E-mail a friendGregory Rodriguez
airdate October 24, 2007
Gregory Rodriguez is an op-ed columnist for the Los Angeles Times and director of the California Fellows Program at the New America Foundation, a nonpartisan think tank. He writes on numerous issues, including race relations and assimilation. The Economist has praised him for "decisively changing the understanding of the Latino experience" in the U.S. Rodriquez is also author of Mongrels, Bastards, Orphans, and Vagabonds, which addresses how contemporary Mexican immigration will change the way Americans view race.
Gregory Rodriguez
Tavis: Gregory Rodriguez is a columnist for "The Los Angeles Times" and a senior fellow at the New America Foundation. His acclaimed new book is called "Mongrels, Bastards, Orphans, and Vagabonds: Mexican Immigration and the Future of Race in America." Gregory, nice to have you on the program.
Gregory Rodriguez: A pleasure to be here, big fan of your show.
Tavis: This title is so subtle, what's the problem?
Rodriguez: (Laughs) What's the problem? It's a sober, thoughtful history, and my publisher thought, you know what? Throw something at the audience to shake them up.
Tavis: Yeah, well, you got my attention. Tell me what you mean to suggest by the title.
Rodriguez: What I'm suggesting, these are words and terms that have been used to describe mixed people for the last 500 years. People who didn't belong in strict, rigid racial systems. People who weren't either Black or White, people who weren't Indian or Spanish, in the case of Mexico. People who were mixed and didn't belong, they were called mongrels.
There were people, the original (unintelligible) the mixed people of Mexico, they were largely bastards. They were illegitimate children of illicit unions between Spaniards and Indians. Essentially, these were the people who didn't belong in strict racial systems.
Tavis: And those kinds of descriptors, relevant for today's conversation about race in what regard?
Rodriguez: Because I'm arguing that what the mixed people did in Mexico, the Spanish came into Mexico, they conquered Mexico, and they set up a strict racial system - two republics. That for the Spaniards, and that for the Indians. The (unintelligible) didn't exist. The mixed people didn't exist legally in that system, and they weren't recognized by the church or the crown.
And what happened over the centuries is that mixture created the mixed people, so that became the majority of Mexicans. They destroyed that racial system. I'm arguing that Mexicans, who are largely mixed, as they come to the United States will also destroy our racial system, which has essentially been based on purity, which has essentially been based on a division between Black and White.
Tavis: Tell me how that would or could happen, in fact, if we continue to see the kind of push-back that we're getting now on immigration, period. To have that kind of impact, you have to still be coming to this place called America.
Rodriguez: Not necessarily. Even if you had stopped immigration in 1994 during the big anti-immigration initiatives here in California, you would still have had - the demographic projections said that Latinos would still be a majority in the nation's two most populous states, Texas and California, by the mid-century. So even if immigration were to be stopped today, the demographic wave will continue because even right now, the Latino population growth is actually driven by procreation rather than by migration. It's really birth-driven, not migration-driven.
Tavis: To that point now, procreation versus migration, how do those who have been here for a while, procreating, view those who are just coming here through immigration?
Rodriguez: It's always been a real intense competition. We use the word Latino, and there are political reasons, there are all sorts of reasons to underline the continuity and similarities between peoples of Latino heritage. However, there's always been this competition between the newcomers and the old comers, and there is such a thing as acculturation, that a third-generation Mexican-American isn't necessarily live on the same street or work in the same job as an immigrant who just came from Mexico the previous day. Now there is a large social rift between newcomers and those who are long established over time.
Tavis: One could argue, Gregory, and I think one would be right if one were to argue this, that - and I'm just using this term - given the Tiger Wood-ization of America, that is to say obviously more and more mixed couples having babies - one could argue that were there no Mexican immigrants coming to this country that the reality you spoke of earlier would happen over time in America anyway, just born of the mixed relationships that we have. So what's the connection between that reality, which is underway anyway, and the reality with regard to Mexican immigration that you talk about in the book?
Rodriguez: Two things. One, Mexicans hastened this process. The southwest - the region of the country with the highest rates of intermarriage is the region of the country with the highest number of Mexicans. Okay? Mexicans also bring - so they are - two-thirds of interracial, interethnic marriages in California involve a Latino. They are great participants in this mixing.
Secondly and most importantly, they bring a language with which to talk about that mixing. They bring the notion of (unintelligible), of cultural and racial mixing that is the essential point of Mexican history, that we are mixed people. And I think we're bringing 500 years of dealing with this, grappling this. What does this mean, to be mixed? Is it all wonderful and great?
