Posted on 06/07/2003 9:12:47 PM PDT by Luis Gonzalez
The stuff they throw out on the Civil War threads is seldom a meant to be a joke and the Southern-bashing gets pretty viscious.
When I jump in to defend to integrity and honor of someone like Robert E. Lee, someone new to those threads usually ends up calling me a Southern redneck who is probably a fourth generation member of the Ku Klux Klan.
It's funny when they find out that I'm a Cuban American instead of a Southron American. :-)
If you want to ease yourself into something other than Civil War novels, you may want to read the diaries of some Southern women of the era. You will then get the "Southern Belle-itis" and other woman-stuff of the period without the man-stuff about whether Lee should have followed Longstreet's advice to attempt to turn the Union left flank at Gettysburg instead of.....
The diaries would include:
You know of any good historical fiction set in Cuba from an author that actually researched it well? I'd love to read something like that. It has to have a little romance involved though.
Romance?
Well.....ummmm.....Jeez, honeygrl, Cuban guys don't go around reading romance!
Wouldn't you like to consider a good book on how Mahan's concepts of seapower affect the military logistics and therefore the military outcome in any conflict on islands such as Britain and Cuba and therefore account for the longevity of the defending forces on such......
You're nodding off already. O.K. Romance......
(Mutter, mutter.......Yeah, Cuban and Southern guys talk tough but the fact is that we have a ring through our noses and are led around by women who talk sweetly and ask nicely......Why can't my California-born wife get off her feminist horse and be more like a Southern or Cuban lady....Mutter, muttter....)
Research. Research......
O.K. Here are two.
Back during the Cuban Wars of Independence from Spain, a certain Evangelina Cisneros caught America's fancy as a damsel in distress when she was rescued from a Spanish prison by an American reporter from the Hearst newspaper chain. On a hunch, I did a search and, sure enough, someone sat down and wrote a historical novel about it with romance in it.
A while back, someone gave me a contemporary novel about three Cuban women on different sides of the Castro Revolution that's been sitting unread on my bookshelves for years. The reviews say that it has a little bit of romance in it in the form of letters to a long lost love from the gandmother's earlier days.
If you read any of them, let me know how you liked them.
I posted several citations given by the Federal government and independent organizations concerning the financial detriment of immigration to Florida. Using the power of logical deduction, one can assume since so many Cubans comprise the statistics attributed to immigrants of south Florida, whether “legal” or not, some of them are “soaking up tax dollars in Miami”. The fact that refugees are automatically granted citizenship under the CAA, only further enables them to rely on government subsidized programs providing your island brethren good old American greenbacks at the expense of the Florida taxpayer, as we can see from my previous posts.
Let me guess, American Female. You are the product of a public high school education, aren't you?
Your powers of "logical deduction" are extremely sophomoric.
To begin with, you suffer from the GIGO (Garbage In-Garbage Out) Syndrome.
The immigrant population statistics in Florida do not, as you falsely claim, "place Cuban immigrants in overwhelming numbers". According to the U.S. Census of 2000, Cuban Americans comprise only 31.1 % of all so-called "Latinos" in Florida:
Hispanic Population of Florida by region of Origin/Nationality, U.S. Census 2000
The other 68.9% of so-called "Latinos" in Florida are a combination of Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, Central Americans, South Americans, etc.
And that does not even included the wave of Haitian immigrants that are not counted as "Latinos" or "Hispanic" or whatever the meaningless catch-all label of the week is for someone with a Spanish surname.
That 31.1% minority of the Florida "Latinos" that the Cuban Americans now represent includes every Cuban American from immigrants that have been in this country since 1960 to third generation Cuban Americans born this very year.
Since you are still a college student (and I will assume, for the sake of argument, that you have not failed any grades), that means that you were born after 1980. My first cousins and I, the yougest of the cousins, came to the U.S. from Cuba in 1960. By the year you were born, one of my cousins was C.P.A. and owner of his own accounting firm, one cousin was the CEO of one of the largest banks in Florida, one cousin was the owner of a multi-million dollar business and I was an M.D. and a U.S. Naval officer in the U.S. Navy Medical Corps.
However, your "logical deduction" mixes our immigrant statistics with the illegal alien statistics of the Mexican illegal alien that crossed the Rio Grande five weeks ago.
Your "logical deduction" is so sophomoric that it fails to consider that all "immigrants" are no more equally interchangeable than all "females" are.
By what you consider "logical deduction", Werner von Braun, the German immigrant designer of the Saturn 5 rocket that put Americans on the moon, was a drag on America as much as the Mexican illegal alien who crossed the border last year and now belongs to a street gang.
By what you consider "logical deduction", "females" are a drag on the American taxpayer.
To wit: All second or third generation welfare mothers are female. Female welfare mothers are a drain on American taxpayers. Statistics will show that about half of all student in your college are female. You have admitted that you are a female at that college. Using the power of logical deduction, one can assume since so many females comprise the statistics attributed to welfare mothers in America, you and the other female students at your college are “soaking up tax dollars”.
