Hispanic Contributions to the American Cultural and Media Mosaic May be Growing Rapidly. Robert Rodriguez on Building a Kick-Ass Network | Entrepreneur.com

America is no longer changing …  It has changed.  To be sure, demographics move more rapidly than the mainstream culture, but sheer numbers eventually transform and redefine the whole.  In this way, the American scene is changing rather rapidly and this is no where more true than in the economy.

Take for example, the connection between television, the internet, radio and politics as popular mediums that are driven by “consumers.”  Hispanics are increasingly becoming a growing and vibrant segment of every important sector of the economy and young entrepreneurs are finally stepping up to the plate.  One example is Hollywood success story filmmaker Robert Rodriguez of popular mainstream hits such as Spy Kids and Sin City.

Hispanic influence on the mainstream culture has been slow in coming, especially since many of the mainstream mediums that magnify an ethnic group’s interests and influence have not embraced the sleeping giant that is the nation’s latino community.  This cannot hold much longer.  A generation of educated and ambitious Hispanic leaders is coming of age.

The numerical reality of the Hispanic community is not reflected in the nation’s identity nor in its financial success indicators.  This is rapidly changing and it will impact the work that you do and who you do it with sooner than you may think.

“With films like El Mariachi, Desperado, Spy Kids and Sin City, Austin-based filmmaker Robert Rodriguez has carved out a career on Hollywood’s fringe. He is a key member of the digital filmmaking revolution and the original indie film bootstrapper, having funded his debut movie with cash he earned from being a medical test dummy. Now, he’s turning his attention to the world of television with his own network, El Rey, bringing his tastes to a mass audience and filling in a few gaps for the Hispanic population in the process.

It’s one of a handful of new networks launching this spring headlined by bold face names, a happy byproduct of Comcast/Universal merger and a requirement from the FCC that ten networks be given to independent owners and operators, four with a minority focus. Others getting into the network game include Magic Johnson and Sean Combs.”

More via Robert Rodriguez on Building a Kick-Ass Network | Entrepreneur.com.

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The U.S. Hispanic population has increased sixfold since 1970 | Pew Research Center

There is no larger, more monolithic group in the US with less power and with less representation at all levels of the civic and private sectors of American society.  Of the 53 million hispanics, a whopping 33 million plus are Mexican American.  This means that the current immigration impasse is largely, both internally and externally, a Mexican problem.  You can think of it as a “Mexican American Problem” or as purely a Mexican problem but in any case, Mexican Americans are a relatively monolithic community with a strong sense of their past, and an ongoing connection to the mother land (incidentally, Mexican Americans do not have to divide their loyalties between North America, i.e., the USA, and modern day Mexico, because the lands between the Rio Grande and the territories beyond the Alamo have largely been one continuous playground to a Mexican community that can easily claim to be Native American.  The so called “pilgrims” have a weaker claim.

Answering the question “Why have Hispanics/Latinos been in the US for so long and achieved so relatively little?” would go a long way towards unlocking America’s potential and promise of another American century of success.  The clock is ticking and American leadership and policy makers are asleep at the wheel.  The Latino community leadership is asleep as well…

“The Hispanic population grew to 53 million in 2012, a 50% increase since 2000 and nearly six times the population in 1970, according to the most recent U.S. Census Bureau data. Meanwhile, the overall U.S. population increased by only 12% from 2000 to 2012. Hispanic population growth accounted for more than half of the country’s growth in this time period.

Much of the growth is occurring in a relatively small geographic area. A Pew Research Center analysis last year found that the 10 largest counties by Hispanic population accounted for 22% of the national Hispanic population growth between 2000 and 2011. Half of these counties are located in California.

Nationally, Mexicans are the largest Hispanic origin group but the composition of origin groups varies by geographic area. For example, while Mexicans represent a majority of Hispanics in all but 11 states, Puerto Ricans are the largest group in New York and New Jersey and Cubans are most populous in Florida.”

More via The U.S. Hispanic population has increased sixfold since 1970 | Pew Research Center.

