ABSTRACT
In this chapter I discuss how these 17 second and third generation Mexican and Puerto Rican students construct their ethnicity (i.e., what it means to be Mexican or Puerto Rican) through identification and culture. The focus of this chapter is on the meaning the students assert when they invoke their identification and culture, and what it signifies of who they are and who they are not. The term “culture” is intended to capture the definition and attributes of culture the students assign to their identification as Puerto Rican, Boricua, Chicano, or MexicanAmerican; it does not convey a finiteness to Puerto Rican or Mexican culture. What emerges in this chapter is a dynamic discussion of ethnicity that centers on the students’ use of identification and culture to describe themselves. However, this does not mean that their report of their ethnicity is solely a subjective construction. In fact, in chapter four I will discuss how the students perceived others interpreted their skin color as a signifier of race and what that meant for the construction of their own understanding of their ethnicity. With that said, the focus of this chapter is on the meaning of the identification the students use and what attributes of their group’s culture do they use to account for who they are, what they look like and how they think and act.
