US Cities With More Latinos are Less “Brainy”

There’s got to be a better way to say it. Cities with a high percentage of Latino population have been classified as “less brainy.” Whatever that means.

Portfolio.com, a property of the company that owns the local Bizjournals, published a report in which it rated the supposed “brainpower” of the country’s largest 200 cities. The study rated braininess according to educational attainment, high school dropout rates and the earning power of workers over 25 years of age. The least brainy cities, according to their criteria, were all west of the Mississippi. The cities that were deemed to be the least brainy were also the one’s with the largest Latino population.

Here’s the bottom of the list, or top, if you turn it on it’s head, according to the Portfolio.com report:

1) Merced, California with a 41.4 % Hispanic population versus the national average of 12.5%

2) McAllen-Edinburg, Texas has the 15th largest Hispanic population in U.S. representing 88.3% of the city’s population

3) Brownsville, Texas where Hispanic’s represent 91.28% of the population;

4) Visalia, California part of California’s agricultural valley with 40% of its population being Hispanic; and

5) Bakersfield, California also part of the state’s agricultural valley has 32.45% of its population being Hispanic.

I don’t like it, I don’t like the story and I don’t like the list because they lead with the negative.

You’d think, by reading it, that Latinos spoil the pot; that the smarter cities don’t have Latinos; that Latinos are just plain less smart. When in fact the result of Portfolio.com’s little number crunch reveals what Latino leaders have been saying for many years: the public education system is failing Latino children. You can call it braininess if you want, it doesn’t change the truth: Latinos are dropping out of school in unacceptable numbers, Latino workers earn less income than non-Latino workers, and Latinos have lower educational attainment.

The real question is, what are those cities doing to improve their situation?  It’s a matter of perspective. These cities are not less brainy because they have Latinos, they’re that way because they’ve failed to address important issues of education attainment, drop outs and income disparity. It’s like saying a road is bumpy because of where it is, and ignoring the fact that the bumpy road hasn’t been maintained.