When we look at migrants, we see our nation’s history

Best piece I've read to date on what to do about the building humanitarian crisis on our border.  Temporary protected status, allowing the newest immigrants, or rather, "war refugees" into our country is a solution, indeed.

-Angela

Copyright © , Austin American-Statesman, All rights reserved.

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SPECIAL CONTRIBUTOR

When we look at migrants,we see our nation’s history

by JENNIFER HARBURY

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Copyright © , Austin American-Statesman, All rights reserved.

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SPECIAL CONTRIBUTOR

When we look at migrants, we see our nation’s history

by JENNIFER HARBURY

Although we Texans are a diverse lot, we have all been moved by the plight of the desperate young mothers and vulnerable teenagers arriving our border in recent weeks. Public comments, however, reflect a worrisome lack of information.

 First, we must understand that these new immigrants are not criminals. They are war refugees fleeing the brutal drug wars in their homelands. The cartels of Central America and Mexico have long targeted local adolescents to work for them, and resistance results in death. If we read the statistics, a 15-year-old boy in Honduras would in fact be safer in Syria. Worse yet, the kind of femicide we saw in Juarez, Mexico, is now the norm for women in Central America as well. Parents are sending their children north on the nightmarish train ride because there is no alternative.
 

 We are prohibited by international law from returning people to a country where they face persecution or torture. This is not a knee-jerk nicety. After all, sending the refugee boat back to Nazi Germany is not one of our more shining moments. There are, however, reasonable solutions. One immediate and time-tested approach would be to grant Temporary Protected Status to persons in danger of harm by the narco-cartels. This would allow the refugees to work to support themselves and remain safe for a few years, when their situation can be re-evaluated. We have done this successfully before. Likewise we should not be shy about calling in the United Nations or the Red Cross to assist us.
 

 We must also get over the idea that “outsiders” are a bad thing for our country. It’s a pretty silly position for anyone except Native Americans. The Puritans were religious refugees, and most colonists were fleeing either persecution or poverty. Devastating wars and natural disasters brought continuing waves of newcomers, including my father, who was then 11. They survived, thrived, and contributed. This is our national heritage. People who were safe, wealthy and happy in the Old World had no motive to mosey over here. 
 

Last, many people urge that we increase financial aid to these countries and help establish a more democratic society with a stronger economy. That won’t work. We Americans are the drug consumers, and we spend a pretty penny on these ugly habits. There will always be drug lords as long as we are paying.

 Importantly, we must remember our own disturbing historical role. The people of Central America worked valiantly for basic labor rights, racial equality and educational programs. They were brutally put down by military dictatorships backed by the United States. Declassified documents indicate that in Guatemala, the CIA helped to carry out a bloody military coup in 1954 to oust just such a reformist president. We then continued to fund an army that carried out a well-documented campaign of genocide against its own citizenry.
 

Some of the bloodiest military officers became involved in the drug trade early on. The Zetas who now terrorize us on the border were armed and trained by Guatemalan Kaibiles, who were in turn armed and trained by, well, us. My husband, a Mayan resistance leader, was tortured to death in Guatemala in the 1990s. One of his torturers, Col. Julio Roberto Alpirez, appears on the DEA’s corrupt officer list, but was long permitted to reside in the U.S. After all, as public records indicate, he also worked as a paid informant for the CIA. Apparently that puts him and others off limits.

HARBURY IS A FORMERAUSTINITE, WHO IS NOW AN ATTORNEY IN WESLACO.

Is bilingual education worth bringing back? LATimes Editorial Board

Answer:  It should never have been done away with in the first place. -Angela
Los Angeles Times Board Editorial             Is Bilingual Education Worth Bringing Back?

SB 1174 would place a measure on the November 2016 ballot to repeal Prop. 227 and allow local school districts to decide whether they want to bring back bilingual education. (Los Angeles Times)

TIMES EDITORIAL BOARDcontact the reporter

A lot has changed since 1998, when Proposition 227 all but wiped out bilingual instruction in California public schools. The matter is due for reconsideration; a bill that passed the state Senate last week would allow that to happen.

