Shades of Brown

A very interesting article from LA Times today -- I love the things LAT comes up with sometimes -- about social and cultural divides between Mexican-cultured and American-cultured students in a majority Latino high school (Montebello). Though perhaps not as pronounced, this division was kind of matter-of-fact at my high school in the early 90's, something I didn't really reflect on until I started dating my now-wife who often-times feels trapped between these two poles within La Raza, being Chicana and being Mexicana. These days I would say my wife's identity issues go beyond the bi-polar, having to deal with being a non-hyphenated "American", a "Latina" (in which lies a whole swaddle of other issues) and being Mexican -- the influences and pressures of Chicanisma seem to vanish this far from California. That she was an honors student in a majority-white magnet school probably foreshadows her identity-juggling of today, in that her high school peer group was thoroughly American and middle to upper-middle class, to a large part oblivious to her thoroughly Mexican home-life in the barrio. Though I would have figured in Montebello this obliviousness was less pronounced (Montebello is a majority-Latino school after all), at the end of the article, the writer makes the American-born Latinos come off as ignorant or clueless (or both) A-holes (which could be attributable to these kids being young or jocks or American-born).. Finally, I wonder how this this proces compares to anything that is happening or has happened (historically) in Texas, where there are now 10th-generation Mexican-Americans (over whom the border crossed), but also an increasing influx of new immigrants.