[Antiracism] FLatino Policy eNewsletter - Feb. 27, 2008

Wed Feb 27 21:28:34 EST 2008

Date: Wed, 27 Feb 2008 12:10:20 -0500From: editor at latinopolicy.orgTo: echonyc at hotmail.comSubject: Latino Policy eNewsletter - Feb. 27, 2008

In This Issue . . . 

Message from the Editor

The Latino Vote So Far

Deconstructing El Voto Latino

Book Notes

Message from the Editor

Estimado colega, 

You know, whatever your position on El Commandante Fidel Castro, there was something attractive about Cuba's election of a new president this Sunday. What is taking the United States months and months, millions and millions of dollars, and way over twenty debates to accomplish, took the Cubans one day! But, you might say, that's the price we pay for democracy in this country. That may be the case, but isn't this extended primary process nuts, wasteful and, well, a little out of control? Once it's over I hope we start talking some serious election reform and the need to push for a one-day national primary in this country. The price of democracy may be getting quite a bit out of reach for most Americans.

Once we released the results of our National Latino Opinion Leaders' Survey last month before Super Tuesday, in which these leaders projected that the Latino vote would go to Hillary Clinton, doubts were immediately raised about the results by some after Ted and Caroline Kennedy endorsed Obama and he won in Utah. But it turned out that our survey was on the money and today the Clinton campaign is banking on big Latino support in Texas to revive her run. This survey also added evidence that talk of a large anti-Black sentiment among Latino voters was largely baseless and that the Latino vote was pro-Clinton and not anti-Black. But the dynamic of this race within the Democratic Party has been changing quickly and we breathlessly wait to see the results not only in Texas but also in Pennsylvania and Puerto Rico to see how Latinos wind up voting.

And now for a little policy talk. Daniel Day-Lewis for best actor, Marion Cotillard for best actress, Javier Bardem for best supporting actor, Tilda Swinton for best support actress, 'Atonement' for best original score, 'Le Mozart des Pickpockets' for best live action animation, Didier Lavergne and Jan Archibald of 'La Vie en Rose' for best makeup, and on and on. Yes, the Oscars this Sunday were dominated by "foreigners," possibly adding to the explosive immigration debate in this country! We understand that Lou Dobbs is preparing a new series on CNN, "The Broken Multiplex," which will focus on how NAFTA resulted in foreigners taking these American awards. Spaniard Javier Bardem's making part of his acceptance speech in Spanish didn't help . . . although most Latinos, Spanish-speaking or not, couldn't understand a damn thing he said! But perhaps most galling of all to true Americans is the fact that the model for the original Oscar statue was a Mexican! Emilio "El Indio" Fernandez posed for it in the nude for MGM art director Cedric Gibbons (then the husband of Dolores Del Rio) in 1928. No kidding!

Un abrazo,

Angelo Falcón
President
National Institute for Latino Policy (NiLP)

The Latino Vote So Far

The Latino vote continues to be tracked very closely by the media and the Democratic candidates for president. Below you can find our compilation of the available exit poll stats on how Latinos voted to date. In the 12 states for which exit data on Latino voters is available so far, Hillary Clinton won the Latino vote in 9 states and Barack Obama in 3, with Clinton being ahead on average by a substantial 18 percentage points. But read these numbers with some caution given the poor track record of these polls in general this primary season, especially so when it comes to subgroups like Latinos who come with relatively large margins of error.

It is also important to note the Obama momentum. He has won the last ten primaries in a row, plus the vote of Democrats abroad. He appears to be making some slight inroad into Clinton's Latino support, but surveys give Clinton the Latino vote in Texas. We will be looking very closely at the primary contests in the remaining states and territory with significant Latino populations: Texas (35.7 percent Latino) and Rhode Island (11.0 percent) on March 4th, and Puerto Rico on June 7th. And then it is on to the Democratic National Convention in Denver on August 25-28, and the Republican National Convention in Minneapolis-St. Paul on September 1-4.

When we look at the 12 states that have already voted in these primaries and for which exit poll data on Latino is available, it appears that the strongest predictor of Latino support for Clinton is the percentage of a state's population that is Latino.

The percentage increase of the Latino population between 2000 and 2006 in these states ranges from 18 percent for California to 52 percent for Nevada. This is moderately and negatively correlated (-.23) with Latino support for Clinton. The percentage of the population that is Black has almost no relationship (r = -.09) to the vote for the Democratic candidates.

Deconstructing el Voto Latino: The Colbert Report and the Incomplete Latino vote 

We at NiLP have been trying to do our part to educate the American public on the realities of the Latino vote in these primaries. The highlight of this educational campaign was the appearance of NiLP's President, Angelo Falcón, on The Colbert Report on the evening of Super Tuesday! He went toe-to-toe with Stephen Colbert in dispelling common myths about Latinos. Falcón has gone on to joke that although this is a fake news show, when he is on "real" news shows he gets the same questions! 

Falcón has also taken on the task of discussing the unique role of Puerto Rico in the primaries. In an op-ed for CandidatoUSA, "Colonial Delegates?," he discusses the speculation by some that Puerto Rico could be decisive in the outcome. In a later column in the Hispanic Link News Service, "The Incomplete Latino Vote" (March 2), he points out the problem of the disenfranchisement of the 4 million Latinos who reside in the U.S. territories of Puerto Rico, the US Virgin Islands and others.