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Prison reform: An unlikely alliance of left and right | The Economist

How can we square the fact that we are the number one nation in the world in the number of people we put in prison, that an African American male is more likely to end up in jail in today’s America than he would have been under South Africa’s Apartheid regime?  According to the London Economist, China is a distant second in number of people incarcerated despite its significantly larger population.

This facts serve to put into perspective the real and urgent need to reform our “crime and punishment” system.  It is simply too expensive and the statistics clearly show that affects Americans from different communities in disproportionate fashion.

Historically, crime and punishment have been an ongoing challenge for all empires and for all leaders.  American is miserably failing in this regard and we can’t afford to continue down this path of wasting human life in a criminal justice system that is a revolving door with little accountability and without rational goals that serve society as a whole.

What will it take to get America to invest in its young in the areas of education, job training and re-training and, frankly, in a more robust and inclusive view of an America that invests in its most challenged urban and rural areas with a view to the future?  Prison reform could yield a significant downpayment on new more enlightened policies that could bring together both sides of the isle for the sake of millions of families and young people.

“ERIC HOLDER and Rick Perry (pictured) have little in common. America’s attorney-general is black, liberal and uses the word “community” a lot. The governor of Texas is white, conservative and says “God” a lot. Last month Mr Holder’s Justice Department sued Texas for allegedly trying to make it harder for blacks to vote. Last year Mr Perry ran to unseat Mr Holder’s boss, Barack Obama.

On one thing, however, the two men agree. On August 12th Mr Holder said: “Too many Americans go to too many prisons for far too long, and for no truly good law-enforcement reason.” He then unveiled reforms to reduce the number of people sent to America’s …”

MORE via Prison reform: An unlikely alliance of left and right | The Economist.

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Modest Public Interest in Close of Zimmerman Trial | Pew Research Center for the People and the Press

Are we our brother’s keeper?  America seems to be increasingly divided in its opinions in what happens, and even in simply taking notice.

The verdict in Florida regarding the shooting of an unarmed teen should raise concern and key questions about guns, court systems, legal justice, race relations, and many other issues of import for the state of our Nation’s social fabric and for the future of an increasingly diverse if separate America.  This separation seems to include what we notice and what we care about.

Be sure to visit the Policy ThinkShop for commentary on the importance of what happened in Florida for how after the legal system addressed the death of Trayvon Martin millions of people might now see America and how America sees millions of people through the eyes of our local police departments and justice systems.

https://policyabcs.wordpress.com/2013/07/15/15175/

The Pew Foundation has released a troubling survey about apathy and neglect for matters that should matter to all of us…

“The final days of the trial of George Zimmerman, which concluded July 13 with a verdict of not guilty, attracted relatively modest public interest overall. In a weekend survey, 26% say they were following news about the trial very closely.

This is lower than interest in the initial controversy over Trayvon Martin’s shooting when it erupted last year. In March 2012, 35% said they followed news about Martin’s shooting very closely.

However, the story has consistently attracted far more interest among blacks than whites – and that remained the case in the trial’s final days. Blacks are more than twice as likely as whites to say they tracked news about the Zimmerman trial very closely (56% vs. 20%).

Moreover, fully 67% of blacks say they watched at least some live coverage of the Zimmerman trial, compared with 38% of whites. About one-in-five blacks (21%) say they watched “almost all’’ of the trial coverage; just 5% of whites reported watching almost all of it.

The Pew Research Center survey was conducted July 11-14 among 1,002 adults. In 237 interviews conducted July 14, the day after the Zimmerman verdict, 29% say they were following news about the trial very closely.

The Zimmerman trial and Trayvon Martin shooting have drawn less interest than some other racially charged incidents in recent years, including the riots that followed the Rodney King verdict in 1992 (70% very closely) and O.J. Simpson’s arrest in 1994 (48%).”

More via Modest Public Interest in Close of Zimmerman Trial | Pew Research Center for the People and the Press.

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We the people … Who are we?

