Latinos Are More Optimistic About the Economy
There’s a lot to be said about the Latino can-do, si se puede spirit. Give us a chance, we’ll take it and make things happen.
We know that, but it always takes a study or a poll to make things like these official. Maybe it’s because some people trust data more than they trust their own eyes or intuition; or maybe it’s because some folks need to spend money on a thing before it becomes real to them.
So the good scientists at the Washington Post-Kaiser Family Foundation-Harvard University spent the money, asked the questions and crunched the numbers. They found optimism where there should be despair, eagerness where people would have been disheartened. They did a poll to assess attitudes among those most hurt by the recession.
African Americans and Hispanics were more likely to be left broke, jobless and concerned that they lack the skills needed to shape their economic futures. But they also remained the most hopeful that the economy would soon right itself and allow them to prosper.
Like it’s a big deal – news to them.
What they seem to be missing is the idea of no hay de otra (there are many other ways to express the same sentiment). It means that there is no choice, but not in a fatalistic way. No hay de otra is a marshaling of intent and energy, there is no other option but to make things work.
This is how dire things have gotten:
Among employed Hispanics, nearly four in 10 say their families would be in real financial trouble within one month if their paychecks stopped.
The fresh wave of insecurity has reversed years of Hispanic economic progress in which homeownership and employment rates rose and poverty rates generally decreased.
A third of working Hispanics – more than in any other group – felt insecure in their jobs. Nearly one-third said they lost their health insurance or other benefits. And Hispanics were the most likely to be “underemployed,” either jobless or eager to work more than they do.
And yet, the polled Latinos found reason to be optimistic.
Two-thirds said people can still get ahead if they are willing to work hard. Just over half predicted that their family’s financial situation will improve over the next year.
Whites, on the other hand, were more likely to give in to gloom and doom. They resent government, they think their children will be in a worse economic condition than they are and they feel that it will be a long time before the economy recovers. Part of this has to do with specific stages of affluence. They say that the poor suffer the least in hard times because they were poor to begin with. Things can only get better for them. More affluent communities have more to worry about.
Most whites say the economic situation is a cause of stress in their lives, and half say they are frustrated.
But the differences run much deeper than outlook and optimism. There is a very marked political schism between whites and non-whites.
By a 2 to 1 margin, whites saw the president’s economic program as harming the struggling national economy. By contrast, Hispanics were nearly 3 to 1 the other way, and African Americans overwhelmingly said they think Obama’s plan is improving the economy.
Whites sided with the GOP over the Democratic Party by an 11-point margin when it comes to identifying the party that better understands people’s economic concerns. Democrats had a 27-point advantage among Hispanics, and that swelled to a 60-point lead among African Americans.
I think this is an interesting and alarming situation. This poll seems to indicate that attitudes and politics differ to a very large extent along racial, ethnic and cultural lines. It also points to a largely unnoticed (by some) truth: that the optimism that will bring the country back to its strength is mostly found among those who will benefit from the upswing the least.
[Photo by borman818]