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LITR 5731 Seminar in Multicultural Literature: American Immigrant: model assignments 2010
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research post 1
Betty Vasquez
Interethnic Marriage:
Dissipating ethnic boundaries in
The course objectives contained in the syllabus for American
Immigrant Literature bring to surface several thought provoking terms and
descriptions. One such term is
assimilation, which is defined as the process of becoming similar or
emulating “American culture,” and the term is also referred to as stage four of
the “Basic Stages of Immigrant Narrative.” (White) One of the highest forms of
assimilation is interracial or interethnic marriage. This a difficult point to
argue, since what can be more intimate to a person than their spouse? More
importantly, what does a decision of this gravity, to spend the rest of your
life and procreate with another individual who does not share your cultural
background, result in?
Before exploring answers, I found it necessary to first
establish the ratio of interethnic marriages in
This study also isolated findings to gender and immigrant
status. Given the statistics, native born Hispanics are three times more likely
to marry someone from a different ethnic group than a Hispanic immigrant would
be. This divide was also true for native born Asians and immigrant Asians.
Interestingly enough, the percentages of both Hispanic men and women coincided,
but the percentages for Asian men— both native born and immigrants—was
significantly lower (about half) than it is for Asian women to marry outside
their ethnic group. (Passel) The difference in overall percentages between
native born and immigrants can be accounted for by
resistance. It makes sense that as
newcomers to the “New World” they are desperately trying to hold on to the
customs of the “
These statistics gave me hope that we are moving toward a
country where the ethnic composite of the majority is so convoluted that it
would no longer be a reason for divide. The result of interethnic marriages
would naturally be native born equals—right? Believing this to be my conclusion,
I was crushed when I discovered the theory of the “Browning of America.” It
seems that I was not the first to come to this conclusion. Upon conducting more
research I came across an interview conducted by The O’Reilly Factor. In this
interview Bill O’Reilly questioned N.Y. councilman Charlie Barron over the
immigrant debate and restriction of immigration into the nation. After not
getting a straight answer from Barron, O’Reilly theorized that it had to do with
the “Browning of America”; however, the agenda was not what I personally
theorized it to be. Instead O’Reilly tells us that Barron revealed (when he
never explicitly stated it) that it is in fact a master plan to phase out the
dominant white man and take over the country with a new “brown” dominant group.
It is quite opposite of my theory
because I seek equality not the replacement or “take down” of the white dominant
group for another dominant group with its own political agenda.
This cynical approach, forced me to dwell further into
research over the rise of procreation of interethnic children and the ratios. I
found another interesting study whose findings were published by the Journal
of Marriage & Family where the original purpose was to find the percentage
difference between procreation practices of interethnic and non-interethnic
unions in order to establish or argue the strength of group boundaries. (Kang
Pu) The translation of the results was to be set against three hypotheses. The
first hypothesis argues that if the percentages of the same ethnic procreation
ratios were larger than those of interethnic couples, it was due to the
opposition to their union. This argument based its thought process on the
rational that if the families of the couple were not supportive of the union, it
would persuade the couple to not have children. The second hypothesis claimed
that if the number of children to interethnic unions were greater than those of
same ethnic unions, it could be reasoned that it was for the building of
solidarity of the marriage. Hypothesis three supposes that if the percentages of
children are equal between the two previously defined unions, then the unions
“do in fact represent a genuine weakening of group boundaries . . .” (Kang Pu
784-85). What this study found was that the percentages of the two groups were
overall similar therefore establishing hypothesis three. While this study does
lack some accountability, such as- couples who cannot procreate or those who
adopt (especially ethnically diverse children), it is a beginning to veering
away from political advantage and it therefore brings some piece of mind.
Although my research did not end at the point which I had
anticipated, the question evolves: if we were to eventually become a dominantly
“brown nation”— as foreshadowed by statistics— would this new world, having
isolated the ethnic problem, formulate a new color code where the degree of your
“brownness” determines your worth? While the answer lies within a time frame
that we have not yet reached, it will also supply the ultimate answer to another
question found in objective six of the syllabus: “How do immigrants change
Works Cited
Barron, Charles. “O'Reilly
claimed to have exposed the ‘hidden agenda’ behind the
immigrant rights movement: ‘the browning of
Haq, Husna. “Interracial
Marriage: more than double the rate in the 1980’s.”
Christian Science
Monitor 04 June 2010: N:PAG.
Academic Search Complete.
EBSCO.Web.14 June 2010.
Kang Pu, Vincent.
"Interracial-Interethnic Unions and Fertility in the
Passel, Jeffrey S., Wang, Wendy
and Taylor, Paul. “Marrying Out:
One-in-Seven New U.S. Marriages is Interracial or Interethnic.”
White, Craig. “Graduate Immigrant
Literature Syllabas.” Summer 2010. Online. Internet. 14 June 2010.
<http://coursesite.uhcl.edu/HSH/Whitec/LITR/4333/models/20085731/rschpost/rpost08suassgncopy.htm>
