Comunidades migratorias en eeuu

Carl Robinson
Dr. Chambers
Hist 307
12/9/2007


In the past few decades, the Hispanic community has increased drastically as a result of an influx of immigrates and the never ending reproduction within this community. “Although there is a tendency to think of the Latino/ Hispanic community as one, it is made up of several national, racial, cultural, and social groups” (Priestly, 56). Infact, it is among these groups that an individual comes to find a self-identity. In “‘White Chocolate’: An Inquiry into Physical and Psychological Identity”, Maria Parrilla highlights the struggle one faces with being Latino/a in the United States. In this paper, I will demonstrate the physiological division that race plays in our American society and likewise within the Hispanic community. Inaddition, I hope to show that these effects can be severely damaging to those children living as immigrants within the United States’ borders, children born as Latino Americans, and even biracial Americans.

Before examining how race produces an identity struggle within Latinos, one must first define some key terms. Race is traditionally defined as “a biological concept, referring to commongenetic origin and physical characteristics, while ethnicity refers more to the belonging to a common culture of a group of people linked by a common national, linguistic, and/or religious background” (Bean 252). All too often, these terms tend to be used in the place of the other or interchangeably causing confusion, thereby one should avoid doing this. In addition, Biracial, generally is used todescribe someone of African and Anglo features, should be, more appropriately, used for anyone of two different races and multiracial, accordingly.

Moreover, an understanding of how, exactly, does the mind come to the realization of one’s identity is crucial before proceeding on to its effects. There have been a number of theories that attempt to explain the intricate details of what occurswithin our minds as we search to the answer the question, “Who am I”. For the purpose of omitting redundancy and avoiding boredom, we will reduce our search to a simple outline:

“Identity development has been recognized as one of the central development tasks of adolescence […] Erikson refers to this transitional period as a ‘psychosocial moratorium’, a time during which adolescentsexplore different roles before committing to an identity […] social identity theory is concerned with individuals’ identification with social groups and the affective processes associated with group membership […] Identity development during adolescence, particularly for adolescents of color, often involves the exploration of multiple social identities including ethnic and/or racial identity (Pahl1403).”




With this, one can see that there are many factors that play into how a child’s identity formed. In Parrilla’s article, she avoids using such long and draw out terms and simply demonstrates they impact that social, ethnic, race has impacted her self-perception can and other Latinos. It is through examining the lives of pervious generations as well as the current generation thatone can find the negative impact these discriminations have on our society.

Immigrants, or non-mainland born, children are among the first affected by national, racial, cultural, and social groups when growing up with in the United States. Foreign born children are confronted with the dilemma of disowning their place of origin and taking up an American identity. In many places where Spanishis the primary means of communicating, racial guidelines were established in a different manner. In the September/ October 2006 printing of Child Development, we find that North American ethnic groups have different histories and are facing different current socio-cultural conditions, which may give rise to differences in the development course of ethnic identity. This new system of race...