Thread by @Noahpinion

1/Next up on my "immigration and diversity" reading odyssey: "Barrios to Burbs", by Jody Agius Vallejo: amazon.com/Barrios-Burbs-…

2/This book is basically an ethnography. The author went and talked to and hung out with a bunch of middle-class Mexican-Americans in the Greater Los Angeles Area, in order to figure out what the Mexican-American middle class was like.

3/The book has almost no data in it, so it's hard to say how many of the characterizations are generalizable to other regions, or to what degree the author captured the totality of the Mexican-American middle class experience.

But still, it's eye-opening and quite vivid.

4/One of the book's main conclusions is that there are basically two paths that Mexican-Americans take into the middle class.

One path for people born into the middle class, the other for people born into poverty and/or to immigrants.

5/The "middle class to middle class" path is a well-known one - you grow up in a mostly-white middle-class neighborhood, attend good schools, go to college, etc. As an adult, your Mexican-American-ness becomes less of a constraint or lifestyle, and more of an ethnic flavor.

6/This first path basically follows the experience of the "white ethnics" of yesteryear. But the author describes a second path, in which Mexican-Americans who grow up poor continue to be strongly rooted in the Mexican-American community after becoming middle-class.

7/How do Mexican-Americans escape poverty? The author identifies several key factors, including:
* gifted and talented education programs, scholarships, etc.
* mentors and benefactors from the existing (mostly white) middle class
* following in the footsteps of family members

8/But for Mexican-Americans who grow up in poor and/or immigrant families, Vallejo argues, there are at least two factors preventing full incorporation into the white-dominated middle class:
1. discrimination by whites
2. the need to support poor family members financially

9/Vallejo describes regular instances of anti-Latino discrimination by middle-class whites. There is a heavy dose of classism in this discrimination - bigotry is much more heavily directed toward Latinos who display signs of coming from lower-class backgrounds.

10/In one chapter, Vallejo vividly describes her experience in a Latina business organization in Santa Ana, in which middle-class Latina businesswomen are always struggling to gain respectability in the eyes of racist Orange County white people.

11/A second factor preventing classic "assimilation" of Mexican-Americans who grew up poor is the need to provide financial and logistical support to family - poor parents, but also a wide array of extended family and friends.

12/Due to these factors, the author argues, there is a second Mexican-American middle class - one that retains a strong Mexican-American identity and strong ties to poor Mexican-American communities, even while living middle-class lifestyles.

13/Of course, it's possible that the kids of this "minority middle-class" community, as Vallejo calls it, will themselves follow the first, more traditional path to assimilated middle-class-ness, making the "minority middle-class" lifestyle an intermediate step.

14/Vallejo calls for policies to speed the incorporation of lower-class Mexican-Americans into the middle class. These include:
1) a path to citizenship
2) income stability for lower-class Mexican-Americans
3) more mentorship and tracking for lower-class Mexican-Americans

15/It's the last of these that is especially novel and interesting.

Basically, the idea is to selectively find and boost talented poor Mexican-Americans to middle-class status, after which they will in turn uplift the rest of their communities.

16/Anyway, I really enjoyed this book. While data, and regressions are important, ethnographies can provide a vivid, complete picture that numbers can miss.

And it's also nice to read about things going right in America once in a while, instead of things going wrong.

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