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.
Tag Archives: demographic
Attacks on Women and HispanicLatinos: One and the Same
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.
HispanicLatinos and the Need to Rethink Themselves
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.
The New America: A New Creation
To an already over-populated world undoubtedly harming its environment and contributing to climate change, the thought of adding more people to a global population of seven billion is not a subject easily dismissed nor left blithely unconsidered. Yet, the arms race of the previous century has been displaced by an undeclared demographic war among nations, and America cannot but continue to grow its own population.
The Nation-saving Purpose of the HispanicLatino Population
Readers who have heard me speak know that it was as a teenager more than 40 years ago that I watched the impact that sudden changes in demography and in the economy can unleash. The winding down of the bracero program and the nearly simultaneous closing of the local air force base devastated the town in West Texas where my family once lived. From that experience it was only a matter of time before I realized what was coming to the country as a whole. As a young reporter in Corpus Christi in the late 1970’s, I saw the makeup of its schools’ HispanicLatino population prefigure the slow unfolding of the drama we are witnessing today. It was then that I first learned the power of 2.1.
Anti-HispanicLatino Rhetoric – a Small Silver Lining
So it is true that anti-HispanicLatino rhetoric continues unchecked, driven by the prolonged Republican presidential primary campaign, fed by the fights in places like Alabama, Arizona, Georgia and South Carolina over mostly unconstitutional state laws on immigration and festooned by the antics of the hate-filled Joe Arpaio. And the tone of the attacks that like shrapnel explode in every part of the HispanicLatino community might get shriller still. However, a sliver lining adorns every cloud.
HispanicLatinos within the Democratic Ranks: A Dangerous Unease
So I have a friend – a longtime Democratic liberal stalwart – who announced to me over lunch that he intends to vote Republican in November. I was stunned. His decision upends his long work record and rings totally out of character. You are going against the flow of history, I reminded him gently. A surge in the HispanicLatino community seems to be building in favor of President Obama and the Democratic ticket.
I am just tired of white liberals, he rejoined. I have never felt comfortable around them but now I am done with them.
Not Good: Events Taking Shape Without Significant HispanicLatino Participation
It says a lot about the country today that the Republican nominee for President is being chosen without any meaningful participation by one of its largest population groups. Aside from Florida where the HispanicLatino vote played some role, the HispanicLatino electoral quotient in the primaries and caucuses has been nil, which is in stark juxtaposition to the cover of Time magazine that has so many across the nation twitter. Yesterday’s primary in Arizona – of all places – saw almost no participation by HispanicLatinos. In a different world, HispanicLatinos should have rushed to vote for a more moderate Republican candidate win. But HispanicLatinos skipped the primary as if it never existed – a fact that speaks to how bifurcated the country is politically.
National Decline: A Burden for HispanicLatinos
The phrase national decline finally has entered the lexicon of American political thought – and not soon enough. How much time America has to address its national decline is an interesting question given that the nation’s government has entered a period of stagnation and ideological paralysis. The institutions of government, paralyzed by the nation’s increasingly polarized and monetized politics, show no signs of being able to put forth strategies to sustain the nation’s future.
On Stage Last Night: The Old America
If you believe that the country is undergoing a historic demographic transformation and that a new America has emerged with a majority of the country realizing it needs a new way forward, then you need to look no farther than last night’s Republican presidential forum in Arizona. The debate was for and about the old America, that is to say, that part of the country that is willing to hear candidates for the Presidency who would spend 25 minutes…on birth control. The discussion last night was of interest to voters who care about the issues that hardly matter to the rest of America: The bailout of the auto industry that worked; immigration that helps prop up a declining national population and, of course, birth control. And that was the first hour.