Generation X Latinos: A 21st Century Identity Crisis
by Rodolpho Carrasco
in Sojourners magazine, December 1994
(Rodolpho Carrasco is associate director of Harambee Christian Family Center in Pasadena, Calif. and a columnist for the San Gabriel Valley Newspaper Group. Check out more articles by Rodolpho Carrasco here.)
The majority of Generation X Latinos perceive that our faith sects (Catholic, and Protestant) have little to say about the issues that affect us most: technology-induced future shock, multiculturalism's variations and offspring, a national debt as frightening as a velociraptor, AIDS, and (perhaps most important) race and identity. What better way to explain the phenomenon of countless young Latinos leaving -- in their own words, escaping -- our religious institutions?
In San Antonio, it's reported that 3% of Catholic youth attend mass every Sunday. Chicago Protestant pastors report a local example of a national phenomenon: young people raised in Latino congregations leaving for Anglo-dominated superchurches or just dropping the faith altogether. In Los Angeles, Christian leaders report youth active in lowrider car and bicycle clubs, Quebradita and Rap crews, tagbanging and gangbanging -- but not in church. This is tragic, because my generation needs to hear a Biblical message: that we are God's children, and our father considers all that we are -- including including our race, culture, gender, economic status -- to be valuable.
But since my generation does not access the Bible nor the resources of the Bible-believing church, we search for identity and racial validation elsewhere. Will the new, Latino-conscious media such as CULTURE CLASH's FOX network comedy show, Tejano music, Quebradita and bilingual rap, and the growing list of Madison Avenue published Latino authors do it? Will pride in our history, in being Chicano, Puerto Rican, Tejano, Guatemalan, Salvadoran do it? Will our hard-fought-for economic and political power do it? I think, instinctively, we sense that these and other trappings of a newer, friendlier U.S. Latino future won't do it.
The complexity of the race and identity question in particular represents too deep a chasm between our current understanding of ourselves and what we imagine we should be. What does it mean to be Latino/Hispanic/mestizo/whatever? Yes, I may have grown up in a Mexican home, raised by parents who immigrated from Mexico, but my public schooling has de-emphasized the Mexican and helped create new parts that are American, rather, Latino. Now throw interracial relationships into the picture -- not just the ever-present Latino-White, but Latino-Black and Latino-Asian - and you have an identity crisis fit for the 21st century.
And so many people dare to say to me, "Look, aren't we all just Americans?" No. I and my generation of Latinos are Americans of the 21st century. Old racial divisions and terminoloy is dying. We need new words, new models, new dreams, to help us live in a new world. I personally believe that the age-old wisdom of the Bible can affirm my generation in all its complexity, while pointing to a greater, eternal harmony. But will the church be able to communicate this to us?
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