01-15-2017, 12:22 PM
Where there is a large Mexican-American population, the cultural assimilation also goes the other way. Much about Mexican culture is attractive. The food is good, and the music is colorful (OK, Herb Alpert isn't Mexican...) Mexican restaurants often have nice murals... lots of Mexican-American painters imagine themselves as the new Diego Rivera. That's before I talk of the heavy intermarriage.
Mexican-American social life has advantages: in it no man is an island. At the same level of poverty as white and black people in Chicago, Mexican-Americans died at a far lower rate than non-Hispanic poor during a heat wave in Chicago. Mexican-Americans were looking out for their neighbors and relatives in contrast to the norm in non-Hispanic American life.
Mexican-American social life has advantages: in it no man is an island. At the same level of poverty as white and black people in Chicago, Mexican-Americans died at a far lower rate than non-Hispanic poor during a heat wave in Chicago. Mexican-Americans were looking out for their neighbors and relatives in contrast to the norm in non-Hispanic American life.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.