Readers who have heard me speak know that it was as a teenager more than 40 years ago that I watched the impact that sudden changes in demography and in the economy can unleash.  The winding down of the bracero program and the nearly simultaneous closing of the local air force base devastated the town in West Texas where my family once lived.  From that experience it was only a matter of time before I realized what was coming to the country as a whole.  As a young reporter in Corpus Christi in the late 1970’s, I saw the makeup of its schools’ HispanicLatino population prefigure the slow unfolding of the drama we are witnessing today.  It was then that I first learned the power of 2.1.

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