If by “reasonably quickly” you mean a good long time, sure. Irish, Polish, Italian and other immigrants from the Eastern and Southern parts of Europe were discriminated against for decades.
I think it’s people in general – I hear an awful lot of racist talk in non-digital channels these days, too. Maybe more so this year, since the US has a presidential candidate running their campaign on racial themes.
Pretty much ALL immigrant groups are going to create their own spaces and enclaves. And in general, their children straddle those enclaves and the wider American community. Their grandchildren are typically even better integrated.
I think a lot of the ire directed at Mexican immigrants is twofold. One, they’ve created their own enclaves, which is no big deal. What does seem to be a big deal for many is that they’re often multigenerational AND they’re continually refreshed from Mexico with both people AND goods. So they’re like little pockets of Mexico within the US. From what I gather, that’s a fundamental difference between say… Italian, Irish and Jewish communities that had that constant replenishment of people for a while, but were otherwise cut off from their homelands and forced to evolve (many American “ethnic” dishes come from these things- “Irish” corned beef, “Italian” pizza, etc… )
But when say… a Mexican neighborhood in Dallas is only a half-day from Mexico by car, it’s a lot easier to remain a Mexican for all intents and purposes while living in Dallas, than it was to remain an Italian in NYC. And they can raise their kids like they did in Mexico, but in a version with more opportunity and resources. Can’t fault anyone for that, but there’s definitely a feeling among a relatively large segment of the population that assimilation should be the goal, instead of what I describe.
I think it’s reactionism, pure and simple. To use a Texas example, these folks are more than willing to eat barbecue (either in the German Central Texas tradition, or the more Southern East Texas Black tradition), eat kolaches (Central Texas Czech), eat tacos (Mexican) possibly made from fajitas (Tex-Mex), and drink Shiner beer (Texas German brewery), have bowls of pho (Vietnamese), eat gumbo, jambalaya, boudin, red beans and rice, (all from French Louisiana) or eat pizza (NE US Italian tradition), etc… while decrying the immigration and enclaves of other groups, despite there having been German and Czech language newspapers in places like San Antonio into the 20th century, and there were enough Germans in Texas for long enough to develop their own recognized dialect (Texasdeutch), of which there are a few native speakers left even today.
But it’s a major sin if some Mexicans or Vietnamese or whoever come here and bring traditions from where they’re from.
Houston’s actually a great place for seeing how it can be done right however. There’s a really cool sort of cultural syncretism there, and a couple of complimentary attitudes of “Everyone’s culture is cool” and “Everyone’s welcome if they’re willing to roll up their sleeves and work”.
Yes, I’m thinking a time scale of a few generations. One of my great-grandparents got here from Italy in 1906, and other parts of my extended family got here from Poland and Ireland not so long before that. Having met many of these people, I can see generational changes in us that are also matched by the changed in society at large. It would surely have been nice for the integration process to happen sooner and with less stupidity (on both sides), but it did happen.
It seems to me that “African-American” has been used less frequently in the last few years, so I would answer no.
It’s been a while since I visited the Metroplex, but I don’t remember any walled-in Mexican barrios. Don’t the kids go to school? Can’t they drive or get on the bus & visit other parts of the city? Don’t they watch TV & use the Internet? Many Mexicans still enjoy the food, music & other cultural aspects of their homeland–but have no desire to replicate that political & economic system here. They have voted with their feet.
Anyway, some of those people you think are “Mexicans” may be from El Salvador, Guatemala,* etc*…
As a Houstonian, I’m supposed talk trash about Dallas. But, is it really* that* bad up there?
My experience is that young people don’t use “African-American” to refer to themselves, and I teach in a very racially balanced high school where I see it in action on a daily basis. Teenagers still refer to themselves as black or white, even the student I had last year who lived in Kinshasa for the first half of her life. This will not change any time soon.
We also have a lot of “in-between”. Those students generally self-reference as “Mexican-American” (even though a lot of them do not have Mexican roots), “Hispanic”, or “Latina/Latino”, and the other “in-between” group almost always self-references as “Middle-Eastern”. I got nothin’ on self-referencing for Asian-Americans (we have some but not many) and Native Americans (none whatsoever).
It’s definitely more segregated than Houston is, although not walled-off ghettoes or anything. I moved here in 1999 after spending the first 27 years of my life in Houston, and was shocked at how ethnically non-diverse parts of the city were. And I don’t mean all-white, but rather that if you go south of Downtown, the residents are almost all black. Or on the western side of Dallas, they’re almost all Hispanic. Or in the far northern parts, they’re almost all white.
My point in the previous post was that if the ethnic enclaves are not isolated from the mother country, there’s a lot less incentive and reason to assimilate- you’re living in the best of both worlds if you live there. You (and your descendants) can culturally remain Mexican, but take advantage of the US educational, political and economic systems.
That’s what I think a lot of people are decrying- a perceived lack of interest in assimilating into American culture, even if they’re assimilating into the economic and political landscape. One thing they point out as a terrible thing is second and third generation immigrant children who still solely speak Spanish- they feel that there ought to be more of an effort than that.
I don’t know how true this is, but I hear it from the crabby conservative types I know.