Hispanics and the Future of America (2006) / Chapter Skim
Currently Skimming:
2 The Making of a People--Rubén G. Rumbaut
2 The Making of a People--Rubén G. Rumbaut
Pages 16-65
The Chapter Skim interface presents what we've algorithmically identified as the most significant single chunk of text within every page in the chapter.
Select key terms on the right to highlight them within pages of the chapter.
From page 16... ...
-- Richard Rodríguez (1993) In 2003 the Hispanic population of the United States reached 40 million -- or 44 million if the inhabitants of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico are included (U.S.
|
From page 17... ...
The making of this population needs to be understood from three vantage points. Hispanics are at once a new and an old population made up both of recently arrived newcomers and of old timers with deeper roots in American soil than any other ethnic groups except for the indigenous peoples of the continent.2 They comprise a population that can claim both 2Many Latin Americans mix indigenous pre-Columbian ancestries with European, African, and even Asian roots.
|
From page 18... ...
The ethnic groups subsumed under this label -- the Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, Cubans, Dominicans, Salvadorans, Guatemalans, Colombians, Peruvians, Ecuadorians, and the other dozen nationalities from Latin America and from Spain itself -- were not "Hispanics" or "Latinos" in their countries of origin; rather, they became so only in the United States. That catchall label has a particular meaning only in the U.S.
|
From page 19... ...
How do they differ from non-Hispanics in the United States? Do a common language and cultural tradition, as well as a shared history once in the United States, make the essential difference in the maintenance of a panLatin American ethnicity?
|
From page 20... ...
, to identify persons of Mexican origin in its decennial counts.5 A century later, in the 1950s, the Census Bureau first published information on persons of Puerto Rican birth or parentage; tabulations on people of Cuban birth or parentage were first published in 1970. Efforts to demarcate and enumerate the Hispanic population as a whole, using subjective indicators of Spanish origin or descent, date back to the late 1960s (Bean and Tienda, 1987)
|
From page 21... ...
The law, building on information gathered from the 1970 census, asserted that "more than 12 million Americans identify themselves as being of Spanish-speaking background and trace their origin or descent from Mexico, Puerto Rico, Cuba, Central and South America, and other Spanish-speaking countries"; that a "large number" of them "suffer from racial, social, economic, and political discrimination and are denied the basic opportunities that they deserve as American citizens"; and that an "accurate determination of the urgent and special needs of Americans of Spanish origin and descent" was needed to improve their economic and social status. Accordingly, the law mandated a series of data collection initiatives in the federal departments of Commerce, Labor, Agriculture, and Health, Education, and Welfare, specifying among other things that the Spanish-origin population be given "full recognition" by the Census Bureau's data collection activities through the use of Spanish language questionnaires and bilingual enumerators, as needed; and that the Office of Management and Budget (OMB)
|
From page 22... ...
Whereas more than twelve million Americans identify themselves as being of Spanish-speaking background and trace their origin or descent from Mexico, Puerto Rico, Cuba, Central and South America, and other Spanish-speaking countries; and Whereas these Americans of Spanish origin or descent have made significant contributions to enrich American society and have served their Nation well in time of war and peace; and Whereas a large number of Americans of Spanish origin or descent suffer from racial, social, economic, and political discrimination and are denied the basic opportunities they deserve as American citizens and which would enable them to begin to lift themselves out of the poverty they now endure; and Whereas improved evaluation of the economic and social status of Americans of Spanish origin or descent will assist State and Federal Governments and pri vate organizations in the accurate determination of the urgent and special needs of Americans of Spanish origin or descent; and Whereas the provision and commitment of State, Federal, and private resources can only occur when there is an accurate and precise assessment of need: Now, therefore, be it Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, that the Department of Labor, in cooperation been typically set against the term "Hispanics" and the other racial minority categories, conflating the distinction. In the news media, academic studies, government reports, and popular usage the "ethnic" constructs "Hispanic" or "Latino"7 have already come to be used routinely and equivalently alongside "racial" categories such as Asian, black, and non 7The terms themselves are contested and there is no consensus on usage, although neither "Hispanic" nor "Latino" is a term of preference used by Latin American migrants in the United States to label themselves; rather, the research literature shows that they self-identify preponderantly by their national origin.
|
From page 23... ...
