Maybe instead of bashing people in government, more attention should be given to leaders outside of government.

The next wave of leadership will come from the immigrants and children of immigrants and that generation is more open to differences and not stuck in the past. They did an excellent job of organizing the immigrant marches.

And Latinos have had more cabinet positions than you seem to be aware of. I don’t think it’s just litigation that got other groups into the cabinet. There were movements, and their voting power. We haven’t had the numbers to swing an election until now.

You say that white women have done very well under Affirmative Action. They make up about 50% of the population and they have high levels of education. They are actually underrepresented in government.

The Mexican-American culture has a huge problem with sexism. We have never had a Mexican-American woman in the Cabinet.

Do you remember that show American Family on PBS? There was an episode in which Contance Marie’s character, who had a law degree from Stanford, was forced to turn down a job in Washington DC because she got trapped into raising her nephew, while living at home with her father.

The show depicted this as the “right” choice. The last scene of the show was of her making tortillas for this whiny brat in the middle of the day. It made me sick.

Mexican women always get trapped into taking care of other people’s children, elderly parents–you name it. And going away to college, or moving to a different part of the country is an ordeal. It’s like you’ve betrated them if you leave.

Yeah, because they won’t have anyone to work like a slave anymore!

More Mexican-American women need to be taught to aspire to careers. marriage and children should come later–in the mid 30s.

Let me say that the victims of discrimination like people of color and women have come along way…some more than others…women, especially white women have been the truly most successful of the affirmative action struggles of the 60′s, ’70′s and 80′s. Next are the African Americans. Why have these two groups been most successful in achieving ‘top cover’ not only from their communities but from others? Very simple: legal action. By and large in Washington for years every new cabinet officer was greeted in their incoming briefings with the reality that the courts had ruled in favor of affirmative action or demanding remedy to a discriminatory situation (primarily women and Blacks)..hence this was a key driver in appointing and adding diversity to the Federal work force….law suits and continuous litigation were primarily the ‘top cover’…later aggrieved communities rallied behind their own…Latinos (or Hispanics) are seen as rarely suing or been less litigious hence no real or driving pressure to address their grievances…this has further been exacerbated by the Latino communities’ less than fiery activist mode.

The bottom line is that the Establishment has not really perceived a ‘penalty’ for not delivering to the Latinos…at the same time ‘top cover’ has never emerged as a factor with Latinos…our divergence in ‘nationalities’ among our community further impedes this situation and also the largely ‘unrecognized’ internal debate or better yet the ‘elephant in the room’ syndrome of race awareness haunts our community and leads to disunity…a vast number of Latinos do not feel comfortable with designations like: ‘people of color’, ‘non-white’ Latinos, the mixture of indigenous people with Europeans, the further mixture of Europeans with the African descent population…Latinos can have Native American, European, African, Asian and Middle East ethnic roots. Quite a mosaic. But managing all the accompanying cultural freight of this racial and ethnic hodge podge remains one of our principal challenges as we determine whether to proffer political ‘top cover’ or not to our fellow Latinos… these musings are merely some thoughts on the question…certainly we all have our own personal ‘take aways’ on this subject and these issues…we can certainly opt for forceful litigation and help create a ‘penalty’ or simply be more thoughtful in our understanding the nature of our challenges in education, employment, health and housing as we continue to be modestly confrontational…yet rally around our own when they are being considered for high office or just ordinary jobs in the government and the private sector.

Thoughts?

He got our votes this time, will he get it again in 2112? I still intend to see if he’ll brings us into the mix, but if this trend doesn’t change, I can see the latino vote going away.