SB 1174, by state Sen. Ricardo Lara (D-Bell Gardens), would place a measure on the November 2016 ballot to repeal Proposition 227 and allow local school districts to decide whether they want to bring back bilingual education rather than continue with the current system, which aims to move students toward full-time English use as quickly as possible.

Over the last 16 years, academic research has largely found that good bilingual programs are just as effective at teaching English skills, and often slightly better at it, than classes that immerse students in English. Along the way, they also teach students literacy in their native language.

Another reason to consider bilingual education: Shortly after Proposition 227 passed, testing and accountability requirements were imposed on schools. The academic skills of students, including those who aren't fluent in English, are now measured every year. That means that if bilingual education is failing students, that failure will become clear quickly, and schools will face potential disciplinary measures if they don't fix the problem.

A third factor: The globalization of the economy means that bilingualism confers a significant advantage in the work world.

Yet there were good reasons Proposition 227 passed. Bilingual education is more expensive. The state suffered continual shortages of qualified bilingual teachers. Worse, bilingual education was often poorly done. It's important to consider the academic studies that have shown slightly better results for bilingual classes, but remember that those studies involved top-notch programs with outstanding teachers. California's public schools seldom came close to the model, and before Proposition 227, thousands of students were handed diplomas without ever having mastered English.

To persuade voters, supporters of bilingual education will have to demonstrate that they can overcome these obstacles.

Dual immersion programs, a subset of bilingual education in which students from different language backgrounds study in two languages, gaining fluency in both, have often succeeded and are increasingly popular. Such programs exist in California, but they have been small and have involved populations of motivated parents and students. Bringing them up to scale so that they work statewide might be difficult.

These are debates worth having, and SB 1174 would provide the forum for them.

Copyright © 2014, Los Angeles Times

Project-Based Learning Research Review

Project-Based Learning Research Review



Project-based learning reflects real-life situations and therefore helps children and youth to retain that which they learned longer.

The angry response by some that the federal ruling that the "Redskins" team trademarks should be canceled is disappointing given that the term is clearly offensive to Native Americans.

On the topic of such self referents as "Indian," "American Indian," or "Native American," they have their own unique, interesting history.  Unfortunately, none of these self referents entirely avoid or sidestep discourses, interests, and agendas of empire and colonization.  

Interesting and important read.



-Angela

Bismarck, North Dakota (2006)

"American Indian" or "Native American"?

By Dennis Gaffney

Posted: 4.24.2006

A guest at the Bismarck ROADSHOW referred to "Indians" during his conversation with appraiser Brad Witherell (right). But is that the term he should use?
"I abhor the term Native American," says Lakota activist Russell Means.

At the 2005 ROADSHOW in Bismarck, North Dakota, a man brought in a Colt gun made at the turn of the 20th century, and had some dramatic family folklore in tow as well. The gun had apparently belonged to his great-uncle, who in 1902 got into a gunfight; he was, in the words of the present owner, "killed by an Indian." That word — Indian — has often been used, both by guests and appraisers alike, to refer to various indigenous American peoples who crafted objects such as rugs or pots that appear on ANTIQUES ROADSHOW regularly.
There's no doubt that labels, especially as they apply to groups of people, are a very sensitive subject, and sometimes difficult to discuss. Nonetheless, the appraisal in Bismarck caused us to ponder again what are the issues surrounding this particular label and the widely varied group of people it is often used to describe?
Is the term Indian anachronistic, even offensive? What about American Indian? Is the more recent term Native American preferable, or simply more politically correct than proper?
In the 1960s, many people, both non-Indians as well as Indians, challenged the use of the word "Indian." Some argued that it was a term coined by oppressors, and also a misnomer — they were not, after all, the Indians of the East Indies that Columbus thought he had met in the Caribbean. The critics argued further that over the centuries the word had gained a pejorative meaning, often conjuring up images that were simplistic, romanticized and often disparaging that were reinforced by TV serials and Hollywood westerns — think, for instance, of Tonto of the Lone Ranger series.

Is one more correct than the other ... and why?