3. The Director of the Office of Management and Budget, in cooperation with the Secretary of Commerce and with the heads of other data-gathering Federal agencies, shall develop a Government-wide program for the collection, analy sis, and publication of data with respect to Americans of Spanish origin or de scent.
|
From page 24... ...
. The changes now stipulated five minimum categories for data on "race" (American Indian or Alaskan Native, Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander, Asian, black or African American, and white)
|
From page 25... ...
The Spanish origins of what is now the United States date to 1513, when Juan Ponce de León first came to La Florida, as he named it. Spanish explorers drew the first maps of the Texas coast and of the northern Atlantic coast through Georgia and the Carolinas (where a colony was established in 1526)
|
From page 26... ...
, the U.S.Mexican War (18461848) , and the Spanish American War (1898)
|
From page 27... ...
. And they include countries whose ties with the United States are more recent, but who have emerged as major sources of Latin American immigration since the 1980s-notably the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Colombia, with other sizable flows from Nicaragua, Honduras, Perú, Ecuador, and elsewhere (Moncada and Olivas, 2003)
|
From page 28... ...
. When the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo ceded the lands of the Southwest to the United States in 1848, there were perhaps 75,000 inhabitants of Mexican and Spanish origin residing in that vast territory -- nearly three-fourths of them (Hispanos)
|
From page 29... ...
The end of the Bracero Program, but not of a built-in, structural demand for immigrant labor -- in conjunction with a sharp reduction in U.S. legal visas for Mexican immigrants and increasing population growth and economic downturns in Mexico -- prompted increasing flows of illegal immigration, peaking in 1986 (when the Immigration Reform and Control Act, IRCA, was passed)
|
From page 30... ...
. This status defines the island's relationship with the United States and distinguishes Puerto Ricans fundamentally from other Latin American peoples.
|
From page 31... ...
-- when mass immigration to New York reached its peak and made Puerto Ricans the first "airborne" migration in U.S. history.
|
From page 32... ...
investment in Latin America as a whole, more than was invested by U.S. capital in any Latin American country either on a per capita basis or in absolute terms.
|
From page 33... ...
Their size and evolution reflect both the varied history of their incorporation in the United States and the relative geographical proximity of their source countries to the United States: Mexico, El Salvador, and Guatemala from Meso-America; Puerto Rico, Cuba, and the Dominican Republic from the Caribbean; Colombia, Perú, and Ecuador from South America. Only 7.9 percent of the 35.2 million Hispanics self-reported as "other Spanish, Hispanic or Latino" in the 2000 census, without indicating a particular 12If the Puerto Ricans on the island were added to the calculation, those three groups would comprise 80 percent of the total; the focus of this analysis, however, is on Hispanic and non-Hispanic populations on the U.S.
|
From page 34... ...
U.S. Ecuadorian 2-2 Rican American, leaving Ricans 2000 American, Spanish, Identity Hispanic Mexican Puerto Cuban Dominican Salvadoran, Central Colombian Peruvian, South Other Puerto Persons a b TABLE Ethnic Not Hispanic: Total national-origin SOURCE:
|
From page 35... ...
As noted, immigration and generation are central issues for understanding the Hispanic population of the United States: 45 percent of Hispanics are foreign-born, compared with only 7.6 percent of non-Hispanics; while 55 percent of Hispanics are U.S.-born, compared with 92.4 percent of non-Hispanics. Those figures refer to countries of birth, quite aside from citizenship status (e.g., Puerto Ricans born on the island are included under the foreign-born first generation, although they have birthright citizenship)
|
From page 36... ...
14 Table 2-3 addresses that question, cross-tabulating that pan-ethnic self-identification (Hispanic or not) by principal countries of birth (distinguishing between Spanishspeaking countries -- 19 in Latin America, including the commonwealth of Puerto Rico, plus Spain -- versus all other countries in the world)
|
From page 37... ...
. Hispanic Identity and "Race" Much has been made in the media and even in academic discourse about "the browning of America," a misnomer based on popular stereotypes of phenotypes presumed to characterize peoples of Latin American origin.
|
From page 38... ...
and of the Salvadorans and Guatemalans (55 percent) reported "another race," as did 46 percent of the Mexicans, 42 percent of the Peruvians and Ecuadorans, 38 percent of the Puerto Ricans, 28 percent of the Colombians, and less than 8 percent of the Cubans.
|
From page 39... ...
