Criticized by supporters for passing a weak civil rights bill in 1957, even though it was the first civil rights legislation in almost a century, the powerful Democratic Senate Majority Leader Lyndon B. Johnson responded by saying that it was but a first step to larger gains ahead. Eight years later, a far more comprehensive civil rights package indeed became law. The story of those years — retold in part in Robert Caro’s new book on Johnson, The Passage of Power – holds implications for those contemplating a watered-down version of the Dream Act. The courageous leaders of the Dream Act movement, perhaps unknowingly, hold in their hands much of how HispanicLatinos are redefining themselves. The other part of that redefinition is being accomplished through the courtesy of states like Arizona, Alabama and Georgia and, soon enough, most likely, the Supreme Court.
Monthly Archives: May 2012
‘Diversity’ Doesn’t Cut It Anymore for HispanicLatinos
Diversity is no longer an operative word for knowledgeable and informed HispanicLatinos conversing and thinking seriously about the future. Unity is by far more suitable for the times. It speaks to the strategic importance of a population that has gained critical geographic and demographic mass. A microcosm of the kind of collaboration that geography and demography will extract naturally from HispanicLatinos is the daily operations of the country’s Spanish-language television networks. Every day of the year, HispanicLatino professionals from all corners of the HispanicLatino world produce programming developed and managed by staffs whose primary language of interest might be Spanish derived from different countries of origin but whose language in the control room is likely English.
Aided by a new demography and a resilient geography while Spanish-language television and radio networks expand in more markets while English media distribute both positive and negative messages that bolster its identity, a HispanicLatino population that is allegedly a loose conglomeration of groups competing against each other is unlikely to succumb to expansive division over the long term.
While only an example, the English-Spanish paradigm evident in television production will continue to extend to many more sectors of the economy, calling, of course, on HispanicLatinos to maintain, improve or acquire both Spanish and English to an effective level.
On Afghanistan, Obama Resonates within the HispanicLatino Community
There was something unusual about President Obama last night when he spoke from Bagram military base in Afghanistan. His tone of voice seemed to capture the nation’s weariness of war without his own voice sounding listless. There was no bluster, no nonsense. Matter-of-fact, he sounded presidential. He did not rush to useless rhetorical heights. All of this should have resonated well within the HispanicLatino community, whose contributions to the Bush wars are well documented.
Obama embodied part of the common sentiment expressed to me by a family member a year ago. “We need to get out. We have done all we can. It will not work in the end, but no one has given it a better shot.” Indeed, the casualties within the country and within the HispanicLatino community will last for decades and entire lifetimes. It really is time to come home. It is hard to believe that we have spent more than $3 trillion in those wars and will spend trillions more to take care of the wounded and the families of the dead.
The message Obama delivered was a powerful as the one that went unstated: Get out, close that checkbook, open up another course at home. The hope is that the discredited neoconservatives, the ones who sat back while others fought and the habitual warriors who plunged America into these meaningless wars, get the message for all time.
Somewhere in his voice lay the possible reaction of a country were it ever attacked – God forbid – again as in September of 2011. Only the most ridiculous people would argue for some sort of land invasion – of what? More probably, we would step up what we are doing now: Keeping the pressure up and waiting for generational change to come in the Islamist world. Nations can change within a generation. Some can climb; others decline. Perhaps that is the reason for a longer commitment than most Americans want now.