Tag Archives: HispanicLatinos

Gail Does Texas

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So Gail Collins sorta ruined my weekend.  The columnist for The New York Times could not have known that I had not planned to pick up another book this week, especially with the EuroCup competition starting today.  Still recovering from Robert Caro’s latest forest-killer on Lyndon Johnson, I thought I had made enough time for a story about the history of the Mossad.  Reading about LBJ and about how Israel ruthlessly wages universal war against its enemies is not easy.  It is going to take me longer to read 200 pages of Collins’ As Texas Goes... as 1,000 pages of Caro.  Laughing consumes more time than you think.  It has been years since I went from beef and bourbon to cotton candy, and you know how long that takes to eat.

There no doubt will be more to say on Collins’ book (on page 32 so far) but I saw her hawking it on MSNBC on Wednesday.  In the ensuing discussion with Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough, none of them could put a finger on why Texans feels their state is so special.  They like most people could not get beyond the surprise that, for good and bad, Texans care a lot about their state – a state that seems to have inordinate influence over the nation’s life, as Collins believes.

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Wisconsin last night compounded the value of the HispanicLatino vote for November

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The election results in Wisconsin last night raise more than an eyebrow.  They carry real implications.  The one consequence not being discussed in the post-election analyses on the television sets is the ever-ballooning importance of the HispanicLatino vote.  Take the electoral votes of Wisconsin and perhaps other near-by states out of the equation for November, and it makes Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico and Florida all the more critical.  As each day passes, the HispanicLatino vote gains greater political currency, and the resources dedicated to it should increase accordingly.  States that are deemed safe today might not be tomorrow, and so whatever additional insurance can be purchased by the campaigns, its cost should not daunt campaign strategists.

The facility with which Gov. Scott Walker swept aside the attempt to recall him also gives rise to the need to review the infrastructure that President Obama’s campaign is building to win in November.  However important labor unions, they can provide only one component of the votes Democrats need.

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Voter purges can lead to voter surges

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Did anyone expect otherwise?  News reports that elections officials are purging hundreds of thousands of HispanicLatinos from voter rolls throughout the nation should surprise no one.  But as easy to identify potential voters to strike from official voting lists through electronic means is the ability to identify them once they have been removed.  President Obama’s campaign has the necessary time and resources to take the steps necessary to protect its flank.  Whether its managers do what needs to be done is another matter.  But no one should think that average voters – HispanicLatino or not – on their own are going to take the steps to make sure their registrations are in order until they go vote – which could be too late.

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The President’s Hair: To Reminisce

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The Washington Post running the photograph of the little black youngster feeling President Obama’s hair to see if it was like his was probably lost on some people.  What it must have meant for that little boy in the process of finding his identity and his manhood.  And however it might be emblematic of other things, it represents also the time and point in which America always finds itself.  The kid could have been a white boy that age, or a HispanicLatino kid.  Upon seeing the image, my mind travelled back to another moment decades ago.

I remember shepherding a class of about 20 seventh-grade black kids to Monterrey, Mexico, on a field trip from Houston, a trip of about 500 miles.  It might have been a trip to the moon – for the kids and hosts alike, not to mention the teacher-chaperones.  Upon our arrival at the hotel, some of the hotel’s staff actually touched the hair of my students, and some of the clerks kissed their foreheads.  My students giggled.  I was embarrassed and touched at the same time – and confused.

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On summer’s eve: An election way down the road to being decided

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As the summer begins, where does the presidential election stand five months before Americans go to the polls?  If retired general Colin Powell is to be believed, he is one of those voters still undecided who make the polls a muddle when in fact I suspect they are not.  I guess we are going to trust his word.  The reality is the election is being decided each day.  It would be a good bet that the endless news cycle is driving more voters to an earlier decision than four years ago.  The much-ballyhooed lack of intensity among voters will be a wash if the campaigns do their work correctly.  Even though the electorates of 2008, 2010 and 2012 will be different one from the other, in many ways the election perhaps is closer to already having been decided – except for the final tally of votes.

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More than about civil rights, education is about national security

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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.

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Spurs: America’s Team and Other Important Thoughts

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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?

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The HispanicLatino Vote Matters, Right?

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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.

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Lyndon Baines Johnson: The first HispanicLatino — and black — President

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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.

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Census Bureau News Shatters History

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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.

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