“Surnames Reflect Changing Face of America”
The main claim in the article is that in America the Latin culture is being seen more and Americans are being overwhelmed with the number of Hispanics in the country. Even though a Latin last name is seen, it does not define who the Latin person is as an American. You can still identify with your culture as Latin (Mexican, Spanish, etc.) but they are still Americans. Points to support this I found are in (Rodriguez, 2008 para 2) “We Hispanics have become a people whose presence gets told by such numbers”. Anytime there is a discussion about Hispanics both legal and illegal, what do the news talk about, the numbers of Hispanics in the country, or the number of jobs that are being lost due to Hispanics working. Some are legal and some are illegal, but there is always a number associated to it. In paragraph 6 Rodriguez gives two examples of the surname being shortened to appeal to all people to be accepted in America, not just Latins. He uses the baseball player Alex Rodriguez who is known all over the world. The new media shortened his name to A-Rod. The unspoken assumptions in this article are how Latin people’s presences are told by numbers and not by whom they are or their professions such as doctors, lawyers, members of the church, etc. Americans do not understand the tradition of Spanish surnames and would rather shorten the last name(s) to appeal to those of no Latin descent. The qualifiers I found are in paragraph 2 where Rodriguez writes that Hispanics are more than numbers and lists a number of professions, shows that they work until a retired age, serving in the military, etc. These examples show that not all Hispanics are illegal and have chosen career paths as other Americans have that are not Hispanic. In paragraph 7 we see that some people want to disguise there last name with a different pronunciation to