Jan. 12, 2006 - 17:22 MST

ANOTHER LOOK

Tina Griego of the Rocky Mountain News is a lady who has spent a lot of time in our area, investigating before speaking her piece. Her today's column is of interest to me. In full:

ASSIMILATION MAY COME AT COST OF BICULTURALISM

"A few readers of Monday's column got the idea that I don't ever want to talk about assimilation. Au contraire. Or, perhaps I should say, on the contrary."

"The subject fascinates me. Not simply for its Lazarus-like ability to be resurrected whenever an immigrant group is perceived to pose a threat to the status quo."

"Assimilation is, for many, the emotional heart of the illegal immigration debate, hitting the hot buttons of national identity, shared ideals and individual responsibility to the whole."

"I simply don't believe that it's helpful to focus on what are essentially after-the-fact education and language complaints when searching for a solution to the immediate problem: fixing a broken immigration system."

"But, if a detour is what you wish, a detour I shall give you."

"Every once in a while, I will introduce myself to a group like this, "I'm a fifth- or sixth-generation New Mexican, part of the assimilated generation of the family. My great-grandparents spoke only Spanish, my grandparents mostly Spanish, my parents only when they didn't want us to understand what they were saying. No one in my generation grew up speaking Spanish."

"The parents line usually gets a few chuckles, and I can almost always tell the politics of the room by the reaction to the word "assimilated." For some, it might prompt nods of approval: It is as it should be. The flame beneath the melting pot holds steady."

Others view the word in its most negative connotation, as a denial of ethnic heritage, a forced submission to the dominant culture. Think Indian boarding schools. Allotment. Remember your grandmother's stories of public humiliation if a word of Spanish or Lakota escaped into the classroom air."

"My own feelings are as complex as the topic. My parents wanted us to assimilate. They believed success would come if we equipped ourselves with the tools of mainstream society: an education, the higher the better , and a mastery of English."

"As far as that goes, they were right. It is part of the reason I hammer away on the scandal that is the minority dropout rate. It is why I have always said that immigrants to this country should learn English -- as much for their benefit as for ours. but, my parents' insistence also meant that I could not speak to my great-grandmother, it underestimated the value of bilingualism and biculturalism, and that realization has always been accompanied by a sense of loss."

"My parents did what they thought best, acknowledging history and heritage without anchoring me to either. I suppose one could argue that they left me free to invent my own future, a true American. One could also say that they set me adrift, severing me from a chorus of ancestors who could have illuminated my way into the world, opening doors I did not know existed. Both statements would be true."

"Not everyone shares my ambivalence. People move to extremes. I have met old Italian and German and Polish men who slam their fists on tables and shout. "Yes !" to the suggestion that bililngual education be ended. Yet, these same men have grown sons and daughters who openly wish so much had not been lost in the journey toward Americanization. They eat panettone and pierogis and remain unsatisfied. Some of these children, parents themselves now, walk new tightropes, trying to strike a balance between past and future."

The complicated personal story helps explain the complicated public one, the interplay between individual and society. It could explain how an English-speaking Hispanic woman could scream at a group of Spanish-speaking Hispanics: "You don't understand, this is America. We speak English here."

"I could tell you of a street in southwest Denver, one of those roads that leaps blocks at a time, hiccuping its way through the city so that it is impossible to drive from one end to the other without numerous detours. Along one tiny stretch is a neighborhood of Spanish-speaking Mexican and Central American immigrants, English-speaking Hispanics from Colorado and New Mexican families and a few Anglos."

"It is a neighborhood experiencing what Denver Pastor Mark Lopez once told me was "immigration at the street level" It is changing from homeowners to renters, from English to Spanish-speaking."

"The tensions here tend to be blamed solely upon illegal immigration, but they have much to do with poor city planning, with high density and transient populations that have long created instability in urban neighborhoods"

"One hundred streets like this exist in Denver and through the year I will tell you the stories of one. I can tell you this now: Illegal immigration at this level seems to have very little to do with illegal immigration, per se, and everything to do with how people are perceived to behave once they get here."

"I don't care how they came across," says a Hispanic woman named Joyce who lives on this tiny street. "You have those vigilantes on the border waving their guns and I think that's ridiculous. Everyone has a right to try to make a living. What I do care about is that if they come here, they respect the people here. That's all I'm asking for: respect."

"I keep hearing that the newcomers are not holding up their end of the social contract, that more is being lost than gained."

"It's a fear masterfully exploited by hard-liners building a groundswell against illegal immigrants. And that, in the midst of a search for answers to a difficult problem, is more destructive than constructive."

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Tina Griego has spent months at North High School in Denver trying to find out why the high drop out rate of Hispanic students. She has been a prime investigative reporter to my mind, delving into the ills of all our society at times.

In this article she brings out many things I think we ought to think about.

I remember here in our beloved Denver, where black folk rode the buses and street cars wherever they wanted to sit, where we patted ourselves on the back for our tolerant philosphy -- not remembering the prejudice we had against the foreigners who worked our smelters and packing houses. YET, the lowest two legged people in the world here were considered to be those "damned Mexicans."

I think what Tina Griego is trying to bring out is that we must live with and cope with those who are already here, and do it in a humane, commonsense way. Find a way to equalize educational processes, and aid in the assimilation of all people here.

In many ways I understand Tina Griego, I come from a crop of Western folk whose parents were from the East, but whose folks had very little contact with relatives back there. I do know that many folks changed their last names when they got out to Colorado, for different reasons, some of which were legal, and did not contact relatives back east. That is the way my family was. (no name change, but occasional letters that my folks read to themselves). I had a grandmother who moved to New Mexico to be a housekeeper at Albuquerque's fanciest hotel (of that time) when I was very young, an uncle with his family who lived across town - whose wife was at odds with my Mom most of the time. Some of the kids I went to school with were Hispanic, some were friends of mine, oh, how I longed to be part of a large family like they. So there is no family history for me, no common inherited langauage, no group of relations around to visit with. All that came to me as a gift from my wife's family when they took me in as a son after we married and made me congnizant of just how valuable those things are. So, I can see and understand where Tina Griego is coming from.

So it is not just the present inflow of folks crossing our southern border that are the problem. They are walking into an existing problem of long standing, which no one really seems to be truly trying to solve.

Tina Griego always encourages me to take ANOTHER LOOK . . . . . . . . .