Thread by @Noahpinion

Howdy, folks! Today's @bopinion post is why Tom Brokaw is wrong about Hispanic Americans.

bloomberg.com/opinion/articl…

Brokaw scolded Hispanic Americans to "work harder at assimilation" and "make sure all their kids are learning to speak English.

In addition to being rude, that's utterly out of touch with the facts on the ground.

politico.com/story/2019/01/…

Hispanic Americans' kids DO speak English.

In fact, Hispanic Americans are learning English about as fast as European Americans do.

washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2…

And this is important, because English is the gateway to all other forms of integration into mainstream American life.

Here's a good book by @JodyAVallejo about how Mexican Americans, for example, are joining the middle class: amazon.com/Barrios-Burbs-…

And guess what? Hispanic American income is climbing.

This 2018 paper by Chetty et al. finds that "Hispanic Americans are moving up significantly in the income distribution across generations."

Hispanic American upward mobility is high.

equality-of-opportunity.org/assets/documen…

That upward mobility across generations was, for a long time, OBSCURED by the continued arrival of more and more new immigrants from Latin America, whose incomes were lower than those of the native-born.

But that's rapidly ending. For example, check out Mexico:

The typical immigrant to America these days is Asian, not Latino.

voanews.com/a/data-show-as…

The end of large-scale Latin American immigration means that the integration of Hispanic Americans with the rest of America will proceed more rapidly than ever.

Check out this book by Tomas Jimenez that explains why:
amazon.com/Replenished-Et…

The boundaries between Hispanic Americans and others are already blurring. Recent Pew surveys show that among young Americans with Hispanic ancestry, a substantial number don't even identify as Hispanic.

pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018…

And as sociologist @GabrielRossman notes, it's already difficult for brands to target Hispanic Americans as a separate group.

https://twitter.com/GabrielRossman/status/1089927541106737152

Furthermore, political scientist @debbiejsr has found that Hispanic Americans' feelings of American identity, and their notion of what it means to be an American, are very similar to those of other groups of Americans:
amazon.com/Americanism-Tw…

But, it's important to note, assimilation doesn't mean slavish conformity to white American norms. White Americans - and Black Americans, Asian Americans, etc. etc. - are also being changed by contact with Hispanic Americans.

Here's a thread about that:

https://twitter.com/Noahpinion/status/1089581594744999936

The ultimate act of assimilation - on both sides! - is intermarriage. And this is proceeding at a dizzying pace:

This recent survey finds that "among young adults, more than half (58%) of third generation or higher Hispanics are married to someone who is not Hispanic":
pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018…

In fact, Brokaw is right when he says that it's this intermarriage - and the assimilation it represents - that is actually what's upsetting some Trump voters.

It's not a lack of assimilation that sent anti-Hispanic Trump voters into a panic.

It's racism.

It's a desire for Hispanic Americans *not* to be a part of America, and of the American mainstream.

But as the generations pass, as Trumpism is discredited, and as Hispanic Americans become an ever more integral part of the fabric of this nation, this racism will slowly ebb.

You can crush the flowers, but you can't stop the spring.

bloomberg.com/opinion/articl…

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