How Have Latinos Been Misrepresented?

Marisa Ruiz Sociology 251 19 December 2008 Question 10: How have Latinos been misrepresented in the research? What are some common experiences of Latinos in this country? With the growing number of Latinos on the rise, there is an increasing need to understand their population as a whole such as the studies conducted on any other racial group. Although, there are common experiences shared among Latinos in general, there are many distinctions that make each group within their population different from one another. But even when sociologist put forth the differences of this diverse group, there is much research needed to represent other less studied groups within the Latino population. In order to get valid statistics, it is imperative that each ethnic group within this population be thoroughly and equally represented. Thus, it is crucial that social scientist gather further information and conduct various studies each individual ethnicity. I found that the studies disseminated in our reading were incomplete and somewhat one-sided, therefore, not a true account of the Latino population. Evidently, there is much evidence that disputes the Latino representation in the research presented. In their article, Diversity within Latino Families: New Lessons for Family Science, Zinn and Wells indicate that although this diverse group is represented in research, “family scholarship can distort and misrepresent by faulty emphasis and false generalizations” (Skolnick 422). For example, general misconceptions and personal viewpoints of earlier social scientist have caused bias. Therefore, there isn’t much validity to their findings. Due to these one-sided studies there is an overwhelming need for social scientist today to replace any misconstruction

and conduct new studies that provide a sound and more reliable information on the Latino population. Another example of misconception from formal academic studies, was how Latino familieswere compared to what sociologist termed the “modern standard or traditional family” model. According to Zinn and Wells, in referring to a study on Mexican immigrant families, “… the immigrants and theirchildren were thought to be at odds with social requirements in the new settings. There family arrangements were treated as cultural exceptions to the rule of standard family development”. Evidently, these social scientist perceived that certain ethnic lifestyles evident in Mexican families was the cause of their socially disorganization (Skolnick 423). Latinos were also inaccurately represented due to the lack of information on some of the smaller groups within their population. When it came to Zinn and Wells analysis of the individual groups of Latinos, they were able to present a lot of information on the sociohistorical content of Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, and Cubans. But in reference to other Latin populations, such as Dominicans and Central Americans, there was a limited amount of information available to represent them. This illustrates that researchers can’t corroborate their studies when it comes to Latinos as a whole without taking into account a thorough examination of these smaller groups. Another thing I found apparent to the presented studies in Zinn and Wells’ article was the prevalence of Mexican Family studies. They further go on to explain that “A significant portion of scholarship includes only Mexican-origin groups…” (Skolnick 424). Because of the diversity within each group, one can’t construe that this is typical for ALL Latinos. But more importantly, not only are the other groups disregarded; this just proves that through prolific studies on Mexican families we know more about them than any other group.

On the contrary, when Latinos were studied in their entirety, there were similar experiences shared in the US. In one study, they found that “Latinos have the highest concentration of children and adolescence of all the major racial groups” (Skolnick 438). In another study, when looking at the conceptual family frameworks and the effects that economic restructuring on Latino families found that “they were profoundly affected as the environments in which they live in are reshaped and they face economic and social marginalization because of underemployment and unemployment” (Skolnick 426). As there is continuous growing number of Latinos here in the United States, there is a growing need to understand the ethnic diversity within their population. In offering empirical information specific to Latinos in its entirety, researchers must specifically study each of the individual ethnicities that make up this diverse group. In my opinion, (from my gathered reading of this article,) sociologists compromise their integrity somewhat when they make claims and disseminate information on such a diverse group, when they clearly don’t have enough information to provide well-founded statistics.