SOCIETAL PIE' SLICED WIDER FOR HISPANICS
Gutierrez, Jose Angel
'Societal Pie' Sliced Wider for Hispanics BY JOSE ANGEL GUTIERREZ Our historic "backyard"—Mexico, Central and South America, and the Caribbean-must become our front yard. Our national future and...
...Jose A ngel Gutierrez is executive director of the Greater Texas Legal Foundation in Dallas...
...In these cities and across the country, we have Third World school districts run by First World white, absentee politicians...
...The school-board majorities of both districts, Dallas and Houston, are white...
...and to continue the pork barrel for incumbent politicians...
...Hispanic enrollments have exploded to 44 per cent in Houston and 33 per cent in Dallas, and in the elementary grades, Hispanics are the overwhelming majority in both school districts...
...This desegregation scheme of the 1970s required then, as it still requires, that all teaching personnel hired, all curriculum-program budget expenditures, and all student-activity ratios (beyond the fourth grade) be allocated 40 per cent black, 40 per cent white, and 20 per cent Hispanic...
...how to make their system work for them...
...Under a progressive agenda, blacks and whites should help browns amend the court order because of changed circumstances to make the school program available to Hispanics in proportional allocations of budget, personnel, and policy...
...There are no "illegal" currencies or economic systems, nor are there "wetback" corporations...
...In this present world are found interdependent and inextricably linked global villages...
...White students have fled to the suburbs, so that white enrollment has declined to approximately 17 per cent in Dallas and 19 per cent in Houston...
...The concept of "nation" is outmoded and inapplicable to our present reality...
...Rather, the solution is a national requirement that all children earn and obtain a high-school diploma and be fluent and literate in the English language...
...Resident immigrants in the United States should immediately be given the right to vote in all elections...
...A scenario: In Houston and Dallas, back in the 1970s, blacks succeeded, with chicano assistance as intervenors, in a class action to end school segregation...
...Without such benefits, the new underclass of single mothers with children, primarily Hispanic and black, will never be trained or otherwise made employable and healthy...
...We Hispanics are growing at five times the white rate and twice that of blacks...
...A "nation" is no more, except among the valiant efforts of territorial minorities within the Soviet Union and in a few other global spots...
...The same phenomenon also prevails in jobs, higher education, redistricting, construction, municipal planning and zoning, health, military, social work and services, and, sad to say, symposiums such as this one, with a lone Hispanic voice...
...Therefore, there must not be illegal human beings...
...Otherwise, the old white formula will prevail: Blacks will be pitted against browns to the detriment of both, or browns will appeal to whites against blacks...
...Police agencies and personnel paid to hunt Mexicans, Haitians, and other economic or political refugees should be disbanded...
...it should be an exit requirement from high school...
...This criterion stems from an earlier era of agricultural labor...
...Free prenatal care, well-baby clinics, and day care for the children of mothers who work or go to school should be made a fundamental liberty and a property right...
...In 1992, those of us claiming ancestral roots to both an indigenous and Spanish heritage will celebrate a 500-year presence in the Americas...
...The word "citizenship" in our Constitution is there not to keep people from the franchise...
...What we need to function within and outside our own village is system literacy and training...
...it was inserted in addition to the word "person" to bring African-Americans into the franchise and out of race discrimination...
...Our "national leadership" in all sectors—religious, labor, business, political, industrial, educational, legal—is more concerned with the next Presidential election than with the next generation...
...We must become a family of the Americas...
...that seek to lead important U.S.-based corporations, and that seek to use the "peace dividend" to fund improvements in the quality of their lives...
...The "peace dividend" will not be used to reduce the enormous national debt, but to continue funding of new toys for generals intent on safeguarding cheap gas Without a progressive agenda, the old white formula will prevail: Blacks will be pitted against browns to the detriment of both...
...Yet black student populations in Houston and Dallas have topped out at about 39 per cent and 44 per cent...
...The tragedy is that, arriving at the threshold of these goals, minorities will find the White House heavily mortgaged and structurally dilapidated, the national and international corporations merged or foreign-owned, and the national agenda for the Twenty-first Century will remain the stuff for articles, books, and, perhaps, a few revolutionaries...
...The characteristics of a nation—borders, state apparatus, unique monetary system, common language, common heritage, and homogenous population—are all mythical...
...In our technological/information age, the solution to the criminal rate of "drop-outs," more aptly termed "push-outs," is not to be found in more research grants, doctoral dissertations, or task-force reports...
...He is the author of "A Gringo Manual on How to Handle Mexicans" and "A War of Words...
...Family members do not lock the door or patrol the border...
...There is nothing sacred in the prerequisite of citizenship to vote...
...We must have open borders...
...The Federal "remedy" was and is designed only for the black minority...
...The solution is to make the pie bigger and all slices the same size...
...At this rate we will want and need more of the "societal pie" than is available to us at present...
...Our immigrant populations, minorities, members of the underclass, the have-nots, need to know how the world works...
...All the world has are the state apparatuses called "governments" of various types, void of unique personality, character, and culture...
...In these Texas school districts, which are among the largest in the country, desegregation and equal educational opportunity resulted in a Federal court-ordered remedy called the "Singleton ratio...
...Similarly, there is no magic to the requirement that children remain in school only to age sixteen...
...why social organization is necessary, and how organizations led by poor people fail...
...The only long-term strategy and vision are found among minorities that seek to own and paint the White House brown...
...The word was and continues to be a legal reminder to white Americans that black Americans are intrinsically more than mere former slaves, that they are legally equals...
...English proficiency should not be an entrance requirement at the elementary grades of the public schools...
...The initial institutional response to that demand is already visible: Keep the white portion of the pie as is, make the black slices smaller, and give some of those smaller slices to Hispanics...
...Yet the Hispanic student is the new majority...
...how money is made from poverty, racism, sexism, and age discrimination...
...Smaller slices are not the answer...
...Our national future and destiny are tied to the Americans in the South, not to Wall Street or Washington, D.C...
Vol. 54 • November 1990 • No. 11
