HispanicLatinos are more important to America than simply holding up a national population that otherwise would be in serious decline. Yet they are a complicated blessing, given their complicated history. Significant-enough discrimination, legally-mandated exclusion, ample geographic isolation and individual self-neglect in many HispanicLatinos sheltered their culture from full-fledged assimilation in American society.
Thus hindered and restrained, HispanicLatinos began to fall behind early and have lagged through the years. But change can happen quicker today than in any time in history. HispanicLatinos now can develop a new way to manage their immediate future, and they can look to the just-immediate past to see how the prospects of a whole country can change in the span of only a few years.