Editor's Note

This issue of the Journal of the National Association of Ethnic Studies presents an interesting cross section of ethnic groups in the United States: Native American, Vietnamese, Latino, African American. Several of the articles involving these groups raise the persistent question of assimilation versus acculturation and where the health and welfare of the children of immigrants or the younger generation of immigrants lies. Shaw N. Gynan in “Hispanic Immigration and Spanish Maintenance as Indirect Measures of Ethnicity: Reality and Perceptions” has found that the newest generation of Latinos not only are more involved ethnically with their Spanish heritage than earlier immigrants but also are more proficient in English, information that might cause the promoters of English as the official language of the United States to rethink their position. In “An Examination of Social Adaptation Processes of Vietnamese Adolescents” Fayneese Miller, My Do, and Jason Sperber show that this age group finds its strength in a strong attachment to their ethnic community and proficiency in speaking and writing English: the first keeps them grounded and the second two allow them the confidence to progress in their new society. In “Community Versus Assimilation: A Study IN American Assimilation at Saint Joseph's Indian Industrial School” Sarah Shillinger shows through oral history the effects of being removed from one's ethnic community as Indian children were in the board school movement of the early twentieth century.