Jack has a great post up at AngryBrownButch (and Feministe) about a new Demos report on the instability of the Black and Latino middle class. Jack shares some really interesting insights from childhood, and it inspired me to share some of my own thoughts.
From the report:
African-American and Latino families have more difficulty moving into the middle class, and families that do enter the middle class are less secure and at higher risk than the middle class as a whole. Overall, more African-American and Latino middle-class families are at risk of falling out of the middle class than are secure. This is in sharp contrast to the overall middle class, in which 31 percent are secure and 21 percent are at risk.
My parents are Cuban exiles, who immigrated here in the 60s shortly after Fidel Castro took power in Cuba. The reason why class has such different implications for immigrant families in the US is because they bring their class histories with them from their countries of origin.
Some immigrants come to the US to flee poverty, others are forced to leave behind relative wealth in their home countries seeking safety in the US. My family left because of communism, and their inability to maintain ownership over their respective businesses. While my paternal grandfather was a wealthy businessowner in Cuba, my maternal grandfather owned a small modest cornerstore. Neither side was able to regain similar class positions after coming to the US. Money was really tight when they first came over (people were not allowed to bring any of their things, including money, with them when they left) and my paternal grandfather (who had been relatively wealthy in Cuba) never rose above lower middle class status (my best estimation, it's hard to really know) in the United States. This was partially because he held onto the dream of returning to Cuba (as so many Cuban exiles did). For most of his life in the US he sold used cars for a living, and my grandmother (who had never worked before) worked as a secretary in a local school in Miami.
My parents and their siblings have all dealt with class in different ways. My mother's sisters became really wealthy, by marriage and entrepreneurship. Business and wealth are really important to them, and as someone who works in non-profits it's a struggle to relate to my cousins on that side. My parents took the education route, and are both college professors. They each have very different financial situations (now divorced) but we never had to deal with the fear of real poverty because of the security and stability that tenure and academia afford. They have always had trouble relating to their parents and siblings, who don't understand what they do and look down on them as simply "teachers."
It still remains to be seen how these things will affect my generation in my family, the first generation US citizens. We are all learning really different lessons about class from our parents and society in general.
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A friend of mine's father, a Cuban immigrant, works as a public high-school teacher in Miami and faces these sorts of questions from his extended family all the time. Even though my friend knew that his father was really happy and successful with his chosen career and didn't expect his son to be a doctor or lawyer or something, my friend felt a *lot* of pressure to choose a "professional-track" career. He felt the family pressure just as acutely, even though he was a generation removed.
It's a pretty natural impulse, I think, for all parents to want their children to be "more successful" (in a class sense) than they were themselves. But it's very true that the immigrant experience adds a whole other layer to that dynamic.
Slightly off-topic:
I think the fact that it's possible to look down on someone as "simply" a teacher, whether they're a tenured professor at Yale or a kindergarten instructor, is itself a misunderstanding of what it takes to teach, and how important teachers are.
It's not completely off-topic, though. The least-served populations in terms of education are immigrant and minority communities, and as long as teachers are the enemy (see No Child, Governor Schwartzenegger's policies, and recent statements by McCain), a lot of those kids won't get the educations they need to reach and maintain financial stability.
Being latino (Puerto Rican) immigration is a big issue to me but one I tend to aviod with a lot of people even ones I otherwise get along with. If you want to see the ugly bigoted side of people immigration is a good subject in which to get it out of them.
Thanks for writing this Miriam. I think that class issues are one of the most under-examined intersections with the immigrant debate. Immigrants who buy into the "American Dream" ideology are seen as worthy, while those who might retain some of the ideologies of their home countries or just question all of it are unworthy. It's so infuriating.
There are several intersections here worth discussing.
Cubans who came post-Castro were mostly white at the beginning-- only much later did afro-cubans start to show up. The ones that got to be "white" were treated much differently than those who weren't.
It's also interesting to note that the ones who came post-Castro went to Florida and became Republicans. The ones who came in the 50s went to New York and were Democrats.
Immigrants from "white" countries also get better treatment than those who aren't. When was the last time you heard complaints about Canadians working here illegally, even though thousands do? (usually they are students and the like, but if you live in a border state or city like Buffalo you see a lot of them).
People's view of security will reflect the ways that their peers get into the middle class. For instance, Filipino families place a high premium on nursing as a profession, because that's how they often got decent lives here. Irish people used to place a high premium on being cops or construction workers or auto plant workers. Same dynamic.
Jess--
You're right, race also plays a large role in this dynamic. Not just for Cuban immigrants, but for a lot of Latino groups.
There is definitely a privileging of "white" Cubans (or Cubans who pass as white) over the ones who don't, but it has also changed over the years. In the beginning, even in Miami, there was a ton of anti-Cuban sentiment. There used to be signs on storefronts that said "No dogs, No Jews, No Cubans."
Race and class are very much entertwined in this debate as well, and it's also interesting to see how some Latinos, who are seen as white in their home countries come to the US and are then seen as people of color.
There is also a lot of internalized racism in the community as well.
In terms of the politics of the Cuban community, there is an interesting article in the New York Times Magazine about how the republicanismo of Miami Cubans might be shifting.