Jessica Alba Gets It!

In a recent interview with Para Todos magazine, the lovely lady had this to say:

Alba is my last name and I'm proud of that. But that's it. My grandparents were born in California, the same as my parents, and though I may be proud of my last name, I'm American. Throughout my whole life, I've never felt connected to one particular race or heritage, nor did I feel accepted by any. If you break it down, I'm less Latina than Cameron Diaz, whose father is Cuban. But people don't call her Latina because she's blonde…

My grandfather was the only Mexican at his college, the only Hispanic person at work and the only one at the all-white country club. He tried to forget his Mexican roots, because he never wanted his kids to be made to feel different in America. He and my grandmother didn't speak Spanish to their children. Now, as a third-generation American, I feel as if I have finally cut loose.

My whole life, when I was growing up, not one race has ever accepted me, ... So I never felt connected or attached to any race specifically. I had a very American upbringing, I feel American, and I don't speak Spanish. So, to say that I'm a Latin actress, OK, but it's not fitting; it would be insincere.

For this she has been excoriated by ethnic activists who are trying to erect and maintain barriers to assimilation. Yet, Ms. Alba epitomizes what we think of as the American dream -- representing an immigrant family whose members chose to play by the rules, worked hard, assimilated, got a good education, moved into the national mainstream, and reaped the rewards of their efforts. Read about it here.

Similarly, Bill Cosby has been widely denounced by prominent Black activists for urging young people to assimilate to the American mainstream and Arnold Schwarzenegger has recently come under fire for telling Latinos to assimilate.

Many commentators have found this disturbing and are alarmed by the development of a large, well-organized, and determinedly separatist Latino movement. But I am not so worried.

The creation of imagined ethnic identities and the erection of separate communities of resentment are nothing new in America. The most persistent of these -- think of the Pennsylvania Dutch who have maintained a separate identity for centuries -- are shunted to the margins. Others, like the Irish Catholics, maintained their position on the margins for generations, but have gradually moved toward the mainstream and as they did, their fortunes improved. Others, like the late nineteenth-century Jewish influx, moved rapidly toward the mainstream and quickly ascended to positions of real power and influence within our national institutions.

A generation ago Arthur Schlesinger warned about the "Disuniting of America." His alarm was well-intentioned and founded in cogent analysis of the ethnic enthusiasms that emerged out of the civil rights movement, but the phenomenon was nothing new. The disuniting and reuniting of America has been going on for centuries. There is no reason to assume that the latest wave of immigrants will be much different from those who arrived in the past.