These cultural critics suggested substituting the term Native American for Indian. They maintained that Native American was also more accurate, as one meaning of native was "being the original inhabitants of a particular place," as Native Americans were.
But despite the supposed political correctness of Native American, it has not become the preferred term. "The acceptance of Native American has not brought about the demise of Indian," according to the fourth edition of the American Heritage Book of English Usage, published in 2000. "Unlike Negro, which was quickly stigmatized once black became preferred, Indian never fell out of favor with a large segment of the American population."
Nor did the word Indian fall out of favor with the people it described. A 1995 Census Bureau survey that asked indigenous Americans their preferences for names (the last such survey done by the bureau) found that 49 percent preferred the term Indian, 37 percent Native American, and 3.6 percent "some other name." About 5 percent expressed no preference.
Moreover, a large number of Indians actually strongly object to the term Native American for political reasons. In his 1998 essay "I Am An American Indian, Not a Native American!", Russell Means, a Lakota activist and a founder of the American Indian Movement (AIM), stated unequivocally, "I abhor the term 'Native American.'" He continues:

It is a generic government term used to describe all the indigenous prisoners of the United States. These are the American Samoans, the Micronesians, the Aleuts, the original Hawaiians, and the erroneously termed Eskimos, who are actually Upiks and Inupiaqs. And, of course, the American Indian.

I prefer the term American Indian because I know its origins. ... As an added distinction the American Indian is the only ethnic group in the United States with the American before our ethnicity.

At an international conference of Indians from the Americas held in Geneva, Switzerland, at the United Nations in 1977 we unanimously decided we would go under the term American Indian. "We were enslaved as American Indians, we were colonized as American Indians, and we will gain our freedom as American Indians and then we can call ourselves anything we damn please."

Yet others argue that neither term should be used, because they both blur the differences between various Indian peoples. In her essay "What's in a Name? Indians and Political Correctness," Christina Berry, a Cherokee writer, argues that people should avoid the terms Indian and Native American:

In the end, the term you choose to use (as an Indian or non-Indian) is your own personal choice. ... Very few Indians that I know care either way. The recommended method is to refer to a person by their tribe, if that information is known. The reason is that the Native peoples of North America are incredibly diverse. It would be like referring to both a Romanian and an Irishman as European. It's true that they are both from Europe, but their people have very different histories, cultures, and languages. The same is true of Indians. The Cherokee are vastly different from the Lakota, the Dine, the Kiowa, and the Cree, but they are all labeled Native American. So whenever possible an Indian would prefer to be called a Cherokee or a Lakota or whichever tribe they belong to. This shows respect because not only are the terms Indian, American Indian, and Native American an over simplification of a diverse ethnicity, but you also show that you listened when they told what tribe they belonged to. ... What matters in the long run is not which term is used but the intention with which it is used.

See the Bismarck, North Dakota (2006) page for a list of all appraisals from this city.

For more by the essayists cited above, see:
"What's in a Name? Indians and Political Correctness," by Christina Berry.
"I Am An American Indian, Not a Native American!," by Russell Means.

 

Piketty’s Triumph

Piketty’s Triumph

Check out this piece in the American Prospect.  We should all consider getting our hands on Thomas Piketty’s  influential,  best-selling, magisterial text, Capital in the 21st Century.

Analyzing 20 countries as far back as the eighteenth century, he uncovers key social and economic patterns  that ultimately leads him to advocate for a global taxation of capital.

The main culprit is that returns on capital overwhelmingly tend to exceed the rate of economic growth and this threatens to lead to social unrest and undermine democratic values.

He has obviously created a big stir in economic and political circles even as this  600+-page tome is already getting characterized as one of the most important reads of the century.

-Angela

I'm with Ford Foundation President Darren Walker on the response to Piketty's book, Capital in the Twenty-First Century.

 

But what troubles me most about the FT’s [Financial Times] approach to its Piketty critique is not that the paper raked through the data sets. That’s fair enough. It’s the implicit assertion—assuming Picketty is wrong and inequality is marginally less severe today than it was during the Industrial Revolution—that beating a 200-year-old standard of inequality is a major accomplishment that we should feel good about. 

 

Angela

You know Piketty is onto something when everyone’s trying to prove him wrong

By Darren Walker 2 hours ago

Darren Walker is the president of the Ford Foundation.

