Category Archives: Immigration

Ethnicity and Race Do Matter — and Thank God

Posted on by

Let’s say you are a young HispanicLatino, say, in your 20’s, and you are aware enough to know there are more important things in life than social networking, music, dancing, drinking, friends, entertainment and games.  Let’s say that you pick up on the fact that 57 percent of white non-HispanicLatinos have anti-HispanicLatino sentiments, that is, that so-called Anglos think negatively about you, your family and your friends.  The findings from a recent survey commissioned by the Associated Press and conducted by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago and Stanford and Michigan universities are no surprise to most HispanicLatinos.  But what is someone so young supposed to think – or do?  The answer is to make it about you yourself, not them.  What 57 percent of Anglos think is less important as each day passes and will have lesser and lesser bearing.

Most writers across the country have bemoaned the results of the study.  It is, I suppose, sad – if you live in the past.  A different viewpoint should take hold instead of morose musings that the country never achieved harmonic convergence on race.  It does not matter now that the country never got to some nebulous promised land where skin color and ethnicity blended into some sort of multicultural muddle.  The very point of where humankind finds itself today is that in a globalized world, all cultures matter, and, in fact, matter equally.  The point of the future is that we are going to have to get along despite lasting natural differences not melt each other into some vapid subsistence.

Continue reading →

The Age of Scramble

Posted on by

We entered the age of information – and disinformation – not that long ago.  It changed our world and our lives, and now we live in the age of scramble.  In almost every sense of the word, life has become scramble as noun and verb.  The most vivid image of scramble of late is the tens of thousands of young residents in the country illegally scurrying to take advantage of an opportunity to legalize their presence and status – at least for now.  The long lines of young residents, mostly Hispanic/Latinos brought to the country illegally from Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala and other places, represent only part of the scrambling of individuals, groups of people, institutions, and organizations reacting to defend their interests or get their slice of the pie that appears to have been getting smaller.

Continue reading →

Manzano So Much More than Navarrette

Posted on by

Where and how does one begin to make sense of what Ruben Navarrette wrote for CNN about Leo Manzano and, by extension, Hispanics/Latinos, be they recent immigrants or descendants from founders of some of the oldest cities in the nation?  To start off, the column Navarrette wrote lambasting the young Olympic runner for raising a Mexican and a U.S. flag to celebrate his silver medal in the 1500-meter race was not about Manzano.  It was about Navarrette.  The object of Navarrette’s anger was not Manzano’s alleged act of disloyalty but something about Navarrette that is not yet settled within his own self.

Navarrette admits as much in the column, which in a way is the most important he has ever written:  “Most Mexican-Americans I know would need a whole team of therapists to sort out their views on culture, national identity, ethnic pride and their relationship with Mother Mexico,” the 55-year-old Navarrette wrote.  And that is the problem.  The problem is not Manzano, who knows who he is and knows what he thinks and who is not going to back down from someone like Navarrette who has not figured himself out at his age and remains incomplete – like many Mexican-Americans and other HispanicLatinos.

Continue reading →

Court on Arizona: Maintains and raises race as central theme of nation’s future

Posted on by

The essence of the American experience throughout its history has been race.  From the country’s very beginning when the founders sidestepped slavery, through the Civil War and through the civil rights movement, racial identity – and the meaning of Americanhood – has been a focal point in the events of our time.  The Supreme Court’s affirmative decision on Arizona’s anti-HispanicLatino law maintains – and in fact raises – race as a central theme of the nation’s destiny.  Not only can any HispanicLatino be stopped by local enforcement officials but also blacks, Asian Americans and any dark-skinned person thought to be from anywhere else.  In that sense, Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer was correct in claiming that the “heart” of her state’s racist law that permits racial profiling was confirmed. 

