Team 4: Generational Latinx Attitudes Towards Success: The American Dream

By: Samantha P., Sofia F., Martin S., Stacy M., Bea E

Abstract

Globalization has allowed us to enhance our point of view around the world. One constant that transcends cultural boundaries is that success is defined by one means: achieving your goals. Through these interviews we will be assessing and analyzing the Latinx/Chicanx community through their distinct approaches towards success from various personal and societal factors. Within this research there are some key terms that will be looked at in relation to success some of which include: money, success, work, family, job. Cultural differences can often be subtle, yet critical when it comes to a person’s development. An individual’s personality and attitude changes through observation, experiences and learning environment, all of which contribute to an individual’s attitude towards success. For our research, we will quantitatively analyze our collected empirical data through sentiment analysis and term frequency, and make conclusions about generational perceptions of success through applications of political and social theory.

Methods of Research

In the following section, the methods used to conduct the interviews where the didactic theme of family unity through language was observed are stated. First, CITI training provided from the school was necessary in order to be properly educated on the matter to conduct proper interviews and be licensed by St. Edward’s University. After we received our certification and St. Edward’s University gave us the authority to perform the interviews, paperwork was prepared. All people that were interviewed were adults of Hispanic/Latino origin and are from the Austin/San Marcos area. Before the interviews were conducted, everyone who was interviewed was given a consent form to read and sign to be in accordance with us interviewing them. The person interviewed and the interviewer kept a copy of this consent form for filing purposes. After consent forms were handed out and signed, a demographic questionnaire about the person interviewed and the interviewer was assessed to see certain demographic characteristics about these certain people. Next, the interviews were performed which consisted of questions about their personal life, the Hispanic community, and the US-Mexico border. Each interview ranged from 30-45 minutes and questions were adjusted in accordance to the flow of the conversation. Finally, the atmosphere of the interviews were recorded in field notes and the interviews were transcribed and cleaned with the help of Google Colab and Microsoft Word. All of the documents were uploaded into the BOX website found in the Canvas school platform.

Research Topic

We will be examining Latinx/Chicanx sentiment towards Americanized notions of socio-economic success, and how social, political, historical and economic modes of oppression affect the psyche of this community. Generally, interviews had positive results in their sentiment analysis, meaning that our interviewees had positive feelings and responses to questions about their experiences and livelihoods in Central Texas, particularly in connection to their perceptions of success.

Literature Review

Latinos are rarely portrayed as successful and quietly boast their success. According to a study by the Stanford Graduate School of Business, if Latino businesses grew as fast as the U.S. average, they could add $1.4 trillion to the U.S. economy. While this is an extensive amount, many Latinos struggle with full inclusion in the workplace, and also have much experience as it pertains to their communities and are very knowledgeable on the history of their elders and their own struggles with inclusion in American society. Young Latinos have a growing entrepreneurial effect on the U.S. economy by starting small businesses at a rate faster than any other demographic, and are starting up businesses faster than any other demographic as well. There is a powerful unity dynamic that is growing among young Latino professionals who strive to put any sense of existing as “other,” especially in the workforce. While these struggles are still prevalent, the mindset on success is generational as more young Latinos are openly believing and advocating about being winners and that they will succeed and work to succeed until they have reached their goal; it has become a lifestyle and a mindset. Business owners show that they are consistently increasing opportunities and develop business plans to branch out on their own.

 Table 1: Pearson’s Correlations Between Success and Other Factors (Academic Satisfaction, Sense of Belonging, and Friends Rating of University), from “Comparing First and Second Generation Latin@ Transfer Students: Factors that Lead to Academic Persistence and Success.”

Research Findings

By using an interdisciplinary approach, such as the application of historical methods, social theory, political theory, economic analysis, etc. to the empirical data collected in our field work, we can begin to understand the roots of success as an ideological and social value that is shared within the community. Seeing as success is closely related to terms “job” and “money” from our topic modeling data set, it can be concluded that the generalized Latinx interpretation of success is based on the collection of capital and social standing, an idea born from the system of capitalism in the US and concurrently, the development of the “American Dream.” Typical Anglo-American interpretations of success shaped the American Dream for immigrants coming to the US: the term was first coined during the Great Depression, though the idea itself surely existed before this (Leonhardt, 2016). The process of double colonization, and the long standing ramifications of such oppressive and exploitative systems implemented by colonists resulted in a legacy of overachievement, which is evident from our field work. Systemic oppression, generational poverty, lack of representation, among many other forms of racism against the Latinx community, are odds that members of the community feel obligated to overcome. This was the true birth of the American Dream as we know it today.

Our interviews also revealed that age, socioeconomic status and citizenship played a significant role in how success was spoken about by participants. Though our data represents an overwhelmingly positive sentiment, there are some segments from interviews which reflect either ambiguous or somewhat negative sentiment about careers, jobs, family dynamics and other forms of success. These segments reflect the personal and behavioral, rather than systemic modes of oppression. The formation of identity is an inherently personal process; the way in which these identities are shown and expressed is even more personal. In using a behaviorist approach to how politics and identity intersect in defining success within the Latinx community, we are able to better interpret these nuances in sentiment analysis that may be neglected if analyzed only through a systemic lens.

