HispanicVista Columnists
Week of October 11 - October 17, 2004
America’s Diversity and Assimilation
By Sal Osio
On the HispanicVista online issue in the first week of April I wrote a commentary entitled “The American WASP – A Master Race” in rebuttal to Harvard professor Samuel B. Huntington thesis that Hispanics pose a peril to America. The article became a lightning rod of support for diversity in America and was republished in several leading ethnic and affinity publications in addition to syndicated members of the Knight-Ridder chain of newspapers. It became a lead rebuttal to Huntington’s flawed premise that a cultural minority is a threat to the dominant social order.
I want to revisit the topic once more. But instead of rebutting a criticism of multi-cultural integration, I want to address the reality of America’s present: A diversity of multi-cultures wherein the emerging minorities are ascending as the new majority in an evolutionary process of assimilation. This evolution is best illustrated in America’s metropolitan communities of California, New York/ New Jersey and Illinois. For instance, in Los Angeles County, the cradle of diversity, the minority ethnic groups – Hispanics, Asians, Jews and Blacks – comprise 2/3ds of the population.
Hispanics, in particular, are the emerging majority among the minorities comprising an estimated 14% of the U.S. population and almost 50% of Los Angeles County. Aside from its contribution to the labor intensive industries, Latinos, as Hispanics are also known, are a major contributor to the cultural landscape of the community. Can anyone perceive a Los Angeles without its Spanish language heritage, architecture, traditions, history, food and music?
Diversity, however, is not viewed universally as a positive enrichment to American society. There is a significant backlash among WASPs, who, like Huntington and former Governor Peter Wilson, view minority cultures as an erosion of the American ideal and heritage. Blacks are accused of draining the Treasury by disproportionately taxing our Justice system and burdening our welfare programs. Jews are accused of over influencing our elected officials to promote Israel at the expense of the Middle East thereby causing and embroiling us in an ongoing crisis. Hispanics are charged with unlawfully immigrating to America, taking jobs away from our employment force and bankrupting our educational and health institutions. Asians are categorized as disloyal to America with an overriding loyalty to their country of origin.
The attacks on our ethnic, religious, cultural and racial minorities stem primarily from a politically conservative WASP citizenry, more frequently affiliated with the right wing of the Republican Party and the Christian right, who fears a dilution of white power which they equate to Americanism. And indeed, prior to WW II, white power was the majority and the alter ego of America. In a sense, therefore, the white supremacy, anti minority, America first patriot wants to roll back the clock to the way it used to be. Nostalgia is a sickness to those who want to retard progress and the evolution of society. It is also a camouflage that conceals a cancer: Discrimination against non-whites. Nostalgia is a shield of white supremacy.
America leads the tidal wave of multi-cultural integrated communities. The WASP segment of our society is dwindling so that in a decade the non-WASP will constitute the majority of America. America’s motto E Pluribus Unum (Out of many One) is taking a new meaning. The evolution of our society has as its ultimate destiny its diversity. The true manifest destiny of America is not imperialism. It is diversity.
The process of diversity commences with immigration and through successive generations of American born citizens the process goes through a stage of acculturation wherein the 2nd and 3rd generation immigrant adopts American culture while still retaining a link to the culture of the mother country. After the 3rd generation the American born grandchildren of immigrants have assimilated. The English language is their dominant if not their exclusive language and they have become as American as apple pie.
The evolution of acculturation and assimilation is very evident among American Hispanics. The McKinsey Quarterly (1998) and a similar study by VNV Spectra in 2003, found that only 28% of America’s 40 million Hispanics are Spanish language mono-cultural – the foreign born 1st generation – and that 59% are acculturated (2nd generation) and become assimilated, wherein the English language and American culture is dominant, from the 3rd generation onward. The Pew Hispanic Center, National Survey of Latinos, 2002, relying on the 2000 U.S. Census, finds that 78% of 3rd generation Hispanics are English language dominant and 22% are bilingual. The same study found that the overwhelming majority, 71%, of U.S. born Hispanics (2nd generation onward) preferred the English language with another 20% selecting both languages equally. After the 2nd generation the studies found that an estimated one-half of Hispanics marry outside their ethnicity. The experience of Hispanics in climbing up the economic ladder in successive generations is similar to the experience of other immigration groups according to the RAND Corporation study published in 2003.
Asian immigrants reflect the same experience as that of Hispanics with the exception that they climb up the economic ladder with greater fluidity due to their emphasis on higher education. American Jews are the best example of social accomplishment in America due to their educational and work ethic. Blacks are the underperformers due to their treatment as slaves and indentured servants through the last century and the fact that they were robbed of their traditions and heritage when forcefully interned in this country. Although Blacks are not treated as immigrants because they did not emigrate voluntarily, in reality, although forced to emigrate, they became de facto immigrants.
The wave if immigration and the evolution into a diverse society commenced with Euro-Americans and Afro-Americans, and from Europe it spread through Asia and the Western Hemisphere. And more recently the dominant immigration group is the Hispanic who has also become the dominant contributor to America’s diversity. When it reaches its ultimate destiny, America will have become one multi-cultural, fully diversified, society. And in this accomplishment, it will be the paradigm for other counties to promote diversity and evolve into assimilated multi-cultural societies. And, in this manner advancing the quest of mankind for brotherhood and equality - the ultimate goal of civilization.
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Sal Osio, JD is the Chairman of the Board of HispanicVista.com, Inc. (www.hispanicvista.com). Contact at SPOsio@aol.com