Sociology 100: Introduction to Sociology

A. Green

Sociology 100: Introduction to Sociology

Take Home Writing Assignment #2

I will be discussing two excerpts from the Twelve Stories, collected by Alejandro Portes and Ruben Rumbaut. I will be discussing the second generation immigrant children and how their socialized to adapt to their living environments. I also will compare these stories to the chart Portes and Rumbaut came up with based on these stories.

I read the story from Mary Patterson: February 1995 her family came from Trinidad they spoke there British-accented English. Mary spoke American English. Her parents were professionals from Trinidad. Mary was treated as the American black populations. Many times Caucasian people would disrespect her based her race. She acculturated fast she began taking lessons from her mother trying to regain her islands accent. Her parents took longer to acculturate their homeland accents are still with them. This family is not immersed in an ethnic community it seems to only be them. Based on the chart the predicted outcome for the child would be joint search for integration into American mainstream; rapid shift to English monolingualism among children. Mary stated she is determined to succeed. She plans to surpass her mother by attending medical School. Based on the evidence presented in this story of second generation immigrants the child would definitely correspond with the chart as consonant acculturation.

The second excerpt I read was about Melanie Fernandez-Rey: Miami, September 1993 Melanie's parents are Nicaraguans the came to the United States in 1986, escaping the Sandinista revolution. In the U.S. they face legal problems so far as citizenship. They have been able to get work permits but no guaranteed residency. They have been just taking whatever jobs they can to get by. Her mother Milagros finally received approval from her request of permanent residency, but still waiting for her card to make it official, while Roberto Melanie's step father still waits. Melanie has bounced from grade to grade, growing fluent in English forgetting her home Spanish and dreaming of American life. She is determined to go to college she get excellent grades. Her family just can't afford college it. Melanie does not give up though. Melanie is acculturating fast despite her families' struggles. Her parents acculturating are hard and lengthy based on their will to seek residency the family is not immersed in an Ethnical way. As Melanie learns the American way her the cultural ways are forgotten. The predicted outcome for the child would be rupture of family ties and children's abandonment of ethnic communities; limited bilingualism or English monolingualism among children. The evidence in the stories of the second generation immigrants does correspond to the predicted outcomes chart as dissonant acculturation.

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