THE BUMPY ROAD OF ASSIMILATION: GENDER, PHENOTYPE, AND HISTORICAL ERA

Abstract

Gender, phenotype, and historical era powerfully shape the life experiences, identities, and cultures of Mexican-origin families. Using interview data from three-generation Mexican-American families, second-generation Mexican-American women were inclined to revivify their heritage upon marriage or childbearing whereas men underwent the gendered racialization process of U.S. military service. Among the third generation, skin color determines the relevance or irrelevance of “symbolic ethnicity.” Women engaged in a “third-generation return” to ethnicity far more than men, revealing gendered expectations of cultural transmission. This article advances assimilation theory by identifying fractures within generations—gender, phenotype and historical context—that steer incorporation processes.

Acknowledgments

This project was supported through grants from the University of California at Berkeley, National Science Foundation, UC MEXUS, and the University of Kansas. I am deeply grateful to advisors and peers for their guidance, including Michael Omi, Ann Swidler, Joane Nagel, Christopher Wetzel, Tanya Golash-Boza, Tomás Jiménez, Cynthia Feliciano, Zulema Valdez, and members of the University of Kansas International Programs Faculty Seminar.

Notes

¹Consider, for example, the variegation among the four waves of Cuban refugees that began in 1959 following the Cuban Revolution. The first two waves were largely wealthy, white, and educated/skilled whereas the latter two were poorer, darker, and less educated/skilled. Cuban success is largely based on the business entrepreneurship and socioeconomic advancement of the first two major waves of Cuban immigrants (Newby and Dowling 2007, p. 348).

²I defined middle class through a number of different factors. The first factor was if household income met or exceeded $57,000. (This is the average of all median household incomes for all eleven counties of California in which interviews were conducted. This data comes from the 2004 American Community Survey located at http://factfinder.census.gov/home/saff/main.html?_lang=en.) My household income question was fixed-choice, one option of which was $45,000–$60,000. I included the respondents who selected this option in the middle-class category. The second factor was if respondent possessed a college degree or above, and the third factor was if respondent held a managerial or professional occupation. If an individual possessed any of these qualities, I considered him/her middle class.

³The Brown Berets were the militant vanguard of the Chicano Movement. The Brown Berets claimed a brown (nonwhite) identity, their pledge reading: “I wear the Brown Beret because it signified my dignity and pride in the color of my skin and race.” They protested injustices (especially police brutality) through mass mobilization and militant street action, declaring they would fight for Mexicans “by all means necessary.” By 1970, the Brown Berets had over 60 chapters throughout the Southwest. (Haney-Lopez 2003, pp. 18–19, 178).

⁴Cesar Chavez, along with Philip Vera Cruz, Dolores Huerta, and Larry Itliong founded the United Farm Workers of America (UFW) labor union in 1962. Chavez and the UFW organized numerous nonviolent social protests (including the Delano Grape Strike in 1965) in California.

⁵While I cannot tease out causality, this table shows that the positive association between families’ socioeconomic status and educational attainment.

⁶The primary distinction that third-generation respondents draw between themselves and the non-Hispanic white U.S.-born population is the experience of racism, prejudice, and discrimination. They complained of cases of racial slurs or violence, educational tracking by race, and the widespread conflation of race, class, and nativity (that is, people assuming that because they are of Mexican descent that they are therefore poor and/or an immigrant).

⁷While I did not interview lower-class individuals, I suspect the lower class is also significantly racialized.

⁸I did not directly question respondents about military service so the data I have are from voluntary remarks. Therefore, military participation may be higher than reported here. I also have incomplete data on whether interviewees were conscripted or enlisted.

⁹Further minimizing the participation of racial and ethnic minorities in wartime, Hollywood films depict the Vietnam War from perspective of white males, whereas African Americans and Latinos were disproportionately on front lines (Lipsitz 2006, p. 89).