Book Notes 

Attention Authors and Publishers: If you would like us to review your recent and forthcoming English or Spanish language book(s) on Latino policy and politics, please mail or deliver to: Angelo Falcón, Editor, Latino Policy eNewsletter, 101 Avenue of the Americas, Suite 313, New York, NY 10013, 212-334-5722.

With the current anti-Latino rhetoric infused in the politically explosive immigration debate at an all-time high, television journalist and personality Geraldo Rivera of Fox-TV has published a welcomed addition to this debate: HisPanic: Why Americans Fear Hispanics in the U.S. (New York: Celebra, an imprint of New American Library, a division of Penguin Group [USA], 2008). In this well written and well-research book, Rivera addresses all the major hot button issues on immigration and the Latino presence in this country in a reasoned way and with good humor. Besides hearing from the experts, we also get insights from his celebrity friends like Cheech Marin and Geraldo's own colorful life as a journalist and Puerto Rican. This is a highly accessible and informative read.

The issues of the role of race and of the Latino vote have become important in this year's Presidential race. A useful and comprehensive, but uneven, introduction to the professional political science literature on the subject is Latino Politics: Identity, Mobilization, and Representation, edited by Rodolfo Espino, David Leal and Kenneth J. Meier (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2007). It features articles by over 20 established and emerging political scientists who study Latino politics in the US.

The role of race in the Latino community is a complex one. Ginetta E.B. Candelario's Black Behind the Ears: Dominican Racial Identity from Museums to Beauty Shops(Durham: Duke University Press, 2007) is a highly nuanced and insightful examination at Dominican ideas and practices of race both in their homeland and in the US. A good and highly readable overview of Latino and immigrant challenges to the Black-White dichotomy in the US is Ronald Fernandez' America Beyond Black and White: How Immigrants and Fusions Are Helping Us Overcome the Racial Divide (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2007). It looks like "beyond the racial divide" may be becoming a popular phrase: there is a book due out later this year, The Racial Middle: Latinos and Asian Americans Living Beyond the Racial Divide by Eileen O'Brien (New York: NYU Press, June 1, 2008) that almost has the same cover as Fernandez' --- his has different colored crayons, O'Brien's has different colored pencils.

There is the tendency to see Latino politics and experiences in the U.S. almost exclusively from the perspective of the Big Three: Mexicans, Puerto Ricans and Cubans. To begin to counter this and illustrate the increasing diversity of this experience, you should take a look at The Other Latinos: Central and South Americans in the United States, edited by José Luis Falconi and José Antonio Mazzotti (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007). On the issue of race from yet another perspective, for example, this volume contains a fascinating chapter by Ana Cristina Braga Martes, "'Neither Hispanic, nor Black: We're Brazilian'." Latinos in a Changing Society, edited by Martha Montero-Sieburth and Edwin Meléndez (Westport: Praeger, 2007) is another collection that looks at this broader Latino experience. There is also a book due out later this year that looks at yet another aspect of this growing Latino complexity by José Maria Mantero, Latinos and the U.S. South (Praeger Publishers, April 30, 2008); it examines the adaptation of Latinos to their newest US region of settlement, the South. Critically analyzing this broader Latino experience are the recently published Technofuturos: Critial Interventions in Latina/o Studies, edited by Nancy Raquel Mirabal and Agustin Laó-Montes (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2007), and A Companion to Latina/o Studies (Blackwell Companions in Cultural Studies), edited by Juan Flores and Renato Rosaldo (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell, 2007).
The role of the media is clearly an important issue in how the Latino vote is covered. Just in time for this Presidential election is a new reader edited by Federico A. Subervi-Vélez, The Mass Media and Latino Politics: Studies of U.S. Media Content. Campaign Strategies and Survey Research: 1984-2004 (New York: Routledge, 2008). It includes sections on media coverage of elections, the English-language media, campaign strategies, political advertisements, and surveys. And talking about the media, a book originally published in 2004 by The Smithsonian Institution by sociologist Clara E. Rodríguez, Heroes, Lovers, and Others: The Story of Latinos in Hollywood, has been reissued by Oxford University Press this year.

Finally, one of the more senior Puerto Rican elected officials, US Representative José E. Serrano, Democrat representing the South Bronx, just had a book published on his political career. Carlos Velasquez has written and edited The Political Icon: José E. Serrano (New York: Galos Publishing, 2008). The book was released at a February 11th event at Hostos Community College in The Bronx (see video by NiLP by clicking here).

February 27, 2008

LATINO POLICY eNEWSLETTER
Official Bi-Monthly Publicationof theNational Institute 
for Latino PolicyEditorAngelo FalcónThe National Institute for Latino Policy (formerly the Institute for Puerto Rican Policy) is a independent nonprofit and  nonpartisan policy center established in 1982 to address Latino issues.José R. Sánchez, Ph.D.Chair, Board of DirectorsAngelo FalcónPresident and FounderHector Soto, Esq.Senior Fellow

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