Court Set to Empower Ethnic Cleansing of HispanicLatinos

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.

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News About HispanicLatinos? Proper Context, Please.

At times in journalism it is not the story but the context that matters.  So it is with news reports this week about rapid declines in Mexican immigration that generated front-page news coverage throughout the nation.  Mexicans coming northward form only one component of the changing demographics roiling the country — and it is important that HispanicLatinos do not think that the size of their population is going to diminsh in any way in the years ahead.  Almost 50 years ago – long before the advent of the HispanicLatino population became newsworthy – the power of demography and the economy made a deep impression on me.

The winding down by Congress of the bracero program that allowed for Mexicans to work legally in the country and the nearly simultaneous closing of the local air force base economically devastated the town in West Texas where I grew up, reducing the county’s population from about 40,000 to 30,000.  But at the same time the country already had written a prophetic passage in its history, and its authors were not Mexican immigrants, changes in the economy or laws passed by Congress but the so-called Anglo population.  Sometime in 1972 or 1973, the Anglo population decided it was going to stop having more than two kids per family.  Thus news gives way to context.

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If Only a Label Were the Answer

After all the huffing and puffing, the ongoing discussion about the Hispanic and/or Latino labels sort of misses the point. Yes, Hispanic is a confected term, and, yes, Latino, is not far behind but Latino is personally more acceptable to many of us who are Americans but cannot go around town calling ourselves Paraguayans, Colombians, Dominicans, Cubans or Mexicans first but who yet feel differently about our selves, meaning our identity.  Thus the discussion – wholesome, necessary and inevitable – is not about a label but about identity, a term that is as much about who we are as it is about purpose in life.

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America, Still in the Act of Becoming, as are HispanicLatinos

After more than two centuries of existence, America continues to be a nation always in the act of becoming, and the new moment the country has entered allows HispanicLatinos to reintroduce themselves in a new light to the country – and to themselves.  In the 1960’s and 1970’s, young Americans, feeling freed of conventions that were assumed to be breeding a national identity, went off in search of a self that somehow was unfulfilled. 

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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.

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Alone at the Top: HispanicLatinos with the Responsibility to Lead

In the immediate years ahead, HispanicLatinos who are the most accomplished will have the most to lose if the rest of their community does not accelerate its progress and if America falters.  These HispanicLatinos bear the looming responsibility of managing the interplay of three powerful forces already changing their personal lives and the larger trajectory of the country:  A new demography, mass communications and a seemingly willful geography.  It is a difficult but worthwhile task.

Geography often is taken as fixed.  In fact, it moves history.  Geography projects, maintains and grows culture, however unevenly.  At times, an army can use the lay of the land to scurry a foe into defeat.  But geography is far more powerful over the long term, shaping and influencing events permanently in positive and negative ways not apparent until much later.

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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:

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Forced to Lead: The Most Acculturated and Assimilated HispanicLatinos

HispanicLatinos can remake America through the remaking of their identity, and, ironically, it will fall on the more assimilated or acculturated HispanicLatinos to communicate how important their community’s development will be to the country’s survival.  Above all, more integrated HispanicLatinos must understand clearly the core characteristic of the population they will be forced to lead:  It is still a people in the making.

America itself is a country always in the making and reinventing itself.  Constant change grew it into a world power. If the country is always being remade, so, too, must the HispanicLatino community experience ongoing change.

At the core of any human being succeeding in life and maximizing his or her potential is a sense of confidence that emanates from a complete self usually derived from a secure home, environment and family.  Knowing who one is, growing to understand one’s purpose in life and feeling comfortable within one’s own skin is critical to individual achievement.

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From a New Understanding, a New Purpose and a New Identity

Whether the rest of the nation understands the unique nature of the present circumstances and importance of its HispanicLatino population to the future of the country is not as important as HispanicLatinos themselves understanding it – and understanding themselves in the process.

Within a growing number of HispanicLatinos, the perception of the fact that they will be decisive to America’s future has taken root.  If HispanicLatinos think they are going to get the kind of leadership they and the country need from somewhere else, they are fooling themselves.  In many cities and states, then, many HispanicLatinos are having conversations – publicly, privately and individually – about what happens next.

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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.

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