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Looks like we made it: this is a great time to be an Anchor Baby! Our making of history is making history. We made the cover of the New Yorker.
And we also made it into the American Heritage Dictionary! Of course,
their definition was a first draft. Kind of a C-, to be honest. You can
read about that in the link to the piece on ImmigrationImpact. com. But we hope the final version will be a B+, in true modern American form.
And I want to thank all the Anchor Babies who helped us scoop CNN and the
New York Times on the story on the evolution of the definition of us in
the English Dictionary. (Are we two words or one?) This proves that Gen
X Anchor Babies can multitask and multimedia faster than Affirmative
Action Anchor Babies and their friends.
Check out the picture on the CNN piece. I’m
sure we can get the names of all those beautiful people, and maybe
reach them to do an Un-Bennington of Colors ad. I hate to be the one to
tell the woman holding the sign asking for “Secure Borders” that Borders
Bookstore closed down. I love readers. Also, that fellow with the sign
“Racism” has really been successful at branding since “Racism” is hot
all over the U.S.
Actually, the A+ goes to the Community College student- Wikipedia. They turned in their brilliant A+ definition of Anchor Baby
long ago, and filed it, appropriately, under "Ethnic Slurs." (If our
website offends you, don't click them. Their thorough list of slurs
would make a Chicago street cop blush.)
Of course, it's not as if we made it into to the Oxford English
Dictionary, which is real English. I suppose it's too far a swim for the
word to get there. And there is no 14th Amendment for the word to
anchor to over there. And well, the Pilgrims-the first anchor
babies-came from England, so how could they go anchor back? Wow, racism
is complicated.
Send us your definitions:
Mario Salinas: Depends on whom you ask. For some unfortunate people, "anchor babies" are the personification of what's going wrong with this nation. For others, they are the personification of what has made this country great as a nation of immigrants.
Cesar E.: I don't believe in the term,
but mass media says they are children who are purposely birthed here by
their parents to secure their immigration futures...
Colin E. S.: I thought anchor as in reporter and like it's your baby, something important. Google showed me otherwise.
Lisa M.: In all seriousness, the
right tends to use the term "anchor baby" to describe some sinister plot
that drives mothers across the border in droves, which is not true. I
think that anchor babies need a voice and an identity. Maybe solicit
stories from anchor babies so they can share their own experiences...
good luck!
