The media has a substantial influence on the shape of public opinion, and it is important to understand how the landscape of media is changing, as well as how news coverage portrays issues, individuals and groups of people. The Project for Excellence in Journalism through Pew Research Center recently released two studies, one examining where local news comes from in Baltimore, and another looking at coverage of Latinos in the news. Pew Research Center also released findings from an important new study on race relations, which we will discuss further in the upcoming Public Opinion Monthly report. To see more analysis of public opinion pertaining to race relations, please see the Public Opinion Monthly November Roundup.
Where is the News Coming From? A recent study by Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism examined the “modern news ecosystem” of Baltimore to gain an understanding of how people get news about their communities and the role of alternative news sources such as blogs and new media. In this study, they found that traditional media outlets – print, television and radio – are producing fewer new stories and doing less original reporting, but new media has not, as yet, picked up the slack. Fifty-three media outlets producing local news were identified, and six news threads were studied. More than eight in ten local news stories were redundant, only 17% of the stories included new information.
Over the next few decades, the United Sates’ Latino population is estimated to triple, comprising about 29% of US residents. At the same time, voters of Latin descent made up 7.4% of the electorate. In a continuing effort to better understand the attitudes and values of Latinos as expressed in survey studies in the past, we rounded up below findings from recent months.
The Pew Hispanic Center released today a new survey of Latinos focusing especially on young people who are ages 16 to 25. The survey explores the “attitudes, values, social behaviors, family characteristics, economic well-being, educational attainment and labor force outcomes of these young Latinos”. We will look more carefully at this study in one of our upcoming blog postings, but we wanted to bring attention to the racial identification of Latinos in this survey, in case it’s taken out of context in the various coverage of the study. Three out of four Latinos don’t identify themselves as white in the race question (“What race do you consider yourself to be: white, black or African- American, Asian, or some other race?”), or they volunteer that their race is Hispanic or Latino, although based on the U.S. Census these terms are used to describe ethnicity. This finding is consistent with what we see in studies of Latinos every day. The questions usually asked and response choices offered to identify the respondent’s ethnicity and race are not aligned with the way Latinos think about race.
For some perspective on the wisdom of the Democrats who are opposing health care reform, let's go the elections last Tuesday. New polling analysis from Greenberg Quinlan Rosner and Women's Voices Women's Vote is pretty powerful, and I recommend it to all the Democrats who voted no on the health care bill and every single one of their political consultants: the bottom line, friends, is that everything you do to depress Democratic voter turnout in your district is another nail in your coffin.
On May 30, 29-year-old Raul Flores and his 9-year-old daughter Brisenia Flores were shot to death, purportedly by a group of far-right anti-immigrant activists who broke into the Flores home by posing as police officers. On Friday, Shawna Forde, anti-immigrant activist and Executive Director of the Minutemen American Defense, (MAD) along with accomplices Jason Eugene Bush and Albert Robert Gaxiola were arrested on two counts of first-degree murder and burglary charges related to the Flores murders.
The Wire will be brief this week, as I'm attending New America Media's Expo and Awards at the University of Georgia's Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication. I'll be speaking about New Media and accepting an award on the behalf of the Sanctuary group at ProMigrant.Org.
As the U.S. moves closer and closer to enacting immigration reform, the situation on the ground is evolving as well. Nothing is static for an issue that touches so many people across so many communities. This week's wire follows up on trends observed last week: holding mainstream media accountable, enforcement tactics, and immigration's positive effect on the economy.
We are living in unsure times, filled with drastic transitions that shift our perspectives from day to day. In one sense, immigration is about groups of people shifting in size and moving from place to place. It is also about the formation of new groups, how we live through the transitions, and who we are on the other side. For this week's Immigration Wire, I'd like to look at how different social groups are dealing with issues related to immigration-and all of its accompanying cultural shifts.
Hate does not emerge in a vacuum writes the editorial staff of El Diario/La Prensa [translated by New America Media]. Nor could it thrive there, we might add. While many collude to bring about positive change, they face opposition from others who have coalesced to propagate negativity on a large scale. As of late, it is the Latino community catching the hate that has been unleashed upon the immigrant community. El Diaro/La Prensa gives the gruesome details:
Cross-posted at Project Vote's blog, Voting Matters
Weekly Voting Rights News Update
By Erin Ferns and Nathan Henderson-James
Massive voter registration drives, recent passionate immigration debates, and the contested presidential primaries are finally bringing one of the nation's fastest growing populations into the democratic process, despite decades of low voter participation rates and recent voting rights attacks based on anti-immigrant rhetoric. Recognizing their rapidly increasing voting power - which is catching up with their "raw demographic power," particularly in the closely contested states of Florida, Colorado, New Mexico and Nevada - both presidential candidates are actively pursuing Latino voters. However, advocates caution a powerful lesson must be learned from voter suppression schemes executed in recent elections in order to ensure this former "sleeping giant" of electoral participation will have access to the polls in November, and most importantly, have their votes counted.
