What does it mean to be American?

March 11, 2017 8:13 PM

The Making of a Mexican American Dream. [Many second-generation Mexican Americans'] understanding of what it means to be an American derives not so much from the symbols and institutions of mainstream white culture but from a powerful sense of in-betweenness. For them, Americanness is less a sweeping mythology to which they must submit and more a framework for seeing, thinking, blending, reinventing.
posted by sunset in snow country (3 comments total)

I'm so glad I took the time to read this, what a great piece. Sending to my friend who's third-gen Mexican-American, but I learned a lot from it too. Thanks for posting, sunset.
posted by emjaybee at 8:25 AM on March 12, 2017

I wish I had the opportunity to know my grandfather. He immigrated from Guadalajara to Detroit in the 30's. None of my aunts or uncles were taught Spanish growing up, although two of them learned in adulthood. My very rudimentary grasp of the language is due purely to osmosis from growing up in South Florida. The whitewashing (Americanization? idk the proper word for the phenomenon) of my family history makes me a little mad sometimes, although I understand why he did what he did. My mom and her siblings grew up as good little American children and, for the most part, reaped the benefits of their "American-ness." I have a friend from Mexico who didn't know that I was ethnically Mexican for years (I have a Polish last name from my father's side) because I hardly consider myself to be Mexican.

Gordon admitted a modest influence of ethnic minorities on cuisine, architecture, and place names, but the sizzlin’ pepper-jack quesadilla was largely the extent of the exchange.

"I'm not racist, I love eating at Chili's."
posted by dudemanlives at 9:47 AM on March 12, 2017

Thanks for posting, sunset.

You're welcome! I wanted to share because I relate to it a lot - Asian Americans fall sort of in between the immigration scenarios of Europeans and Mexicans as described in the article, because we did fall victim to immigration quotas that prevented new immigrants from coming in and influencing those who were already here, but we are also racialized so that we never were able to fully assimilate the way European Americans did, with the result that a lot of Asian Americans from the third generation, fourth generation, and beyond have returned to their countries of origin and drawn strength and self-knowledge from the very ambiguity and weirdness of that situation. Nothing taught me what it means to be American the way living in Japan did, and this article really gets at the heart of what that felt like.
posted by sunset in snow country at 9:58 AM on March 12, 2017 [2 favorites]