But Brewer also said that local enforcement authorities will be held “accountable” if they engage in racial profiling.  From my days covering police departments as a reporter years ago and then later when I worked as a speechwriter for the commissioner of the old Immigration and Naturalization Service, I know the power and discretion that local officers have.  And some, no doubt, will go overboard.  And therein Brewer has no idea how accountable local governments will be held, for the moment that any citizen or any other person in the country legally has his or her rights violated by overzealous officers, they must sue the local governments that officer represents. 

Only a cascade of lawsuits that will hurt local governments financially can push back the wave of discrimination that will soon be visited upon unsuspecting HispanicLatinos and other individuals of color.  County and city and school districts that engage in any kind of discrimination must be taken into account – immediately.  HispanicLatino attorneys must be the first line of attack on the Court’s tragic decision.  In the smaller towns and cities and marginal localities in which HispanicLatinos are at the most risk, properly timed lawsuits against these local governments can bankrupt many of them. The Court left open the possibility that the most odious part of the decision could be challenged almost immediately.  Let those legal assaults begin in earnest on all fronts.  HispanicLatino attorneys literally must invade local courthouses with lawsuits.  Local and state governments should pause before moving forward on ill-fated, ill-advised efforts that will prove counterproductive in the end.

A pivotal implication of the Court’s decision, then, is the slow movement of history pushing HispanicLatinos to the lead of the civil rights struggles of the future through the legal system.  The Court put in high relief the lead role that HispanicLatinos – the principal force changing the country’s demographics – are going to play in its future.

In more ways than most people can appreciate, this is a pivotal moment in the nation’s history.  The Court did nothing to advance the notion that the nation one day will get over the question of the color of one’s skin.  And in deciding infamously on Bush v. Gore, women’s wages, campaign finance reform and, probably, health care and, certainly, on Arizona, the Court is on the wrong side of history.  HispanicLatinos can advance their history-altering responsibilities by making sure that the Court – its decisions and its composition – become an election-year issue.

If HispanicLatinos in fact are destined to change the country, let them start by remaking the Court by helping re-elect a President who might yet have the opportunity to appoint another justice or two.

Marco Rubio: Laugh or Cry?

Posted on by

I am one of those HispanicLatinos who wants to like Marco Rubio.  Anyone who knows and understands how fast HispanicLatinos need to rise within high leadership circles to affect the challenges the country faces should cut a wide swath around individuals like Rubio, especially those gifted with the kind of presence, charm and personality that some people equate to that possessed by John F. Kennedy.  In today’s media-driven world, Rubio possesses all the traits that lead to success.

Except that Rubio is so wrong on so many fronts.

Continue reading →

Romney Lets Golden Moment Pass

Posted on by

I do not know what President Obama is going to say today in Orlando at the annual convention of the National Association of Latino Elected Officials.  I did hear Mitt Romney yesterday and to say that it fell short of what he needed to do is an understatement.  By my timing, Romney spoke for 16 minutes.  In the 20 or so GOP debates during the presidential primary campaign, I estimate that Romney spent at least five minutes, on average, bashing immigrants and, by extension, HispanicLatinos who, while not making immigration their number one priority, do not cotton to that kind of language.  Romney’s antagonistic language in the last few months amounted to perhaps as many as 100 televised minutes – not to mention the endless repetition of his remarks as sounds bites across every medium in the country.  It isn’t as if HispanicLatinos do not know where Romney stands on things HispanicLatino.  And so 16 minutes hardly would suffice. 

But Romney amazed me:  The national Spanish-language networks, both television and radio, waited for him with genuine interest.  Univision and Telemundo were there, but also were the mainstream media, from which most HispanicLatinos get their news.  CNN and MSNBC carried the address live.  This was not a “gotcha” moment.  He had control of the entire environment.  It was a golden moment for Romney but, like the alleged vetting of Marco Rubio for vice president, Romney flubbed his opportunity.  Perhaps he expects Jeb Bush or Rubio to do what he could not do for himself.  Yet it does not work that way. Folks do not vote for surrogates. He could have achieved 100 percent coverage of the HispanicLatino community to make up for 100 minutes of discord.

