Assimilation Didn’t Save Me— It Denied My Humanity

Refinery29 Somos continues our preservation of customs that serve us and our retiring of those that don’t this Latine Heritage Month. In 2023, we’re exploring how Latines are pushing back on assimilation by resurrecting and remixing traditions so they serve us today.

The rolling clouds threatened rain one morning as I stood outside the velvet rope on New York’s 45th Street and 12th Avenue in a brand new suit sans umbrella — anxious for access, but I was not on the list. A young man wearing a lanyard scanned the pages fastened to his clipboard, lifted his eyes, now circumspect, and asked me to step aside to allow actual invitees to enter while he radioed a gatekeeper inside.

This wasn’t the kind of event that bruised your ego if you were turned away at the door. At least not in my book. But I was chasing a story. Donald Trump was president, and the daily outrage his brand of unabashed racism incited grew exhausting and deadly. I was eager for a sense of community — some armor to fortify my pride, some joy to quell the anger, and a story that could uplift others, too. My hope that all this could be found at an event billed as an assembly of Hispanic leadership inside a government office led me to confront the truth of assimilation: It won’t save us, but it has always harmed us.

Raised in a predominantly white town in New Jersey by a Honduran mother and Ecuadorian father, I suffered from a crisis of identity unlike those around me. From a very young age, my looks distinguished me. My textured hair, brown skin, and Spanish-speaking parents telegraphed a message to the affluent, all-white community we lived in but would never be a part of: We were “invaders” who didn’t belong and needed to go back to our own country.

Assumptions about me and my family’s unworthiness had long been decided and harshly imposed. And, I learned quickly, it was not the responsibility of the prejudiced to interrogate them; it was up to us to change their minds — through assimilation, a process where marginalized communities attempt to erase their differences in an effort to fit in with the culture, values, behaviors, and beliefs of dominant society.

Years later, I wanted to believe that safety could be found among Latines — that people of like-identity could also be of like-mind. But I was wrong. The two-day event that I eventually made it into featured talks, panels, and fireside chats from C-suite executives, musicians, and politicians who all pledged to coalesce under the mantle of “Hispanic Excellence.” According to organizers, 77% of “Hispanics” had no idea of their contributions to this country. So the goal of the affair was to empower and educate Latines by making them aware of their power players and how they could emulate that power. But, like the non-Latine white world I grew up in, the metrics of this corporatized movement also measured our power in achievement: education, wealth, and privilege. Again, it was reiterated, this time by my own alleged community, that humanity is not given; it is earned — and you secure it through assimilation.

Throughout the event, students would rise to qualify themselves as prime examples of the program’s success. The model minorities, they stated their cultural identities, alma maters, and accolades. Attendees looked on adoringly and applauded as each returned to their seats. Meanwhile, I felt like running and grabbing as many impressionable minds as I could on my way out. But also, to my horror, I felt like staying and winning the approval of this sinister council and self-appointed leadership for the Latine community.

“Again, it was reiterated, this time by my own alleged community, that humanity is not given; it is earned — and you secure it through assimilation.”

Later in the program, a representative from Ancestry.com led an “exploration of identity through the results of an aggregate DNA summary,” a talk which dabbled problematically in theories of blood quantum and seemed to give permission to white Latine attendees eager to justify their self-proclaimed “browness” for clout. Next, The New York Times columnist Bret Stephens spoke with Rev. Jesse Jackson, Sr. about learning from other communities. A few weeks later, Stephens would argue for the veracity of eugenicist logic in his column, a belief he failed to mention to the reverend that day.

Then, there was the grand finale: Wearing a gown fit for a beauty pageant and hair teased to the gods, the hostess proudly revealed a national campaign designed to “change the perception of Hispanics” in the U.S. But she needed our help. The dictates were as follows: “It’s all about us. We’re happy, we have no pain, this is not like Black Lives Matter where we’re complaining. We’re celebrating,” she said. While an audible gasp escaped my gaping mouth, around the room heads nodded in agreement and hands raised as if at an auction. These Hispanics were eager to pledge their allegiance and support, to be seen as “stars,” no matter the cost.

“These Hispanics were eager to pledge their allegiance and support, to be seen as “stars,” no matter the cost.”

In Behold America, author Sarah Churchwell writes that assimilation was historically proposed as the antidote to xenophobia, a strategic measure to combat the rise of white nationalism at the turn of the 20th century. But the agenda of assimilation, the blueprint of nation-building in the U.S., is at its core anti-Black. It’s created to center and perpetuate white male privilege, and it fortifies that power with the support of so-called “good immigrants” who align themselves with whiteness in the misguided hope that they’ll be able to collect the crumbs.

According to Churchwell, assimilation as the path to upward mobility — a promise that came to be known as the American dream — was first used in a 1918 review of the immigrant memoir An American in the Making. Imposing an American ethno-nationalism on all incoming citizens served to recruit cheap labor but also loyal soldiers — as it continues to do today.

For instance, of the more than 1,100 Capital riot cases, Enrique “Henry” Tarrio, the Afro-Cuban former leader of the far-right neo-facist group Proud Boys, was handed the harshest sentence on record for his role in the January 6 attack. While he was not physically present on the day — having been ordered to leave Washington, DC, two days prior for his defacement of a Black Lives Matter banner — prosecutors still sought 33 years in prison for his actions as a “ringleader” orchestrating a plot to dismantle democracy and fomenting hatred and unrest from afar.

“The agenda of assimilation, the blueprint of nation-building in the U.S., is at its core anti-Black. It’s created to center and perpetuate white male privilege, and it fortifies that power with the support of so-called ‘good immigrants’ who align themselves with whiteness in the misguided hope that they’ll be able to collect the crumbs.”

On the day of sentencing, Tarrio pleaded for mercy. “I am not a political zealot. Inflicting harm or changing the results of the election was not my goal. Please show me mercy,” he begged. “I ask you that you not take my 40s from me.” The judge responded with a 22-year sentence, a punishment that surpassed non-Latine white Stewart Rhodes, founder of the armed pro-Trump militia the Oath Keepers, and the longest of his fellow Proud Boys who received 15 and 18 year sentences for the same charges of seditious conspiracy. Once again, assimilation, to the extent of violent, white supremacy, did not help Tarrio. Similarly, subscribing to the anti-Black agenda of assimilation espoused in this “Hispanic” excellence event will only destroy us and our communities.

Following the conference, I knew I had a story — not the glowing feature intended to elevate the platform but an exposé, a warning of the dangers, false promises, and the corruption packaged and pandered annually during Hispanic Heritage Month.

The resistance against assimilation does not begin nor can it end on the surface of what people can see — how we do our hair or nails, how we talk, or how we dress, for instance, though these cultural markers have meaning and that meaning is ours to explore and define.

“We must live our histories and in their truth find the path forward to healing as a community, emancipating our futures from the colonial past.”

No, assimilation can only be canceled by our awareness — by understanding that our susceptibility to and complicity with systems of power, and aligning ourselves with it for personal safety or gain, inevitably harms others and ourselves.

The “melting pot” became the country’s first metaphor for assimilation in 1889. The phrase likened people to various metals tossed into a scalding vat, boiling all its individual properties in order to emerge as one shiny uniform coin. For immigrants and their progeny, this process is just as searing. We are left with wounds cauterized by gatekeepers as payment, blistering from the denial of our humanity. But we must live our histories and in their truth find the path forward to healing as a community, emancipating our futures from the colonial past.