@Merry Andrew,
Merry Andrew wrote:
You are so full of crap, foofie, I can only assume your eyes must be brown.
Quote:Also, Irish have been assimilated since the 1800's, if not before. By 1900 they ran Tammany Hall in NYC. First generation Italians born here spoke English amongst each other. They used Italian to speak to parents or grandparents.
As has been pointed out before, Irish spoke English when they came here. Big advantage.
I personally know some Italian families where second and even third generation children are encouraged to speak Italian in the home. It's not because the grandparents don't speak English; it's simply part of the heritage. Parenthetically, I went to university with some Jewish kids who had not learned English until they were sent to public schools; they had always spoken Yiddish in the home, although born here and although their parents knew English perfectly well.
The points you are making, such as they are, are bigoted big-time.
Why would you want to put parenthesis around Jewish kids that only learned English in school?
But, your sampling techniques might be using a population of ethnics that do not reflect the statistical mode of the population, which I believe reflects an orientation to speaking English to each other. That was my point; Hispanics speak Spanish in the street to each other; other ethnicities historically spoke English to each other in the street, as soon as they were able.
There is also a desire to BE AMERICAN by many ethnicities that have come here in the past. In my opinion, I do not see that from the same percentage of Hispanics. Perhaps, I am mistaken?
But, being Jewish I do break down the world into Jews and Gentiles, so it might be a little short-sighted to focus on my attitude to any one ethnicity, do you not think? And, just to be accurate, I only care about Americans, be they Jewish or Gentile. That said, you can understand how I am attuned to the American identities of prior immigrant groups, and left wondering how American Hispanics plan to be in their desire to assimilate.
I define assimilation as the process whereby a specific immigrant group aspires to livelihoods across the spectrum of blue-collar, white-collar, smart-collar and entrepreneurial livelihoods. When the majority of an immigrant group stays in one specific class of livelihoods, I do believe they have not assimilated completely into the American society.