While most expected that Barack Obama would win South Carolina's primary, nobody said he would crush Hillary Clinton by a 28-point lead (a more than 2:1 margin.) The polls were even less accurate than in New Hampshire, where Clinton eked out a surprise 3-point victory on January 8th. Bill Clinton's attempt to marginalize Obama as a "black candidate" failed - as the Illinois Senator did far better than expected among whites, and tied Clinton among white men. In part because black women strongly supported Obama, there was no real gender gap - which raises the question: if Democrats want to win this year, why nominate a candidate whose primary base is old white women and few others?
As the race moves to Super Duper Tuesday on Steroids, Obama has a shot because Bill Clinton has returned to dominate his wife's campaign. Voters want "change" over "experience," and while they liked the 1990's do not want a Clinton dynasty. But Obama must target Latinos to win - especially in California - and his latest endorsements could make the job slightly easier. While South Carolina gave Obama a landslide victory, exit polls showed that voters there did not place a premium on Iraq. If the War becomes an issue on February 5th, Obama's chances in California will be strongly enhanced.
As the Democratic Presidential race moves to California on February 5th, Senator Hillary Clinton holds the advantage in part because she leads Barack Obama among two crucial demographics: gays and Latinos. But if these groups were more "results-oriented" about which candidate would bring about substantive change for their community, Obama could have an edge. Clinton's husband signed the anti-gay Defense of Marriage Act when he was President, and she has only promised to scrap part 3 of DOMA - whereas Obama would repeal it entirely. While both have waffled on giving drivers licenses to undocumented immigrants, when pressed to take a position Clinton said "no" and Obama said "yes." Gays and Latinos either don't know such policy differences -- or else have put them aside in favor of symbolic gestures, high name recognition or top-down endorsements. Before it's too late, LGBT and Latino voters must look at the issues, and decide which candidate would better pursue their interests.
I have been on the fence this campaign season while pursuing my Ph.D. I have also been conflicted: While I would love to see the first person of color win the Presidency of the United States, I would also like to see the first woman President. Moreover, I greatly admire Hillary Clinton and wanted to get behind General Clark's decision to endorse her. Despite my neutrality for most of this presidential race, I now feel compelled to respond to the outrageous attacks made by the Clinton campaign during the past month or so. As a result, I am blogging for the first time.
I have spent nearly 20 years in politics working on local elections in Puerto Rico, engaging in community organizing in Los Angeles and New Haven, and, most recently, working as National Adviser on Hispanic and Latino Issues for General Wesley Clark during his 2004 presidential campaign. If there is one thing that I have learned from my time in politics, it's that, while African Americans and Latinos do not agree on everything, we do have a shared history and legacy. The civil rights movement that was so inspired by the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. ignited the emergence of a Latino political conscience whether in the farms of the Southwest or the urban neighborhoods of the Northeast. In fact, many Latinos like me view themselves as the raza cosmica, or for short, la raza, a term meant to capture the pride we share in our blended European, African-American and Native American ancestries.
In New Haven, for example, as in most areas of the Northeast, African Americans and Latinos have always tried to sustain a strategic, if fragile, alliance. Strategic, for our present and future civil rights depend on our ability to cooperate effectively. Fragile, for we come from different origins and have faced similar trials and tribulations from different perspectives. Whereas many African Americans were brought as slaves, Puerto Rico and the Latino Southwest - to take but two examples - were war bounties. But the process was the same - having to fight a long struggle for the recognition of our civil rights, despite our enormous contributions to American history and culture, not to mention the loss of countless lives in every major American conflict.
At a more personal level, many of the people with whom I worked as a community organizer saw themselves as both African American and Latino. Why? Because they were both, not only from the standpoint of la raza, but also as a result of the sad reality that we have all shared the same history of poverty, neglect, lack of educational and professional opportunities, and systematic exclusion from the larger society. Unfortunately, this sense of unity seems to have eroded over the years, despite the hard work of community activists such as myself to find common ground and transcend the issue of culture and race in communities as diverse as Los Angeles and New Haven.
