¡Ask a Mexican! - racism

¡Ask a Mexican! by Gustavo Arellano

Dear Gabacho: The U.S. government shares your concerns, Took For Years. Its Dillingham Commission released a forty-two-volume study on the waves of immigrants that concluded, "The new immigration as a class is far less intelligent than the old...Generally speaking they are actuated in coming by different ideals, for the old immigration came to be a part of the country, while the new, in a large measure, comes with the intention of profiting, in a pecuniary way, by the superior advantages of the new world and then returning to the old country." The Dillingham report went on to fault the new immigration for their lack of assimilation and English skills, constantly contrasting them with earlier generations of immigrants and urged clampdowns on immigration. Sounds familiar, no? That's because the Dillingham report appeared in 1911, and the inassimilable masses at the time were Eastern and Southern Europeans. The Dillingham Commission proves that the time-honored conservative anecdote that earlier generations of immigrants walked off the boats, chopped down the multisyllabic surnames, and learned English immediately is bull-pinche-shit. American racism is a corousel--and here we go round again.
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