November 23, 2005
Approaching the Identity Issue
By Ruben
Navarrette Jr.
SAN DIEGO
-- The epiphany came while I was pledging allegiance to the flag
of the United States of America.
I was about
to deliver a speech to a Republican women's group when it occurred
to me: This was all my parents' generation of Mexican-Americans
ever wanted, to be treated as full citizens of the republic and
live in ``one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and
justice for all.''
They didn't
want to start their own country or reclaim the Southwest for Mexico.
They just wanted to be treated as Americans. They wanted it so
badly that they tacked on a hyphen. In the 1940s and '50s, even
those born on this side of the border were commonly referred to
as Mexicans. By the 1960s, many were identifying themselves
as Mexican-Americans as if to say, ``This is my country
too.''
Now things
have come full circle. A lot of people want me to drop the hyphen
and call myself a plain ol' American.
People like
the woman in the audience who took issue with me for referring
to myself as a Mexican-American.
``When are
we going to get past that?'' she asked. ``Why don't you just call
yourself an American?''
Here we
go. Of course, I'm an American, I said. That's a given. I was
born in the United States to parents who were born in the United
States. But I'm also Mexican. It's the blood in my veins, and
the smile on my face at Mexican weddings when mariachis
play, and the comfort I feel with a food, a culture and a people
I call my own. It's not a question of being either American or
Mexican. I'm both.
The woman
wouldn't let it go. Her husband's roots were German, she said.
But he didn't call himself German-American.
He might,
I said, if he lived in Wisconsin or Pennsylvania or any other
state with a large population of Americans of German ancestry.
Or he'd call himself German. This is California. Everyone came
here from somewhere else. So it's not the place to gauge ethnic
pride. It's one thing to be Irish in Los Angeles, another to be
Irish in Boston.
Not persuaded,
the woman frowned. But she also let me off the hook, and stopped
her questioning.
Other Mexican-Americans
may approach the issue of identity differently. In a magazine
interview, Mexican-American actress Eva Longoria -- who was born
and raised in Texas -- described herself as ``Mexican.'' She dropped
the hyphen all right, and what comes after it.
Personally,
I wouldn't go that far. I've gotten used to the hyphen -- and
to defending it.
My readers
get furious. Some even call me a racist for using the hyphen.
Others quote President Theodore Roosevelt who railed against the
idea of a hyphenated American as someone who was ``not an American
at all.''
What the
readers forget is that T.R. uttered those words in the early 1900s
and that the immigrants to which he was referring were German,
Irish and Italian. None of those groups -- give or take a Germantown
or a St. Patrick's Day -- was ever in danger of breaking off from
the republic. None deserved to have their loyalty challenged.
That means T.R. was paranoid -- and maybe a tad ethnocentric.
Here's the
thing: using the hyphen isn't about claiming one's nationality.
It's about acknowledging one's ethnicity.
What people
want me to acknowledge is that I'm an American, first and foremost.
I guess I should consider that progress. My parents' generation
-- as they were being spanked for speaking Spanish in school,
tracked into vocational courses, denied access to movie houses
except in the balcony, kept out of municipal swimming pools and
subjected to other forms of humiliation -- would have given anything
to have been invited to become full-fledged Americans.
But, the
more I think about it, the more I think it's mostly about fear.
Consider that the number of Latinos in the United States has now
surpassed 40 million, that they are expected to account for one
in four Americans by 2050, that they have an annual buying power
of more than $800 billion and that both political parties are
courting them.
For those
who worry that the country is changing in ways that could make
them less relevant, it must be tempting to try to neutralize the
effect by insisting that those you've always considered different
are suddenly not so different after all.
So those
folks who grew up being called Mexicans are really Americans.
I can't wait to tell my parents. They'll be so relieved.
©
2005, The San Diego Union-Tribune
