Questions about my own Latino identity were the primary motivation for taking your class at Northwestern as a freshman and are something I continue to think about.
Specifically, I think about what Latino identity looks like for Americans who are more-and-more generations removed from living in Latin America. For my abuelo, he lived the first 35 years of his life in Havana and then spent the rest of his life working in the Spanish-speaking Caribbean. For him there was no question he was a Cuban and then a Cuban exile. For my dad, he grew up with Spanish as his first language and always his family language moving from school to school in Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, and Miami. After college, however, he has lived and worked in the U.S. in English and has raised our family speaking English (my mother is not Latina). For him Latino identity came through language, his childhood, and his large, close-knit Cuban-American family also living near each other in Miami.
For myself, Latino identity has not been such a clear or confident experience. I learned Spanish primarily through school (one out of seven periods a day) and through family trips to Miami. I have always taken pride in my identity and had a great amount of interest in learning about Cuban and Latino history, learning to cook Cuban dishes from my Abuela, and attempting to keep up fluency in Spanish.
What I think makes my Latino identity distinct from my dad and the rest of our family is that my identity feels like an option. Important to this is appearance (while my dad often gets asked the "where are you really from" question on account of his somewhat darker complexion, I get the "how are you Latino when you are white" question).
But it is also heavily about differences in lived experiences. If I had grown up in Miami like my cousins, going to Private Catholic schools with mostly other Cuban-Americans/Latinos and more frequently seeing my abuelos, I may not feel so removed from my identity at times. Instead I grew up in the Chicago suburbs attending schools that were primarily white and where the Latino populations (~20% of my high school) had very different relationships with their Latino identity (mostly first-generation Mexican immigrants with lots of family remaining in Mexico).
Ultimately, after lots of background, my main point is still a question. And that is what Latino identity will mean for my children (whose dad will not natively speak the language among key differences). And I think that is a big, outstanding question for what lots of Latinos in the U.S., from a diverse set of backgrounds, will experience for the next few generations.
A discussion question that comes from my comment is the following: over the next 50-100 years, how will the evolution of Latino identity be similar or different to other ethnic groups immigrating to the U.S.?
Personally (and this is not well-researched), I see some parallels to Italian and Irish immigration around the turn of the 20th century. While not a perfect analog the similarities I see are groups that are ancestrally European (obviously this is a key point of difference for many, but not all, Latinos), but were also not initially deemed "White" (in the nebulous, capital W, American definition). And who primarily lived in immigrant-heavy areas upon arrival and for several generations.
A not-super confident prediction I have is that there is a potential for Latino identity (and I want to caveat that the racial diversity of Latino populations complicates this) to in several generations be similar to what Irish-American and Italian-American identities are today. And I should define that I see those two identities as centered around specific cultural practices (especially around holidays), food and drink, and a conception of an ancestral land that there is some loose connection to.
Questions about my own Latino identity were the primary motivation for taking your class at Northwestern as a freshman and are something I continue to think about.
Specifically, I think about what Latino identity looks like for Americans who are more-and-more generations removed from living in Latin America. For my abuelo, he lived the first 35 years of his life in Havana and then spent the rest of his life working in the Spanish-speaking Caribbean. For him there was no question he was a Cuban and then a Cuban exile. For my dad, he grew up with Spanish as his first language and always his family language moving from school to school in Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, and Miami. After college, however, he has lived and worked in the U.S. in English and has raised our family speaking English (my mother is not Latina). For him Latino identity came through language, his childhood, and his large, close-knit Cuban-American family also living near each other in Miami.
For myself, Latino identity has not been such a clear or confident experience. I learned Spanish primarily through school (one out of seven periods a day) and through family trips to Miami. I have always taken pride in my identity and had a great amount of interest in learning about Cuban and Latino history, learning to cook Cuban dishes from my Abuela, and attempting to keep up fluency in Spanish.
What I think makes my Latino identity distinct from my dad and the rest of our family is that my identity feels like an option. Important to this is appearance (while my dad often gets asked the "where are you really from" question on account of his somewhat darker complexion, I get the "how are you Latino when you are white" question).
But it is also heavily about differences in lived experiences. If I had grown up in Miami like my cousins, going to Private Catholic schools with mostly other Cuban-Americans/Latinos and more frequently seeing my abuelos, I may not feel so removed from my identity at times. Instead I grew up in the Chicago suburbs attending schools that were primarily white and where the Latino populations (~20% of my high school) had very different relationships with their Latino identity (mostly first-generation Mexican immigrants with lots of family remaining in Mexico).
Ultimately, after lots of background, my main point is still a question. And that is what Latino identity will mean for my children (whose dad will not natively speak the language among key differences). And I think that is a big, outstanding question for what lots of Latinos in the U.S., from a diverse set of backgrounds, will experience for the next few generations.
A discussion question that comes from my comment is the following: over the next 50-100 years, how will the evolution of Latino identity be similar or different to other ethnic groups immigrating to the U.S.?
Personally (and this is not well-researched), I see some parallels to Italian and Irish immigration around the turn of the 20th century. While not a perfect analog the similarities I see are groups that are ancestrally European (obviously this is a key point of difference for many, but not all, Latinos), but were also not initially deemed "White" (in the nebulous, capital W, American definition). And who primarily lived in immigrant-heavy areas upon arrival and for several generations.
A not-super confident prediction I have is that there is a potential for Latino identity (and I want to caveat that the racial diversity of Latino populations complicates this) to in several generations be similar to what Irish-American and Italian-American identities are today. And I should define that I see those two identities as centered around specific cultural practices (especially around holidays), food and drink, and a conception of an ancestral land that there is some loose connection to.
I’d love to see the syllabus for this class! Sending this piece to a few friends. There will be some interesting discussion for sure.
thanks for reading and sharing!
absolutely will send your way!