The United States is always in the act of becoming, remaking itself. Like all nations, America’s population replaces itself through the generation of a new people, except that unlike other nations it has done so in the context of an inventive society endlessly progressing somewhere. No one has ever laid out a plan for America. It happened as the result of hard work, freedom, perseverance and luck. Were the American continent 2,500 instead of 3,500 miles from Europe, history would almost certainly have been different. Indeed, geography is crucial for any nation. Left alone for a decisive period, American society was able to adopt the values of a progressive culture that made it special for a long period of time. Now, its geography and a great demographic moment are remaking a country hard to recognize from even two decades ago, and the role of Hispanic or Latinos is watershed.
Tag Archives: Latino
Gun Control and Reality
I go back and forth on this gun control thing. Growing up in rural Texas with a father who hunted and who during the Cuban missile crisis got his rifle out of the closet and got it ready, I favor the Second Amendment and the right to bear arms. I cannot imagine that the founders who, however elitist, did not recognize the dangers of new settlers making their way unarmed through the wild forests of a new country. It is nonsense to think that individual citizens cannot protect themselves. And I cannot imagine that anyone would think that citizens cannot use whatever means to defend themselves against oppression. Think Hafez al Assad in Syria and his father, Bashar al Assad, or Joe Arpaio of Arizona for that matter. I am glad Hispanics or Latinos have the Second Amendment as their last resort.
On the other hand, the violence wrought by handguns and the possession of larger weapons really is a wholly different matter. But how do you control the possession of arms so that someone like the shooter in Denver today would not have been able to do the damage he did this morning?
Latino Veterans: An untapped source within the Hispanic community
More and more Hispanics or Latinos are coming to understand their unique placement in the flow of American history that at this moment calls on them to understand their growing responsibility for the fiscal fate of the country. Two groups within the HispanicLatino community know and feel the mounting obligation the best: College-educated professionals and veterans. Individuals holding college degrees most often are the ones who rise to play leadership roles within the community. But the vast numbers of HispanicLatino veterans – many of them having put their lives on the line for the country – are as cognizant and are especially important today. They, more so than most, know what is at stake in a pivotal election in which they can make a decided difference.
Education: A way to balance the books
The great and constant plaint from Hispanics or Latinos is and has been education. Their grievances have as their origins actual discrimination that kept many of them out of school or condemned as many or more to schools through the years with insufficient resources to maximize their community’s talents and potential – much to the nation’s detriment. Were the average household incomes of HispanicLatinos to equal overnight that of the average white, non-HispanicLatino household, the nation’s fiscal condition and outlook would be quite different.
Bloomberg: A National Hero
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is a national hero, not the wannabe fascist overseer of an emerging nanny state as his critics maintain. Sigh. Had the HispanicLatino community a leader with the stature and political and financial standing of a Bloomberg and his bravura! Bloomberg, of course, has taken aggressive stances on smoking and other public health issues, and he now wants to eliminate the super-sized sodas ballooning the national waistline. Some of the criticism coming his way so far has not come from the seriously overweight HispanicLatino community.
Say it isn’t so, Rupert: Romney Going Negative on HispanicLatinos
Regular readers of this blog know that some weeks ago I wrote that the Romney campaign might have decided tactically to give up on the HispanicLatino vote. Nothing otherwise explains Romney’s lame performance at the NALEO conference in Orlando three weeks ago. I suggested that Romney might now allow his friends at the SuperPacs to run an anti-HispanicLatino strategy in selected states to whip up working class whites a la Willie Horton to make up for any lost share in traditional GOP HispanicLatino support.
A story in The Washington Post about a tweet by Rupert Murdoch supports my suspicion. “Murdoch was among 50 people who met with the former Massachusetts governor at the Union League Club in New York City (last week)….At the meeting, Murdoch pressed Romney and his aides to get tougher on Obama and asked about Romney’s stance on immigration. He later tweeted his thoughts in response to a follower who said Romney has brains but needs more stomach and heart…(Murdoch tweeted): ‘Romney has all these and more, but just to see more fight. And Hispanics a surrender to O. Cn not afford, hurts senate too.’”
Murdoch’s disjointed, contorted tweet implies that he walked away from the meeting with the impression that Romney has surrendered HispanicLatinos to President Obama, something Murdoch feels Romney cannot afford to do. But trailing 68-24 percent among HispanicLatinos in the polls, Romney might feel he has no option but to revert to a strategy that attracts voters scared and anxious about the economy and the nation’s new demography.
Chief Justice Roberts: A Catholic in the Making
I do not know John Roberts. Never met the man. I have been reading about him for years. Could not avoid him, really. Upon any vacancy or near-vacancy on the Supreme Court, Republican insiders incessantly pumped him as a rising jurist and, lo and behold, he now sits as Chief Justice. I do not know Antonin Scalia either. Observed him once at a reception. Said to be an intellectual. He seemed to be enjoying what he was eating and drinking.
Both men were raised Catholic, something I do know about, and it might shed light beyond Linda Greenhouse’s contribution in The New York Times and the notable, or not so notable, depending on your view, reporting of Jan Crawford of CBS about Roberts changing his vote at the last minute to uphold The Affordable Care Act. The reasons for his switch are as speculated upon as they are myriad in number. But I wonder if Roberts’ vote was the result of the good Catholic gene winning over the bad Catholic gene that burdens all Catholics, including Scalia, who no one can doubt from his increasing vitriolic and bitter dissents has let his bad Catholic gene run amuck.
