BlogHer - The "Latino Vote:" Myth and Reality - Comments

I'd love to hear more about your research, Maria!

Kim Pearson — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 15:08:08 -0600

This quote is so important:

Coalitions must be actively built and require an understanding of issues that are important to communities and they will vary within the broad umbrella of "Hispanic" and will vary locally.

You're so right -- and even where there is a history of coalition building, it's a mistake to assume unanimity. I think. for example, of the range of opinions I've heard from Latinos about bilingual education. On the other hand, I've seen a shared concern among African American and Latino leaders about the disparate impact of the subprime mortgage crisis on people of color and working class people. Class, geography, age, culture -- all of these factors are vectors that affect political attitudes. One hopes that more of those nuances will become visible in news coverage.

Friend of BlogHer George Kelly sent this analysis from Sarah Wildman, writing on the the Guardian newspaper site. It concludes:

Finally the results of the Nevada caucuses bring in yet another slice of identity politics. Hillary won the Latino vote. This should highlight for both campaigns how crucial it is to have their ground workers go door to door to meet and entice the increasingly important Latino vote - more open to the Democrats than in 2004 thanks to the xenophobic anti-immigration debate of the GOP.

If Nevada is any indicator, the Clinton campaign's get-out-the-vote effort among Latinos is stronger. Obama relied on the endorsement from the Culinary Workers Union, whereas Clinton went out and picked up endorsements from big names in the Latino community. (Latino voters, who made up 15% of Nevada caucus-goers, went 64%-26% for Clinton.) While that momentum among Latinos will not be as crucial in South Carolina, where Latinos make up only a small percentage of the population, the Clinton campaign will definitely try to leverage it in other states as we roll to Super Tuesday on February 5.

And yet the Latino population is not uniform; across the country it changes from state to state. Cubans in Florida vote more conservatively, for example, than Mexicans in California and Dominicans in New York. Latinos aren't the same type of voting bloc as African-Americans, which means the Obama campaign has a chance to regroup and rethink how to peel away Latinos who may have voted Republican in 2004.

Unlike 2004, Democrats.now have a registration advantage over Republicans among Latinos, so expect attention to this diverse segment of the electorate to become even more intense.
Kim
BlogHer Contributing Editor|Professor Kim|

Fantastic post, Kim!

Maria Niles — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 13:25:28 -0600

My primary Ph.D. research focused on black-Latino political coalitions. There is a tendency to assume that African Americans and Latinos will automatically coalesce and of course the reality is much more nuanced but that also does not mean that Latinos automatically will not vote for black candidates out of some sort of racial tension.

Coalitions must be actively built and require an understanding of issues that are important to communities and they will vary within the broad umbrella of "Hispanic" and will vary locally. The issues of Central Americans in Southern California are quite different from those of Cubans in Florida. For example shared issues around small business and public education has helped build political coalitions of primarily Mexican and Central American Latinos with primarily Vietnamese Southeast Asians in California.

Assuming monolithic lockstep behavior by any group is lazy thinking in any direction.

PopConsumer
Beyond Help

You're welcome!

Kim Pearson — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 12:47:29 -0600

I suspect, you're right, Marilyn, that many Americans don't understand the diversity and complexity of Latino peoples. It's especially important to recognize the integral roles they play in American life, both historically and currently. I know I have a lot to learn, myself. Thanks for taking the time to read and comment!

Kim
BlogHer Contributing Editor|Professor Kim|

Thank you for these links, Kim!

Marilyn — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 11:40:13 -0600

This is such important information and I suspect most Americans know very little about it, myself included. I knew even less before I moved to the Caribbean. It was only there that I began to look at and have my eyes opened to Afro-Caribbean history. Thank you for posting this.

The Land of Moo

Co-Founder of Bloggers for Darfur

The "Latino Vote:" Myth and Reality

Kim Pearson — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 09:35:46 -0600

In the analysis and anticipation of the primary votes leading up to Super Tuesday on February 5, one sees consistent references to the "Latino vote." Today's news reports credit Latinos and women with putting Hillary Clinton over the top in Nevada, for example.

Read those reports with a gimlet eye. Experts say that while Latino voters might be critical constituencies in several major primary states, a monolithic bloc of voters of Hispanic descent doesn't exist. In addition, certain storylines -- such as whether Latinos will vote for a black candidate -- ignore the diversity among Hispanic peoples.

Maynard Institute columnist Bobbi Bowman explained it this way in 2006:

"[L]et’s banish two major misconceptions about the so-called Latino vote and the spurious stories that so often spring from them.

"These two myths are that the growing Latino population means an equally growing Latino electorate, and that Latinos vote as a bloc.

"There is not doubt that the Hispanic population is booming. Hispanics are the country’s largest minority, comprising an estimated 14.5 percent of the 288 million folks living in the U.S. Latinos are fueling U.S. population growth. But a growing population has little to do with voting strength."

