Racism, Even Out Of Ignorance, Is A Trend We Should Not Ignore
By Victor Landa, NewsTaco
Trends are hard things to ignore. So if anyone says they were blind-sided by a trend it’s either because they weren’t paying attention, or they’re not being honest.
For instance, we’ve been talking about the surge in the U.S. Latino population since February of 2011. That’s when the most recent and official U.S. Census numbers were made public. It’s when the great revelation was made that there were close to 53 million Latinos in the United States; and that revelation started what has now been 18 months of numbers crunching, recalculating, projecting, divining, and hand-wringing.
The most recent Census-related pronouncement came this week when the Pew Hispanic Center dug into the numbers and found that Latinos are now the largest minority group enrolled in four year colleges and Universities. But think of it like the exclamation point at the end of a long, drama-building sentence. It’s the most recent point on a predictable trend. The Pew Center has given us those points through the years – they call them milesotnes:
- In 2006 Latinos reached the one-quarter milestone among all nursery school students.
- In 2007, more than 25% of all kindergarten students were Latinos for the first time.
- In October 2011 Latino children made up 26% of public nursery school enrollments.
- Same year, 2011, Latinos made up 21% of all public high school student enrollments.
If I live that long (I intend to be grumpy and tell them to get off my lawn) by 2036 – according to Pew – “Latinos are projected to compose one-third of the nation’s children ages 3 to 17.”
We call it a trend now because there is empirical evidence to substantiate it. But Latinos have known that our community was growing at a tremendous rate before anyone sat down to count them/us. And non-Latinos sensed it as well.
That’s the thing about trends, and ignoring them at one’s own peril. They happen, but if no one says they’re happening you can pretend they’re not.
For instance, the recent banning of an Anaheim, California, High School festival, called “Seniors and Señoritas.” You may have heard about it by now, but if you haven’t, here’s Fox News’ telling of the event:
A Southern California high school canceled an annual dress-up day for seniors, saying that students who dressed as gang members, a U.S. Border Patrol agent and a pregnant woman pushing a stroller demeaned Latinos.
The June “Seniores and Senoritas” day at Canyon High School in Anaheim prompted complaints by two former students and an investigation by the Orange Unified School District.
“Enough was enough. I was hurt,” said Jared Garcia-Kessler, 19, who graduated last year.
There’s no question that this thing was insensitive. What is questionable is how the festival was permitted to continue for years, until a Latina former student complained. It’s not like the administration, faculty and parents at the school and school district were blind-sided by a sudden surge of Latinos in their midst; that it happened so fast that they didn’t notice there were Latinos among them and that said Latinos might be insulted by their behavior.
The Latino population surge has been coming slowly for years, and we know that slow doesn’t mean easy; we knew that some folks weren’t going to like the browning of the U.S. So racially tinged shenanigans like the “Seniors and Señoritas” bash in Anaheim shouldn’t surprise us. But neither should they be ignored – this is a trend we can’t pretend away.
The bottom line is that this kind of thing is disheartening because it still happens, and because it happens in a school, where they should know better. It’s also disheartening because it’s part of a trend that should have run itself out already. But it hasn’t so we should remain vigilant, chin-up and moving ahead.
There’s a lot to look forward to. One-third of the kids in the U.S. will be Latino in 2036. There’s work to be done today to pave the road for them, and I intend to be the cool old guy with the great stories from back in the day about how there were once school festivals where kids dressed up to make fun of Latinos and how we made all that nonsense stop.
[Photo by Campanero Rumbero]