How American is Miami? (Miami Beach, Coral Gables: vs., move to, Lowes)

[Miserere]

American, that's the force and the future.
You don't have that in Europe, Europe will be a very old continent in no time and I don't see anybody with the oulook of Latins.
Latins admire and adapt, other groups here colonize and won't accept the rules of the games. Even Turkey, our hope of convivence, is failing because extremism.
Americans are having success were Romans failed.
Who cares if in the future instead of turkey they use American lacked duck?

Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me:
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.


that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness—That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed.



This text and the preface of the American Independency....I got goose bumps everytime I read them.

[StarfishKey]

Originally Posted by Miserere

Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me:
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.


that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness—That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed.



This text and the preface of the American Independency....I got goose bumps everytime I read them.

If only the majority of American citizens believed in either one of those principles!...

[croatbob]

NOT! its 10% white and thats mostly european

[Krispin Klander]

Originally Posted by Robdreamz

Fantastic post! Just because immigrants come to Miami and retain their culture doesn't mean they dislike 'American" culture at all! Go to Bayfront Park on the 4th. of July or go to a hispanic's home on Thanksgiving and they embrace those traditional American values except they just adjust it to thier former heritages.
Thanksgiving goes from "sweet potatoes" to "yucca with lemon juice" & "stuffing" becomes "rice & beans" instead.
The problem with many "anglo" Americans when they first come to Miami is that they are not used to seeing such a major American city in the US dominated politically, socially and Economically by Hispanics whereas in other majority cities they are the "minorities".
Miami is a "American city" but that all depends on how you define "American".

I believe that there's no problem between Americans and Hispanics now. Most Americans that could not adapt left from 50 to 30 years ago, and the ones living in Miami are located in very rich areas and are mostly Jews, plus there are new groups now that are displacing Cubans from their historical areas. A very fragmented city. But problems between Americans and Hispanics? Only in Internet. What I see is a trend in which Cubans arrived generations ago are moving to southern states or moving north.

[Pincho-toot]

Huge parts of the city are like language deserts, with Spanish being sand and English being water. Bad English is like sandy water :P It has a double standard where if you don't know English and only Spanish, you're good. If you know English, but no Spanish, it's an unfortunate spot. Bilingual here means "know Spanish, even if only Spanish" if you know Greek, Polish, Japanese, Arabic, Swedish and French but no Spanish, you're at a disadvantage compared to people that know Spanish, even people that ONLY know Spanish. This is better closer to downtown though.

People do celebrate Thanksgiving, at least my family does. Football is popular, but so is baseball. Basketball is the most popular though, but all are American sports. Yes people sing the Star Spangled Banner before games. Most of our athletes are American anyway.

People do celebrate the 4th of July, and considering it's my mom's birthday, it's one my family doesn't miss!

You'll find many Cubans that have been living here most of their lives who still see themselves separate from Americans. I speak from personal experience with Cuban born relatives that have been here since they were 4 and still don't see themselves as American. I find it weird. You're a citizen here, you're American. Regardless of where you were born. Also, the whitest Cubans act like they aren't white, cuz they speak Spanish, which is, a western European language anyway but I digress

It's still an American city, but I will argue that it doesn't feel very American. Hialeah in particular doesn't feel American. There's many things about it that make it distinct not only from the US, but also the rest of Florida. The style of houses in the suburbs is different from other states. Many houses here are one storey, which I find weird. Basements are uncommon here and so many houses got these orange peel walls. I posted a picture of my house online once and someone asked if I lived in China cuz the roof looks so different from most mainstream American homes haha. It's not that the houses look foreign, but they look different. My house was built in 1940 and it does have a more American feel to it than others, but it still sticks out compared to a house in Illinois, for example. Downtown Miami has a more urban American feeling, and the nicer suburbs look more American too (Californian)

The language barrier is probably one of the things that separates Miami from the rest of the US the most. In most major American cities, immigrants go and assimilate to the culture and learn English, while not necessarily forgetting their home traditions and language. Here, there's so many immigrants who've been here since the 1980s and 1990s, and still don't speak the language. It's changing, as generations grow up, but it's a different story to immigrants elsewhere. Parts around 8th street, particularly around 57th avenue, feel like they fit more into Latin America than the US.

