by Janet Murguía

Though much attention has been paid to the growing diversity of the U.S. population and the vital role Latinos will play in our country’s future, it’s time to focus on a sobering, little-discussed fact: By 2030, Latino children will make up half of the U.S. child population living in poverty.

How can we allow such a large and growing group of our current and future population to continue down this road?

The answer is clear. We can’t.

Let’s examine the figures Since 1990, the number of Latinos under age 18 has doubled, making them one of the fastest-growing segments of the national population.

We are talking about U.S. citizens. More than 90 perent of these 16 million children were born here. Their growth projection is propelled not by immigration, but by U.S. birthrates. Latino children are clearly poised to become an even more critical portion of the country’s economic health, social well-being and political power.

But new data from the Population Reference Bureau paint a sad mosaic for their future, one that shows up to 44 percent of all U.S. children living in poverty in 2030 to be Hispanic.

That future is not so hard to believe when we consider the current predicament of Latino kids. Today, more than one-fourth of Latino children live in poverty. Three-fifths live in low-income families. More than one-fourth of Latino four-year-olds are not enrolled in early childhood education programs. Almost one-fifth have difficulty speaking English. One in five does not have health insurance.

About two out of every five teens and preteens are obese or overweight. Only 55 percent graduate from high school. And Latino youth are overrepresented in the juvenile justice system and adult jails.

The National Council of /La Raza/ has fought to overcome these major challenges through our youth programs, ensuring that Latino children have access to health care, a better education, fair housing and credit programs, an immigration system that does not tear families apart, and a reformed juvenile justice system. We are in crisis. More must be done.

To engage others in this effort, NCLR convened youth experts, policymakers ers and community leaders for the first time ever in the nation’s capital this month to develop a comprehensive policy agenda to address the well-being of Latino children.

­This isn’t an effort that should be confined to NCLR or the Latino community. Everyone needs to get involved. If our youth succeed, we all succeed. If they fail, we all fail. To reverse these unacceptable trends, there are countless ways individuals like you who are reading this can take action. You can:

Take a young person under your wing. Fight for better schools for all kids. Volunteer to teach English at your neighborhood center. Write to Congress and the president and ask for comprehensive immigration reform. Demand health care reform that includes all children, foreclosure prevention programs that keep families in their communities, and job programs that stabilize neighborhoods.

Each child in this nation, regardless of the color of her skin, the origin of his parents, and the neighborhood she grew up in, deserves the opportunity to claim a piece of the American Dream. All children should have the same opportunities for success that so many others take for granted. In a country as great as ours, we all deserve nothing less. Hispanic Link.

(Janet Murguía is president and CEO of the National Council of /La Raza/. Email her at opi@nclr.org) ©2009

by José de la Isla

HOUSTON – A popular affirmation, goes something like this: every moment is a choice between regret and the future; choose the future. Aphorisms like that, especially those posted on the bathroom mirror or the refrigerator, seem to help people overcome all sorts of problems, from low self-esteem to alcoholism. They remind us we have more power over our lives than we assume we do. But we must address the real demons of the past that hitchhike into the present and the future and dump them.

This comes to mind with publication of “The Nixons: A Family Portrait,” a memoir by former President Richard Nixon’s brother Edward. Co-authored with Karen Olson, it goes into some of the influences upon that very complex president. With the passage of time — and the Watergate crimes ceasing as the singular event that defined Nixon’s presidency — a kinder, gentler figure emerges.

Some promotional material even frames the book in terms around the statement by the late Massachusetts Senator Edward Kennedy’s regret that he didn’t take up Richard Nixon’s offer to work on a bipartisan national healthcare plan in 1971. If they had worked together, we would not have the present gut-wrenching debate that puts money as the fulcrum between life and death.

There is plenty more about Richard Nixon to put into perspective. For instance, it is well known that, already in the late 1960s, Republicans understood they were becoming a minority party in national elections and Nixon was the game changer. He devised a “southern strategy” to win parts of the South from Democrats. And he appealed to the “silent majority” by culling out from the Democratic coalition those groups that were intolerant of racial and student unrest and anti-war sympathizers.

During the 1970 census, the term “Hispanic,” under pressure from some Latino groups, I might add, was applied to identify and define that demographic. Hispanics were a new source for national economic expansion and electoral gains, as we now fully realize. Yet, it’s taken some portions of the Latino community to get over the designation and the endless bickering over which is “right” or preferred, “Hispanic” or “Latino.”

More important is that the Nixon White House gave unprecedented attention to Hispanic issues — some of it to undercut the influence that Lyndon Johnson had had — and a strategy to shepherd entrepreneurs and middle-class Latinos into Republican ranks. What they did and how they did it is, in part, revealed in the Watergate Commission’s public record.