We are all at one time or another, strangers.

We never think of ourselves as strangers, but others around us at one time or another surely will.  For thousands of years groups of human beings have found ways to bond and build unity.  Unfortunately, at the same time that we form the “we,” the “them” or the “other” is automatically formed.  That is the fundamental basis of discrimination, judgement, bias and, yes, racism.  It’s us against them.  It’s “you and I are not the same and I don’t trust you.”

On that unfortunate night when George Zimmerman and Trayvon Martin met face to face, they both saw a stranger.  George Zimmerman had already been armed and ready for “the stranger” and acted accordingly when he encountered a startled Trayvon Martin.   Not much can really be said about that night because the only real witness was not a witness at all but a participant observer overwhelmed by his own fear, anger and pursuit of “the stranger in the night.”

Racism is but a word and concept that when put to the test of thought and reason falls short of describing the totality and complexity of many of the situations it, perhaps ironically, so often is a vital part of.  Racism as an explanatory concept falls short because outside of “the human race” all the other constructs relating to race do not hold up to scientific scrutiny.  There is only one kind of human being, though we are all quite different.  Historically those differences have divided us and caused some of us to treat other people in inhumane ways.  The construct of “White person” has been used historically to bring together a normally disparate collection of people.  The early KKK included a diversity of people from different religions and ethnicities.  This collection of disparate people were united in their apposition to the empowerment and liberation of antebellum South people–African Americans who had been enslaved because they were brought to America as muscle for work and were labeled, legally, as somewhere between animal and human.  There is much psychosis and ill will in the history of the American Republic and as inheritors of that legacy, White people (however one defines the complex category) must live with that history. Black people must also live with that burden as victims and objects of hostility.  As Americans, we all have a responsibility to address that past and to make sure that it does not dominate our present or future.  There is no more important a challenge for the future of this Republic.  America cannot go on closing its doors and incarcerating people who do not fit an antiquated norm.

America must work on reinventing itself and forging a culture that will better define what it expects from its citizens and one that is more attentive and inclusive of what it needs from the future than what it needs from its past.  America must be more forward looking and embracing of people’s differences.  That will not be easy… but it must happen.  It cannot be done piecemeal through divisive movements and competition…  Stakeholders in a future multicultural America must forge a value system that can be taught at home by parents, in school by teachers, at religious gatherings by spiritual leaders and in corporate America by managers.  America increasingly looks different and we must figure out how to make the differences among us work if we are going to stay competitive in a competitive world.

Can America talk its way out of the race problem?

In important ways, racism speaks to the fears and phobias held deeply by people who fear black people, especially men America labels “black.”  The reasons White people fear them may be debatable, but their discomfort with “the black stranger” cannot be explained away.

George Zimmerman was afraid and emotional enough that night, that he could not simply say: Good evening.  What is your name?  I am the neighborhood watch guy and I do not know you?  Can we talk?  Perhaps he could have said something like that and a simple conversation could have unraveled.  Perhaps avoiding the confrontation that ensued.

When a person feels strong and negative feelings about another person, because they are strange and foreign to them, it is understandable.  But when a person feels these feelings about a person who is black or African American, that person is acting on prior perceptions and images that are a part of American history and we, as a Nation, hardly know how to talk about that.

To be sure, the “we” here is those of us who frame these issues purely as racial, with little attention to the complexities that lead to intergroup mistrust and hostilities between so called “ethnic” or “racial” groups and the mainstream which is still presumed to be “White.”

But history is not simply Black and White.  America is still not able to get over its “Black and White psychosis.” The mainstream American hegemonic culture has not processed differences and cultural conflicts between groups very well.  That is the most deleterious outcome of its psychosis. Although White and Black hostilities are well documented and talked about, the lynching of Native Americans and Mexican Americans that went on in the mid and southwestern states is rarely mentioned.  American consciousness and history is so twisted that today Hollywood portrays yesterday’s predominantly “brown” cowboys in the erroneous image of blond haired and blue eyed John Wayne.  Intergroup competition, mistrust, hatred and violence are as old as the New England witch hunts, Southern White terror and abuse and exploitation of immigrants to America.

