culture and belonging—who belongs and who does not. Historically, beginning with the 1790 Naturalization Act, which restricted naturalization to “white persons,” as well as in contemporary times, U.S. citizenship and civil rights have been awarded on the basis of race. Lines of whiteness versus otherness are drawn and redrawn in order to preserve white privilege (such as citizenship rights) and maintain the subjugation of nonwhites (Haney López 1996). In recent years, Californians have voted on various propositions defining racial and ethnic boundaries, addressing issues such as eligibility for social service benefits, the official language of the state, and the lawfulness of collecting racial data.¹ Some argue that the definition of whiteness may expand to include groups previously defined as nonwhite, provided they culturally conform to whiteness to an acceptable degree, in order to preserve white privilege (Bonilla-Silva 2004; Guinier and Torres 2002; Warren and Twine 1997). As in the past, contests over race are simmering, as are issues of legality and illegality, a product of U.S. immigration law that actively determines both inclusion and exclusion (De Genova 2005).

The question of whether or how well Mexican Americans will integrate into mainstream U.S. society has persisted for decades. The answer is not merely a matter of volition but depends in no small part on how receptive mainstream society is toward this group. The notion of Mexican Americans as “unassimilable” has permeated public thought (Heller 1966; Huntington 2004a), perhaps perpetuating resistance to Mexican American integration. Indeed, nearly forty years ago researchers of Mexican Americans in California and Texas remarked,

To discover yet another ethnic group that is showing signs of assimilation would be nothing out of the ordinary if it were not for the widespread belief that Mexican Americans were “unassimilable”—forever alien to the American way of life—and predestined for low social status. The general experience of immigrant populations in the United States was rarely if ever projected to this minority. . . . [T]hese stubborn notions are in need of revision. (Grebler, Moore, and Guzman 1970: 10; emphasis in original)

Threads of nativist hostility from earlier eras remain resonant with much of the American populace. For example, in the late 1800s and early 1900s, when the United States instituted restrictions on Asian immigration,² the Mexican migrant labor that became a necessary reserve army of labor in the wake of all these legal exclusions was met with nativist antipathy (De Genova 2005; Gutiérrez 1995; Montejano 1987). Vigilante groups like the Texas Rangers who aimed to subordinate Mexicans through intimidation and violence have found a contemporary incarnation in paramilitary groups like the Minutemen Militia. According to anthropologist Leo Chavez (2008), the Minutemen Militia is a prime example of the “Latino threat narrative” discourse in action. The Latino threat narrative is a racist, xenophobic, nativist discourse that “posits that Latinos are not like previous immigrant groups, who ultimately become part of the nation [because they are] unwilling or incapable of integrating, of becoming part of the national community” (2008: 2). In this reductionist and fear-laden rhetoric, all Latinos are viewed as immigrants (who, in reality, comprise 39.8 percent of the Hispanic population in the United States [Pew Hispanic Center 2007b]), an invading force that is destabilizing national unity. In news press articles, the metaphors used to discuss immigration are exceedingly negative and fear arousing, including references to floods, tides, invasions, takeovers, sieges, diseases, burdens, animals, forest fires, and criminals (Santa Ana 2002). Latinos are figured as a threat to the nation due to a language, culture, fertility, and race nexus fearfully referred to as the “browning of America.”

Using interview data rather than emotion-driven ideology, Mexican Americans Across Generations investigates the racial identity formation and incorporation trajectories of three-generation Mexican American families in California. Mexican Americans Across Generations explores the primary question, How do first-, second-, and third-generation Mexican Americans come to their sense of racial identity? Secondary questions follow: How does a sense of race get transmitted or transformed through three generations in a family? Outside of the family, what other social arenas affect one’s sense of racial self? As racial self-perception is an indicator of assimilation, what integration patterns predominate?

My research finds that Mexican immigrants, their children, and their grandchildren become increasingly embedded in U.S. institutions and ways of life with each successive generation. However, there is substantial variability in the ways members of each generation experience and express their racial identity and cultural legacy even while successfully navigating U.S. institutions and appropriating U.S. culture. I develop a framework to understand this. “Thinned attachment” describes families whose commitment to and familiarity with their Mexican heritage wanes over time. By contrast, “cultural maintenance” describes those families that continue Mexican cultural practices, Catholicism, and the Spanish language through all three generations. Family ideologies, teachings, and memories (often in the form of family stories) are vehicles that transmit content of identity intergenerationally. Each generation’s racial identity style—or palette of racial identity options—is informed by both “appropriated memories” (inherited from others) and “personally acquired memories” (developed from direct experience) (Mannheim 1936). Forces beyond the family, including public spaces, educational systems, peer networks, religious institutions, and occupations, also powerfully shape racial identity and assimilation trajectories.