Been there, done that. AP Photo/ Louis Lanzano

During the last several weeks, Thomas Piketty’s magisterial Capital in the Twenty-First Century has earned great protestation on the heels of great praise. As the hits keep coming, I am reminded of the experience of another courageous, insightful truth-teller: Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, whose work the Rockefeller Foundation supported when I served there for much of the 2000s.

Many will remember that Pachauri and the IPCC shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with former US vice president Al Gore. Earlier that year, the panel’s so-called Fourth Assessment Report was the very first to demonstrate “unequivocally,” in its phrasing, that human activity is warming our world with worsening consequences.

And yet, by 2010 a number of pundits had taken to the talk shows and opinion pages—from the Financial Times to the New York Times—calling for his resignation.

What was Pachauri’s impeachable offense? After countless false recriminations and abundant sound and fury, there were two quibbles of merit. Among the more than 18,000 references cited in the IPCC’s 2,800-page assessment, one overestimated the speed at which Himalayan glaciers are melting (for which the IPCC later apologized) and another included a typo in the percentage of the Netherlands that lies beneath sea level. From there, the “climate-gate” juggernaut had all the fuel it needed to drive lingering doubt about climate change into our political consciousness and public conversation.

It’s understood that translating data into meaningful insights requires a number of interpretative decisions, to say nothing of rigorous peer review. No one pretends that these interpretive choices of data handling are without some subjectivity. What matters with data-driven scholarship like Pachauri’s and now Piketty’s is how transparent the scholar’s choices are, and how fair and defensible the resulting conclusions.

This is why it is worth nothing that when Piketty responded directly to criticisms in the Financial Times a few weeks ago, he expressed openness about his choices, honesty about the certainties and shortcomings of his conclusions, and fidelity to a full and free exchange of ideas. In this regard, Pachauri and Piketty are scholarly kindred spirits.

What worries me is not the existence of debate about Pachauri’s or Piketty’s research. What worries me is the willful insistence that something must be wrong with the data because critics don’t like the conclusions of the researcher.

In other words, what worries me is an intense feeling of déjà vu all over again.

For years, climate-change deniers—many of them supported by powerful interests—ginned up false controversy in order to erode the credibility of climatology. Following the tobacco industry’s tried and true tactics of the 1970s, a climate-crisis-denial industrial complex sowed skepticism to distract from, and ultimately derail, important conversations about solutions.

As a result, we have lost years of opportunity. We are a decade nearer to environmental and human catastrophe, but hardly any closer to a response befitting the scale of the crisis.

I would like to think that a similar pattern of discrediting and delay could not unfold again. I would like to think that our lived experience with widening disparity—reinforced by clear and compelling data—will keep inequality-denial at bay.

But what troubles me most about the FT’s approach to its Piketty critique is not that the paper raked through the data sets. That’s fair enough. It’s the implicit assertion—assuming Picketty is wrong and inequality is marginally less severe today than it was during the Industrial Revolution—that beating a 200-year-old standard of inequality is a major accomplishment that we should feel good about.

As president of a foundation dedicated to advancing fairness, opportunity and rights, I am regularly disheartened by the ingenious and insidious methods by which the well-being and aspirations of ordinary people are undermined by those with power. Far from being persuaded by the arguments of inequality deniers, the message I take away is that we remain tragically far from where we should be in fulfilling the universal human yearning for justice and dignity.

Given that inequality and climate change are two of the most significant challenges to humanity in this century, it is critical we see the debates surrounding them for what they truly are: enormous struggles over power and possibility. It is up to of us to snap out of the déjà vu, recognize we have been here before, and change course.

We welcome your comments at ideas@qz.com.

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Vicente Guerrero, Mexico’s First Afro-Indian President

This is such an important story about Mexico that all of our children should know.  Vicente Guerrero was an Afro-Indian who became Mexico's first African-Indian President.  The series of events that followed his brief tenure as president, including his execution by right-wing leadership, ultimately led to the revered Benito Juarez becoming Mexico's first Indian president. Among his key reforms was abolishing slavery as per the Guerrero decree in 1829 for which he paid dearly with his life.

