Tag Archives: Hispanic

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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The New America: A New Creation

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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.

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The Nation-saving Purpose of the HispanicLatino Population

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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.

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Anti-HispanicLatino Rhetoric – a Small Silver Lining

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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.

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Women Should Uncork a Knock-out Punch in November

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Were I a woman, I would use the election in November as a blunt political tool: In one fell swoop, millions upon millions of women could send an unvarnished message to right-wing Republicans, the Catholic Church, the U.S. Supreme Court and gasbags like Rush Limbaugh to shut the heck up.  What prompted this blog posting – okay, this is downright rant – is that, among other things, I have a niece, recently graduated from college, who is beginning to start building a professional career and, hopefully, a successful life.

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HispanicLatinos within the Democratic Ranks: A Dangerous Unease

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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.

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PBS’ American Experience on Clinton: Incomplete but Invaluable

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The retelling of the Bill Clinton story recently on PBS’ American Experience was more saga than the usual documentaries of that renowned series, which seeks to capture and project the nature of an American Presidency and its importance to history.  Nevertheless, it set the mind to thinking how different and hopeful were the times then.  We have gone from promise to precipice.

The Clinton Presidency of course gave way to the hapless administration of the nation’s affairs and its government by George W. Bush, and it would serve the Obama camp well today to make sure that it does not approach this year’s election in the form of Al Gore, one of the Clinton Administration’s endpoints.  Gore bears the unique responsibility of having lost a national election for his failure to carry his home state or others where using Bill Clinton might have yielded victory.

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Not Good: Events Taking Shape Without Significant HispanicLatino Participation

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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.

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