But intergroup competition and mistrust, intergroup hostilities in the face of reason and laws is not new.  What is new is the proliferation of guns in our country–both urban and suburban, legal and illegal. Mistrust and divisions between groups that increasingly fuel and dominate our electoral politics and discourse do not bode well for an America that is already on guard about teenagers shooting up our schools and theaters, disgruntled and unstable young people blowing up Federal Buildings in Oklahoma, and homeland terrorism born of immigrants from anticommunism wars that armed and trained religious minorities throughout Europe, Asia and the Middle East.  History is very much with us and we are doomed to repeat it.  The violence that ensued between George Zimmerman and Trayvon Martin is very much embedded in racial history and mistrust.  Mistakes happen, but guns have to be carrier by choice and how we define and treat one another in any situation has roots in how we were brought up and how “the other” looks and “feels” to us.

Hope lies in the hearts and minds of today’s young.  But it will not survive for long if we allow police departments, States like Florida and the media establishment to make the mistakes and the politically motivated laws that promote vigilantism and hostility between neighbors. For example, the stand your ground law apparently does.  What kind of society have we become that we allow excessive use of violence no matter what?  In a diverse society where so many of us treat one another as “the other” or “the stranger” we cannot afford laws and court systems that allow anyone to define another person, and based on how they define that person, feel fear for their lives and kill them.  That is insane and that is what is wrong with the Florida court system today.

Something is terribly wrong in American justice today. On the one hand, there is this slavery and civil rights  history that is somewhat alien to most of today’s  young people (today’s young people, of any race or ethnicity) and is somewhat stuck in the past for the rest of us.  Civil rights is no longer about black and white.  The country is much different today and in important ways the current generation that will matter, in terms of what happens in the next quarter century (young people between the ages of 15 to 35) is up at bat.

What are young people on all sides and from all communities going to do to make the future America kinder and gentler?  What ever happened to community and neighborhood?

We better start talking and doing…

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Zimmerman Is Acquitted in Killing of Trayvon Martin – NYTimes.com

Florida justice on trial as the nation watches the justification of profiling and following that led to a senseless killing.

“George Zimmerman, the neighborhood watch volunteer who fatally shot Trayvon Martin, an unarmed black teenager, igniting a national debate on racial profiling and civil rights, was found not guilty late Saturday night of second-degree murder. He was also acquitted of manslaughter …”

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The Rise of Single Fathers | Pew Social & Demographic Trends

Given the focus on women’s liberation and the bad rap that minority men get regarding fatherhood, men as a popular media category, have not been portrayed favorably–especial so called “men of color.”

The Pew Foundation shares recent data that documents increasing “single parent fatherhood.”  It appears that men are increasingly taking on the role of parent on their own.

 

“A record 8% of households with minor children in the United States are headed by a single father, up from just over 1% in 1960, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of Decennial Census and American Community Survey data.The number of single father households has increased about ninefold since 1960, from less than 300,000 to more than 2.6 million in 2011.1 In comparison, the number of single mother households increased more than fourfold during that time period, up to 8.6 million in 2011, from 1.9 million in 1960.As a result, men make up a growing share of single parent householders.2 In 1960, about 14% of single parent households were headed by fathers, today almost one-quarter 24% are.There are some notable differences between single mothers and single fathers. Single fathers are more likely than single mothers to be living with a cohabiting partner 41% versus 16%. Single fathers, on average, have higher incomes than single mothers and are far less likely to be living at or below the poverty line—24% versus 43%.

