I had an interesting discussion in my California politics class today. We read Samuel Huntington’s article/screed in Foreign Policy on “The Hispanic Challenge” the United States faces as a result of what he thinks is unabated immigration from Mexico and other Latin American countries.

In the article, Huntington cites Miami as a city where assimilation is not required because the ethnic enclave created by the city’s Cuban/Latin American population is self-sufficient. I noted, having been born and raised in Miami, that Huntington was correct on one count: in Miami proper, Spanish is the public language. I compared that to my experience in California where even in predominantly Latino areas of Los Angeles, English still pervades as the public language . What explains the difference? We talked about the historical patterns of migration between the two groups. Miami was largely a tourist destination in the late 1950’s, so Cuban Americans had a largely blank canvas from which to create an ethnic enclave. That, the assistance from the federal government as political refugees led there to be diminished pressure to make English the public language of Miami.

Mexican-Americans migration to Southern California, on the other hand, has accelerated in recent years (Los Angeles was the “Whitest” city in the U.S. in 1940). The pressures for this group to assimilate has historically been stronger than for Cubans. Mexican-Americans have been in a constant battle for resources with other racial/ethnic groups and have been subject to traditional racial hierarchies and the pressure to conform to a Whiteness and Americanness standard that Cubans have largely been able to elide.

I’ve found it an interesting experience to go to restaurants in Los Angeles and order in Spanish only to have the waitress/waiter answer me in English. That would never happen in Miami.