Caribeans and Mexicans Do not Represent All Latinos
Oct 25, 2020 14:49:08 GMT -5
Post by Radrook Admin on Oct 25, 2020 14:49:08 GMT -5
Caribean and Mexico do not Represent All Latin America
People in the United States seem to be in the habit of making overgeneralizations concerning Latinos based on the hordes of immigrants that have immigrated to the United States. This leads to a very grave misconception concerning all Latinos and the twenty nations that comprise Latin America.
These misconceptions are in reference to Latin American physical appearance and Latin American culture. For example, in the Southwest of the United States, most immigrants are from the lower economic classes that are generally composed of mestizos. So the conclusion that most Americans their reach is that all Latin Americans look, Mestizo. If you don't look mestizo and look North European or even if you look black, they will say that you don't look, Latino.
In the East Coast of the USA most immigration has been from the Caribean and its lower economic classes are mostly composed of Latinos who are either African American or are heavily mixed with Afro American. So that is the look which most Anglo Americans and African Americans expect.
So if a Latino in that area doesn't fit in with that expectation, they assume that he isn't Latino. Even if the Latino looks southern European they will say that he doesn't look Latino as in my case in Philadelphia where most Puerto Rican are strongly black in appearance.
Curiously, the same phenomenon took place but in reverse in the case of the Cuban Migration to the USA which began in earnest when Castro turned Cuba into a communist regime. You see, the initial immigration had been of the white upper classes who did not wish t lose their riches when the communist government started to nationalize everything. Based on the type of immigration, The general impression was that Cubans were North European white in physical appearance. Yet that was definitely not the case which was proven when the Marielita wave of Cuban immigrants started to arrive and the majority of this e did not resemble Northern Europeans.
The truth is that Latin American countries have different percentages of different races. Argentina is predominantly European while Mexico is predominantly Mestizo. The Dominican Republic is predominantly mixed. Yet within all of these, there is a percentage that does not fit into the immigration mold such as East Asians which number four million in Latin America. So to stay within the parameters of reality, it is based not to generalize concerning all Latin America based on what we see locally due to immigration.
Then there is culture.