BTW, setting up a Strawman Argument by changing your original "anybody" to the "some" in your last post does not win you any more debating points than first claiming that a statement that "Anybody who is a female is soaking up tax dollars" actually means "Some who are female are soaking up tax dollars".
What you consider "logical deduction" won't get you very far up the corporate or professional ladder once you graduate from college and have to compete in the Real World, American Female. Unless you are in college simply to get an "Mrs. Degree", it would behoove you to improve your powers of "logical deduction" unless you want to go through life asking, "Do you want fries with that."
I realize that you seem to be a very concrete thinker, American Female, and that you have difficulty with abstract concepts. However, try to understand that, if pigs are vertebrates and swallows are vertebrates, it does not follow that pigs fly like swallows.
Not all vertabrate groups are alike. Likewise, not all immigrant groups are alike.
Different immigrant groups come from different cultures.
Some cultures value education and others don't. Some cultures have a greater work ethic than others. Some cultures have a long history of mercantile success and some cultures don't.
I am sure that, academically, you are far above the second generation Central American Amerindian whose parents may have never set foot in a school and who never valued the importance of education for their children.
On the other hand, from what you have shown us, I would wager that the typical second generation Asian-American college student on the West Coast chews you up and spits you out academically.
Cuban Americans are successful because we come from a cultures that instills the values that lead to success.
In your last post, you expressed incredulity at how a Cuban could possibly be more successful than people that "came from Europe". Where do you think white Cubans originally came from, American Female? Mars?
Most Cubans can tell you from what region of Spain each branch of their family came from. During pre-Castro days, Cuba and Argentina had the highest per capita income and the largest per capita middle classes in all of Latin America. Cuba even had a large amount of immigration from Europeans seeking greater economic opportunity in Cuba than they had in Europe.
Thus, a large percentage of Cuban immigrants had a family history of economic and educational success going back 100 or 200 years.
One hundred and fifty years ago, my wife's "European" ancestors were Polish peasants growing potatoes in Poland. One hundred and fifty years ago, my Cuban ancestors were business owners, professionals and men of letters in Cuba. In 1912, while my wife's Polish-American grandfather achieved the highest education that family had ever had by graduating from high school and leaving it at that, my Cuban grandfather was earning a doctorate degree at an American Ivy League university before going back home to Cuba.
When Castro came, hundreds of thousands of solid, middle class Cubans with solid educational and business experience came to the U.S.
Yes, things were tough and our income was not very high that first decade. My father was a hospital administrator and part owner of a Volkswagen dealership in Cuba. When we first got here, he had to drive a taxi for several years. My uncle was an attorney in Cuba. When we got here, he had to pump gas at a gas station for several years.
However, we and the tens of thousands of other Cuban families that had left everything from large businesses to Mom and Pop stores back in Cuba simply buckled down and used the same values that had made them economically successful in Cuba to become succesful here.
In the 1960's and 1970's, while my wife's "Anglo" parents (the first of their family to ever graduate from college) believed that public school was good enough for their children, Cuban immigrant parents typically scrimped and sacrificed to do whatever it took to send their kids to private or Catholic schools.
In the 1960's and 1970's, while "Anglo" kids were into drugs and sex and losing their virginity in high school, Cuban American kids were still living the values that America used to have in the 1940's.
In the 1960's, while "Anglo" Baby Boomers were being spoiled rotten by their parents who had lived through the Depression, Cuban American kids were growing up like the Baby Boomer's parents learning a work ethic from their parents who were trying to regain the economic success that they had lost to Castro.
So, yes, second generation Cuban Americans have kicked economic butt in the U.S. just like Asian-Americans have kicked economic butt in the U.S.
Here are the year 2000 economic statistics quoted from U.S. Government sources:
Those U.S. Government figure are for ALL Cuban Americans including the ones who may have landed in the U.S. three months ago and may be pumping gas at a filling station as my uncle did when he first came to the U.S.
The statistics that I quoted you stated that they were for SECOND GENERATION Cuban Americans. (Sociologists consider young immigrant children to be "second generation" and their immigrant parents to be "first generation".) The second generation is my generation and Luis' generation. We benefited from the non-public school education that our Cuban parents and tens of thousands of other Cuban parents sacrificed to give us. We benefited from the work ethic that our Cuban parents instilled in us. We benefited from the old time values that the "Anglo" Baby Boomer generation rejected.
In short, American Female, we second generation Cuban Americans academically and economically outperformed your parent's Baby Boomer "Anglo" generation just as present-day second generation Asian Americans are outperforming your present-day "Anglo" generation.
The reason we did so and the reason Asian-Americans are now doing so is not rocket science.
In the 1960's, America's Baby Boomer generation threw out the old-fashioned values that had made America great.
The Cuban Americans and the Asian-Americans never let those values go. That is why we are doing better than you and your Baby Boomer "Anglo" parents.
For the future, you will need to turn that around.
If not, 20 years from now, you will be working for the people who work for the people who work for my kids...... and my oldest kid is only in 7th Grade right now.
Cuban men don't go around reading about romance, but we do read about passion.
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