I still say it's a US city though. It just doesn't always FEEL like one. Ft. Lauderdale feels more American than Miami by a long shot. Miami is 50/50. I'm a first generation American immigrant, but I had enough of the "immigrant life". If I came with my family to live in a new and better country, I want to actually live in that country, not in what feels like a cultural enclave. Which is why the Midwest has drawn me.

[gahando]

In Miami, especially if you live in the more Hispanic neighborhoods like Doral or Hialeah, you can get by with just Spanish. This has made it so that a significant amount of adults (I say age 40+) will use Spanish if it's available).

Going to high school in Doral, where my graduating class was 89% Hispanic, I can say with my generation, the Spanish-speaking deserts will "flood" with English ... among my classmates, even though we're all perfectly comfortable with Spanish, we would use mostly English, so I expect it'll take a generation for the noticeable Spanish-speaking factor of Miami to wear off.

As others have said as well, if you go to non-suburban areas like Brickell, you can get 100% fine with English. Heck, even in Miami Lakes, where I'm living now, my parents can't get any service in Spanish; gotta bust out the English.

[UKWildcat1981]

Miami/South Florida is a Latin metro with a lot of Yankee transplants especially Jewish and Italian NYers that how I see it

[bale002]

Originally Posted by UKWildcat1981

Miami/South Florida is a Latin metro with a lot of Yankee transplants especially Jewish and Italian NYers that how I see it.

Your viewpoint is understandable, but chronologically backwards, and a bit skewed.

Miami is, or was, primarily northern transplants some 50-70 years before massive Cuban/Hispanic/Haitian immigration (but had its history before that too, see thread on southern culture for example), yes a large and prominent Jewish contingent, but New Yorkers of Italian descent were never dominant in Miami (more so in Broward and Palm Beach Counties), then the Cubans/Hispanics/Haitians followed.

By the way, in the century or so up to the 1960s, most Cuban immigration into Florida was to Key West, Tampa and, to a lesser extent, Jacksonville.

Anyway, as we have been saying, Spanish is slowly fading, and will continue to do so - it takes about four generations, and we are about in the middle of the process - unless massive immigration continues, but I expect that to slow and assimilation to take place at a faster pace, meanwhile people from elsewhere in the US and other continents are trickling into Miami for various reasons, even as Hispanics from Miami move to other parts of the US.

At the same time, social and economic relations with the Caribbean and Latin America will continue to play a key role in Miami's history. But most likely a group of specialists, however large, will engage in its management and thus maintain professional use of languages such as Spanish, Creole, and Portuguese.

At any rate, Miami is very much on US territory and under US administration in the State of Florida, and I don't see that changing any time in the envisionable future.

[Miserere]

Spanish will gain strenght not only in Miami, but in the entire US. Massive immigration will continue. Assimilation does not mean that people loose their culture anymore, more so when many Hispanics in Miami are not immigrants and don't have any interest in English, I'm referring to people looking for shelter for them and their money.
Spanish is not fading at all, I know third generations that speak perfect Spanish, in general, families with certain economic/cultural level will do everything so their kids learn Spanish.
I don't know about Creole, etc, I'm talking about Spanish, one of the official languages of Dade County.
There's no dicothomy between knowing Spanish and being American, that's quite moronic when the Founding Fathers spoke five to six languages.
Plus, you are talking about an ancient scenario, today Hispanics, and any other group, have Tvs in ther language, Internet, papers...and knowing a foreign language is not "unamerican"...plus they export their culture and anybody knows "porque tiene tremendo culo".
Plus, except in the rest of the US, in Miami Dade Spanish is not exclusively the language of the maids..but the language of politicos, realtors, finance, etc.

[MiamiDominican92]

Originally Posted by Sjd1

We frequently hear about how Cuban Miami is. I guess it's not surprising considering that majority of people residing in Miami were born in Cuba as opposed to being born in the US like other hispanic cities in the US. So I guess it brings me to the question of how American is Miami?

Is it difficult to live in Miami knowing english only? Do people celebrate Thanksgiving? Do children say the pledge of allegiance in schools? Is football (not soccer) the most popular sport? Do people sing the star spangled banner before games? Do people celebrate the 4th of July? Do people generally consider themselves American or just Cubans living in America?

As American as any other U.S city. A country and city of diversity, and a rich Hispanic heritage which is part of the American essence itself.