What is the difference btw the Italian immigrants from the 1800's and the Hispanic immigrants of today?

Question

I'm just curious what others think. Italians aren't considered a minority, yet they spoke a foreign language when they arrived in the US. There are currently quite a few Russians immigrating to the US today, and even though they don't speak English they are considered Caucasian. Why don't the Hispanics consider themselves Caucasian? Historically, most of their ancestors either immigrated from Spain (Western European) or were Native American. If you were to describe someone from Mexico and someone from Italy, you would probably use the same characteristics. So would someone please explain to me why Hispanics are constantly referred to as a minority group instead of a Caucasian group that speaks a different language? What makes the Hispanic group different from the German immigrants, Polish immigrants, Bosnian immigrants, Greek immigrants, etc?

Answer 1

Simply two crucial things: 1. pizza  2. there was an urgent need for industrial workers and the states were essentially wide open back then. Now jobs are scarce and it behooves the politicians to manage things differently than then. That was then, this is now. Not comparable. False hypothesis.

Answer 2

Most Italian immigrants from that era strived to become Americanized. Maybe the original immigrants continued to speak Italian but their kids quickly learned English. Also back then there was no such thing as an illegal immigrant only those without papers, hence the derogatory term w*p. By the way Polish and Irish immigrants faced the same discrimination at first.

Now contrast that to you're typical Mexican illegal immigrant, their attitude is "this land was Mexican once Indian always and will be again". We don't need to learn English, you should learn Spanish because we were here first.

Viva La Raza translates out to long live the people but it really means Long Live OUR People, meaning our race. The VAST majority of Latinos don't want to be thought of as Caucasians because of their Indian heritage.

Answer 3

Our society has become very race obsessed.

The answer pure and simple is that they are not white. They are Hispanic or Latino. As a minority group our society must nit pick at everything to find some wrong or discrimination done to them.

The other immigrate groups you mentioned have been assimilated into mainstream America. The Latinos even after a few generations tend to stay in there own communities.

The other thing is the Latino community doesn't value education as much as some ethnic groups,with the possible exception of the Cubans. This keeps them from reaching there potential.

Answer 4

pretty much the same.

Answer 5

The big difference is that most Italians came here legally and assimilated into American society within one generation.

The reason many Hispanics don't consider themselves Caucasian is probably because many are multiracial.