Anglo Texans (or "Texians," as they were called)  a few years later waged war against Mexico in the so-called battle for "Independence" with the idea of preserving slavery in the South.  For these reasons and despite its location in the center of the country and its identification as a Southwestern state, Texas is also a Southern state.

So the U.S. owes much to Mexico in the struggle against slavery—and to heroes like Vicente Guerrero and before him, the father of the Mexican War of Independence, Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla who declared an end to slavery much earlier in 1810.

Here is a good link on Texas and slavery:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_slavery_in_Texas

 
The southern state of Guerrero in Mexico is named after President Vicente Guerrero—and appropriately so since the name means "warrior."  As for Guerrero, it has also seen its share of revolutionaries.

There is so much more to this, but this piece is a good start.  Important, fascinating history.

-Angela

Vicente Guerrero, Mexico’s First Afro-Indian President

The Berkeley Daily Planet article, "Mexico’s First Black President," by Ted Vincent, on 18 February 2009:

Vicente Guerrero, Mexico’s first black president

Barak Obama admires Abraham Lincoln. Vicente Guerrero, Mexico’s first black president, was his nation’s Lincoln. In 1829 he issued Mexico’s slavery abolition decree (which led a few years later to Texas slave holders taking Texas out of Mexico).

Obama and Lincoln are known for building coalitions. Guerrero built one when he was commander-in-chief of the Mexican army during the last three years of Mexico’s exhaustive 1810-1821 war for independence from Spain. Key actions by Guerrero to end the war were his spread of letters to Mexican officers who had been hired to fight for Spain. He convinced many that opportunity awaited if they switched sides. His subsequent team of rivals brought victory and made Guerrero Mexico’s Washington as well as Lincoln—he also created the basic design for the flag.

After the war Guerrero had to be personable to win over influential Mexicans who looked with disdain upon him for having Afro-Indio roots and for being a mule driver by trade—the occupation of his father and uncles. In those years muleteers were very plentiful in Mexico, thanks in part to Spain’s reluctance to pay to create roads for carts and carriages. A history of the drivers describes them being considered unpleasant rowdies by the well-to-do, but welcomed in rural villages for bringing the news of the day, latest songs and the latest jokes about authority figures. Mule trains often convoyed contraband. From this profession came many a fighter for Mexico in the war with Spain.

Guerrero was a descendant of the roughly 250,000 enslaved Africans brought to Mexico during colonial times. Part indigenous, he was raised in an Indio barrio in the mountain town of Tixtla in the state that carries his name. During the 1810 war his knowledge of native languages helped the future president rise in rank. In villages he organized the community for the war effort, often using a speech in which he praised the Indio political system of elected councils and chiefs, while asking for allegiance to the fight for “the bigger democracy” at the state level.

During his presidency, Guerrero’s penchant for telling jokes and sprinkling his speech with native words annoyed members of the refined social elite. But for a time he had to be tolerated. Guerrero came out of the war with an immense following, notable for the Indios he had recruited into the fight. In 1828 he and a brilliant but consumptive cocaine addict, Ignacio Esteva, created the first “People’s Party” in Mexico and its followers put Guerrero in the presidency in April 1829.

President Guerrero was known for eloquence, as displayed in his first speech to congress, “If we succeed in spreading the guarantees of the individual, if equality before the law destroys the efforts of power and gold, if the highest title between us is that of citizen, if the rewards we bestow are exclusively for talent and virtue, we have a republic, and she will be conserved by the universal suffrage of a people solid, free and happy.”

Guerrero wanted his presidency to reflect the broad coalition built during the 1810 war. He allowed political centrists and conservatives to dominate his cabinet, and he accepted as Vice President Anastacio Bustamante who had spent most of the independence war in the uniform of Spain. Left-wing supporters of Guerrero criticized the president’s cabinet and other choices, and in the manner that Barak Obama has questioning friends who are more racially oriented than he, so too did Guerrero have his. One was Isidorio Montesdeoca, an Afro-Filipino campesino who became a general under Guerrero during the independence war. He called Guerrero’s references to racial equality achieved by asking everyone be judged by his or her “merits and virtues,” wishful thinking in a country where many powerful people didn’t believe blacks or Indios had merits and virtues. Moreover, argued Guerrero’s critics from the left, congress had made it near impossible to organize against racial injustice through their passage of Law No. 310 that, though ostensibly in the spirit of equality, prohibited mention of anyone’s race in any public document or in the records of the parish church. One consequence of this law has been that knowledge of the racial attitude of the elite toward Guerrero’s African roots are relegated to private letters and anonymous pamphlets against “the black,” and many a modern history identifies him merely as of “peasant”or “laboring-class” background.

