Category Archives: Leadership

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

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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

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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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HispanicLatinos: A New Way of Thinking to Secure Their Voice

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In the throes of anxious times made so by lingering economic fears, Americans are not united on how to approach the future.  Only the most uninformed or those who revel in some sort of heavenly-ordained exceptionalism can deny the growing evidence of America’s worrisome position.  HispanicLatinos cannot afford to not be involved in thinking about the future.  But they certainly should not get wrapped up in passionate, patriotic bromides about their country.  At the other extreme, they cannot squander their energy on recriminations regarding a now-past history.

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The Pope in Mexico: A Warning to HispanicLatinos

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Regular readers of this blog might think I am on some sort of anti-Catholic crusade.  Quite the contrary.  I am very Catholic.  But upon the Pope’s arrival today in Mexico before going on to Cuba, I am more concerned with what the Church does to hurt the development of the HispanicLatino community – and the country – than worrying about thoughts on paper that some might take as anti-Catholic.

This Pope’s Papacy has been such a disaster that his arrival in one of the most Catholic countries in the world is almost a non-event.  The media will cover it, of course, but so uninspired are Catholics today by this Pope and by the crop of bishops that he and his predecessor appointed that the planners of this papal trip would not dare take the Pope on a tour that would require large crowds to demonstrate the Church’s standing in Mexico – a once-effective tool in this age when image and impression are easy to manipulate.  The Church is so damaged and weaker now than at anytime in modern history that the Pope will hardly venture outside Guanajuato, the cradle of Mexican conservatism.

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Needed: A New People with a New Plan — Now

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Regarding their common – and to many, worrisome – future, neither the country nor HispanicLatinos have a plan.  The much ballyhooed “bridge to the 21st Century” that Bill Clinton talked about in his re-election campaign is no more than a plank walk at the moment.

America – until now – never needed a plan.  In its earliest years, the nation fought great political battles over a national banking system and government involvement in the development of a young country’s infrastructure that included canals, national roads and bridges.  Once settled, these initial disputes opened up a continent to the economic energy thrown off by the Industrial Revolution that ultimately hurled America into the forefront of nations in the 20th century.

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Marco Rubio, the 33-percent Solution and The New York Times

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Years ago, a city editor in the newsroom taped a piece of paper on the monitor on my desk with the proper spelling of the city’s mayor.  I consistently misspelled it.  The New York Times should do the electronic equivalent for whichever of its writers report on the HispanicLatino vote this year.

Individuals across the land who put out a daily newspaper 365 times a year make as many mistakes.  One of those 365 mistakes is when a newspaper gets wrong the share of the HispanicLatino vote that George W. Bush received in 2004.  It was not, as the Times said in a story last week, 44 percent but 40 percent. Aside from the editorial integrity involved, the difference is of interest in this year’s election.

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HispanicLatinos: Critical, Strategic Asset Not Yet in Gear

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Were population groups merely fungible, the current challenges facing America and HispanicLatinos might be less compelling.  If HispanicLatino households reflected the socioeconomic characteristics of the Anglo household, their growing numbers would be what the nation needs to help balance its budget and invest in its future.  But though HispanicLatinos constitute an important strategic asset in the fiscal future of the country, they are in dire straits.  HispanicLatinos earn little more than as 40 years ago.  In a land that aspires to political and societal equality, the economic inequality among its individual components has taken on ominous implications.

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Attacks on Women and HispanicLatinos: One and the Same

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I would imagine that women outraged by Rush Limbaugh’s comments denigrating the Georgetown student might now see why HispanicLatinos rejoiced yesterday when the Department of Justice ruled against the state of Texas’ voter identification laws targeting minority voters.  Limbaugh’s people and the Republican majority of the Texas Legislature that enacted the punitive laws requiring photo identification are one and the same.  In fact, they are one and the same throughout the country, including states like Wisconsin, whose law was also struck down this week.

These are the same GOP legislative majorities that are requiring sonograms and that have embarked on a jihad against contraceptive tools using President Obama’s health care as their stalking horse.  As in other states, women who are under attack deserve and require defense.  So it is with HispanicLatinos and other minorities whom Republicans would want to take back to the dark ages.

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A post-racial society? In our lifetimes? LOL

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I have to strain to refrain from laughing when I hear someone say or write that we live in a post-racial society.  No doubt, the country’s non-Anglo population has reached a critical mass.  But it has not reached critical acceptance of the HispanicLatinos, blacks, Asians and the many others who are transforming the nation – and most likely never will.  Last week, in San Antonio, the kids from Edison High School, an overwhelmingly HispanicLatino campus, were subjected to shouts of “USA! USA!” after their basketball team lost a playoff game to a school from across town in predominantly non-HispanicLatino Alamo Heights.

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HispanicLatinos and the Need to Rethink Themselves

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Without HispanicLatinos, America would be hollowed out demographically at a time when the country is fundamental to the security of the world – an essential truth that HispanicLatinos must inculcate in the marrow of their bones. HispanicLatinos must now think of themselves in a profoundly historic way.  They must view themselves for the strategic assets that they have become and think about how they accelerate the development of their inner potential and innate talents. They are essential to the future of the country in the most basic of ways: They have become a national security concern.

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