What was started back then, of course, was fumbled during George W. Bush’s presidency so that Republican Latinos are at their lowest point in the last 40 years. Yet, the Q&A that Clint Bolick, research fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, asked himself in 2007 is patently obvious: “Should Republicans court Hispanic voters? Only if they want to survive.”

The Nixon White House saw this eventuality already in 1970.

How the GOP blew the opportunity after four decades of effort is something for Republicans to regret.

But now is the present, and tomorrow is the future. Our fortune cookie tells us that despite some valiant efforts in some states such as Arizona, far too much of the Republican leadership is steeped in mythic America. Even their platitudes about economics and ideology ring hollow or banal, more in tune with a revival meeting than a party platform.

Many Republicans stand to learn a thing or two from the affirmation about the road back to pragmatism (and not the manipulativeness, racialism and law-skirting behavior) of Richard Nixon.

People take up affirmations because they judge themselves capable of change. One spiritual leader, Deepak Chopra, has a version of the affirmation that might apply. He presents it something like, “Every decision is a choice between a grievance and a miracle. Choose the miracle.” Hispanic Link.

Perhaps it will take a miracle. At least that’s better than what’s going on now. Hispanic Link.

[José de la Isla’s latest digital book, sponsored by The Ford Foundation, is available free at www.DayNightLifeDeathHope.com. He writes a weekly commentary for Hispanic Link News Service and is author of The Rise of Hispanic Political Power (2003). E-mail him at ­joseisla3@yahoo.com.] © 2009

by José de la Isla
Hispanic Link News Service

HOUSTON Ð Some ancient history might help us get a perspective on a contemporary situation. Here goes:

Following the fall of the Roman Empire, Europe went into a long dormant period. With it went an intellectual tradition that had begun with the ancient Greeks and had persisted into Roman times, from roughly 44 B.C. until about 476 A.D. Previously, scientific and engineering and social knowledge had been the basis for understanding all sorts of change and progress. Now, a millennium of very slow or no development followed, called the Dark Ages.

For instance, Aristarchus of Samos (310 BC Ð ca. 230 BC) had already formulated eighteen hundred years before Copernicus (1473-1543) that the earth was a round planet moving within a complex system. But a disbelieving public and policy centers could not absorb those scientific possibilities. Magical thinking was more important.

After a thousand years, the Dark Ages ended when superstitious thinking and legends had to give way to systematic thinking and discovery, called the Enlightenment, which also brought us the modern concept of science and knowledge. History became a progression of events instead of stringing myths together. But old habits are hard to break, even when they are staring you in the face.

For instance, in 1751, nearly three centuries after the Dark Ages had ended, French philosopher Denis Diderot published the Encyclopedia as a monument to the age of reason, wisdom and knowledge. In it, “America,” whose exploration had begun two and a half centuries before, occupied a quarter of a page. Not until years later was a Supplement printed containing 19 pages about the continent.

This shows how the obvious can be overlooked when people are obsessed with their closed-mindedness. Today, we have, by many who never cared before, the phenomenon of having discovered Latinos and are trying to go from a quarter page to 19 pages. The reason is obvious.

The motivation for the sudden attention given Latinos is the realization that Hispanic voters increased by two million from the 2004 to the 2008 presidential election. The number of non-Hispanic white voters was not statistically different from 2004. The sudden enlightenment, for instance, like the Feb. 16 launch of the Latino ­Partnership for Conservative Principles, is less about conservative values but self-interest and marketing outreach.

Washington Times blogger Thomas Peters reported as much in his interview with spokesperson Alfonso Aguilar who said his group would focus on educating conservatives about Hispanic values (as if Hispanics are not mostly already integrated into society) and about immigration (which in power centers means defining Latinos as “outsiders”). Aguilar acknowledged to Peters “many conservatives may not come out in support of reform immediately but that as the Hispanic vote continues to increase, they will see the demographic necessity to back reform.”

But the transparent statement shows it is not about enlightenment but a gimmick. It is not about “principles” but marketing.

Wayne Besen, founder of a non-profit group that debunks anti-gay misrepresentations and myths, says that the Latino Conservative Principles organizer Robert P. George has a “primary talent, it seems, is to trick the unschooled and easily fooled,” in this case other conservatives. That kind of hocus-pocus takes us back to the Dark Ages, when sophistry, fake religion, magic, anti-progress schemes, encouraged many Sorcerers’ apprentices.

You can see in its post-modern form, how a wart of frog, deceptive intentions and ignorance of Latino civic history don’t add up to good principals. It might work for fundraising purposes but it looks like a trick bag to enroll Latinos into somebody else’s political agenda.

In other words, like the Dark Ages, there seems to be a movement afoot by those who don’t know to tell others in a quarter page all about the half millennium of Hispanic values and reducing it all to tiring political wedge issues, cherry-picked platitudes andÑschizam!!!—Now you see the principles, now you don’t.