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| Re: What's Sonia Sotomayor's racial background? (456037) | |||
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Re: What's Sonia Sotomayor's racial background? |
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Posted by Stephen Bauman on Sun May 31 00:05:34 2009, in response to Re: What's Sonia Sotomayor's racial background?, posted by LuchAAA on Sat May 30 17:06:36 2009. Does it puzzle you that Hispanics isolate themselves with their own media like Univision and Telemundo?Not to a first or second generation american. The usual scenario is that a couple marries in a foreign country and immigrates. They continue to speak their native language among themselves. The US does not offer immigrants a free class in learning english nor the money to live on while taking it. They will move in with relatives or friends who share both their language and culture. Their children, the first generation Americans, are bilingual and bicultural. Their first exposure to English may be in the schools. Fortunately, children pick up language a lot faster than adults. This leads to their acting as an intermediary for their parents when English has to be spoken. When they grow up and marry, English is the language they use in the home. Their children, the second generation Americans, are primarily English speaking. They are exposed to their grandparents' language. Unless they live any significant amount of time with them their fluency in that language is next to nil. They are still exposed to the culture. Succeeding generations have lost all contact with both the foreign language an the culture. There are exceptions. One that comes to mind is the writer Joseph Conrad. He did not speak English until he was in his twenties. It's all about using ethnicity as a weapon. There is always a longing for one's identity, even for Americans. Is it an ethnicity weapon that drives Americans to read the International Herald Tribune in Paris? |
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