Single fathers are also somewhat less educated than single mothers, older and more likely to be white. Compared with fathers heading households with two married parents, single dads are younger, less educated, less financially well-off and less likely to be white. In this report, fathers include those men who are ages 15 or older, who are the head of their household, and who report living with their own minor children biological children, step-children or adopted children. Fathers who are living in a household headed by someone else are excluded from the analysis, as are fathers whose children are not living with them.The term ‘single father’ includes men in a variety of family circumstances. About half 52% are separated, divorced, widowed or never married and are living without a cohabiting partner; some 41% are living with a non-marital partner; and a small share 7% are married but living apart from their spouse.3Cohabiting single fathers are particularly disadvantaged on most socio-economic indicators. They are younger, less educated and more likely to be living in poverty than are fathers who are raising children without a spouse or partner in the household.Overall, two-thirds 67% of households with children are headed by two married parents; in 1960, this share was 92%.4″

More via The Rise of Single Fathers | Pew Social & Demographic Trends.

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Manager Uses Urban Dictionary to Defend UFC Fighter’s Gay Twitter Slur — What would Oscar Wilde and George Orwell say?

Educational attainment, the schools we attend, the neighborhoods we grow up in, and the family that shapes us, all represent the context which gives our language meaning, its connotations.  But the dictionary and the official meanings in it is an important shared frame of reference; or is it?  In search of meaning, intentions and aggression, we often find ourselves in front of the proverbial mirror of shame.  There always seems to be plenty of blame to go around when people are mean to one another.  But to complain about UFC culture seems to go beyond reason to a place where words or meaning may no longer hold much substance.

Life in today’s diverse America is becoming quite interesting and the language to explain it increasingly seems to fall short.  Public behavior, especially public behavior tied to corporate profits and corporate values, has ramifications beyond colloquialisms and local vernacular.   Because the spoken word is usually magnified and made more powerful when it is repeated by those who have the means, people who speak to the wrong person (s) or in the wrong place, or at the wrong time, get crucified.  Someone is always ready to listen and to register a complain for all the good people to weigh in and render a collective judgement.  What passes for conversation, if inelegant or far from eloquent, in the confines of comrades and buddies in local corners or man caves, can be quite the consternation in a public setting–even when it is said in a spectacle of violence, and mostly indecency, displayed for the public palate.  Apparently it is ok to beat another human being nearly to death but it is not okay to call them names?  What ever happened to sticks and stones will break my bones, etc., etc. etc.  We have reached the day when the tongue is mightier than the sword and the public sense of decency is measured by what Oscar Wilde himself may have seen as ironic and inane.

Tell us here at The Policy ThinkShop what you THINK???

“UFC fighter Nate Diaz (above) was suspended by the mixed martial arts body on Thursday night for earlier in the week using a gay slur against another fighter. That’s typically where a manager or someone else would step in and get the athlete to apologize and …”

via Manager Uses Urban Dictionary to Defend UFC Fighter’s Gay Twitter Slur.

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Social policies: Time to scrap affirmative action | The Economist

Affirmative action rears its ugly head once again as the usually intellectually rigorous London Economist magazine publishes an article (link below) making an argument on the deleterious effects of affirmative action policies for beneficiaries, institutions and societies in general.

The main problem with the article is that it sees people of color (or ethnic minorities) as both the “weak classes” and the beneficiaries of these policies.  The article writer fails to understand that a good number of people belonging to the so called “majority” or “white” as the article calls them, are also tremendously disadvantaged and cyclically in poverty by region and sometimes by religious group or region of the country (Catholics compared to Episcopalians and people from the Appalachia region compared to New Yorkers).

The overwhelming majority of people in America are so called “White.”   Poverty is not simply a skin color problem.  Affirmative action is not perfect and plenty of examples can be found of cases in which it is abused or inappropriately taken advantage of.  This does not mean that there’s no need to address historical differences between groups that have experienced circumstances which precluded their development in the educational and business fields, for example.

When  society invests in the children of the poor to ensure that future generations can continue to prosper and contribute to society in greater ways we all benefit.

When specific groups have been locked out for so long that lack of education, sophistication or opportunity defines their relationship to society, then society has a responsibility to address that condition.  Whether we see that “responsibility” as a moral or as a self interested proposition, does not really matter.  The fact is that when societies invest in their citizens they benefit all of society and improve their lot vis a vis other societies who experience the drag and social dislocation caused by an underclass.  The following article in the Economist fails to understand this simple logic.  Read it and tell us what you think?

