Criticized by supporters for passing a weak civil rights bill in 1957, even though it was the first civil rights legislation in almost a century, the powerful Democratic Senate Majority Leader Lyndon B. Johnson responded by saying that it was but a first step to larger gains ahead. Eight years later, a far more comprehensive civil rights package indeed became law. The story of those years — retold in part in Robert Caro’s new book on Johnson, The Passage of Power – holds implications for those contemplating a watered-down version of the Dream Act. The courageous leaders of the Dream Act movement, perhaps unknowingly, hold in their hands much of how HispanicLatinos are redefining themselves. The other part of that redefinition is being accomplished through the courtesy of states like Arizona, Alabama and Georgia and, soon enough, most likely, the Supreme Court.
Category Archives: Education
Let HispanicLatinos be HispanicLatinos: Nation-Builders
That HispanicLatinos are unlike any other group in the history of the country is hard to dispute. No other group lives so close – and in many cases within – its original culture. Whether HispanicLatinos understand the potential power of their presence is not clear even though the old reality – that their root culture never disappears – is poised to gain traction in ways never envisioned by the nation’s founders.
In their Constitution, the founders asserted the right of individuals to freedom of personal expression and self-determination in the pursuit of their personal happiness. The success of HispanicLatinos developing a new, productive way forward – in a way thought of as possibly “un-American” by some – would be testament to the ingenious creators of the country. They understood that the personal freedoms enshrined and protected in their extraordinary document would allow its citizens always to work on America’s behalf and vouchsafe her future.
On HispanicLatino and not ‘Hispanic’ nor ‘Latino’
Standing in a conference room atop a bank building in Miami last week, I had been looking out at the spectacular vista. From the city’s mammoth airport to the west, my gaze spanned eastward, marveling at the jewel-islands linked by the necklace of causeways that connects all to the island of Miami Beach, itself ensconced by the emerald beauty of the Atlantic. I forced myself to return my head to business and stepped into the hallway to snatch a cup of coffee. Upon my return, a man who had spoken earlier to the meeting I was attending introduced himself.
The usual banter ensued, and soon enough the inevitable question that has plagued humanity since it invented small talk came my way from the Anglo marketing consultant: What do you do for a living?
I write a blog on HispanicLatinos at HispanicLatino.com.
Oh. He paused. You are combining the terms. He paused again, then: Thank you! Before I could smile in return, he continued in spurts of sentences. We never know what to say…at my company…which term to use…we go back and forth…in reports and stuff…we do not want to offend anybody….
My response was a bit more organized:
Tejano Monument: Much More — So Much More — than a Statue
It is more powerful than first imagined. Where its creators placed it is impressive. The idea it projects excites the mind, for it is the beginning point of a new future. It is the new Tejano Monument on the grounds of the state capitol in Austin that will be dedicated tomorrow. So poignant a commemoration of the past denotes the beginning of a new day.
Standing in front of the monument, one can hear a soft wind that evokes the past but simultaneously whispers the inauguration of a new time formed centuries ago but interrupted by the vagaries of demography that can make and unmake nations. Though motionless, the statue of a Spanish explorer oversees the future: A Tejano rancher — the original, authentic cowboy — surrounded by a longhorn and another steer and other animals alongside a family that predestines much of the modern HispanicLatino population.
Upon a swath of granite that masterfully captures the sweeping expanse of Texas at its very beginning, its Tejano past is cast in bronze and the future emblazoned on a tableau of larger expectation.
HispanicLatinos: A New Way of Thinking to Secure Their Voice
In the throes of anxious times made so by lingering economic fears, Americans are not united on how to approach the future. Only the most uninformed or those who revel in some sort of heavenly-ordained exceptionalism can deny the growing evidence of America’s worrisome position. HispanicLatinos cannot afford to not be involved in thinking about the future. But they certainly should not get wrapped up in passionate, patriotic bromides about their country. At the other extreme, they cannot squander their energy on recriminations regarding a now-past history.
The Pope in Mexico: A Warning to HispanicLatinos
Regular readers of this blog might think I am on some sort of anti-Catholic crusade. Quite the contrary. I am very Catholic. But upon the Pope’s arrival today in Mexico before going on to Cuba, I am more concerned with what the Church does to hurt the development of the HispanicLatino community – and the country – than worrying about thoughts on paper that some might take as anti-Catholic.
This Pope’s Papacy has been such a disaster that his arrival in one of the most Catholic countries in the world is almost a non-event. The media will cover it, of course, but so uninspired are Catholics today by this Pope and by the crop of bishops that he and his predecessor appointed that the planners of this papal trip would not dare take the Pope on a tour that would require large crowds to demonstrate the Church’s standing in Mexico – a once-effective tool in this age when image and impression are easy to manipulate. The Church is so damaged and weaker now than at anytime in modern history that the Pope will hardly venture outside Guanajuato, the cradle of Mexican conservatism.
Needed: A New People with a New Plan — Now
Regarding their common – and to many, worrisome – future, neither the country nor HispanicLatinos have a plan. The much ballyhooed “bridge to the 21st Century” that Bill Clinton talked about in his re-election campaign is no more than a plank walk at the moment.
America – until now – never needed a plan. In its earliest years, the nation fought great political battles over a national banking system and government involvement in the development of a young country’s infrastructure that included canals, national roads and bridges. Once settled, these initial disputes opened up a continent to the economic energy thrown off by the Industrial Revolution that ultimately hurled America into the forefront of nations in the 20th century.
HispanicLatinos: Critical, Strategic Asset Not Yet in Gear
Were population groups merely fungible, the current challenges facing America and HispanicLatinos might be less compelling. If HispanicLatino households reflected the socioeconomic characteristics of the Anglo household, their growing numbers would be what the nation needs to help balance its budget and invest in its future. But though HispanicLatinos constitute an important strategic asset in the fiscal future of the country, they are in dire straits. HispanicLatinos earn little more than as 40 years ago. In a land that aspires to political and societal equality, the economic inequality among its individual components has taken on ominous implications.
National Decline: A Burden for HispanicLatinos
The phrase national decline finally has entered the lexicon of American political thought – and not soon enough. How much time America has to address its national decline is an interesting question given that the nation’s government has entered a period of stagnation and ideological paralysis. The institutions of government, paralyzed by the nation’s increasingly polarized and monetized politics, show no signs of being able to put forth strategies to sustain the nation’s future.
Justices Damage the Nation and HispanicLatinos — Its Very Future
The damage the Supreme Court inflicted on the country with its wrong-headed ruling in Citizens United should be evident enough even to its most ardent proponents, except for the columnist George Will, of course. The justices, with the likes of Will pulling at the floodgates, enabled multi-billionaires to pour millions of dollars into a presidential campaign that demonstrates how unceremoniously and crudely Citizens usurps the constitutional intent that the vote of any one individual is no more equal than the next.
Now come the warning signs that the court is going to undo programs that seek to increase the number of minority students in institutions of higher education. The court has accepted for review a case involving The University of Texas at Austin that five justices will use almost undoubtedly to roll back so-called affirmative action programs.