If the Romney campaign hoped for some phrase, some language, some image, some narrative to register and make it across the many media gathered there that could begin to turn around the presidential race, the speech it prepared for its candidate was wholly and surprisingly absent of anything substantive.  Who gets this kind of tee-up and whiffs it? 

Continue reading →

The Dreamers: Tomorrow’s Leaders – the Force the HispanicLatino Community Has Always Needed

Posted on by

The next few days or fortnight will redeem Charles Dickens’ it was the worst of times, it was the best of times for the HispanicLatino community.  In a clear signal that it understands the political and fundamental role that HispanicLatinos play in developing the future of the country, the Obama Administration set the stage for the incorporation of 800,000 mostly HispanicLatino young men and women into the flow of American life.  For them, it is the best of times, at least in the short run.  They can think about how to proceed with their lives for the next two years and perhaps longer if they make the most of the time they have been allotted.

But depending on what and when the Supreme Court rules on Arizona’s anti-HispanicLatino law, the rest of the community could well be facing the beginning of the worst of times, starting now, if the Court announces its decision today or perhaps next week.  The Court almost certainly will rule in favor of a law that targets HispanicLatinos specifically so that they any individual who appears to be HispanicLatino can be harassed at the whim of any local official.  Indeed, almost any positive ruling by the Court will encourage local officials, including law enforcement and public school officials, to embark on dangerous self-enforcement missions that in some cases will provoke violence. 

  Continue reading →

Census Bureau News Shatters History

Posted on by

People remember specifically where they were the moment they heard John F. Kennedy had been assassinated in Dallas in 1963.  Very few of us will remember – since no one knows exactly when it happened – the moment that “white” births in the nation fell below 50 percent, most likely sometime in early 2011.  Yet in comparison, the news that HispanicLatinos, blacks, Asians and those of mixed are giving birth to a new majority is by far more important than what happened in Dallas, although it certainly was not caught on film.

Continue reading →

Same Sex Marriage Does Not Trump Arizona

Posted on by

Many years ago one of the most influential books ever written shaped my own political identity and my view of the world. Ostensibly about the presidential campaign of 1960, Theodore White’s Pultizer Prize-winning The Making of the President told the story of how John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson survived one of the narrowest presidential victories in the nation’s history.  But more than simply converting a political story into a highly interesting narrative, White wrote revealingly about how political markets are hardly more than consumer markets.  In his eyes, fifty states and the District of Columbia – each one different from the other – comprised 51 political markets with many more submarkets of voters, hundreds in fact.  They still do, if not more so.

Continue reading →

Court Set to Empower Ethnic Cleansing of HispanicLatinos

Posted on by

Last week a Department of Justice led by Attorney General Eric Holder mounted an attack so lame in front of the Supreme Court against Arizona’s anti-immigrant, anti-HispanicLatino law known as S.B.1070 that even first-time observers realized how thoroughly DOJ had been routed.  Obama’s lawyers cratered in a case of existential importance to HispanicLatinos, who should be thankful that Obama’s lawyers later this year will not handle the challenge before the same Court to the minority-friendly college admissions policies of the University of Texas – meaning those of all of the nation’s colleges and universities.

HispanicLatinos should not be happy about last week’s unmitigated disaster if the Court affirms any part of 1070 in June. Any HispanicLatino citizens who think they are exempt from its ramifications have a surprise waiting for them. As surprised might be President Obama in November.

Most legal experts presume that last week’s faux attempt at lawyering by DOJ will cause the Court to endorse at least part of the Arizona law that targets individuals based on color, race, ethnicity and sound of speech on the mere supposition that they might be in the country illegally.  My fear – and I so hope I am wrong – is that local governments will rush to propose and enact ordinances against defenseless local immigrant and HispanicLatino populations.  Imagine the likes of hundreds of “Americans” like Sheriff Joe Arpaio in Arizona running wild in every state.

Continue reading →