Ecuadorian American 2-4 Rican American, 2000 American, Spanish, Identity Hispanic Includes Mexican Puerto Cuban Dominican Salvadoran, Central Colombian Peruvian, South Other a TABLE Ethnic Not Hispanic: Total SOURCE:
|
From page 40... ...
. The widest mismatches by far occurred among all of the Latin Americanorigin groups without exception: overall, about three-fifths of Latin parents defined themselves as white, compared with only one-fifth of their own children.
|
From page 41... ...
More fully exposed than their parents to American culture and its racial notions, and being incessantly categorized and treated as Hispanic or Latino, the children of immigrants learn to see themselves more and more in these terms-as members of a racial minority -- and even to racialize their national origins. If these intergenerational differences between Latin immigrants and their U.S.-raised children can be projected to the third generation, the process of racialization may become more entrenched still.
|
From page 42... ...
(%) Latin America Parent 58.1 1.5 Child 21.9 0.8 Mexico Parent 5.7 0.0 Child 1.5 0.3 Cuba Parent 93.1 1.1 Child 41.2 0.8 Dominican Republic Parent 30.6 11.1 Child 13.9 2.8 El Salvador, Guatemala Parent 66.7 4.2 Child 20.8 0.0 Nicaragua Parent 67.7 0.5 Child 19.4 0.0 Other Central America Parent 48.0 24.0 Child 8.0 8.0 Colombia Parent 84.6 1.1 Child 24.2 1.1 Perú, Ecuador Parent 61.8 0.0 Child 32.4 0.0 Other South America Parent 87.8 0.0 Child 28.6 2.0 Afro-Caribbean Parent 5.0 73.8 (Haiti, Jamaica, West Indies)
|
From page 43... ...
. For a relevant study of racial selfidentification among Puerto Ricans on both the island and the mainland, see Landale and Oropesa (2002)
|
From page 44... ...
Citizenship patterns, reflective of the history, type, size, and recency of Latin American immigration to the United States, constitute another significant set of distinguishing characteristics. As depicted in Table 2-7, virtually all Puerto Ricans are U.S.
|
From page 45... ...
-- varies widely. In addition to the 33 percent of Cuban Americans who were born in the United States, another 40 percent have naturalized U.S.
|
From page 46... ...
were slightly more likely to have arrived in the 1960s and 1970s and much more likely to have come in the pre-1960 period. The main exceptions in this regard are the Puerto Ricans, who were much more likely than any other group, Hispanic or not, to have arrived during the 1950s, and the Cubans, who were much more likely than any other group, Hispanic or not, to have arrived during the 1960s.
|
From page 47... ...
Ecuadorian 2-8 Rican American, Ricans 2000 American, Spanish, Identity Hispanic Puerto Mexican Puerto Cuban Dominican Salvadoran, Central Colombian Peruvian, South Other a TABLE Ethnic Not Hispanic: Total SOURCE:
|
From page 48... ...
Among both the first and second+ generations, Puerto Ricans emerge as the most English-proficient Hispanic group (English is an official language in Puerto Rico)
|
From page 49... ...
a Guatemalan U.S. Ricans, Ecuadorian 2-9 and Rican American, 2000 American, Spanish, Identity Puerto Hispanic Years For Mexican Puerto Cuban Dominican Salvadoran, Central Colombian Peruvian, South Other a TABLE 5 Ethnic Not Hispanic: Total SOURCE:
|
From page 50... ...
50 Well 879,628 802,037 a Not 9.3 7.8 8.7 5.5 3.8 5.4 8.7 6.9 4.3 4.1 3.5 6.9 1,681,665 8.5 Speak (U.S.-Born) Who Well 1,368,422 14.4 1,851,963 8.9 9.5 18.1 19.5 14.2 17.2 18.5 14.9 11.3 11.7 17.4 3,220,385 16.3 Generations Well 7,248,659 7,580,619 Non-Hispanics Second+ Very 76.3 74.1 71.8 80.3 87.3 77.4 72.7 78.2 84.5 84.2 87.0 75.7 14,829,278 75.2 and Well Not 2,640,980 20.8 6,676,279 46.0 52.5 23.4 43.4 44.8 47.7 36.7 35.8 36.2 21.2 21.9 9,317,259 34.2 Hispanics Older)
|
From page 51... ...
The measure employed in the table -- and illustrated in Figure 2-1 -- combines the percentage who speak English only with the ability to speak it very well or well into a single index of English fluency. That degree of fluency is shaped by three main factors: length of time in the United States, age at arrival, and education.
|
From page 52... ...
