THE STEREOTYPE AND THE SOCIAL TYPES OF MEXICAN- AMERICAN YOUTHS.

MICHIGAN; MEXICO; UNITED States

This article focuses on the extent to which the stereotype of the Mexican-American youth actually accords with empirically perceptible social types in this segment of the American population. This problem is approached by a portrayal of the adjustments actually made and the roles assumed by certain observable types of Mexican youths in Detroit, Michigan. The roles of boys and girls in the Mexican immigrant family are considerably altered in Detroit from the roles which are culturally ordained in Mexico. The child of the immigrant comes to have duties and obligations of a sort which function to alter his own conception of self and that ascribed to him by the parental generation. A distinctive type is the son of Mexican parents who, because of such personal attributes as a light skin color, athletic ability, and savoir faire with girls, finds himself acceptable to "middle class" Americans and tends ultimately to assimilate completely. He is likely to have gone to high school. As a youth of twenty he enjoys a beer garden reputation as a "lady killer."