A Population's Assimilation
Will the next generation of Hispanics be part of the American melting pot?
Perhaps the best sign of this growing assimilation is the high rate of Hispanics marrying outside of their ethnic group. Few foreign-born Hispanics marry non-Hispanics, partly because many arrive married. But studies show only 68 percent of their children, and 43 percent of their grandchildren, marry fellow Latinos.
Definitions. Far from the separate cultures Huntington envisions, some experts contend that the Hispanic population's growth will bring it increasing irrelevance as a designation. "Hispanic" has always been a more amorphous characterization than other definitions of origin; the Census Bureau does not define it as a race. Research from the Pew Hispanic Center shows that Hispanics in later generations increasingly identify as "white." And America's definition of the majority group has historically proved elastic, expanding to include previous waves of Irish, Italian, and Polish immigrants.
Educational and economic disparities may narrow but will most likely persist long into the future. However, the most readily voiced fear-that the Spanish language will displace English-seems the least grounded. Last year, research on Spanish retention in heavily Mexican Southern California found that Mexicans in the region retain proficiency in their native tongue longer than other immigrant groups, but English quickly dominates. Fewer than 30 percent of the children of Mexican immigrants reported preferring to speak Spanish at home. By generation three, only 17 percent of the Mexican-Americans spoke fluent Spanish.
"If there's not retention of the Spanish language in Southern California, it's not going to be retained anywhere," says Princeton Prof. Douglas Massey, one of the study's authors.
That includes Falls Church. As they watched the elaborate Good Friday procession, the adults were wistful. "Especially in a Spanish country, this happens every year," says Victor Doria, 47, an immigrant from El Salvador who was playing Pontius Pilate. And while the parents mostly talked among themselves in Spanish, their children joked and gossiped in English. By the time the occupants of the baby carriages have the chance to take the role of Pilate, the Spanish blaring from the ceremony's sound truck may sound very foreign.
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