Immigrant Identities in the Post-World War II U.S.

Poll Results: What Best Fits the Experience of Immigrants from Asia, the Caribbean Latin America, and Africa?

• Racial Oppression Model: 59%
• Assimilation Model: 19%
• Some Combination: 22%

Comments: Some Combination?... What Combination?...

• "Some assimilate while others are oppressed, for whatever reason."
• "It's both. They play off each other."
• "You confuse assimilation and acculturation, there's a big difference."
• the racial model applies "for Africa especially, not entirely for Asia"

If we reject polar choices, what do we replace them with? Can we account for the ways that the American traditions of ethnic assimilation and racial oppression combine to structure the experience of individuals from the new immigrant communities?

Authors who view American system of Racialization as Preventing the Assimilation of New Immigrant communities:

These authors see 60's movements defense of "native" culture identities of racialized immigrant communities as the first visible sign of the failure of assimilation for new immigrant groups.

Escobar & Madrid: unable to transcend racial stigmas, latino and asian american groups move from ethnic group to racial minority

Flores: forming a resistant identity: rejecting assimilation, mixing cultural practicing, forming sense of common racial identity among immigrants from latino communities, i.e. the development of a latino identity, as well as with other immigrant communities from the post-colonial world

Chinese-American, Japanese-Americans were ethnic categories. Asian American is something different

But Lowe says (in opposition to Flores): Globalization destabilizes the process of race/ethnic identity formation within new immigrant communities. Asian-American & Latino are U.S. racial categories which are destabilized by a globalizing economy which not only subverts U.S. immigration barriers, thereby buttressing "native" immigrant identities with new arrivals from one's homeland, but also divides immigrant groups along class lines, and thus, can create new solidarities that link people based on class and immigrant status (legal/illegal) even as they create internal divisions within immigrant communities.

Latino/a Immigration and the Collapse of Ethnic/Racial Binaries.

The experience of Latino immigration suggests that it is a mistake to assume the existence of a single process of immigrant identity development for new immigrants within the U.S.'s racialized culture. Rather, new immigrant identities can be seen as shaped out of a matrix of different factors-- from skin color & immigration status to language ability and class background. Below is one possible model for understanding the mix of factors that can shape how immigrant racial and ethnic identities develop within U.S. society at the end of the 20^th and beginning of the 21^st century.

Matrices:

The Question Remains: Is Race a Barrier to Full Assimilation to American Society?

What If the Answer is No?

• The Japanese American Citizens League and the Mexican American Movement and the emphasis on developing American identities and resisting racialization into a subordinate status.
• Rodriguez: Multiculturalism and Hyphenated Americanism are transforming the American racial system/

What if the Answer is No?

Moving towards the development of pan-ethnic racialized identities.

• Resisting "Hispanic: From "Mexican-American" to "Chicano" to "Latino/a"
• Resisting "Oriental": From "Japanese-American and "Chinese-American" to "Asian-American" to ????