In Cultural Terms, There’s Not Always Truth in Labeling

“F inally they believe that I’m Mexican,” our daughter is saying.

We’ve just come home from the office, my husband and I, and are popping the usual quiz about the goings-on at school.

Our daughter’s Mexican identity has come up before. She’s boasted about it to her friends, but they’ve written it off. Blond and blue-eyed, very fair of skin, our daughter doesn’t look Mexican, they’ve said. Say something in espanol .

But today in first grade was a planned study in multiculturalism. In the patois of 6-year-olds, that translates to an exercise in “Where are you from?”

Family trees had been completed the night before. We were to supply the birthplaces of all those roosting on these branches of our family’s life.

Our daughter was born in Mexico City and lived there for the first year of her life. We’ve talked up this fact to her a lot.

She has a Mexican passport, a Mexican birth certificate and another from the U.S. Embassy saying that since her mother and father are American-born, the United States, too, will accept her as one of its own.

My husband and I contemplated the advantages of this at the time: If she saves up her allowance for the rest of her life, maybe she’ll be able to buy a patch of property on the Mexican coast. (Foreigners are prohibited by law.)

And I remember feeling a bit of macho pride-- pregnant macho pride--when I’d tell folks back home that I wouldn’t be flying stateside to give birth. Seemed to me that Mexican doctors didn’t have any trouble delivering babies before mine was due to arrive.

There’s more on the plus side, of course. My husband and I believe that our daughter’s so-called bicultural identity will actually enrich her life. She speaks Spanish. And when she grows older, we hope she’ll think of Mexico as an also-home.

But there is this matter of looks.

Nationalities are supposed to look a certain way, conform to a mold. Even in America, where precious few of us can trace our lineage here, many still think of Americans as looking like Barbie and Ken.

Fair of skin, features descended from the Anglo-Saxon genetic line, variations are just that. Others. Please check the appropriate box.

This attitude is changing, but at a glacial pace. And our national obsession with labels doesn’t help.

We are African-Americans, Korean-Americans, Mexican-Americans, Japanese-Americans, Filipino-Americans. I could go on.

Depending on how you draw the line, we are all minorities of some kind.

Yes, cultural identities should be preserved. Solidarity with a group is good. All of us like to belong and all of us deserve respect for our civil rights.

But there’s a danger in slicing up the meaning of American in too many ways. We can begin to think of ourselves as fractions, part American instead of whole.

And that’s when the stereotyped thinking kicks in.

Mexicans are this way, Jews are another, and everybody knows about the Chinese. Hope you understand. For the sake of convenience, I’ve just dropped the part after the hyphen. That’s what we do in our minds.

We concentrate on what makes us different from each other instead of what makes us the same. This is shortsighted folly. We pay the price.

An interesting study was released the other day, about Latinos. You know, that big ethnic lump--Mexicans, Cubans and Puerto Ricans, to be exact.

The Latino National Political Survey, the most extensive attempt so far to measure the attitudes of this group, came up with some surprises for people intent on just assuming they know how other hyphenated Americans think.

Try this: More than 90% of those surveyed said people who live in the United States should learn English, and majorities as high as 80% are against increasing immigration here. Most described themselves as politically moderate and “do not support traditional roles for women.” And the survey revealed a wide range of opinions among Latinos.

In other words: Latinos sound like Americans as a whole.

My daughter, of course, is too young to understand any complexities involving her identity or her family tree. She is Mexican, and American. So what?

For her, now and perhaps forever, her Mexican connection is fun, a lark. It is not traced through her blood.

But, in the end, it doesn’t matter all that much. She can feel American and Mexican too.

She doesn’t need a hyphen and she doesn’t need to renounce her past.

Dianne Klein’s column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday. Readers may reach Klein by writing to her at The Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, Calif. 92626, or calling (714) 966-7406.