Whiteness as property mirrors the idea of citizenship as property, particularly with the Mexican-American/Latinx experience in Central Texas. The principles of domination and nativism that permeate American socio political systems reflect how labor, particularly the idea of labor, affects nonwhite communities and the development of stereotypes. Although an individual may be a citizen and reap benefits of this citizenship, the social status of many Latinx people is “indelibly marked by its non-whiteness and subordinate character” (Gomez, 2018). Some social constructions are more valuable than others, but racialization and perceived deservingness of a wage, or jobs, increases individual self-determination to defy negative stereotypes by unintentionally (or sometimes, intentionally) giving in to apparently positive stereotypes, such as the idea that Latinx people work harder than any other racial group held by the dominant culture in the US. The trapping of an entire community into the choice between two dehumanizing stereotypes reflects the legacy of exploitation that occurred during double colonization, revealing self-determination as a sort of myth in the grand interpretation of Latinx concepts of labor and success.

The upholding of racial hierarchy under the American capitalist structure maintains these racist, anti-immigrant ideologies, while simultaneously purporting the American Dream. The dominant group (Anglo-Americans) is able to express an abundance of power on the world stage to attract immigrant labor while also victimizing themselves by spreading misinformation about immigrants’ deservingness of such labor, constructing a supposed scarcity of resources and inability (or rather unwillingness) to accept immigrants. Such contradicting dichotomies that plague the American economic system affect the ideology of Latinx individuals. Looking at this phenomena through the lens of social identity theory, we see that members of the Latinx community who are citizens generally engage in recategorization by adopting the American definition of success in order to manage their identity and increase personal social status. Those who have a greater sense of immigrant-linked fate generally engage more in social competition, which aims to reverse dominance roles, and challenges the idea of the American Dream (Blanz et.al, 1998). The competing socio-cultural values of individualism versus collectivism based on citizenship status is present through the analysis of these two ideological phenomena in the Latinx social psyche.

Figure 2: Sentiment Analysis of Participant 329, a college student in their 20s who emigrated to the US from Mexico at the age of 10. They expressed feeling isolated in school, which increased their propensity to social competition-affirming ideology.

Work and success is one of the highest priorities for younger Latino generations, especially if there is a longer bloodline tied to being born or raised in the US. For instance, many Latinos have sustained bloodlines dating back to the 1800s in places like Montana working as fur traders, ranchers, rail workers, and laborers and we are beginning to see changes in cultural preferences when defining success. Changing priorities can elicit different outlooks on success, such as the way it is viewed and used as an identity-management tool, which is especially true for younger generations. They feel as if they have a much stronger and direct voice about their rights politically and in the workplace and have gained much more knowledge on what is needed to succeed and how they can attain more power compared to former generations.

Through these new generational experiences, young Latino professionals also recognize and touch a lot on comparisons between their ideal lifestyles with their jobs in comparison to their parent’s lifestyle choices regarding “hard work, money and jobs.” Although young Latinos are still experiencing feelings of displacement and discrimination in the workplace, they believe the workplace culture regarding race and ethnicity is vastly different from what their parents and grandparents experienced. Young Latino professionals feel like their ideas are more accepted, they feel valued and they see the possibilities for growth in their professional field. Older generations are quite the opposite. Elder Latinos have harsher experiences in the workplace, especially if they were not born or raised in the US or around US culture and have had to make the journey to finding work in the US from a different country.

Our sentiment analysis reveals that young interviewees showed greater levels of optimism about personal growth and success. Older interviewees have somewhat different results: people in their 40s have generally high positive sentiments, whereas there is some change in sentiment with people in their 30s on the basis of economic status and career. Having an established career and a high sense of economic identity provides higher positive sentiment concerning success. For young interviewees, the prospect of success as a college student also provides a higher positive sentiment concerning success. This finding validates Gonzales’ assertion that sense of belonging and academic satisfaction lead to positive sentiment from Table 1.

Figure 3: Sentiment Analysis of Participant 329, a college student in their 20s.

Higher education is also a common theme in terms of succeeding. Many have had successful parents who attend university and beyond and the importance of education is instilled in many young Latinos since birth. The American Dream in the Latinx community runs very consistent with the American Dream of many non-Latinx people in the US. Many millennial Latinos have often spoken of their proudest moments which include owning a home, running a business of their own, raising a healthy family and excelling in their career. The same is true for older generations, but with more concentration on family overall and less on excelling.

Figure 4: Sentiment Analysis of Participant 334, who is in their 40s and has a Bachelors’ Degree, as well as a parent with a professional degree.

Our TF-IDF (term frequency–inverse document frequency) revealed that location, language, school and people (particularly family members) were the most used terms by our interviewees. Identity descriptors, such as Hispanic, indigenous, and Mexican, were used by participants who had familial and historical roots in the US-Mexico border. We can conclude that proximity to spaces where identity is paid greater attention by the dominant group, such as the border, could potentially instill a higher sense of identity via linked fate within the Latinx community. However, there would need to be a larger pool of participants to actually test and confirm this hypothesis.

Conclusion

Through these interviews, we have seen some intriguing results concerning the way the Latinx community thinks about and approaches success. After analyzing the results, we have come to the conclusion that the Latinx community has adapted different ways to showcase their success. The older generation used to keep personal information about their money and jobs to themselves, whereas the younger generation is more willing to showcase their talent and status. Socioeconomic status and citizenship is also a major factor in determining success. With that being said, a common theme throughout our interviews is that success is a central tenet to the cultural, social, economic and political actions of Latinx people, which affects the presentations of their identity.

 

Works Cited