Through the years most Americans have believed that their country is exceptional and assume it is eternal. Indeed, its ability to provide opportunity and freedom and to convert human potential into spectacular scientific and technological progress eclipses other nations, and America remains a shining example of the promise of humankind. Despite its faults and shortcomings and because it is not a perfect union, it could have become a slave-holding, colonial-imperialist power for longer than it was tempted. Enough of its people, however, chose differently.
Americans have spent hundreds of thousands of lives and invested trillions of dollars to make the world a safe and better place for humankind. Most Americans – including the vast majority of HispanicLatinos for whom loyalty is almost part of their DNA – take immense pride in their country, and rightfully so. Yet history is not destiny; demography is.
To believe that America is automatically free from the fates that have greeted previous nations and civilizations is a vanity that can no longer be entertained by informed opinion nor sustained by fact. The idea that the country is eternal and impervious to nature and history most likely affronts the Deity in which most Americans say they believe.
The 70 percent or so of HispanicLatinos who are citizens have every reason to be proud to be Americans. Most of the remainder probably aspires to citizenship, given their evident presence in the country. Yet, despite their close affiliation to and affection for America, HispanicLatinos – as a whole – regrettably are not fully part of America for two important reasons, and both reasons must be resolved and confronted. It is an important moment at which HispanicLatinos have arrived.
The first reason is that – as a demographic group – HispanicLatinos lag significantly behind the rest of the nation in almost every positive indicator that is critical to the country’s economic development, prosperity and security. HispanicLatinos with vastly lower household incomes and net worth, anemic educations and less-than-average health stand apart, on average, from the rest of the population. While many HispanicLatinos as individuals have succeeded professionally, especially those most likely reading these blogs, the overwhelming majority of their compatriots have not. Given their average socio-economic characteristics, HispanicLatinos can be seen as identifiably and significantly different.
The second reason flows from the first and is pernicious: A significant number of Americans do not think of HispanicLatinos – even those who are thoroughly assimilated and economically accomplished – as full citizens. And other Americans can be spurred quickly to adopt that view. Disregarding the fact that Spanish explorers were trampling through the lands that would become the United States long before the founding of Jamestown and the arrival of slaves from Africa, many Americans consider HispanicLatinos to be culturally different and even suspect – a belief re-enforced daily by images of foreign nationals from Latin America crashing the border.
To too many Americans, it matters little that most HispanicLatinos are not border-crashers, and it matters even less that Spanish settlements in Florida, Texas and California preceded the founding of the republic and the birth of its first president, George Washington, by almost 200 years. In sum, many Americans amid rising anti-immigrant and increasingly dubious economic times lump HispanicLatinos into one large mass and categorize more of them into a discernible group – which statistically they are.
These circumstances, however unfair and however uncomfortable they might make some HispanicLatinos, form their modern reality, and it is a reality with lasting power. As long as America faces the prospect of decline and its economy continues to fail to create jobs, it will look with increasing skepticism, if not outright suspicion, upon that group within that most represents the future they most fear – especially if that group is growing in number and expanding across the states.
HispanicLatinos might find their present moment in history befuddling, yet they are like and unlike the other groups that make up America. HispanicLatinos are part of the modern American story, but to argue that most Americans are not put off by the new demography changing the country is to be either naïve or in denial. Because they are a huge and growing mass, HispanicLatinos are going to have to find a way to navigate around the tremendous emotions, passions and feelings that a population anxious about America’s future can generate.
Despite the challenges, the HispanicLatino community has before it a splendid opportunity to maximize the full potential of its productive and creative talents by developing them individually across the entire spectrum of their population. The good news is that HispanicLatinos can succeed. In this, America should rejoice, but not until the nation associates HispanicLatinos with a prosperous and secure future, which is not obvious today – even to many HispanicLatinos.
Feel free to forward these blogs adapted from previous writings, with additional thoughts published invariably in between.