As Mexican immigrants and their families deal with what it means to be Mexican American, my research offers a case study into the processes of racial identity formation and assimilation—the process of adaptation to a host country. Racial identity formation is the interactional process whereby an individual negotiates the racial component(s) of his or her social identity. Through interactions with other individuals and institutions, people negotiate the social ascriptions (such as race) imposed upon them and, in response, develop an understanding of and ways to navigate these social categories. The patterns of incorporation discussed in this book are far from a story of simple dilution with each passing generation. Instead, this work problematizes notions of uncomplicated and unavoidable eventual assimilation into the U.S. mainstream in a way that forsakes forbearers’ racial and cultural identity.

Whether Mexican Americans, or Latinos generally, are a race or an ethnic group is a fraught question in the social sciences, in politics, and within the group itself. Scholars debate the definitions of “race” and “ethnicity,” as well as their application to Latinos. Prevailing usages of the terms “race” and “ethnicity” conflate them.³ Due to the socially constructed nature of race and ethnicity and their various applications through history, there is contemporary disagreement over the distinction. For instance, regarding Mexican Americans, some view this group as a race (Acuna 2000) whereas others view it as an ethnicity (Macias 2006; Skerry 1993; Smith 2003) and still others argue in favor of the term “racialized ethnic group” (Golash-Boza 2006; Telles and Ortiz 2009). I think of Latinos (including Mexican Americans) as not simply an ethnic group but a “racialized ethnicity.” I favor this term because Latinos, the umbrella category that encapsulates people hailing from Latin American countries, are often treated as a separate racial category, despite being listed as an ethnicity on the 2000 U.S. Census.

“Racialized ethnic group” honors the notion that Latinos can be racially black or white (or Asian or Native American Indian) as well as underscores the highly racialized experiences that this population undergoes. Many interviewees referred to their experience as one of a subordinated racial group rather than one that is merely distinguished by ethnicity or culture. Race is understood to be (and is experienced as) biological and unchangeable, rather than something you can choose (Blauner 2001). Currently, there is a renewed debate about the biological basis of race, fueled by the fact that it is commonplace to use skin color as a proxy for race (Duster 2003). The commonsense understanding of race is that it is inherited, innate, and unchangeable, whereas ethnicity is understood to be cultural, a matter of shared traditions such as customs, language, or food. One issue this book explores is the degree to which Mexican Americans experience themselves as a race as opposed to an ethnic group, whether this experience changes generationally, and what accounts for any persistence or change.

As for terminology used in this book, I use “race” as a label imposed from outside by the ways people treat one another. I use “ethnicity” to refer to culture that is embraced or “chosen” (Gans 1979; Waters 1990). Race can be understood as a human group that is “socially defined on the basis of physical characteristics”; “the selection of markers and therefore the construction of the racial category itself . . . is a choice human beings make” (Cornell and Hartmann 1998: 25). Note that there is more genetic variation within supposed racial groups than between them (Cornell and Hartmann 1998; Duster 2003; Obasagie 2009). This highlights that the lines dividing racial categories are social divisions rather than genetic or natural ones. On the other hand, ethnicity relies on self-definition whereas race is an ascriptive characteristic, assigned to people by others. Ethnicity is “subjective,” relying on individuals voluntarily to claim group membership, and holds that a “distinctive connection” based on “common descent” (Cornell and Hartmann 1998: 17) unifies the group. Importantly, there is overlap between ethnicity (elective self-definition) and race (imposed) even here, in that ethnic claims often refract what others tell us we are: “although an ethnic identity is self-conscious, its self-consciousness often has its source in the labels used by outsiders. The identity that others assign to us can be a powerful force in shaping our own self-concepts” (Cornell and Hartmann 1998: 20). This overlap not only reveals the shared terrain of these terms but also shows the interactional nature of self and society.

As scholars, politicians, and the public deliberate the “who are we?” question of national identity, it is imperative to take an empirical look at the impact of Mexican immigration on these debates. Who do Mexican immigrants and their successive family generations become after settling in the United States? Do they assimilate? If so, what routes of racial and cultural incorporation do they take as they assimilate into U.S. society? How do families transmit concepts of culture and racial identity across generations? Samuel Huntington’s (2004b: 230) polemical work argues that “contiguity [of sending and receiving countries], numbers, illegality, regional concentration, persistence [of immigration waves], and historical presence” combine to make Mexican immigration distinct from previous immigration from Europe, Asia, and Latin America. Rather than simply presuming or fearfully exaggerating the impacts of Mexican immigration and immigrants on America, my book offers a detailed perspective on people’s subjective experiences of immigration and settlement. The degree to which Mexican Americans experience their ancestry as an ethnicity—diluted in each generation and ultimately an “ethnic option” (Waters 1990)—as opposed to experiencing it in terms of separation, subordination, and racialization, is precisely what this book investigates empirically.

