Hispanics pursue the American Dream - Life In America

USA Today (Society for the Advancement of Education), July, 1997 by Linda Chavez

The more than 21,000,000 Hispanics now living in the U.S. rapidly are becoming the nation's largest minority group. Some demographers already can see the day when one of three Americans will be of Hispanic descent. Will this mean a divided nation with millions of unassimilated, Spanish-speaking, poor, uneducated Hispanics living in the barrios?

In 1990, the president of the National Council of La Raza, one of the country's leading Hispanic civil rights groups, stated: "Each decade offered us hope, but our hopes evaporated into smoke. We became the poorest of the poor, the most segregated minority in schools, the lowest paid group in America, and the least educated minority in this nation."

This pessimistic view of progress is the prevalent one among Hispanic leaders and is shared by many outside the Hispanic community as well. Hispanics are perceived widely as the dregs of society with little hope of participating in the American Dream.

The trouble with this perception is that it is wrong. The success of Hispanics in the U.S. has been tremendous. They represent an emerging middle class that is a valuable addition to American culture and the nation's economy. However, their story effectively has been suppressed by Hispanic advocates whose only apparent interest is in spreading the notion that Latinos can not make it in American society. This has been an easy task since the Hispanic poor-even though they constitute about one-fourth of the Hispanic population -- are visible to all. These are the Hispanics most likely to be studied, analyzed, and reported on, and certainly they are the ones most likely to be read about. A computer search of stories about Hispanics in major newspapers and magazines over a 12-month period turned up more than 1,800 stories in which the words Hispanic or Latino occurred in close connection with the word poverty. In most people's minds, the expression "poor Hispanic" is almost redundant.

Rather than being poor, most Hispanics are achieving solidly lower middle- or middle-class existences, but finding evidence to support this thesis sometimes is difficult. Hispanic groups vary one from another, as do individuals within any group. For example, many Cubans are highly successful. Within one generation, they virtually have closed the earnings and education gap with other Americans. Although some analysts claim their success is due exclusively to their higher socioeconomic status when they arrived, many Cuban refugees-specially those who came after the first wave in the 1960s -- were, in fact, skilled or semi-skilled workers with relatively little education. Their accomplishments in the U.S. mainly are attributable to diligence and hard work.

Cubans have tended to establish enclave economies, in the traditional immigrant mode, opening restaurants, stores, and other emigre-oriented services. Some have formed banks, specializing in international transactions attuned to Latin American as well as local customers, and others have made major investments in real estate development in south Florida. These ventures have provided not only big profits for a few Cubans, but jobs for many more. By 1980, there were 18,000 Cuban-owned businesses in Miami, and about 70% of all Cubans there owned their own homes.

Cubans, as a rule, are dismissed as the exception among Hispanics. What about other Hispanic groups? Why has there been no "progress" among them? The largest and most important group is the Mexican-American population. Its leaders have driven much of the policy agenda affecting all Hispanics, but the importance of Mexican-Americans also stems from the fact that they have had a longer history in the U.S. than any other Hispanic group. If Mexican-Americans whose families have lived in the U.S. for generations are not yet making it in this society, they may have a legitimate claim to consider themselves a more or less permanently disadvantaged group.

That is precisely what Mexican-American leaders suggest is happening. Their "proof' is that statistical measures of Mexican-American achievement in education, earnings, poverty rates, and other social and economic indicators have remained largely unchanged for decades. If Mexican-Americans had made progress, it would show up in these areas, the argument goes. Since it doesn't, progress must be stalled. In the post-civil rights era, it is assumed that the failure of a minority to close the social and economic gap with whites is the result of persistent discrimination.

Progress is perceived not in absolute, but relative terms. The poor may become less impoverished over time, but so long as those on the upper rungs of the economic ladder are climbing even faster, the poor are believed to have suffered some harm, even if they have made absolute gains and their lives are much improved. In order for Hispanics (or any group on the lower rungs) to close the gap, they would have to progress at an even greater rate than non-Hispanic whites.

This hardly is a fair way to judge Hispanics' progress. It makes almost no sense to apply this test today (if it ever did) because the Hispanic population is changing so rapidly. In 1959, 85% of all persons of Mexican origin living in the U.S. were native born. Now, though, about two-thirds of the people of Mexican origin were born in the U.S. and, among adults, barely half were born here. Increasingly, the Hispanic population, including that of Mexican origin, is made up of new immigrants, who, like those of every era, start off at the bottom of the economic ladder. This infusion of new immigrants is bound to distort the image of progress in the Hispanic population if, each time the group is measured, people are included who just have arrived and have yet to make their way in this society.