“ABOVE the entrance to America’s Supreme Court four words are carved: “Equal justice under law”. The court is pondering whether affirmative action breaks that promise. The justices recently accepted a case concerning a vote in Michigan that banned it, and will …”

via Social policies: Time to scrap affirmative action | The Economist.

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The Policy ThinkShop on Facebook: How do you think Healthcare Reform is working in New Jersey? What about the poorest and most vulnerable in these time of change?

New Jersey is reorganizing its healthcare system, including urban hospital that are vital to New Jersey’s poorest and most vulnerable. What do you think?

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Pew Hispanic Center – Chronicling Latinos Diverse Experiences in a Changing America

Some of the descendants of today’s native Americans are also the descendants of today’s Mexican Americans.  For thousands of years there has been a natural migration from well below the Rio Grande to cold northern parts of what is today’s “Upper Midwest.”  The region today that is loosely made up of the Dakotas, Michigan, Wisconsin and Illinois. Ironically, even the then pilgrims were considered “illegal aliens” by the then natives.  The same natives who “hosted them” and welcomed the pilgrims in what we now call “Thanks Giving.”  Certainly the then natives must have thought of the pilgrims as “illegal aliens” but gave them quarter and kindness nevertheless.

But “my oh my” how times have changed and how the Thanksgiving tables have been turned.  The immigration debate promises to change how we all define America and maybe even begin to tie together a North American Continent that continues to play a role for new comers.  We may yet get the facts straight and muster up some of that native hospitality that made that long cold winter of immigration survivable for the original pilgrims.  

We may yet repair the growing divisions in our country and continue to be a beacon of giving, welcoming and building for future generations.  Like the Statue of Liberty, a symbol with open arms, allowing our culture to continue to welcome and thank all of us who were here before the next comers, like the native Americans who taught us that Thanks Giving lesson.

Get the facts at Pew.  The Pew Hispanic Center continues to provide resources and leadership in this important area:

“The nation’s total immigrant population reached a record 40.4 million in 2011, according to an analysis of Census Bureau data by the Pew Hispanic Center. Over the last decade, the number of immigrants in the U.S. has grown by more than 9 million. The number of unauthorized immigrants living in the U.S. grew in the early part of the decade before peaking at 12 million in 2007. It is now at 11.1 million as of 2011, the last year for which an estimate is available.”

Related:

New Data: Statistical Portrait of the Foreign Born, 2011

Report: Unauthorized Immigrants: 11.1 Million in 2011

Report: Net Migration from Mexico Falls to Zero

via Pew Hispanic Center – Chronicling Latinos Diverse Experiences in a Changing America.

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Daily Number: Youth Vote Undergoes Big Racial, Ethnic Changes – Pew Research Center

The Pew foundation continues to light our path forward with data that illuminates a view of a future, more diverse America that seems to be here now…

 

“The racial and ethnic composition of young voters has shifted dramatically over the last four presidential elections.

Just 58% of voters age 18-29 identified as white non-Hispanics, while 18% were Hispanic, 17% were African American and 7% identified as mixed-race or some other race. The share of young voters who are white has declined 16 points since 2000, when 74% of voters under 30 identified as white and 26% identified as nonwhite.

This stands in sharp contrast to older voters. Fully 76% of voters 30 and older were white, down only six points from 2000. Only 24% of voters 30 and older were nonwhite, including 12% who identified as black and 8% as Hispanic.

The changing demographics of the young vote are significant because President Obama’s support among young voters declined in 2012 among many of the same subgroups in the overall electorate in which he lost ground, particularly whites, men and independents. His losses among young voters since 2008 might have been even greater, but for the fact that Obama won young African Americans and Hispanics by margins that were about as large as in 2008.”

More via Daily Number: Youth Vote Undergoes Big Racial, Ethnic Changes – Pew Research Center.

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