More and more Hispanics or Latinos are coming to understand their unique placement in the flow of American history that at this moment calls on them to understand their growing responsibility for the fiscal fate of the country. Two groups within the HispanicLatino community know and feel the mounting obligation the best: College-educated professionals and veterans. Individuals holding college degrees most often are the ones who rise to play leadership roles within the community. But the vast numbers of HispanicLatino veterans – many of them having put their lives on the line for the country – are as cognizant and are especially important today. They, more so than most, know what is at stake in a pivotal election in which they can make a decided difference.
Education: A way to balance the books
The great and constant plaint from Hispanics or Latinos is and has been education. Their grievances have as their origins actual discrimination that kept many of them out of school or condemned as many or more to schools through the years with insufficient resources to maximize their community’s talents and potential – much to the nation’s detriment. Were the average household incomes of HispanicLatinos to equal overnight that of the average white, non-HispanicLatino household, the nation’s fiscal condition and outlook would be quite different.
The Modern HispanicLatino: Not Sexist, Racist or Homophobic
So Hispanics/Latinos have grown into a significant and ultimately critical part of the national population. But what do the times demand of the modern Hispanic or Latino? I write of the HispanicLatino, not the HispanicLatina, for I would not begin to presume on the female consciousness. I am, after all, not a Catholic bishop. So who does the world need the HispanicLatino to be? Who does he need to be for himself?
Bloomberg: A National Hero
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is a national hero, not the wannabe fascist overseer of an emerging nanny state as his critics maintain. Sigh. Had the HispanicLatino community a leader with the stature and political and financial standing of a Bloomberg and his bravura! Bloomberg, of course, has taken aggressive stances on smoking and other public health issues, and he now wants to eliminate the super-sized sodas ballooning the national waistline. Some of the criticism coming his way so far has not come from the seriously overweight HispanicLatino community.
Say it isn’t so, Rupert: Romney Going Negative on HispanicLatinos
Regular readers of this blog know that some weeks ago I wrote that the Romney campaign might have decided tactically to give up on the HispanicLatino vote. Nothing otherwise explains Romney’s lame performance at the NALEO conference in Orlando three weeks ago. I suggested that Romney might now allow his friends at the SuperPacs to run an anti-HispanicLatino strategy in selected states to whip up working class whites a la Willie Horton to make up for any lost share in traditional GOP HispanicLatino support.
A story in The Washington Post about a tweet by Rupert Murdoch supports my suspicion. “Murdoch was among 50 people who met with the former Massachusetts governor at the Union League Club in New York City (last week)….At the meeting, Murdoch pressed Romney and his aides to get tougher on Obama and asked about Romney’s stance on immigration. He later tweeted his thoughts in response to a follower who said Romney has brains but needs more stomach and heart…(Murdoch tweeted): ‘Romney has all these and more, but just to see more fight. And Hispanics a surrender to O. Cn not afford, hurts senate too.’”
Murdoch’s disjointed, contorted tweet implies that he walked away from the meeting with the impression that Romney has surrendered HispanicLatinos to President Obama, something Murdoch feels Romney cannot afford to do. But trailing 68-24 percent among HispanicLatinos in the polls, Romney might feel he has no option but to revert to a strategy that attracts voters scared and anxious about the economy and the nation’s new demography.
Chief Justice Roberts: A Catholic in the Making
I do not know John Roberts. Never met the man. I have been reading about him for years. Could not avoid him, really. Upon any vacancy or near-vacancy on the Supreme Court, Republican insiders incessantly pumped him as a rising jurist and, lo and behold, he now sits as Chief Justice. I do not know Antonin Scalia either. Observed him once at a reception. Said to be an intellectual. He seemed to be enjoying what he was eating and drinking.
Both men were raised Catholic, something I do know about, and it might shed light beyond Linda Greenhouse’s contribution in The New York Times and the notable, or not so notable, depending on your view, reporting of Jan Crawford of CBS about Roberts changing his vote at the last minute to uphold The Affordable Care Act. The reasons for his switch are as speculated upon as they are myriad in number. But I wonder if Roberts’ vote was the result of the good Catholic gene winning over the bad Catholic gene that burdens all Catholics, including Scalia, who no one can doubt from his increasing vitriolic and bitter dissents has let his bad Catholic gene run amuck.
Intensity after Court decision is not one-sided
I am often struck by the conventional wisdom that sprouts instantly on television after, say, a Supreme Court decision on health care. Conventional thinking is like angel dust to reporters who in the immediacy of an event have to say something that by the end of the day is repeated often enough during the 24/7 news cycle that it becomes fact.
