http://www.jstor.org/stable/827827
"My grandparents didn't get special language instruction in school. In fact,
they never finished high school because they had to work for a living." Latinos hear this and similar statements every time the question of bilingual education comes up. Such statements highlight an important difference - the maintenance of another
language and the development of interlingual forms-between this "new" immigrant
group and the "older," "ethnic" immigrants. The fact is that Latinos, that very heterogeneous medley of races, classes and nationalities are different from both the "older" and the "new" ethnics. To begin with, Latinos do not comprise even a relatively homogeneous "ethnicity." Latinos include native-born U.S. citizens (predominantly Chicanos - Mexican-Americans - and Nuyoricans - "mainland"
Puerto Ricans) and Latin American immigrants of all racial and national combinations: white - including a range of different European nationalities - Native-American, black, Arabic, and Asian. It is thus a mistake to lump them all under the category "racial minority," although historically the U.S. experiences of large
numbers of Mexican-Americans and Puerto Ricans are adequately described
by this concept. Moreover, both of these groups - unlike any of the European immigrant groups - constitute, with Native-Americans, "conquered minorities."
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