Autumn, 1998, Vol. 5,
No. 1
The Myth of Homogeneity
Karen Lambeth May: 2nd Year Administration
Maria Cruz and her family ate arroz con gandules and pasteles for Christmas dinner. Her daughter’s madrina was there too. The family moved to Chicago from Puerto Rico 13 years ago. This summer they will buy their first house. They speak Spanish at home, sometimes. They are Catholic. They play Nintendo. They have "assimilated" into mainland U.S. family values—two parent family, single family home. They have "assimilated" into Chicago’s Puerto Rican community- Catholicism, traditional holiday meals, la madrina. Or have they? Maria Cruz and her daughter’s madrina are lesbian partners. They left Puerto Rico when Maria’s family, finding out she was a lesbian, deemed her an unfit mother and petitioned for custody of her baby. Maria doesn’t go to Catholic church anymore. Homosexuality is a sin. Maria’s family doesn’t fit machismo-marianismo stereotypes. Nor does it fit butch-femme stereotypes. Hers is a hardworking, two parent family that no culture will claim.
Family formation and structure are often used as a measure of cultural assimilation- the presence of extended family members, nonmarital fertility, and postponement of marriage. These measures of assimilation reinforce the myth of a homogeneous American family unit (heterosexual and nuclear) by which "others" may be measured. Assimilation itself is mistakenly understood as a unidirectional process whereby "newcomers" become relatively indistinguishable from American mainstream culture. But who decides what American mainstream culture is? Who decides what the traditional American family looks like? In reviewing the writings of Richard Rodriquez, Cherríe Moraga, and Gloria Anzaldúa, this article will examine the complexity of the assimilation process. Specifically, I will use the example of homosexuality to illustrate the difficulty of assimilating to or from cultures that are assumed to be homogeneous.
Rodriquez, Moraga, and Anzaldúa have at least three things in common; they are all Hispanic, homosexual, and well-educated. Richard Rodriguez (1992) describes his experience as one in which gay males in San Francisco gentrified a neighborhood of Victorian homes and, thus, "found themselves living within the architectural metaphor for family" (p. 30). He describes the irony of gay men reclaiming the house while gay women and feminists fought to free themselves from it. Rodriquez (1992) describes his own process as one in which he could not assimilate into the role of the Mexican patriarch or the middle class head of household with the family in the suburbs. Rodriquez (1992) must assimilate into a more obscure cultural group, that of the middle-class, homosexual, Mexican-American male. Where will he find this new group to which he must belong?
Moraga (1983) describes her own assimilation as a relatively smooth process as long as she "feigned being the happy, upwardly mobile heterosexual" (PG. #). Following her identification with herself as a lesbian, she realized that she no longer "fit" as comfortably into the white or Chicana roles with which previously identified. She asks, "to whose camp, then, should the lesbian of color retreat?" (1983, p.X).
Anzaldúa (1983) describes the difficulty of trying to assimilate when one is asked to choose among distinct movements- such as the feminist movement, the Gay movement, the Chicano movement. Identifying with one group signifies betrayal to the rest. While each group fights for their respective piece of her identity, no single group or culture will accept her as a whole. "Both cultures deny me a place in their universe. Between them and among others, I build my own universe, El Mundo Zurdo. I belong to myself and not to any one people" (1983, p. 209). Or maybe she’s just assimilated into Protestant individualism.
The benefit that these three authors share is that of choice. They regret having to choose among groups and they do suffer consequences for the choices they make. Still, their middle-class, well educated status allows them, at least, to choose. Maria Cruz isn’t so fortunate. She’s poor; she lives in the barrio; she has dark skin and kinky hair; she’s not educated. She doesn’t self-reflect. She doesn’t spend her days thinking about oppression and racism. All she knows is that she doesn’t quite fit. Anywhere. But she can’t articulate this feeling. Maria Cruz’ experience of assimilation is probably more typical than that of Rodriquez, Moraga, and Anzaldúa. She’s not struggling to belong; she’s just trying to get along. She really just wants to buy her own home and enjoy her family. But, no one will acknowledge her belonging.
Assimilation, like race, is a social construct. It represents a short cut by which we can classify people according to their similarities and refuse to acknowledge their differences. The conflict of assimilation that arises when the heterogeneity of cultures is not recognized is more an unfortunate social condition than a social problem. The refusal to recognize diversity within cultures is, in my opinion, another dimension of racism and ethnocentrism. For Anglo American society, then, accepting heterogeneity of other cultures would mean recognizing heterogeneity in our own society as well. Unfortunately, as a society, we are not yet willing to debunk the myth of a "mainstream American culture."
References
Anzaldúa, Gloria. (1983). "La Prieta". In Cherríe Moraga & Gloria Anzaldúa (Eds.), This bridge called my Back: Writings by radical women of color. New York: Kitchen Table.
Moraga, Cherríe. (1983). "La Guera". In Cherríe Moraga, & Gloria Anzaldúa(Eds.), This bridge called my back: Writings by radical women of color. New York: Kitchen Table.
Rodriguez, Richard (1992). Days of obligation: An argument with my Mexican father. New York: Penguin Books.
