| February
27, 2004
Presidential
Elections 2004 and Hispanics
By Erika
Robles/HispanicVista.com
Hispanics are
enjoying more attention from presidential
candidates and the press than ever
before. At more than 37 million
Hispanics, presidential candidates cannot
longer afford to ignore the key issues
that concern Hispanic voters.
According to the
results from a recent survey by New York
management consultants Westhill Partners
and the Hispanic publication Poder
magazine, 26 percent of those responding
to the survey said they were Democrats, 9
percent said they were Republicans, and
52 percent said they were independent or
had no party affiliation.
In the 2000
election, Hispanics composed about 6
percent of the total vote. Thirty-five
percent voted for Bush, while 62 percent
voted for Al Gore. With Latinos already
accounting for one-third of the growth in
the nation’s voting-age population,
it could have huge political consequences
across the country, and political parties
know that too well.
On the other hand,
The National Council of La Raza (NCLR)
said that the Latino community is very
skeptical about the amount of attention
they’re getting, as its experience
in the past has suggested “that the
life span of this type of attention tends
to equal the length of an election
season, with no substantive follow-up on
important community concerns in post- or
non-election years.”
On a recent study
conducted by the NCLR, “State of
Hispanic America 2004”, it states
that the Latino community understands
that the increased media and candidate
attention toward the Hispanic community
“doesn’t necessarily translate
into either more accurate portrayals of
Latinos or responsiveness to the issues
that they care about.”
But, what are the
main issues concerning Hispanics?
The NCLR report
states that a poll from the
Republican-leaning The Latino Coalition
(TLC) revealed that the top six issues
identified by Latinos in August 2003
were: jobs/economy, education,
immigration, health care,
language/integration into U.S. life, and
discrimination.
Similarly, the
Democratic-leaning New California Media’s
“Flash” Poll of Latinos
conducted in January 2004 shows that the
top five issues were: education, jobs and
the economy, health care, terrorism, and
immigration.
In future articles,
I will be writing about four of the main
issues discussed in the NCLR report:
Education, Criminal Justice, Employment,
and Immigration policies. If we want
change to happen, if we want to be heard,
we need to start addressing and
discussing these issues that affects us
all. But more importantly, we need to
define what we stand for and take
responsibility for it. “I believe
that we as Latinos should be about not
only demanding our rights, but fully
preparing to shoulder our
responsibilities. We want to build a
nation where opportunity and fairness
abound, where families are rewarded for
playing by the rules, and where people
are judged by their actions,” Raul
Yzaguirre wrote in the NCLR report’s
foreword.
With presidential
elections just around the corner, we have
the responsibility to be informed and get
involved in politics if we want to make a
difference. According to Shorenstein Center
national polls conducted during the 2000
presidential campaign, Hispanics were
less attentive to the presidential race
than non-Hispanics. Sixty-three percent
said they were paying almost no attention
to the campaign compared to 57 percent of
other adults. Although the overall level
of voter involvement more than doubled in
that period, it jumped by only 18 percent
among Hispanics. Despite the fact that
Latino and Black populations are
relatively the same size nationally,
6million more Black people are registered
to vote.
We cannot afford any
longer to not get involved. We are now
the largest minority in the US, and as
such we can make a difference; we ought
to speak up if we want to be heard. There
are still a lot of issues that need to be
addressed and that need to be changed.
Issues such as education for all,
regardless of race, gender, ethnicity,
income, and disabilities; immigration
policies; racial discrimination and
segregation, and equity in employment,
among others. But for all of that to
happen, we first need to be informed, we
need to know what we are standing for and
why, and we need to commit ourselves to
it.
It’s not only
the government’s policies that need
to change. We also ought to. We need to
get more engaged in the issues that are
affecting us and will affect future
generations. We need to register to vote;
we need to vote. We need to make change
happen; it sure isn’t going to
suddenly appear “por arte de magia.”
We are the ones who will make it
possible.
________________________________________________________
Erika Robles, a
contributing columnist to
HispanicVista.com (www.hispanicvista.com),
is a writer and translator now living in Eugene,
Oregon. She was educated in Mexico City; London,
England; and Melbourne, Australia.
Contact at: erikare77@hotmail.com.
Web page: http://www.geocities.com/oakspublishing
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