Mexican, Cuban, Colombian, Nicaraguan, Dominican, and other Latin American youth at three points in time across the decade from 1992 to 1995 to 2002, spanning ages 14 to 24 on average. The findings on linguistic assimilation are incontrovertible, even among the most presumably Spanish-retentive groups: Mexicans living along the U.S.-Mexico border in San Diego and Cubans in the most bilingual major city in the country, Miami.
|
From page 53... ...
The proportions preferring English at the three surveys were even larger among the Mexican American second generation: 45 percent in 1992, 79 percent in 1995, and 96 percent by 2002. In Miami, only 2 percent of all of the Latin American groups combined, foreign-born and native-born, expressed a preference for Spanish over English by the last survey.
|
From page 54... ...
writing proficiency in English and Spanish: over time, the degree of proficiency in English significantly outstripped their Spanish fluency, although nearly half of the sample managed to maintain a limited degree of bilingualism by their mid-20s -- a pattern observed only among Spanish speakers, unlike Asian-origin children of immigrants, whose native languages atrophied at a much faster rate. This pattern of rapid linguistic assimilation was constant across nationalities and socioeconomic levels and suggests that, over time, the use of and fluency in Spanish will inevitably decline.
|
From page 55... ...
Ricans, a Guatemalan 2-12 Ecuadorian 2000 Identity Rican American, American, Spanish, Linguistic Puerto Hispanic For a TABLE Generation, Ethnic Not Hispanic: Mexican Puerto Cuban Dominican Salvadoran, Central Colombian Peruvian, South Other Total NOTE: well." mainland.
|
From page 56... ...
Conversely, nearly three-fifths of Hispanic adults have less than a high school education, compared with only one-fifth of non-Hispanic immigrants. This comparative disadvantage in human capital of Latin American immigrants vis-à-vis their nonLatin American counterparts is reduced but not eliminated by the U.S.-born generations.
|
From page 57... ...
57 in More or (U.S.-Born) 903,691 College Graduate 37,132,874 25.0 13.4 11.6 14.8 34.2 21.4 22.9 33.2 38.3 36.1 46.6 12.8 38,036,565 24.4 Non-Hispanics Generations and Than School 1,964,135 Second+ Less High 23,821,393 9.3 7.5 16.0 29.1 31.0 23.2 13.3 19.3 26.7 13.5 10.7 30.1 25,785,528 16.6 Hispanics More or U.S.-Born and College Graduate 5,388,741 35.7 1,007,105 8.8 4.4 10.9 18.8 9.5 5.2 13.2 22.0 17.6 31.7 28.5 6,395,846 24.0 (Foreign-Born)
|
From page 58... ...
Dominicans follow in this hierarchy (54 percent) , then Peruvians, Ecuadorians, Colombians, and Puerto Ricans (all between 45 and 49 percent)
|
From page 60... ...
This new immigration is overwhelmingly nonEuropean in national origin; half of it hails from Spanish-speaking Latin America. The immigrant stock population of the United States today numbers around 70 million people -- that is, persons who are either immigrants or U.S.-born children of immigrants -- a figure that accounts for nearly a fourth of the total national population and fully three-fourths of the Hispanic population.
|
From page 61... ...
In particular, Mexican Americans and Puerto Ricans -- the two largest Hispanic groups and two of the three largest ethnic minorities in the country -- are peoples whose incorporation originated largely involuntarily through conquest, occupation, and exploitation, followed by mass immigration during the 20th century, setting the foundation for subsequent patterns of social and economic inequality. The Cubans, Dominicans, Salvadorans, Guatemalans, Nicaraguans, Colombians, and other Latin Americans are of more recent and varied vintage, but their distinct histories too shape their modes of incorporation.
|
From page 62... ...
. Latin American immigrants in the United States to send $30 billion to homelands in 2004.
|
From page 63... ...
Racial self-identifi cation among mainland and island Puerto Ricans. Social Forces, 81, 231254.
|
From page 64... ...
. In their own right: A history of Puerto Ricans in the USA.
|
From page 65... ...
THE MAKING OF A PEOPLE 65 Weber, D.J.
|
Key Terms
This material may be derived from roughly machine-read images, and so is provided only to facilitate research.
More
information on Chapter Skim is available.