Things for Thought

Discussion Questions from Phillip and Joe

1)During the 1960s most Latino Americans were more likely to focus on their regional or national origins and few saw their selves as part of a multi-national entity; many would describe their self as a ‘hyphenated american’.
Discussion: What does this term hyphenated american mean on the surface level and beyond the surface level?

2) The following four decades following the 1960s the Latino identity shifted due to the population boom of the Latino community. In fact an overall sense of latinidad came into formation.
Latinidad is a collective sense of cultural affinity & identity deeply rooted in what many Latinos perceive to be a shared historical, spiritual, aesthetic,& linguistic heritage; and a growing sense of cultural affinity and solidarity in the social context of the U.S.
Discussion: How was the development of Latinidad, which was instrumental in creating the ethnic group for latinos, facilitated by the U.S.?

3) Between 1990 and 2000 the United States allowed the most immigrants in their history into the country.
The Immigrants were drawn by two main sources:

4) The Hart-Cellar Act was instrumental in the immigration of the Latino minority.
The Hart-Cellar Act (1965) greatly liberalized the immigration process by abolishing favoritism towards any national origins.
Many Latinos are looked at as a group of people who hold lower end jobs. This seems to be due to the process of Segmented Assimilation.
Segmented Assimilation is an adaptive experience of immigrants. The traditional model of assimilation has four phases to it: contact, competition, accommodation, and then assimilation. Segmented assimilation is a skewed form of assimilation that does not have all the steps the preferred model does.
Since recent working class immigrants enter an economic structure that has been harshly polarized between inferior skilled, inferior status, low paid occupations at the bottom, versus those who are highly skilled, superior status, and high paid occupations in the upper class, the immigrants are at a disadvantage.

5) At the beginning of the Spanish conquest there were between 60-110 million Native Americans. By the 1500’s that number decreased tremendously. What were some of the causes for the large decrease in the Indian population?

6) Religion played a very large role during the new world era. What are some ways the Spaniards use religion in the conquest of the new world?

7) When it came to the idea of land use, the Spaniards had many different philosophies than the English. What were some of these viewpoints that the Spanish had when it came to the subject of land management?