Minorities

W. Ralph Eubanks

Operations — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 08:03:00 -0400

FellowW. Ralph Eubanks is the author of Ever Is a Long Time: A Journey Into Mississippi's Dark Past (Basic Books), which Washington Post book critic Jonathan Yardley named as one of the best nonfiction books of 2003. He has contributed articles to The Washington Post's Outlook and Style sections, the Chicago Tribune, Preservation, and National Public Radio. Since 1995, he has been director of publishing at the Library of Congress and is currently on a leave of absence. A graduate of the University of Mississippi (B.A.) and the University of Michigan (M.A., English Language and Literature), he is a recipient of a 2007 Guggenheim Fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim… more

The Fear Of White Decline

Ron Tang — Mon, 19 May 2008 07:28:00 -0400

Hillary Rodham Clinton is right. She has the broader and whiter political coalition, so she should, by all rights, be the Democratic presidential nominee.

After all, in other realms of the political process, we routinely refer to "black districts" or "Latino districts" and speak of the necessity of those jurisdictions to be represented by black or Latino elected officials. Well, then, because the American population is 66% white, maybe the United States is a de facto white district that should be represented accordingly.

Don't scoff at the idea. Ethnic and racial self-determination have been underlying factors in the formation of modern nations.… more

Go For the Bitter Bloc

Ron Tang — Fri, 09 May 2008 10:17:00 -0400

Last week's Pennsylvania primary demonstrated that Barack Obama is not unbeatable. This might sound a strange way to put it. Hasn't it always been true that Obama is beatable?

Well, consider an alternate reality in which Obama had won Pennsylvania. His people certainly thought long and deeply about this alternate reality -- why else spend a staggering $12 million on one state's primary? Hillary Clinton would have dropped out. Obama would have shown that he can win white working-class votes in a big, diverse, populous state. Way back after the Iowa caucuses, he playfully observed that everywhere he goes becomes Obama… more

Automatic Americans

Ron Tang — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 08:42:00 -0400

Ending birthright citizenship is a placebo, not a solution to illegal immigration.

The debate over immigration is fundamentally about who we are as a nation,who we are not, and who we want to be.

It is thus no surprise that those most afraid of who we are becoming have moved to redraw the rules of inclusion by proposing to do away with birthright citizenship. Such a move is not only legally dubious, it is a threat to American prosperity.

Opponents of birthright citizenship assert that we have it wrong when we interpret the 14th Amendment as granting citizenship to anyone born here. They… more

Engine of Assimilation

adminn — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 19:25:00 -0500

Americans have little confidence that assimilation is happening today as it once did. According to a 2006 Pew Research Center poll, 44 percent of Americans believe that today's immigrants are not as willing to assimilate as those who came during the early 1900s. Their confidence is not likely to grow with the release of a new Pew Hispanic Center report, which shows that by 2050 nearly 1 in 5 people in the United States will be foreign-born. Nativists, such as columnist Patrick J. Buchanan, who has gone so far as to claim that the refusal of immigrants to assimilate is… more

Len Nichols in The Denver Post on Health Care and Latinos

Communications — Sat, 10 Nov 2007 11:18:00 -0500

New America in the News:

...About 56 percent of all wage and salary employees ages 21 to 64 had an employer or union-sponsored pension or retirement plan last year, according to a report released this month by the Employee Benefit Research Institute in Washington, D.C. Overall, about 53 percent of full-time, full-year workers participate in such plans, but the Institute's analysis of 2007 U.S. Census data found non-native Hispanics were less likely to participate than whites, blacks or non-immigrant Hispanics.

Matthew Gnabasik, managing director of Blue Prairie Group, a human resources and investment consulting firm in Chicago, said there is a "generally accepted truism" in the industry that in companies with large Spanish-speaking immigrant populations, participation in retirement savings plans is low. "It's often said that there is a cultural element to that," he said.

Human resources directors, he said, repeatedly tell him that among Spanish-speaking immigrants, those who are working feel a greater responsibility to care for older family members than to invest in a retirement plan. In addition, Gnabasik said, it is difficult to get lower-income workers to participate in a plan.

Burkhart is working to change that. A former English, Spanish and social studies teacher in Denver Public Schools, Burkhart launched Futuro Sólido in 2001 with help from her Colombian-born husband Ferney Colorado, who is also her consultant. Her mission is to help companies tear down the myths and cultural obstacles that keep Spanish-speaking employees from enjoying robust benefits and to help them perform better in the workplace. ...

"Our emphasis is not just on translating accurately, but getting the results the client wants, whether that's understanding and compliance of safety regulation so their workers' compensation claims stay reasonable ... or whether that's having people participate in their 401(k)." ...

In a report released earlier this month in the health care journal Inquiry, researchers found that many Spanish-speaking Latinos are in low-wage jobs that don't offer health insurance plans. For those whose companies offer a plan, the report, entitled, "Why do Latinos Have So Little Employer-Sponsored Health Insurance," found the cost of premiums to be a deterrent. Len Nichols, director of the Health Policy Program at the Washington, D.C.-based New America Foundation and a co-author of the report, said a higher priority for them is to be able to send money home.

"In that sense, making sure you have as much cash now is at a premium in that community," he said. Nichols said Burkhart appears to have a niche company; he knows of no other company that is targeting Spanish-speaking immigrants to get them enrolled in employer-sponsored benefits.

For the complete article, please follow this link.

Back on Earth, Bill Cosby Fights for Hearts

Articles — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 14:41:00 -0400

The 17th century philosopher Blaise Pascal once observed that mankind is suspended between two infinities -- the infinitely large and the infinitely small. And so it is with two figures in the news: Al Gore wishes to speak for the planet, while Bill Cosby wishes to speak to the human heart.

And it’s revealing, given the liberal biases of our culture, that one man gets so much attention and the other man, so little.

Gore, former vice president-turned-pundit-movie star, has chosen, as his topic, the infinitely big. And he has been rewarded hugely: He just won the Nobel Peace Prize, on top… more

Disparities

Articles — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 11:16:00 -0400

Just over a year ago, during a high-school assembly in Jena, Louisiana, a black student asked the school’s white principal if it would be all right to sit under an oak tree outside, an oasis of shade known as the “white tree,” because only Caucasian students congregated there. The principal said that the young man could sit where he liked. Later, the student and some African-American friends walked over to the oak and chatted with some white schoolmates. The next day, somebody fixed two nooses to the tree’s branches.

The ropes inaugurated a narrative of conflict and small-town justice in the… more

An Incomplete Report Card

Articles — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 10:07:00 -0400

Last Tuesday’s release of what is known as the "Nation’s Report Card" for math and reading is likely to reignite talk of the so-called racial achievement gap. Despite some good news, the report, published by the Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences, shows that Latinos, like blacks, haven’t made progress in catching up to the test scores of whites.

But the dour assessment of Latino educational achievement has nothing to do with a racial gap. We can’t use the same lens to interpret Latino data as we do to explain the differences between white and black achievement.

When it comes to… more

Tomás Jiménez

Operations — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 04:33:00 -0400

Fellow

Tomás Jiménez is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of California, San Diego. His research and teaching focus on immigration, assimilation, social mobility, and identity. In 2005, he was the American Sociological Association Congressional Fellow in the office of Rep. Michael Honda (D-CA), where he served as a legislative aide for immigration, veterans’ affairs, housing, and election reform. Dr. Jiménez’s writing has appeared in numerous scholarly journals, and he has contributed editorials to the Los Angeles Times and The San Diego Union-Tribune. He holds a B.S. in sociology from Santa Clara University and A.M. and Ph.D. degrees in sociology… more