I did not grow up in a community that exposed me to many Latinos (or Latin-Americans, a term I would more likely have used). I was raised in Rhode Island, where my relatives and ancestors had evolved a rather disciplined, Yankee-white-bread identity of understated but respectable life and accomplishment. And while mine was also the experience of growing up with the children and grandchildren of the great European migrations to America--"Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to be free..."—not many Latinos who shared that same description and aspiration had found their way to Coventry, Rhode Island.
But since I left high school for the Marine Corps in the '60's, my experience there, and later in Boston at college, graduate school, and ever since and wherever I was, the issues and challenges of growing Latino populations, assimilation, education, and immigration have moved with increasing speed toward the front of America's important domestic issues. I can still remember in the early '70s, in Boston, struggling to understand it all. There were the discussions about the need for bi-lingual education with old friend and bi-lingual Spanish teacher, Mary Furman--and with her good friend, Jorge Quiroga, a reporter for a TV station for whom being a Latino and advocating for strong and self-respecting Latino identity in America seemed a very personal cause.
It's been a long road for Latinos since then, and in that time my understandings have expanded, perhaps sharpened, too. And with them the understanding that Latinos and all the issues surrounding them are now of such importance and materiality that they are changing both the face and future of American life. And we need to embrace that fact and the implications.
Foreign Affairs asked Ray Suarez, Senior Correspondent for PBS NewsHour, to review an important new book, Latinos in the New Millennium: An Almanac of Opinion, Behavior, and Policy Preferences. It appears to be packed with research data and informed analysis. Ray Suarez brings his personal and journalistic experience and balance to the review. Mr. Suarez:
[…] Latinos in the New Millennium represents a potential antidote to this vapid [politically-driven] discourse and a data-rich corrective to the stereotypes that too often define Hispanics in the United States. Aptly describing the book as an almanac, its authors, a group of academic experts, have collected and synthesized a massive quantity of data on the political and personal sentiments of Latinos across all lines of national origin, citizenship and immigration status, and income and educational levels. Their findings simultaneously clarify and complicate the reductive portrait of Latinos that frames discussions of their social and political relevance.
Strategists and theorists from both major political parties take heed: making [Latinos] yours in the years to come might be much harder than you think. Doing so will require contending with a set of contradictory qualities: progressive politics mixed with conservative values, assimilationist ideals in conflict with hardening ethnic identities, and meritocratic aspirations bumping up against the reality of academic underachievement.
---“Latin Lessons: Who Are Hispanic Americans, and How Will They Vote?” by Ray Suarez, Foreign Affairs (September-October 2012)
Doesn’t it always come back to education, sooner or later? And the productivity of our society is just an extension of how well we fulfill the education potential of every American—and the most compelling areas of focus must include those areas and groups for whom academic underachievement has too often been the reality. That includes many Latin-Americans. And Mr. Suarez chooses that point to stress in closing:
[...] Whatever the reasons for it, academic underachievement among Latinos is a challenge far more important than any effort to understand Latinos for short-term political gain. That is because of the degree to which the United States’ success in the coming half century will depend on Latino success. In a few decades, the US economy will increasingly rest on a largely nonwhite, heavily Latino work force providing services and care to millions of mostly white retirees. As Latinos become a larger part of the American whole, quietly consigning them to failure and isolation is hardly a recipe for national prosperity and stability, Whether they realize it or not, all Americans are now deeply invested in the successful integration of Latinos. Their own future affluence and well-being might well depend on it.
Latinos in the New Millennium appears a book well worth reading and understanding—especially if we really do want to better understand the social, political and economic implications of this large and growing Latino population.
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