by Janet Murguía
Much has changed for Hispanic Americans since 1968. Forty years ago, Hispanics made up less than four percent of the U.S. population. Today, that number has reached 15 percent and is growing.
Back then, we were largely invisible outside of the Southwest and a few other pockets around the country. Today, Latinos comprise the nation’s largest ethnic minority and the fastest-growing segment of the U.S. electorate.
Forty years ago, upwards of 80 percent of Hispanics dropped out of school, perhaps a quarter owned their own homes, and there were just a handful of Latino elected officials nationwide.
Since then, the dropout rate has been cut in half, nearly 50 percent of Latino families are homeowners, and there are more than 5,000 Hispanic elected officials.
In 1968, the National Council of La Raza (NCLR) was created with one goal: to strengthen the United States by promoting the advancement of Latino families. Forty years later, we have much to be proud of: The NonProfit Times recognized NCLR’s leadership with its coveted “Power and Influence Top 50” award, honoring the top 50 leaders shaping the nonprofit world. NCLR is also featured alongside Habitat for Humanity and the Heritage Foundation in Forces for Good: The Six Practices of High-Impact Nonprofits, a book that analyzes the practices of 12 “high-impact” nonprofit organizations that have successfully made social change.
NCLR has received this recognition because, in partnership with the nearly 300 community-based organizations in our Affi liate Network, we continue to try to level the playing field in many areas, including:
- Education – NCLR supports 100 community-based schools, serving nearly 25,000 students annually.
- Homeownership – Since 1997, the NCLR Homeownership Network has provided counseling to nearly 145,000 families and has helped more than 23,000 Latino families buy their own homes.
- Head Start – NCLR has long championed making this valuable preschool program more accessible to Hispanic children, who after decades of under-enrollment have now reached parity in attendance with their peers. In 2005, Congress increased Head Start funding by $35 million to expand access for children of farmworkers.
- Health Care – NCLR has helped build health clinics and train lay health educators; in 2006, these clinics and educators provided care and disease prevention to nearly 100,000 people.
- Citizenship – Our affi liates work to help Hispanic immigrants integrate fully into U.S. society by providing English-language and civics classes and assistance with naturalization and voter registration.
While we have made much progress as a community, and as a nation, in the last 40 years, we still have work to do to realize our vision of a country where everyone has an equal opportunity to achieve the American Dream. While NCLR’s founders had to fight to get attention four decades ago, Latinos often receive the wrong kind of attention today.
For example, although Hispanic Americans have proudly served our country throughout our history and are fighting and dying in Iraq and Afghanistan today, some question our loyalty, and others call us a threat.
But we will not let these negative forces derail us from working to improve opportunities for Hispanic Americans. Simply put, if Latino students do not succeed in school, then our educational system cannot succeed. If Latino families do not secure a comfortable level of fi nancial stability and savings, then neither will our country prosper economically. And if Hispanics are not fully integrated into the mainstream, our nation will not achieve the social cohesion required of the world’s greatest multiracial democracy.
Looking toward the next 40 years, one thing is clear: the Latino community’s future is this nation’s future. Let’s work to make that future a bright one for all of us.
(Janet Murguía, president and CEO of the National Council of La Raza, the nation’s largest civil rights and advocacy organization, writes a monthly commentary for Hispanic Link News Service. Reach her at opi@nclr.org). (c)2008