The political coalition Guerrero built fractured six months into his office, not from abandonment by the left, but by the right. His abolition of slavery, his promotion of a wider suffrage and his imposition of a stiff progressive tax code cost him most of his few upper-class supporters—including two cabinet members. In 1830 the conservatives rebelled, and led by Vice President Bustamante, they drove Guerrero from the capital. Most of the president’s progressive legislation was rescinded, but not the abolition of slavery, which had wide public support.

In a subsequent civil war Guerrero was captured and assassinated by Bustamante hirelings, who included an Italian sea captain who kidnapped the president in Acapulco harbor and delivered him to a Cuban mercenary in Huatulco, who passed him to the son of a Spaniard who had been a general for Spain in the independence war. At a mock trial in Oaxaca the first judge resigned during the opening day, claiming illness. Bustamante ordered execution but feared an uprising if it happened in the city of Oaxaca. Guerrero was taken to a small town, where the mayor had fled and the priest who was scheduled to conduct the last rights was also missing. In last words to the firing squad, Guerrero said that whatever he had done, it was in the interest of Mexico.

The execution infuriated many, including moderates, and Bustamante had to make peace with Guerrero’s lieutenants, who controlled the Pacific region from Puerto Vallarta down past Acapulco to the black town of Cuijinicuilapa. An unusual political accord granted the Guerreroistas autonomy on condition they never attack the capital. Over the years the close aide of Guerrero, the Afro-Acapulcan Juan Alvarez wrote and spread many diatribes against the elite, some of which are still in print today. In 1855 Alvarez broke the peace pact, marched on Mexico City, overthrew dictator Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna and became Mexico’s second black president. He included in his cabinet Benito Juarez, the pure-Zapotecan lawyer, who in his youth had campaigned for the election of Guerrero, and who later served twelve years as president and champion of liberal causes.

Guerrero’s one offspring, Dolores, trained her children in the politics of her father, with whom she had been close. Her sons, Vicente and Carlos, became state governors under Juarez, son Jose a general and daughter Javiera, though prohibited from holding office, was significant enough behind the scenes to warrant a large statue. Generations of politicians and intellectuals poured from the family, including today’s prominent journalist Raymundo Riva Palacio. His writings include a 1987 anthology of his articles condemning the U.S. funding of the Contras against the Sandinista government of Nicaragua.

Today, the National Museum of History in Chapultepec Park honors only one family with its genealogical tree depicted on a wall, the family begun by Vicente Guerrero and his wife Guadalupe Hernandez.

Two other presidents of Mexico had known African heritage: Juan Almonte fought in the independence war and at the Alamo on the Mexican side. He turned conservative and his brief term as president is considered a bad one for the nation. Lazaro Cardenas was a key figure in the 1910 revolution. As president nationalized oil and issued sweeping land reform. A popular biography notes in the opening paragraph that his grandfather was “a mulato.”

The original of Guerrero’s address to congress reads, “If we succeed in protecting the rights of the individual, if equality under the law destroys the forces of power and money, if the primary title we use amongst ourselves is that of ‘citizen,’ if rewards are given exclusively for talent and virtue, then we have a republic, and it will be preserved through the universal suffrage of a solidly free and content people.”

Ted Vincent is author of The Legacy of Vicente Guerrero: Mexico’s First Black Indian President, published by University Press of Florida in 2001.

Interesting research by UC Berkeley sociologist G. Cristina Mora that gets at the complexity of the identity labels, "Hispanic" and "Latino" and how they have implications for political power even at the risk of homogenizing the different groups to whom these categories refer.



If these labels seem ambiguous, they are and the ambiguity is helpful in a number of ways.