Given my experiences, I have been extremely saddened by the recent barrage of attacks (whether accidental or strategic) by the Clinton campaign against Senator Barack Obama: In December, Hillary Clinton's New Hampshire Campaign Co-Chair Bobby Shaheen made an issue of Obama's cocaine use as a teenager, something that is well known as it was included in Mr. Obama's book. Mr. Shaheen subsequently resigned, and Mrs. Clinton apologized to Mr. Obama.
Over the past week, however, we have seen more of these personal attacks: We have witnessed Mrs. Clinton debase the importance of Martin Luther King, Jr., who is a hero to all of us, including Latinos and African Americans. We have also witnessed Bill Clinton refer to Mr. Obama as a "fairy tale." New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo - a Clinton surrogate - alleged that Mr. Obama has been engaging in "shuck and jive" at news conferences. Then, the Guardian reported that an anonymous Clinton adviser said:
"If you want Obama to be your imaginary hip black friend and you're young and you have no social needs, then he's cool."
So let's see: Mr. Obama is accused of being a misogynistic, cocaine sniffing, shucking and jiving, imaginary hip black friend… I fail to see the fairy tale here. Instead, it sounds more like every racial stereotype ever used to characterize African Americans - and Latinos, if you add the salsa dancing. It also seems to form a pattern of insidious attacks by the Clinton campaign on a man who has transcended race, campaigned with respect and dignity, inspired our country to get past partisan differences and come together, and restored hope in the hearts and minds of millions throughout the nation. More important, as a Latino, I believe Mr. Obama has finally reawakened in us the sense of urgency and possibility, that sense that anything is possible, que si se puede, if we only come together as Martin Luther King, Jr. and Cesar Chavez once inspired us to do. Again, we are being granted an extraordinary opportunity that we thought was lost with King's death, an opportunity to make history by finding common ground in our shared experiences and by coming together to achieve change.
As a Latino, I have been deeply offended by the Clinton campaign's accusations over the past week. But what takes the cake is Mrs. Clinton's most recent analogy during a campaign stop with Latinos in Nevada. The Las Vegas-Review Journal a few days ago reported Mrs. Clinton as saying the following:
"We treat… problems as if one is guacamole and one is chips, when ... they both go together."
In her effort to relate to the Latino community, Mrs. Clinton ended up trivializing and insulting us. In the meantime, the Nevada State Education Association has filed a lawsuit with the support of the Clinton campaign that would disenfranchise many of the members of the Culinary Workers Union, of which approximately 40% are Latino voters, from participating in the Nevada Caucus. Not surprisingly, the Clinton campaign did not have a problem with their participation until the CWU endorsed Mr. Obama. While I often disagree with columnist Ruben Navarrette, I concur with him when he writes in a recent column about this subject that due to tactics like this:
"Clinton doesn't deserve (the 59% support) she has from Hispanics."
Mrs. Clinton's remark was incredibly condescending toward the Latino community, her efforts to disenfranchise Latino voters in Nevada are hypocritical, and I am shocked and outraged that the national media seem to be ignoring culturally ignorant comment after culturally ignorant comment.
Whether these remarks reflect a conscious strategy or are the result of plain incompetence on the part of the Clinton campaign, African Americans and Latinos should re-consider their support for her. The fact that Mrs. Clinton has called for a truce on race and gender is a positive first step, but it doesn't address why the Clinton campaign turned these matters into an issue in the first place. If a candidate can be that clueless about what may offend people of color and continue to offend people of color repeatedly in a week, she does not deserve the nomination from the party of John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. Had she been a Republican and made such remarks, we would have already asked for her resignation.
The chain of events that has unfolded over the past month or so forms a pattern that seems to be part of an orchestrated plan by the Clinton campaign to paint Mr. Obama as a race candidate and not the candidate of change his inspiring rhetoric has moved us to believe in. For African American and Latino voters, this election provides an extraordinary opportunity: Vote for someone who seems so disconnected from our needs, or vote for someone who shares our experience and understands the challenges we face. As a community organizer in Chicago, Mr. Obama worked with the African American and Latino communities to promote positive change. Although President Clinton has made important contributions to the African American and Latino communities, comments like guacamole and chips tell a different story about Mrs. Clinton. If Mrs. Clinton can make such insensitive comments, why should we trust her with our votes when she shows up in Nevada promising guacamole and chips?
