Budget Cuts & The Loss Of The Latino American Dream

The gist of the budget cuts is this: ultimately, those cuts will weaken institutions that are critical to economic ascension just as Latinos coming out of our nation’s schools and growing into a sizable portion of the population need them most. This is the theory posited by political scientist Professor Luis Fraga, who is Associate Vice Provost for Faculty Advancement at the University of Washington.

The erosion of institutional access after civil rights movements is classic in U.S. history, Fraga tells News Taco, noting that it happened after the post-Civil War rights movement for African-Americans, the suffrage movement for women in the 1920s, then Latinos during the WWII era, again in the 1960s Civil Rights movement when the idea was introduced that the government needed to get out of giving equal access to minorities and women.

If you can’t limit opportunities of others based on race or national origin or sex, then you can limit their access to institutions and opportunities that will make them more equal, he says.

One example of this is the fact that Latinos and African-American students are attending schools more segregated than ever in the history of the U.S. About 2/3 of Latino students attend schools where most students are minorities and 1/3 of all Latino children attend schools with populations that are 90% Latino and African-American. These schools also happen to be overwhelmingly poor.

Latinos happen to be the largest and fastest growing group of students in public schools. Case in point.

So you trim away education funding by limiting teacher pay, attack healthcare by undoing the reforms and attack public employee unions, by the time all those Latino students graduate, what kind of access will they have to a better life? Check out the video and let us know what you think.

Follow Sara Inés Calderón on Twitter @SaraChicaD