Latino Census Headline is Off the Mark

So the big headline this morning concerning Latinos and the US Census is that Latinos are now 1 in 6 of the US population. Honestly though, the drum roll on that faded a few weeks back. We’ve been watching the count unfold on a weekly basis, state by state, since February and we’re past the surprise phase. Today’s headline was expected, but I think it’s a little off the mark.

The real headline isn’t the population in general, but a segment of the population in specific. The same Associated Press story, with the same headline, has appeared in the dozens of on line publications that I’ve read. In the fourth paragraph it reads:

Hispanics are on track to exceed 50 million, or roughly 1 in 6 Americans; among U.S. children, Hispanics are now roughly 1 in 4.

1 in 4 American children are Latino. Now mix that number with the fact that more than half of the population growth in the past ten years is attributed to Latinos. Take the result and project it into the future. There’s your headline.

What concerns me now is what follows. Information leads to discussion, discussion to debate, and debate to politics, policy and leadership. We need to be concerned about where Latinos will be in the discussion, debate and leadership because if the reports and headlines are any indication Latinos could remain third-person fodder. And that’s not going to work.

I don’t pretend to have a solution that will fit in a Twitter post, in fact I don’t pretend to have a solution at all (by the way, beware of those who say they do). But I do know that information is power, and we’ve been empowered, all Americans have, to make decisions based on the new facts of a population reality. I’m concerned with what follows; with the education and health and jobs and safety of a country where one-in-four Americans will be Latino.  That story is already being lived, the headlines just haven’t caught up.

Follow Victor Landa on Twitter: @vlanda