Ethnicity Here

I live in a small Southwestern American city where more than 60% of the people speak Spanish at home. So how well does this work out? (As seen from the perspective of a monolingual Anglo from a Northwestern State).

Pretty darn well, actually. I don't want to portray us as some sort of post-ethnic paradise, but we go to the same churches, and our children go to the same schools and play on the same football, basketball, soccer and baseball teams. Our politicians, including the mayor, have been black, white, and Hispanic. Our neighborhoods are integrated and we intermarry.

Partly this is a matter of tradition. Our town has been majority Hispanic since its founding, but Buffalo Soldiers joined the mix well over a hundred years ago and a steady stream of immigrants from the rest of the US has joined with other immigrants from Mexico.

When we got here, it was a source of some amusement to us that there were old-line Spanish speaking families here with Norwegian, Sikh, German and English family names. We got used to it.

As I say, it's not a post-ethnic paradise. There are tensions, and there are gangs in the schools, and there is gang violence - fortunately not at big city levels. There is significant separation on economic lines, and the flood of mostly wealthy, old, and white recent immigrants has upset some balances of power. Fortunately, most of those with ethnic chips on their shoulders have been kind enough to stay away.

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