This may seem like an editorial -- and it may, in fact, seem to start out as though I'm giving you a chunk of my "opinion" on "race".....but folks, you're going to have to hang on until near the end to see what I'm really after.

I know a Dominican lady named Elpidia. She is the sister-in-law of a good friend of mine, Miguel. When I met her, back in the 1980s, she was a very good-natured young woman who was of humble origins, but yet had a certain classiness in behavior. I remember going back to Dominican Republic to visit relatives in the early 1990s and noting that Elpidia was nowhere to be found. I asked where she was and was told that she had married a Spaniard and had moved to Spain. Later, I saw some photos and slides of Elpidia in her new life in Spain and observed how smoothly she had transformed herself into a cosmopolitan European denizen of Madrid. And Elpidia is not the only one. Another girl I knew named Veronica did much the same thing shortly afterwards -- and other friends of mine have witnessed similar marriages of Dominican women to Spaniards.

At the time of Elpidia's marriage, I had chuckled to myself and thought how improbable it would have been for a Dominican male to have married a Spanish female. To a certain extent, this is because of what sociologists call the marriage gradient. Because of male chauvinism and sexism, it is more permissable for a poor female to marry a more educated and/or more well-to-do male than vice-versa. Hence, I would have been extremely surprised if one of Elpidia's brothers (and she has several) had been able to attract a (more) well-educated and wealthier Spanish woman.

Here in the U.S., the marriage gradient operates as well. Because of it, the scenario of Latina women of humble origins being more acceptable to better-educated and wealthier Anglo men is more common than the one of Latino men of lower socio-economic levels being acceptable as marriage partners of higher-status Anglo females. Before I go further, let me insert a caveat: I am talking about broad trends and aggregates -- I am not saying that this is always the case (my own parents went against this trend).

However, the out-marriages of Latina women to Anglo men are numerous enough (both numerically and with respect to percentages) so as to be noteworthy to both the sociologist and the layman. Presently, states like California are witnesses to large-scale numbers of intermarriages between Anglos and Latinos -- and the majority of these marriages involve Latina females and Anglo males. It has to be noted at this point that the common practice of naming wife and offspring the surname of the father would have the practical result of probably eliminating Spanish surnames altogether from a resultant nuclear family in which the father is Anglo and the mother is Latina.

An ungodly percentage of antagonistic postings at Interracial Voice have involved acceptance (and non-acceptance) of the One Drop Rule. There is little or no official One Drop Rule operating for Latinos. Latinos have always had more latitude in how their children are defined. How, indeed, do the offspring of Latino/Anglo marriages define themselves "racially"? How should they?

* "White"?
* Latino?
* Multiracial?
* "Black"?
* American?

Is there a difference if the Anglo parent is male or female? Do surnames matter?

What if the "Anglo" parent isn't of predominant European ancestry? How do "eyeballing" (how one is judged by others) factors enter into it? How does one's upbringing enter into it? And the most important question of all:

How are these "racial" self-definitions affecting the U.S.?

I sincerely hope that the process of trying to answer these questions -- in succeeding postings here at Interracial Voice and elsewhere, will have the effect of further opening up dialogue on Latinos and their place in the 21st Century United States.

Readers......feel free to.......

William Javier Nelson, Ph.D.

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