Bowman goes on to explain why that's so: according to Census data, more than half of the people identified as Latino in the United States are ineligible to vote, because they are children or immigrants. The Pew Hispanic Center projects that based on past voting patterns, about 6.5 percent of the voters in the next presidential election will be Latinos.

However, the same December, 2007 Pew Hispanic Center study found that much of the Latino population is concentrated in states that are expected to be hotly contested in November: Nevada, New Mexico, Florida and Colorado. In 2004, Pres. Bush won those states by five points or fewer. That's why California human rights activist Amanda Navarro was quoted as saying, "We believe the Latino voters can be the swing voters in the 2008 Presidential election."

In 2004, the Republican Party courted Hispanic voters with socially conservative positions on same-sex marriage and abortion. In 2008, immigration is the wedge issue. Another Pew national survey of Latinos released last month found that more than half of the respondents said that they knew someone who had been targeted by aggressive immigration law enforcement tactics. By large margins, they also said they opposed many of these tactics, including workplace raids, the identification of undocumented immigrants by local police and checking immigration status before issuing a drivers' license.

However, these gross figures miss some nuances in the data, such as:

"For example, on questions about enforcement policies, native-born Hispanics take positions that are closer to those of the rest of the U.S. population than do foreign-born Hispanics. Also, the native born are less likely than the foreign born to report a negative personal impact from the heightened attention to immigration issues.

"Likewise, Hispanics who are not citizens feel much more vulnerable in the current environment than do Hispanics who are citizens. They are about twice as likely as Hispanic citizens to worry about deportation and to feel a specific negative personal impact from the heightened attention to illegal immigration. (Non-citizens account for 44% of the total adult Hispanic population."

On the subject of immigration (and noting that not all immigrants are Hispanic), Bowman has a few more misconceptions to correct. First, regardless of their immigration status, most immigrants pay taxes. Second, whether we realize it or not, the next generation of seniors are increasingly dependent on the Social Security taxes paid by today's more diverse, largely immigrant workforce. That's one aspect of the debate over investments in education for immigrants that is too frequently ignored.

Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez argues that the press also neglects to realize that Latinos are racially diverse. In particular, she singled out the New York Times for reporting that Latinos might be reluctant to vote for Barack Obama because he is black. So are many Latinos, she points out:

"The New York Times not only ignores completely the African history of Latin America by positioning "blacks" against "Latinos" as if none of us were both. To do so is enormously irresponsible because it dissolves from public consciousness the fact that African slavery was a crime committed all across this hemisphere, by colonial Europeans who spoke English, Spanish, Portuguese and French. The story also erroneously portrays Latinos as a race unto themselves - an error egregious enough to be stated in our own census bureau's definition of Hispanic as a person "of any race". Including "black".

Valdes-Rodriguez's brief continues:

"The article quotes a random 20-year-old woman on the streets of Los Angeles as their only legitimate source for the headline screaming about Obama’s lack of support among Latinos, ostensibly because of his “blackness.” This is your source? Natasha Carrillo of East Los Angeles? Holy crap. Are you joking? Is this the best you can find? Why not go the CUNY, and talk to the Dominican and Puerto Rican studies experts there? Why send reporters to a freakin' taco stand in East Los Angeles? I'll tell you why: The story was written in the minds of the editors before it was reported; that's why it WAS NEVER reported. It was made up. And because it was on the front of the NY Times, you are going to have pundits from coast to coast quoting it as the gospel truth, all because Natasha Carrillo, 20, of East Los Angeles, said so."

Read the whole post, and the comments as well. The TImes would do well to pay attention.

Liza Sabater at Culture Kitchen also twitted the Times for its ignorance of history, calling the article that Valdes-Rodriguez cited, "a race-baiting piece of drivel." But while researching the post that she was crafting in support of Valdes-Rodriguez' argument, a revelation occured. You need to read the post to find out what it is. But I will share this part of her conclusion with you:

"That there are many latinos who don't want to recognize their African ancestry? I give you that. Racism --and it's opposite, self-hatred-- is part of the fabric of the cultures of this hemisphere, not just the United States of America.

"The difference though is that, racism in latino culture is not manifested as a hatred of blacks for being blacks. Many migrant workers who come to this country have heard of the trials and tribulations of the African American community. The issues of "tension" that Nagourney crapped about, have to do with the economic facts that led to the 1900 riots in Puerto Ricos : Of an American government with imperialist tendencies using every dirty capitalist trick in the book to maintain the lower end of the labor spectrum weakened in order to ensure a never ending pool of labor at 'slave-like' wages.

Adam Nagourney [the New York Times reporter] plays right into the divide and conquer narrative...."

A more complex understanding of the peoples we call "Latino" and "Hispanic" is essential to truthful reporting on the 2008 election.