by José de la Isla
Hispanic Link News Service
HOUSTON – The sleeping giant myth, a metaphor to represent Hispanic political potential, has been dead since 1960.
An inquest beginning in 1972 should have been the end of the matter. But it wasn’t. That was the year when long-term Latino voting trends started getting documented.
Some commentators have, however, stirred up a virtual cult following that the Sleeping Giant is alive.
Actually, the sleeping giant image has been used inappropriately since the John Kennedy and Richard Nixon 1960 campaign. Latinos — mostly Southwestern Mexican Americans and New York Puerto Ricans—became known as a swing group that could sway future presidential elections.
Ever since, the Sleeping Giant idea has been applied to suggest Latino potential, even though there is a contradiction here. Sleeping Giant was meant to imply something that hasn’t happened yet by the expectation of waking up. But the fact is that it happened ALREADY, at the beginning.
After all, John Kennedy might not have become president had it not been for Texas Latinos. Ever since that time, Latino voting has increased nationally and grown more important, as documented itsince 1972 by the U.S. Hispanic Leadership Institute.
Yet, the imagery of a Sleeping Giant was been increasingly used in municipal, dog catcher, and off-year elections as perpetual disappointment about voting turnouts, elections which traditionally have low turnouts and public interest. The vamping on Latino voting looks suspiciously like fault-finding of general public laziness.
Recently, Henrik Temp in The American Enterprise’s blog did the same thing. He says Hispanics have been the sleeping giant of American politics for decades. Already he is wrong by decades.
Then he says Latinos heavily under-represent themselves. That’s a revealing declaration. It does not take into account a long history of registration and voting impediments to this public. And all that was overcome during one of the U.S.’s great civil rights sagas, led by Willie Velásquez and the Southwest Voter Registration Education Project.
It seems Temp doesn’t know his civil rights history and how inhibiting potential voters has been an ongoing struggle to overcome.
Today, for example, 15 states attempt to retard certain voter segments with new requirements. That is worthy of deep analysis, instead using an old, tired, dead myth to hit on.
But never mind that, Temp, using Resurgent Republic data, claims Latino population growth is not reaching its potential; therefore, his expectation, ergo the Sleeping Giant.
Resurgent Republic is a group run by Ed Gillespie, the GOP’s former chairman, and pollster Whit Ayres. Their think tank aim is to shape up Republican Party leaders. But they don’t yet seem ready to promote faster citizenship, voter registration, outreach, immigration reform, reversal in 15 states of voting retardation, and other similar measures. Why is that?
Since 1968, the Republican Party’s has been cherry-picking the Latino upper middle class and middle-middle segments, the ones with the highest voting rate potentials.
The Sleeping Giant myth is kept around because it is a nuanced way to shame- blame political leaders who champion the cause of the disenfranchised, while taking unearned pride for doing little and getting credit for a constituency.
When Republican leaders don’t champion everybody voting and become vote deniers, they still cannot deny what matters. Latinos vote in real numbers in presidential elections. The proportions used for shame-blame can make it seem otherwise. But the historical data tell another story.
In each successive presidential election since 1972, Latino voting has been larger and in growing proportions.
Speaking of death notices, Ed Gillespie has told the Capital Hill bible Politico, “The Republican Party has been declared dead at least three times already in my lifetime — in 1964 after Goldwater lost in a landslide, in 1974 after Watergate and in 1992 after Clinton won with a Democratic House and Senate.”
We know the myth about the Sleeping Giant is dead. Now maybe the moderate, responsible, balanced, non-denying part of the Republican Party is coming to an end too. That’s a shame.
As for the Sleeping Giant myth, RIP.
[José de la Isla, a nationally syndicated columnist for Hispanic Link and Scripps Howard news services].
