Week 10 Reading Response 1

In the 2002 “National Survey of Latinos,” 2,929 adult Latinos from various backgrounds were chosen to be surveyed in order to set out “to capture the diversity” of the Latinos population. Included in this survey, was 171 African Americans, and 1,008 whites for comparison. The Pew Hispanic Center/Kaiser Family Foundation who put the survey together, found that as a whole the Hispanic population in the United States had different attitudes, beliefs, and values; that are different from non-Hispanic whites and African Americans. It was noticed that their was no single, homogeneous Latino opinion. It was found that the Hispanics who are Spanish speakers, fill strongly that Hispanics must learn English in order to be successful in the United States. It is more common today to find English spoken in the Hispanic population. They found that if a Hispanic immigrated to the United States at a young age, they were more likely to speak English as an adult. The primarily used language of foreign born Latinos was Spanish dominant and native born Latinos were English dominant. By the age in which Latinos immigrated and their use of English dominancy, was found that the younger they were when they moved to the United States, gave a higher chance to be English dominant. Third generation United States Hispanics mostly used English as the dominant language. African Americans, Whites and Hispanics all argued that adult Hispanic immigrants need to learn to speak English to succeed in the United States. I found this survey very interesting. I have come across many Hispanic immigrants who did not speak English. When their was Hispanic immigrants in school, they would take a class to learn to speak English, and take the rest of their classes in Spanish until they learned English. I was surprised to read that Hispanic immigrants were found to speak English at such a high number.