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« on: February 23, 2010, 09:10:22 PM » |
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I don't think the question is well-posed. If the question is, would, at some point, most Americans have at least one ancestor coming from Latin America, then the answer is "not impossible". However, most of those "latinos" would have most of their ancestors hailing from other parts of the world. If the quesion is, would there, at some point, be a situation in which most of US citizens self-identify as something called "latinos", the answer is "extraordinarily unlikely".
Immigrants from Latin America assimilate pretty fast and are not an obvious homogenous racial group. The visible subgroup are the recent migrants or else those with particular assimilation difficulties, but they are not really indicative of the long-term dynamics. A third-generation Latino is as much a latino as a third-generation Italian is an Italian and a third-generation Irish is an Irish: all of them are infinitely more American, then anything else. Of course, as long as there some advantages to being identified as a Latino, any Jack Cohen, whose grandmother grew up in Mexico City will make sure to claim that ancestry. Trust me, when it's my daughter's turn to go to grad, school she will definitely claim to be both Latino and Jewish to the appropriate funding sources - even though, to be sure, neither myself nor my wife are really either. So what?
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