Angela

I say Hispanic. You say Latino. How did the whole thing start?

By Yasmin Anwar, Media Relations | April 29, 2014

Video by Roxanne Makasdjian and Phil Ebiner/UC Berkeley

BERKELEY – From Hollywood actor Cameron Diaz to the
late labor rights leader Cesar Chavez, the labels, “Hispanic” or
“Latino” cover a strikingly diverse population of more than 50 million
Americans.


In her new book, UC Berkeley sociologist G. Cristina Mora traces the
commercial, political and cultural interests that colluded in the 1970s
to create a national Hispanic identity and, in turn, boosted the
political clout of Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, Cubans, Salvadorans,
Guatemalans and other Latin Americans in the United States.


A Mexican American from Los Angeles, Mora completed her undergraduate
studies at UC Berkeley and her graduate work at Princeton University,
before returning to UC Berkeley in 2011 as an assistant professor of
sociology.  Her incisive investigation into pan-ethnicity in her
book, “Making Hispanics: How Activists, Bureaucrats, and Media
Constructed a New America” (University of Chicago Press) – as well as
her related article in this month’s edition of the American Sociological Review
– is sure to position her as a player in the debate over racial, ethnic
and national identity in the United States, especially as it pertains
to Hispanic categories in the 2020 U.S. Census. Here’s what Mora has to
say about the origins of the Hispanic category and where it’s headed.


How has your personal background shaped your scholarship?


Growing up Mexican American in Los Angeles in the 1980s and 1990s, I
wouldn’t have been caught dead calling myself “Hispanic.” I called
myself “Chicana.” It was not until I moved to the East Coast in 2003 and
was around more Puerto Ricans, Cubans and South Americans that I
realized that the Hispanic or Latino identity means something
drastically different on the East Coast than it does on the West Coast.
It was then that I started to think deeply about how this label can
capture so many people who are so radically different from one another,
and that story became my Ph.D. dissertation and my book.

Cubans in Miami are a diverse group unto themselves and part of the larger Hispanic category

What’s the gist of your book?


It’s a story about people being disadvantaged, being a statistically
reliable group and being consumers. All of these elements came together
in an almost perfect storm in the 1970s when activists, the media and
government bureaucrats learned how to work together to put out this
pan-ethnic message.


How did this movement start?


It was the activists who first went to the Census Bureau and said,
‘You have got to create a category. You have got to distinguish us from
whites.’ Up until that time, the Census Bureau mainly grouped Mexican
Americans, Puerto Ricans and Cubans in the same category as Irish and
Italian, and that became a real problem because it couldn’t show the
government the poverty rates between Mexicans and whites. There was
pushback on how large and how broad the category could be, but
ultimately, a Hispanic category was established.


How was the category sold to Latin Americans?


The Census Bureau asked activists and the Spanish-language media to
promote the category. The media created documentaries and commercials.
There was even a Telethon where people called in, and were encouraged to
identify as Hispanic on the Census form. We can see why the media
executives were so happy and so quick to help the Census Bureau because,
later on, it became in their interests to help grow that cooperation.


Why was that?


Until that time, Spanish-language media executives had been creating
separate television stations and programming for Mexican Americans,
Puerto Ricans and Cubans. Suddenly they were able to start using some of
this broad Census data and go to advertisers like McDonald’s and Coca
Cola and say, ‘Look, we’re a national Hispanic community and our
consumer needs are different so invest in us and we will get you
Hispanic consumer dollars.’ With that strategy, they were able to
connect stations across the country, and over time, create a
Spanish-language McDonald’s commercial that could broadcast to a
national audience.


Spanish-language media also became an important platform to get the
Hispanic political agenda out to communities, and activists were a
regular feature on Spanish-language newscasts. For example, if you need
funding for bilingual education, you lobby the federal government, you
testify before Congress. But if you can go on nightly network news and
speak to your people in their language, the message really gets out.


Weren’t Hispanics just being exploited to make a buck?

