The best way to include Latinos
by Rodolpho Carrasco
San Gabriel Valley Newspaper Group on Saturday, January 23, 1999
(Rodolpho Carrasco is associate director of Harambee Christian Family Center in Pasadena, Calif. and a columnist for the San Gabriel Valley Newspaper Group. Check out more articles by Rodolpho Carrasco here.)
The latest Latino population estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau are astonishing.
Los Angeles County leads counties nationwide in number of Latinos with four million. To put this in perspective, the number two county on the list, Dade County in Florida, weighs in with a paltry 1.1 million.
If you are like me, you don't just count Los Angeles County when you think of "Los Angeles." I think of the whole metropolitan region which includes Orange, Riverside and Ventura counties. Add these counties and we are looking at over six million Latinos.
For many, the temptation in encountering these figures is to reflect anew on ways to woo Latinos. It's not just the Pepsis and the AT&Ts that think this way. Almost every group I can think of - including schools, governments, religious institutions, coalitions, businesses, banks, and restaurants - is trying to come up with ways to attract this potential-laden demographic.
The word these groups most commonly use is "include." This word covers a lot of ground. You may want more Latinos to join your civic group: "How can we 'include' them?" You may want to sell your product to Latinos: "Will they feel 'included,' like it's for them?" You may want to build your political alliances before you need them: "They need to see that we are an 'inclusive.' group."
I've received more than my share of these questions and statements. It seems that the New Year's resolution for many is "include Latinos," and one of their plans is to have me tell their group how to do it.
There is a church in Orange County that has chosen to build a new sanctuary in its rapidly Hispanized community, as opposed to doing the white flight thing and settling in a suburban industrial park.
Seminarians in central California want to bring Latino concerns into a race dialogue dominated by blacks and whites. A private school wants to reflect the now-majority Latino community in which it is located. Government officials would like to hear what the new Latino voices are saying.
Some Latinos think this new inclusiveness is just a cynical ploy, a "make friends before they become enemies" type of move. After all, to some it seems the California electorate already spoke on inclusiveness when it passed the political Triple Crown of propositions 187 (illegal immigration), 209 (affirmative action), and 227 (bilingual education).
I disagree. I think a lot of people and groups are genuinely interested in including Latinos. For those who are, I'm glad to respond to questions of inclusiveness. I don't speak because I have all the answers, and certainly not because I deign to speak on behalf of all Latinos.
But I do feel strongly about one thing: If you treat a Latino merely as a member of a monolithic ethnic community, you will lose that Latino for sure.
I say this for three reasons. First, there is no party line. Latinos come from and are found in every country in the Western Hemisphere, so the cultures represented are many and diverse. Language is not a simple unifier. Most think of Latinos as Spanish-speakers, yet the majority of U.S. born or raised Latinos speak English more than Spanish.
Politics don't unify. The Democratic Party has had a stranglehold on Latinos only because they have given Latinos the time of the day, something that Republicans - whose party values more closely align with general Latino values - are just now learning to do.
Second, there is more to a Latino than his or her ethnicity. It's a big turn-off to be pidgeon-holed into a purely racial or cultural category. A woman is asked to represent the Latino perspective at a company retreat. Big deal. It is more important to the company that she knew to buy Amazon stock at 190 and sell at 410, but they are hung up on the diversity she brings to the group and fail to see what else she brings to the table.
Third, the great felt need of almost every Latino in the United States is to feel "authentic." More immigrants have come from Mexico in the past three decades than any other immigrating ethnic group in U.S. history. Millions of Central Americans reluctantly call the U.S. home. So far from what they have known, their tendency is to grasp the culture and history they are losing each day, to affirm that they are the same as they were when they started the immigrant journey.
A man may have lived outside of Mexico for 20 years, worked alongside Black and White people, become a U.S. citizen, have kids who speak English and play roller hockey. But he will claim - demand - that he is still authentically Mexican.
That pressure for authenticity is there for second and third generation Latinos as well. Depending on how you look at it, Mexican-Americans are either diversifying their linguistic and cultural habits through acculturation, or they are assimilating and otherwise selling out. Either way, when our parent's generation projects their struggle for authenticity on top of our own, the pressure to demonstrate we are legitimate Latinos is turned up.
Demonstrated sensitivity to the Latino struggle for authenticity may seem a lot to ask of someone who just wants to diversify the local Kiwanis membership.
If it's any consolation, I'm dealing with the same dynamic.
My work involves developing young people into future leaders who will serve not just their own ethnic community, but all Americans.
To do that, I have to crack the riddle of why Latino young people in my neighborhood pick one transport vehicle over another because their chosen vessel is "the Mexican van." To gain credibility in the eyes of these teenagers, I have to know why the baggy jeans flared at the bottom, which 31-year-old me thinks are ugly, are called "Mexican pants."
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