View Single Post
  #18  
Old Posted Jan 24, 2020, 11:05 PM
craigs's Avatar
craigs craigs is offline
Birds Aren't Real!
 
Join Date: May 2019
Location: Los Angeles
Posts: 6,667
Quote:
Originally Posted by Steely Dan View Post
another interesting aspect of chicago's status as a mexican immigration hub is the spillover effect up into milwaukee.
A good friend of mine who identifies as Mexican-American was born in Chicago to a Mexican immigrant and a white Cheesehead. His parents divorced in the early 1970s, and his mom moved the kids with her up to Milwaukee.

His memory was of a jarring change. While it was not weird to see Mexican-Americans in Chicago then, and there was already an established Mexican-American community (I don't recall which neighborhood) in which he felt at home, the opposite was true of Milwaukee. He was often the only Mexican-American person people up there had met, and there was no community to speak of. He moved back to Chicago on his own as soon as he could, because Chicago was just a better fit for an 18-year old Mexican-American, circa 1988. It's not that he was obsessed with his ethnicity, but rather that he didn't want to stick out like a sore thumb all the time, wanted to feel more 'normal.'

It looks like today's Milwaukee is quite different from the one he remembers.
Reply With Quote