A Developing Identity Hispanics in The United States

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The New Dividing Lines
Immigration status is a new boundary line, one that confronts Latinos like no other group and that is likely, over time, to condition the ways that newcomers are incorporated into American society, or not. But at the same time, the “old” boundary lines of race and ethnicity are also undergoing change because the United States is a fundamentally different place than when either African Americans or the immigrants of the trans-Atlantic era were forming group identities. In both those cases, there was a dividing line drawn sharply through American society. On one side sat a white majority that set societal, political and cultural norms, and those norms were overwhelmingly Anglo-Saxon, Christian and male. Now, women, blacks, Jews and all kinds of other folks are involved in defining American norms, there are several different kinds of dividing lines and they are blurry in places and sometimes even zigzag. Immigrants today, like immigrants before, are busy absorbing American ways; the difference is that nowadays there are many more ways to be an American, many more accepted flavors and variations. The Latino immigrant influx arrived as the United States was in the process of establishing a more diverse vision of itself. The process seems irreversible but is not finished, nor is it fully codified or digested. Latino immigrants and their offspring are adapting to a United States that is already immersed in a process of transformation that may be further impacted by the Latino immigrants themselves. This is a demographic coincidence that may well be of profound historical impact.

For example, in the 1970s, as the Baby Boomers became adults, they put off having children; many never did and many had just one or two. In the same decade, as noted earlier, the influx of immigrants from Latin America, especially Mexico, began to grow. These two trends, entirely unrelated in their origins, gathered momentum across decades and produced effects that continue to reverberate throughout American society: the first created a dearth of people while the second resulted in an abundance. Without this confluence—meaning, absent Hispanic immigration and high fertility rates—the United States might well begin to resemble nations such as Italy or Japan, which have quickly aging populations that are also shrinking in size. When the Boomers retire, Hispanics will be there to fill out the workforce. Thus, the significance of Latino population growth has to be measured not just by the sheer size of their numbers but against what is happening with the rest of the population.

While Latinos make up 14 percent of the total population, they account for 21 percent of all children under the age of 10. Look at another key segment of the population: young adults. Between 2000 and 2005, the number of non-Hispanic whites between the ages of 20 and 35 declined by nearly 800,000. Meanwhile, the number of Latinos in that age range increased by more than 1.7 million. The Latino population is not only growing fast, it is accelerating while the rest of the population is getting older and hardly growing at all. That context enormously leverages the significance of the Hispanic numbers. The fact that Latinos are the only population in the United States that can be cited as fast growing not only defines their size but also helps to highlight their place in American society, bestowing a particular degree of status, as well.

While it would be easy to overstate the potential leverage represented by the size of the Latino population, their numbers—and standing as America’s largest minority group—are already too big to ignore. Employers, marketers and politicians increasingly seek out Latinos as workers, consumers and voters. This attention may be self-serving, but it is attention nonetheless, and probably ripe for future spin. Latinos are the rare group whose position in society is defined less by who they have been than by who they will become.

In the public policy arena, the size and projected growth of the Hispanic population has already had a notable impact. The banking industry, for example, was so concerned about keeping immigrant Latinos as a potential source of new consumers that it successfully lobbied the Bush Administration to block Congressional efforts to keep undocumented immigrants from opening bank accounts. Indeed, concerns over the future political clout of the Hispanic population have acted as a brake on a variety of efforts to adopt restrictive immigration policies. And, when the Supreme Court decided in 2004 to preserve affirmative action in university admissions, one of the rationales was the growing size of the minority population in the coming years. This perception of demographic significance is not going to resolve all of the hardships or remove all of the barriers faced by Latinos but it is widespread enough in the majority society that the position of Latinos today is more positive than that of blacks in the 1970s or Italians, for example, in the 1920s. Group identities are powerfully shaped by the majority, and in this case, demography is a critical factor. Moreover, Latinos themselves absorb some of this sentiment, generating a feeling of demographic pride, even demographic triumphalism, at times.

The picture I’ve tried to paint in this essay is not one of a racial minority group cordoned off from the rest of society. Nor is it the picture of an immigrant ethnic group at the gates waiting for admission into a society that will absorb it and wash away its differences. As I noted earlier, this phenomenon is something different than we have seen before. Latino/Hispanics comprise a group with an identity that sets them apart, but not permanently. The boundaries that define the group are shifting and they are permeable, which is characteristic of a society that values homogeneity of purpose but also embraces cultural, religious and ethnic diversity. Still, the societal contradictions faced by Latinos abound: for example, they intermarry with a freedom unimaginable for blacks fifty years ago, one signal of the ongoing assimilation process, and yet, at the same time, a large Latino cohort—the undocumented—live in the shadow of the law. It is unlikely that this range of experiences will narrow any time soon.

So what conclusions can we reach after considering the many factors impacting the lives that Latinos/Hispanics live in the U.S. today? Surely at least one thing is clear: the Latino/Hispanic identity is one that allows for multiple and varied expressions. Latinos have arrived on the scene as American notions of identity continue to evolve and they have brought with them the kind of identities that may be well suited to the moment. The result, the combination of the two—a nation with less rigid boundaries and a people with a more fluid identity—will undoubtedly change both the host society and the newcomers. In the past, the United States has tended to either reinforce group differences or negate them, but now it seems headed into a future where it will do neither. Instead, the prospects are for a society that sometimes embraces, even celebrates, some aspects of group identities while at the same time fuses people of different sorts together in pursuit of common purposes and goals. It is an uncertain and potentially confusing prospect—but promising, as well—and one that has only just begun to unfold.

Now, which is it, “Latino” or “Hispanic?” The answer is that “Hispanic” is the preferred choice of about a third of the group and is most popular in Texas and Florida. “Latino” is preferred by a bit more than a tenth, mostly in California and New York. But the majority has no preference and will use both. How could it be otherwise in 21st century America?

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