Spanish-language media is key to keeping immigration reform in the spotlight

On the one hand, there were media executives selling the idea of a
hot new consumer market. On the other hand, this hot new consumer market
still has high poverty rates compared to other groups. But without the
media, activists have a hard time getting the message out. If you look
at Spanish-language media right now, it’s the perhaps the No. 1 means of
getting out information about immigration policy reform. Whereas other
networks have moved onto the next hot topic, it’s Spanish-language media
that’s still reporting on the issue.


How did they bring together such a diverse group?


The Spanish-language media was key to creating a narrative about
Hispanics. For example, one of the most popular Spanish-language
programs at that time was the Miami-based El Show de Cristina, billed as
the Spanish-language version of Oprah. On the set, Cristina might have a
Colombian family, a Mexican family and a Puerto Rican family talking
about the difficulties of raising second- generation immigrant children
or passing on the Spanish language and traditions. This created an image
that we were together, that we share the same problems, that we are a
community.


Weren’t there enough Mexican Americans to warrant their own category?


In the 1970s, this was fine if you wanted to capture the California
governor’s attention, but it wasn’t enough for capturing President Nixon
or President Ford’s attention, and it certainly wasn’t enough for
capturing the attention of East Coast politicians because many of them
had never even met a Mexican. But when activists were able to cite the
number of Cubans in Florida, Puerto Ricans in New York, Salvadorans in
DC and Mexicans in the Southwest, and when they were able to argue that
these groups were all connected and were all in need of resources for
job training programs and bilingual education, then they were onto
something. It was only then that activists could get federal attention –
by making Latin American groups seem like part of a national
constituency.


What do Hispanics have in common other than the Spanish language?

Cuban-American
journalist Cristina Saralegui helped promote a Hispanic identity in a
popular show that ran for 21 years until it was canceled in 2010.

In many cases, they don’t even have that in common. You have the
person whose great-grandmother came from Argentina, but has never
visited Latin America, and does not speak Spanish, lumped into the exact
same category as a Guatemalan who just crossed the U.S. border.  One
argument the book makes is that in order for all these government,
market and political interests to come together, the category had to
become broader in order to fit in all these ideas about Hispanics being
consumers, or Hispanics being disadvantaged people.


Over time, the Hispanic identity has become based on cultural
generalities such as ‘We all love our families. We are all religious and
we all have some connection to the Spanish language however far back
that may be.’  That’s a weakness and a strength. It was because of that
ambiguity that we have the large numbers who identify as Hispanic and
who have made advances.  But when you have such a broad and opaque
category it’s hard to elicit and sustain passion and commitment.


Is the Hispanic category here to stay or is change in the air?


When the category was first established, Latinos were a smaller
percentage of the population, but now we’re the largest minority group
with increased migration from central and South America and the
Caribbean. Why does the guy with the grandmother from Argentina have
more claim to the Latino category than, say, Brazilians or Haitians?
These questions are going to be asked and we are going to need to
develop a new narrative even if it means splintering the group in some
ways.


At the same time, I would advocate that we not forget the political
origins of the Hispanic label, that we not forget there are real
experiences of discrimination and disadvantage that started this story
and that continue today. If we dangerously slip into just a narrative
about culture, we forget that there is, within the population, a
considerable number of people who still face poverty and a lack of
education that the larger community can mobilize help for. There are
still really important issues like immigration reform that this
community can mobilize its strength toward, but it can only be done with
an eye toward respecting diversity.


What about Hispanic vs. Latino?


Hispanic generally refers to the way that Latin Americans are united
through their connection to Spain and their links to Spanish culture and
tradition. Spaniards would be included in this formulation, but
Brazilians would not. Latino, on the other hand, is usually used to
refer to the way that Latin Americans are connected to one another via
their common history of colonization. Spaniards, then, would not be part
of this formulation, while Brazilians might. Yet for the most part,
these labels and categories are ambiguous and lots of organizations and
institutions invest in keeping these terms as ambiguous and as broad as
possible.


As for the breakdown, there is still a slight preference for Hispanic
over Latino – 51-49 percent – and it’s more regional and less
political. Urban areas on the coasts prefer Latino. Rural areas in
states like Texas and New Mexico use Hispanic. Organizations have become
adept at using both. The media prefers “Latino.”


Which do you prefer to be called?


Latino.