In April 2012, Linda Chavez, a widely recognized Latina conservative political figure, 1 penned a column titled “Why So Few Latinos ID Themselves as ‘American’.” Chavez cites a 2012 Pew Hispanic Research Center report based on a nationwide survey of Hispanic adults, and ponders why “only 8 percent of immigrant [Hispanics], 35 percent of second-generation Hispanics, and 48 percent of thirdgeneration Hispanics” identify themselves first and foremost as American. She constructs a historical narrative in which the predominantly European immigration cohort in the early twentieth century was “encouraged to ‘Americanize’” and “public schools saw it as their primary responsibility to help form the children of these immigrants into new Americans.” Chavez distinguishes between the assimilationist ethos surrounding European immigration and “the advent of multiculturalism and ethnic solidarity, beginning in the 1960s,” which coincided with dramatic increases in immigration from Latin America. For Chavez,“if the children and grandchildren of Hispanic immigrants still see themselves as a group apart, it’s because we’ve encouraged them to do so.” As examples of how racial and ethnic identities are continually promoted, she points to affirmative action policies that require ethnoracial self-identification on government forms, educational entrance exams, and applications for colleges, jobs, and mortgages or bank loans. Shifting gears, Chavez assures readers that “the news on the assimilation front in the Pew Hispanic Center’s study is not all bad.” She explains that “Hispanics overwhelmingly believe in the importance of learning English; 90 percent think English fluency is crucial to succeeding in the United States.” Doubling-down on this point, Chavez repeats the study’s finding