Daily NewsTaco
Thursday October 11, 2012
By Victor Landa, NewsTaco
Latina vote: Mothers a political force in this election (Voxxi): Take a scalpel and dissect the Latino vote and you find that Latinas are the driving force. The bold prediction in this article: Latinas will elect the next president.
The Voting Rights Act Protects Two More States From Voter ID Laws (The Nation): If you’re keeping score (and you should if you’re paying attention), the latest states to have their Voter ID laws held back are South Carolina and Mississippi. This si a good article with good background information to bring you up to date.
3 Ways to Play Hispanic Population Growth (Investorplace.com): Really? A few things caught my attention about this post: First, that it blatantly pretends to give a formula to “play” Latinos – as if it was written for a secret meeting where you get in with secret handshakes, where no Latinos are allowed. Second, all of the examples in the post are large, big box, corporations. This isn’t a bad thing, per se, but when the article refers to Latino food it points out Burger King, McDonald’s and Wendy’s…who are “serving Mexican cuisine.” Not one iota of a sliver of a mention of a Latino owned business, nowhere, nada. The stark omissions make a case for the need for more Latinos in corporate boards and C suites.
Latino electorate largest ever; expect influence from those not voting, expert claims (PhysOrg): Very cool and very needed piece about Latino politics from a Physics publication! In essence, unregistered Latinos are engaged and waiting to formally engage with their vote. In the mean time they’re influencing their friends and families and and getting involved.
Southern Poverty Law Center files lawsuit against Alabama Department of Education over immigration records (Birmingham News): Think of it as legal jiu-jitsu. The Southern Poverty Law Center is suing the Alabama State department of Education for not releasing it’s own data. The state has public school enrollment data it collected before and after it enacted stringent anti-immigrant laws. The SPLC says that data shows the anti-immigrant laws were detrimental to the children of the state. But the state won’t release the post immigration law enrollment numbers. Wonder why?
College-Educated Latinos More Financially ‘Disciplined’ (National Journal): Straight forward piece that makes several assumptions: that Latinos are bad money managers overall, until they get a college education; that money management and assimilation are synonymous; that American mainstream money management is superior. Take into account that the people surveyed self described themselves as “financially disciplined” and that the study was done by a financial institution (Northwestern Mutual). Context and POV says as much as the content of the story.
Supreme Court: If affirmative action is banned, what happens at colleges? (Christian Science Monitor): Good question, in light of the SCOTUS taking up affirmative action yesterday. One alternative: class based (poverty?) admissions. Very interesting piece.
Illinois Teachers Lack Bilingual Training (National Journal): This is important in heavily Latino Chicago, but it also raises a question for the rest of the nation. With state and federal legislatures slashing education funding, and more Spanish speaking teachers needed to Latino learning gaps, this is a huge problem.
How Georgia’s Immigration Law Traps Nurses In A Paperwork Nightmare (Think Progress): Another item to toss in the unintended consequences bin. Georgia’s anti-immigrant law requires that anyone who applies for a professional license renewal must prove their citizenship. That’s 475,000 licenses. You can imagine the backlog and the problems for the professionals who may not be able to practice their profession because a reduced state workforce – read here budget cuts – is making the process slower.
Workplace Fatalities on the Rise Again: Monthly Latino Employment Report (NCLR) Kudos top NCLR for keeping track of this and of the Latino unemployment numbers. Latino unemployment is now at 9.9%.
Fisher v. Texas is not about quotas, It’s about the economy (The Hill): This article follows this line: diversity in universities creates diversity in the workforce. Diversity in the workforce spurs innovation because people from different background, exchanging experience and ideas, produce new knowledge. So today’s battle in the Supreme Court is about tomorrow’s achievement and innovation. Simple. Good read.
