You will be assimilated... NOT!

One topic that I have been constantly reminded of over my lifetime is the desire of "mainstream" white America demanding that everyone else "assimilate" to their norms, language and custom.  The idea is that, if only these non-whites would assimilate, everything would be peachy keen jellybean.

I am living proof that this is not the case.  I was born in the late 1960s and grew up in a small "hick" town in Oregon in the 1970s.  I am a Latino of Californian and Sonoran decent. 

Back then Oregon was more conservative than the deep south, there were neo-nazis everywhere, and cross burnings were a way of life in some areas.  People in small towns would refer to Brazil nuts as N****r toes.  Chinese people were barely allowed to walk the street when I came to live in Oregon.  It was not a place to be non-white in those days.

In consequence, my family assimulated.  It also helped that I had been born a military 'brat'.  I never learned to speak Spanish.  We never practiced or discussed any of our cultural heritage or practices.  I speak proper standard English, fuss over grammar, and learned to use all the norms and customs of the white people I was around.  I still profusely say please and thank you to this day and speak very politely to anyone that I do not know well.  These were the rules of white society in days gone by.  I would have used "ma'am/sir" as well if that had been the custom.

Did any of this help?  No, not at all.  I was still a "Mexican" to the whites of McMinnville, Oregon growing up there, including one D. Bundy who tried to run me over with his car.  I was still a "Mexican" in High School and whenever anything happened, my brother or I were the first to be dragged in as the "usual suspects."  I was still a "Mexican" not to be hired at Hewlett-Packard in the 1990s.  I was still the object of the we don't need another Mexican around here at that recent job site in 2013, where I was the only Hispanic and only person not hired of four temp to hires (the others being white and all of us being qualified and promised to be hired).  

I was still one of the "mud races" to racists in Arkansas when I lived there.  To that one guy at NCR, when I worked there, I was still the alien invader that needed to be destroyed even though I was born in the U.S. and had done everything I could to "fit in."  I was still a horrible creature to Virginia Alderson, an ancient woman who would threaten me with her "G-Man" husband [I think it was a sort of accusation of being an illegal alien], and give me long lectures on how come you people don't assimilate?  Latinos are still dinged in job interviews for failing to make serious and constant eye-contact even though Whites have been told again and again that constant eye-balling eye contact is considered rude and threatening in Hispanic cultures.


These days, ethnic groups and immigrants no longer have to assimilate, which is a good thing.  Because, even if you do it, it will do you no good.  You will never be accepted.  I wish I had been raised in my culture and learned to speak fluent home-Spanish.  I wish I had not been raised to try and "fit in" with the "mainstream" white people who still despised me as one of the "mudslide" invading from the south.  Resistance isn't futile.  Assimilation is.  If you're thinking of it to try and "fit in", don't.  Neither they nor your future self will thank you for it.