No, there are burdens to this mixture. Octavio (unintelligible) liked to say that Mexicans were orphans. That we were somehow orphaned from both of our progenitors. We weren't Spanish, we weren't Indian, we were mixed. Again, this notion of (unintelligible) I think in legitimizing - remember, miscegenation was a dirty word.
We're now bringing the notion of (unintelligible), which is not only not a bad word, it's almost celebratory. So I think we're bringing a way of looking at this mixture at the time America, as you said, is mixing on its own.
Tavis: What are the risks, the dangers inherent in that reality for Mexicans specifically? As you intermarry, what are the dangers in what is and has been Mexican staying that way?
Rodriguez: The danger is the price of acculturation, and that is the price of Americanization that most migrants, and at this point most Mexicans who've come to the United States have been migrants. There were Mexicans who were here and were part of the annexed and conquered territories of the southwest, but those are very few at this point.
Most Mexicans who came chose to come, and it's the similar history of the give and take, what you gain from becoming an American, and what you lose. Becoming an American for Mexicans, on a larger level, just as it was for Europeans, does bring some loss. Does bring a certain unmooring over time from the heritage and culture and language of one's grandparents.
So yes, the inherent difficulty is that one loses one's past, but isn't that what it has been to be an American?
Tavis: But how's that debate - you and I are intellectualizing this. How is that looked upon, thought about, discussed inside - I'm not asking you to speak for all Mexicans here -
Rodriguez: Well, thank you.
Tavis: (Laughs) But to the extent that you can, tell me how this conversation goes not on PBS but inside the Mexican community?
Rodriguez: Well, I think you'll have activist groups that were essentially started in the sixties that are dedicated to the notion of cultural continuity, but you'll notice that they largely speak English. (Laughter) And they're largely mixed, and they live in mixed suburbs themselves. But I think - but you'll find - you look at polls.
The best I can do is show polls. And if you ask a Mexican - and polls have done this - you ask immigrants, Mexicans who make up two-thirds of all Latinos in the United States of Mexican origin, you'll ask him should Spanish language be maintained, and 85% say absolutely. And then the next question will be, should people learn English, and should they be competent in the language?
And about 87% say the same thing. So again, I would argue throughout Mexican and Mexican-American history, there isn't this anti-assimilation versus pro-assimilation, that you can do both.
Tavis: It's not either-or, but both (unintelligible).
Rodriguez: It's not either-or, it's both, yeah.
Tavis: Yeah. How does this - because I know that certainly right around now, in the midst of a presidential campaign, this is the kind of conversation that impacts not just race in America but politics in America, and then one could argue the two are inextricably linked together anyway. But talk to me about how this reality impacts America politically.
Rodriguez: Well, it's confused. It's confused the political system to some extent. Again, in the same way that the Anglo racial system never knew what to do with Mexicans - are they people of color? Are they White people? And they've been categorized as either throughout the history of both. Parties don't know what to do with them.
Again, they're speaking - they look at Latinos in a Latino electorate and they assume that they are a monolithic group. They assume they all think the same. They assume that they are a community. But remember, unlike African Americans who were forged by a common experience, Latinos have - even if they're Mexican-Americans alone, we have not been forged by a common experience in the United States.
We're too diverse, we're multigenerational, we've been here from three generations to two minutes. We're multilingual, we're multiracial, and we're multiclass. It's harder to look at us as a solid bloc electorate.
Tavis: So if I'm running for president, how in the future do I campaign to this community?
Rodriguez: You break it down. You break it down. For instance, you look at the - when I look at the polls for the last - the 2004 election, for instance, George Bush won Latinos making over 70k and above. And that was - but that's the minority of that vote, right? And Bush won - rather, Kerry won those making less. So the Republicans are just going to have say, “Well you're going to have to desegregate, just like the consumer market does.”
It breaks down groups by age, by gender, by where they live. That has to be done with the Latino electorate to really - because no one's going to get all Latinos to vote for them.
Tavis: Yeah. This thing is getting real complicated. (Laughs) But I like it. The new book by "L.A. Times" columnist Gregory Rodriguez is "Mongrels, Bastards, Orphans, and Vagabonds: Mexican Immigration and the Future of Race in America," and indeed it will, as it already is, having an impact. Gregory, nice to have you on the program.
Rodriguez: Oh, thanks for having me.
Tavis: All the best to you.
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