The Unintended Paradox of Arizona
Nothing defines an individual more than a different identity being thrust upon him or her. It is more important than just one moment, and it in the long run might be pivotal for the country. It might convert a leaderless community into one of action — for America’s good..
The massive attention given to the Supreme Court decision on Arizona represents only a part of our passage into the new time we are privileged to witness, although many of us will have to adjust our vision to it, as if entering a room suddenly lit. The intense speculation over the HispanicLatino vote in the presidential race is but another component of the point of no return. Things HispanicLatino have become and will forever be, with growing strength, a part of the national consciousness. The Dream Act. The penetration of the HispanicLatino image into mainstream advertising. The changing demography. Unending elections and perennial electoral calculations. All are real departure points rooted in change but now intensified by the necessity of HispanicLatinos to prove their citizenship by showing their papers until the last remaining part of Arizona is declared unconstitutional.
Court on Arizona: Maintains and raises race as central theme of nation’s future
The essence of the American experience throughout its history has been race. From the country’s very beginning when the founders sidestepped slavery, through the Civil War and through the civil rights movement, racial identity – and the meaning of Americanhood – has been a focal point in the events of our time. The Supreme Court’s affirmative decision on Arizona’s anti-HispanicLatino law maintains – and in fact raises – race as a central theme of the nation’s destiny. Not only can any HispanicLatino be stopped by local enforcement officials but also blacks, Asian Americans and any dark-skinned person thought to be from anywhere else. In that sense, Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer was correct in claiming that the “heart” of her state’s racist law that permits racial profiling was confirmed.
But Brewer also said that local enforcement authorities will be held “accountable” if they engage in racial profiling. From my days covering police departments as a reporter years ago and then later when I worked as a speechwriter for the commissioner of the old Immigration and Naturalization Service, I know the power and discretion that local officers have. And some, no doubt, will go overboard. And therein Brewer has no idea how accountable local governments will be held, for the moment that any citizen or any other person in the country legally has his or her rights violated by overzealous officers, they must sue the local governments that officer represents.
Only a cascade of lawsuits that will hurt local governments financially can push back the wave of discrimination that will soon be visited upon unsuspecting HispanicLatinos and other individuals of color. County and city and school districts that engage in any kind of discrimination must be taken into account – immediately. HispanicLatino attorneys must be the first line of attack on the Court’s tragic decision. In the smaller towns and cities and marginal localities in which HispanicLatinos are at the most risk, properly timed lawsuits against these local governments can bankrupt many of them. The Court left open the possibility that the most odious part of the decision could be challenged almost immediately. Let those legal assaults begin in earnest on all fronts. HispanicLatino attorneys literally must invade local courthouses with lawsuits. Local and state governments should pause before moving forward on ill-fated, ill-advised efforts that will prove counterproductive in the end.
A pivotal implication of the Court’s decision, then, is the slow movement of history pushing HispanicLatinos to the lead of the civil rights struggles of the future through the legal system. The Court put in high relief the lead role that HispanicLatinos – the principal force changing the country’s demographics – are going to play in its future.
In more ways than most people can appreciate, this is a pivotal moment in the nation’s history. The Court did nothing to advance the notion that the nation one day will get over the question of the color of one’s skin. And in deciding infamously on Bush v. Gore, women’s wages, campaign finance reform and, probably, health care and, certainly, on Arizona, the Court is on the wrong side of history. HispanicLatinos can advance their history-altering responsibilities by making sure that the Court – its decisions and its composition – become an election-year issue.
If HispanicLatinos in fact are destined to change the country, let them start by remaking the Court by helping re-elect a President who might yet have the opportunity to appoint another justice or two.
Romney Lets Golden Moment Pass
I do not know what President Obama is going to say today in Orlando at the annual convention of the National Association of Latino Elected Officials. I did hear Mitt Romney yesterday and to say that it fell short of what he needed to do is an understatement. By my timing, Romney spoke for 16 minutes. In the 20 or so GOP debates during the presidential primary campaign, I estimate that Romney spent at least five minutes, on average, bashing immigrants and, by extension, HispanicLatinos who, while not making immigration their number one priority, do not cotton to that kind of language. Romney’s antagonistic language in the last few months amounted to perhaps as many as 100 televised minutes – not to mention the endless repetition of his remarks as sounds bites across every medium in the country. It isn’t as if HispanicLatinos do not know where Romney stands on things HispanicLatino. And so 16 minutes hardly would suffice.
But Romney amazed me: The national Spanish-language networks, both television and radio, waited for him with genuine interest. Univision and Telemundo were there, but also were the mainstream media, from which most HispanicLatinos get their news. CNN and MSNBC carried the address live. This was not a “gotcha” moment. He had control of the entire environment. It was a golden moment for Romney but, like the alleged vetting of Marco Rubio for vice president, Romney flubbed his opportunity. Perhaps he expects Jeb Bush or Rubio to do what he could not do for himself. Yet it does not work that way. Folks do not vote for surrogates. He could have achieved 100 percent coverage of the HispanicLatino community to make up for 100 minutes of discord.
If the Romney campaign hoped for some phrase, some language, some image, some narrative to register and make it across the many media gathered there that could begin to turn around the presidential race, the speech it prepared for its candidate was wholly and surprisingly absent of anything substantive. Who gets this kind of tee-up and whiffs it?