Latinas, Not Latinos, Hold The Future In Their Hands
As we are already aware, the first wave of U.S. Latino baby boomers are now exiting exceptional positions of power and influence. During the era when the eldest members of this generation were born, there were less than three million Latinos living in the United States. Now nearing their mid-60s, this generation has witnessed a major demographic shift from one in fifty Americans being Latino to now one in six. Latino baby boomers have contributed through their tremendous service, volunteerism, philanthropy and community stewardship across each step in the struggle for equal rights and equal opportunities. In every domain of civic service, the elder members of this generation evolved the nascent organizational infrastructure that has endured beyond the 20th century. However, this powerful leadership base is now on the verge of mass retirement.
So who will emerge as the next wave of community leaders within the organized sectors of the U.S. Latino community?
I believe the heirs to this empire will be their highly educated daughters and granddaughters followed by the waves of young women that their new Latina organizations and initiatives will catalyze. The progeny of the baby boomers have a generational trajectory that present distinct social and economic advantages compared to other Latino subpopulations. Each subsequent generation has a greater propensity to achieve higher educational and economic success.
However, the extreme gender gap that has persisted between Latino and Latina students has become inverted. By the time I am 65 and the Latino community has doubled to over one hundred million, Latina degree completion rates and average annual income levels will have eclipsed their male counterparts for nearly three decades straight. They will become not only the new leadership base of the U.S. Latino population, but will also represent the bulk of our community’s future academics, the majority of our high skill/high wage professionals, the vanguard of our entrepreneurs, the core of our elected officials, a critical mass of veterans, and among the most visible community advocates within the nonprofit sector.
For twentieth century Latinos like myself, on the other hand, our zenith of leadership and organizational development has already occurred. The burden of being the “ultimate twentieth century Latino male,” in stark contrast to the rest of the western hemisphere, is that gender-based advantages are in decay within our community while our performance in every system of education continues to decline simultaneously. Although once mighty and numerous, late century “American Latino supermen,” it pains me to say, are becoming both an antiquated and endangered species.
When I examine today’s social landscape, I feel that the growing pool of talent in the Latino population is becoming increasingly comprised of multidimensional Latinas who (re)construct organizations, businesses and campaigns more efficiently than their precursors. Within the next couple of decades a viable Latino candidate for the presidency will undoubtedly emerge, and there is an increasing probability that it will be an extraordinary Latina leader — not a Latino — who launches that new era in American history.
Our community’s future leaders will be comprised primarily by today’s young Latinas. Not only will they have to resolve the power vacuum that will exist after the mass departure of Latino baby boomers, but additionally they will have an exponentially increasing scale of community challenges to address in the decades ahead. This crucial sector of women can either repeat the singular models of leadership that their male predecessors promoted across the twentieth century, or they can espouse more dynamic systems of power that draw upon all of the resources available within the rapidly growing U.S. Latino community.
Joseph P. A. Villescas, Ph.D. is an independent consultant, writer and instructor who conducts extensive investigations on Latino and other multidimensional populations that explore trends in their educational development, media consumption, internet usage, voting behaviors, racial categorization, organizational capacities and readiness for future leadership roles in community settings. He is also the founder and owner of Villescas Research, Media & Instruction, LLC.