So it is with the “intensity argument” that is supposed to give the Republican campaign of Mitt Romney a much-needed boost in the arm. Trailing in every state that is supposed to be competitive in a supposedly close election, Romney, it is thought by the conventionalists, received an injection of energy sure to change the dynamics of the campaign. I am not convinced. I doubt more can be done to increase the anger-level of the virulent anti-Obama camp. In contrast and perhaps as important is the fact that three million young Americans up the age of 26 can stay on their parents’ insurance policies. Add to that perhaps as many as five million grateful, anxious parents and anyone can begin to see that the intensity argument does not flow in one direction only.
The Unintended Paradox of Arizona
Nothing defines an individual more than a different identity being thrust upon him or her. It is more important than just one moment, and it in the long run might be pivotal for the country. It might convert a leaderless community into one of action — for America’s good..
The massive attention given to the Supreme Court decision on Arizona represents only a part of our passage into the new time we are privileged to witness, although many of us will have to adjust our vision to it, as if entering a room suddenly lit. The intense speculation over the HispanicLatino vote in the presidential race is but another component of the point of no return. Things HispanicLatino have become and will forever be, with growing strength, a part of the national consciousness. The Dream Act. The penetration of the HispanicLatino image into mainstream advertising. The changing demography. Unending elections and perennial electoral calculations. All are real departure points rooted in change but now intensified by the necessity of HispanicLatinos to prove their citizenship by showing their papers until the last remaining part of Arizona is declared unconstitutional.
Court on Arizona: Maintains and raises race as central theme of nation’s future
The essence of the American experience throughout its history has been race. From the country’s very beginning when the founders sidestepped slavery, through the Civil War and through the civil rights movement, racial identity – and the meaning of Americanhood – has been a focal point in the events of our time. The Supreme Court’s affirmative decision on Arizona’s anti-HispanicLatino law maintains – and in fact raises – race as a central theme of the nation’s destiny. Not only can any HispanicLatino be stopped by local enforcement officials but also blacks, Asian Americans and any dark-skinned person thought to be from anywhere else. In that sense, Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer was correct in claiming that the “heart” of her state’s racist law that permits racial profiling was confirmed.
But Brewer also said that local enforcement authorities will be held “accountable” if they engage in racial profiling. From my days covering police departments as a reporter years ago and then later when I worked as a speechwriter for the commissioner of the old Immigration and Naturalization Service, I know the power and discretion that local officers have. And some, no doubt, will go overboard. And therein Brewer has no idea how accountable local governments will be held, for the moment that any citizen or any other person in the country legally has his or her rights violated by overzealous officers, they must sue the local governments that officer represents.
Only a cascade of lawsuits that will hurt local governments financially can push back the wave of discrimination that will soon be visited upon unsuspecting HispanicLatinos and other individuals of color. County and city and school districts that engage in any kind of discrimination must be taken into account – immediately. HispanicLatino attorneys must be the first line of attack on the Court’s tragic decision. In the smaller towns and cities and marginal localities in which HispanicLatinos are at the most risk, properly timed lawsuits against these local governments can bankrupt many of them. The Court left open the possibility that the most odious part of the decision could be challenged almost immediately. Let those legal assaults begin in earnest on all fronts. HispanicLatino attorneys literally must invade local courthouses with lawsuits. Local and state governments should pause before moving forward on ill-fated, ill-advised efforts that will prove counterproductive in the end.
A pivotal implication of the Court’s decision, then, is the slow movement of history pushing HispanicLatinos to the lead of the civil rights struggles of the future through the legal system. The Court put in high relief the lead role that HispanicLatinos – the principal force changing the country’s demographics – are going to play in its future.
In more ways than most people can appreciate, this is a pivotal moment in the nation’s history. The Court did nothing to advance the notion that the nation one day will get over the question of the color of one’s skin. And in deciding infamously on Bush v. Gore, women’s wages, campaign finance reform and, probably, health care and, certainly, on Arizona, the Court is on the wrong side of history. HispanicLatinos can advance their history-altering responsibilities by making sure that the Court – its decisions and its composition – become an election-year issue.
If HispanicLatinos in fact are destined to change the country, let them start by remaking the Court by helping re-elect a President who might yet have the opportunity to appoint another justice or two.
Marco Rubio: Laugh or Cry?
I am one of those HispanicLatinos who wants to like Marco Rubio. Anyone who knows and understands how fast HispanicLatinos need to rise within high leadership circles to affect the challenges the country faces should cut a wide swath around individuals like Rubio, especially those gifted with the kind of presence, charm and personality that some people equate to that possessed by John F. Kennedy. In today’s media-driven world, Rubio possesses all the traits that lead to success.
Except that Rubio is so wrong on so many fronts.