I interviewed members of middle-class families in part to determine whether and in what ways these economically successful and structurally integrated Mexican Americans are racialized. Are Mexican Americans more likely to assimilate and view their heritage “symbolically” (Gans 1979), like previous waves of European immigrants, or will racialization forestall that option? Portes and Rumbaut (2001), focusing on the first and second generations, argue that due to low human capital, nativist hostility, racial discrimination, and a reactive counterculture, Mexican Americans will probably experience downward assimilation. Yet, time plays a key role in the assimilation process, and my research extends to the third generation. While a segment of the Mexican American population is part of an urban underclass (Dohan 2003; Sánchez-Jankowski 1991; Vigil 1988), another segment has experienced upward mobility (Alba 2006; Perlmann 2005; Reed, Hill, Jepsen, and Johnson 2005; Smith 2003). Mexican American upward mobility adds optimism to this group’s assimilability—ostensibly, at least. Thus, determining whether and in what ways middle-class Mexican Americans are racialized reveals much about Mexican Americans’ ability to assimilate rather than stand apart as a racial “other.” A focus on middle-class Mexican Americans is interesting because it is precisely this class-privileged group one would expect to be able to assimilate. Working one’s way up the socioeconomic ladder is a yardstick of assimilation; upward mobility is considered “making it” in America. Middle-class Latinos are “considered to be the most successful members of their group and, thus, to face little (or less) discrimination” (Feagin and Cobas 2008: 41). Both popular lore and academic writing suggest that social acceptance and first-class citizenship will be awaiting those who achieve middle- or upper-class status. The fact that class status does not shield middle-class Mexican Americans from the effects of race underscores the salience and gravity of race, even among the economically fortunate, even among the U.S. born. Even this relatively class-privileged group has embittering, racializing experiences that highlight their status as outside of the white⁴ mainstream. This book is therefore as much about achievement of upward mobility and middle-class status as it is a story about “racialization despite assimilation.”

Racial identity formation and assimilation occur concomitantly through everyday practices and experiences. This book deals with the experiential process of racial identity and assimilation, distilling key moments and everyday decisions people make that significantly influence the process, speed, and direction of assimilation. As a general trend, as each generation takes on more “American” self-descriptions, they also take on more “American” modes of life and cultural behaviors. “American” is in quotation marks here—but not hereafter—to point out that “American” is a universalizing concept that unfairly simplifies the regional character of the myriad American identities and overlooks the hybrid nature of identity, which includes region, religion, ethnicity, and so forth. Considering the variety of racial options and American identities lived out by third-generation Mexican Americans, this is not an oversimplified story of gradual, straightforward assimilation. Given the middle-class status of the families in my sample, neither is this book a tale of “segmented assimilation” or integration into an already stigmatized subgroup (Portes and Rumbaut 2001; Portes and Zhou 1993). Mexican American identity is not yet an “ethnic option” (Waters 1990), as it is for white ethnics. Indeed, all three generations experience a high degree of racialization in numerous social arenas. Thus, the story that unfolds here is not simple and straightforward but instead follows a “bumpy-line” (Gans 1992a) and branches in a number of directions.

Theories of Assimilation

“Racialization despite assimilation” is an innovative approach to think about the way race informs integration trajectories and also to demonstrate that to be racialized and to be assimilated are not exclusive and opposite states of being. Focusing on the institutional and interactional experiences of immigrant families and their offspring, I examine the life course trajectories of Mexican immigrants, their children, and their grandchildren. I examine the daily decisions and key moments wherein acculturation and integration take place. By analyzing experiences (rather than life outcome measures) across three generations, I am able to distill patterns by which both assimilation and racialization occur. It is through everyday decisions, encounters, and experiences that individuals and families move toward, resist, and reshape patterns of assimilation.

Traditional or “straight-line” assimilation theorists assert that assimilation–the process of adaptation to a host country—is the inevitable destiny for immigrant groups (Gordon 1964; Park, Burgess, and McKenzie 1925). Anglo-conformity has historically been the most prevalent assimilation theory, assuming the “desirability of maintaining English in...