Last week in Washington, Mitt Romney said the failure of schools with minority students “is the civil rights issue of our era.’’ Hmmm. It is more the seminal national security of our time but who’s quibbling? If HispanicLatinos do not accelerate their educational – and thus their economic – attainment in the short term, they will not be able to stave off the nation’s crushing fiscal demands in the long term. Without the tax revenues necessary to keep abreast with the technological advances in defense systems, the country’s defenses ultimately will be on par with other nations. It is only a matter of time. Not to mention keeping up with other costs. But this is a fella who cannot bring himself to support any version of the Dream Act, and he seems to not understand how college-opportunities programs after World War II set up the nation for long-term economic growth.
Spurs: America’s Team and Other Important Thoughts
So I promised a friend I would not write about sports on my blog. But my birthday is around the corner so I am gifting myself. (When did gift become a verb? Around the time impact did?) In any case, nothing about the world of HispanicLatinos specifically but three thoughts that do have some social relevance:
The San Antonio Spurs should be America’s Team. Forget the Dallas Cowboys and the rest of professional sports, with colleges not far behind. Has there been a group of players that so personifies the word team? And so embodies athleticism? And does not embarrass anyone? And allows itself to be coached? That does not use Jesus Christ as a football?
The HispanicLatino Vote Matters, Right?
Presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney speaks today at a meeting of HispanicLatino business owners in Washington, D.C., where he reportedly is going to chat with Marco Rubio. Who knows what they will talk about or what Rubio’s chances realistically are of landing the second spot on the GOP presidential ticket but it should get the attention of individuals who do not think the HispanicLatino vote is not going to be important – much less potentially decisive – in November.
Lyndon Baines Johnson: The first HispanicLatino — and black — President
Years ago, when Bill Clinton was styled as America’s first black President, more than a few Americans, knowing it to be hyperbole, were tolerantly amused. It was fun to appreciate the direct connection the African American community and he shared but, of course, along came Barack Obama. My bemusement at the Clinton pretext stemmed from the wanton disregard of Lyndon Johnson’s role in cracking open the world for African Americans – and HispanicLatinos simultaneously. After decades of oppression, minority communities began to emerge from their suppressed selves because of Johnson. LBJ was America’s first black president politically and America’s first HispanicLatino president, to boot.
Census Bureau News Shatters History
People remember specifically where they were the moment they heard John F. Kennedy had been assassinated in Dallas in 1963. Very few of us will remember – since no one knows exactly when it happened – the moment that “white” births in the nation fell below 50 percent, most likely sometime in early 2011. Yet in comparison, the news that HispanicLatinos, blacks, Asians and those of mixed are giving birth to a new majority is by far more important than what happened in Dallas, although it certainly was not caught on film.
A Generational Responsibility: Understanding Oneself
In its storied history, America has had to rely on specific generations to make enormous personal sacrifices for the country’s sake. One generation fought to create the country; another generation struggled to keep it whole and not let it disappear into disunion; another generation beat back fascism; others outlasted communism; and another now fights international terrorism. HispanicLatinos are no different. They are a new generation of Americans being asked to save and to hold their country for a far greater purpose than the vast majority of HispanicLatinos might have ever considered – except that many of them start behind the social, economic and political curve. And the dimensions of the responsibility they bear are daunting. How to help save a country that seems in decline internally is no small task.
Same Sex Marriage Does Not Trump Arizona
Many years ago one of the most influential books ever written shaped my own political identity and my view of the world. Ostensibly about the presidential campaign of 1960, Theodore White’s Pultizer Prize-winning The Making of the President told the story of how John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson survived one of the narrowest presidential victories in the nation’s history. But more than simply converting a political story into a highly interesting narrative, White wrote revealingly about how political markets are hardly more than consumer markets. In his eyes, fifty states and the District of Columbia – each one different from the other – comprised 51 political markets with many more submarkets of voters, hundreds in fact. They still do, if not more so.
HispanicLatino: More Human Drama than New Market
Markets is a word easily thrown about, especially in the changing landscape of television. One definition of market is the old trying to catch up to the new – and to the news, perhaps. In the roiled television industry, ‘market’ could also be defined as networks discovering they stood in the way of history. Certainly, television has scrambled to catch up with the social media, and it has begun finally to move away from an old demography on which it has been stuck that each day applies less and less to the only definition of markets that ultimately matters – a way to make money.
Reworking the Networks at Last: Breaking the News
There are many tough executive-level jobs in corporate America today. The nation’s economy is being buffeted on all sides by foreign competition, skilled workers are at a premium and the nation’s infrastructure each day falls behind the rest of the world — among other issues. Few of those jobs are more challenging than leading a television network today (or a film production or advertising company for that matter).
Whether heading up an English-language or a Spanish-language operation – all are caught in some way by changing demographics; the evident and growing power of social media and new platforms; and an audience comprised of submarkets and subgroups hard to unify into a national market. It is nothing short of mayhem – and confused mayhem at that – exacerbated by business models that probably need to be revamped or scratched. Not surprisingly, rumors abound about the future of the current Spanish-language networks, the advent of news ones and the creation of new hybrids for English-dominant HispanicLatinos. ABC and Univision this week affirmed their intention to bring to life next year a new cable news channel that appeals to English-dominant HispanicLatinos.
Dream Act Leaders Now Have Tough Decisions to Make
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.