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.
Tag Archives: HispanicLatinos
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.
Women Should Uncork a Knock-out Punch in November
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.
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.
PBS’ American Experience on Clinton: Incomplete but Invaluable
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.
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.
Culture Change
At the core of the way forward for HispanicLatinos and the country is implementing change. Change is the universal, common condition of humankind, flowing from its evolutionary nature, and most change throughout history has been for the good. Yet, for a nation that knows it faces tremendous challenges, the forces of inevitable change cannot be left to chance and to the vagaries of the trillions upon trillions of decisions that individuals make on a daily basis that in the end result in the society that surrounds us.
To the potentially decisive moment in history to which HispanicLatinos are called – which is nothing less than sustaining an America that can continue to influence events on a widening global stage – how to change what is must be a constant component of our thinking.
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.
Justices Damage the Nation and HispanicLatinos — Its Very Future
The damage the Supreme Court inflicted on the country with its wrong-headed ruling in Citizens United should be evident enough even to its most ardent proponents, except for the columnist George Will, of course. The justices, with the likes of Will pulling at the floodgates, enabled multi-billionaires to pour millions of dollars into a presidential campaign that demonstrates how unceremoniously and crudely Citizens usurps the constitutional intent that the vote of any one individual is no more equal than the next.
Now come the warning signs that the court is going to undo programs that seek to increase the number of minority students in institutions of higher education. The court has accepted for review a case involving The University of Texas at Austin that five justices will use almost undoubtedly to roll back so-called affirmative action programs.