SF Chronicle | Questioning Immigrants' Desire to Assimilate

. . . Two new books diverge from the political approach to the simmering assimilation debate, one looking backward, another looking forward. Los Angeles Times columnist Gregory Rodriguez's provocatively titled "Mongrels, Bastards, Orphans, and Vagabonds: Mexican Immigration and the Future of Race in America" examines Mexican Americans' self-identity through history, from the Aztec conquest to 21st century immigration into the United States. Rodriguez makes a strong argument that the very idea of treating Mexican Americans or Latinos as a single racial category, as the U.S. Census attempts to do with the "Hispanic" label, misses the fact that, for the past 500 years, the Mexican people have been an "in between" group, with each individual deciding where he or she belonged based on economic and cultural advantage. . .

Gregory Rodriguez directs the California Fellows Program and is an Irvine Senior Fellow at New America Foundation.