As I was reading the article about LULAC and assimilation into American Society I found myself sort of chuckling and shaking my head at some parts. For example I find it interesting that one of LULAC's goals was to fight the racism and discrimination towards Mexican-Americans...but in order to be worthy of having LULAC's support you must fit a certain category/mold. The part I found myself chuckling at was when the Order Sons of America (OSA which later joined other Latino organizations to form LULAC) spoke about how they did not want to be "brought down" by the new immigrants of South Texas. There was this feeling that the white collar Latino's status among the Anglos would be in trouble with these "inferior" Mexicans coming in and altering the Anglos perspective of Latinos. I was bugged by this because it seems so ridiculous to me how LULAC is fighting for equality and against racism, yet it seems to be promoting inequality too when they separate themselves from other Mexican-Americans who are of lower class.
Unfortunately this kind of thinking still continues today as more and more immigrants come to America. I have family in Southern California who I hear complain about how all the immigrants are making the city worse and causing it to become dirty. Hearing them talk about this situation is interesting because they put themselves on this pedestal where they are better then their fellow Mexicans because they have assimilated into American society more than the immigrants. However, they, like many others, seem to forget that it wasn't too long ago when their families came to America for a better life and had to learn English and so on.
When we separate ourselves into subcategories of Latinos, African Americans, etc. then we are only allowing for racism and stereotypes to continue. There needs to be unity to fight against the inequality rather than fighting against each other to be seen as better than other Latinos.
1 comment:
I think your chuckling is interesting. You're probably thinking to yourself "those dummies" and sighing afterwards.
You come across a good point.
Why would Mexican immigrants who became U.S. citizens put down, and frown upon other immigrants?
I think its interesting, and consistent with Migrations to the U.S. When other whites such as Italians, Greeks and Italians came to the U.S. those white people also ostercized each other because of cultural and linguistic differences much like your family members have done to other Latinos.
In these situations until, the immigrants are able to assimilate linguistically, and culturally they are oppressed.
I think a phenomenon is in play here: What are the oppressors motivations to oppress? Using my intuition I would say that they've learned that behavior from others and are imprinting that behavior. Also, oppressing others might make someone feel better about their own social identity. Oppression is an interesting psychological phenomenon, and it's even more interesting in this case because there seems to be some sort of collusion because the social group is basically inflicting self-damage.
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