Reply #35: If Mexican settlement becomes more even distributed

[Ignacio Upton]

the whole Aztlan/Chicano nationalism issue may become mute. I can't see Aztlan or La Raza being able to recruit Mexican-Americans in the NYC or Chicago areas (I think that hispanics will soon be larger than blacks in the Chicago area.) The southern states may end up absorbing some of the Mexicans into Evangelism for all we know (North Carolina and Georgia are gaining a lot of Hispanics from Mexico and Central America.
I don't believe that the idea of Chicano nationalism can happen if two things occur:
1. Hispanics as a whole move up the social ladder, in the same way that Irish Catholics and Jews did, and move into the American middle class (which is happening in many cases.)
2. Assimilate to some degree. This doesn't mean being forced to abandon your heritage, but it means considering yourself an American and U.S. citizen alongside of being Hispanic, a not simply as a Spanish-speaking Chicano living in the U.S. It means knowing English fluently and/or being bilingual. We , as a country, should encourage Hispanic immigrants to assimilate in the same way that European immigrants assimilated. It wouldn't surprise me in another half century or so to see people who consider themselves white AND hispanic (although many hispanics are already part European if you count Mestizos.)