Integrating the Latino minority: a time trial?

Résumé du document

It is common knowledge that the Latino minority constitute a little less than one third of the United States population in 2050. The Latinos are already the largest minority group, representing 15% of the total US population, and according to the previous 2050 forecast, their population is supposed to triple in four decades. There are nevertheless some worrying issues to take into account now, to minimize the crucial impact they could have on the US life and social peace. First, the political representation of the Latino minority is still far from reflecting their real weight in the US society. Even if the 2008 general elections have confirmed more than twenty Latino seats at the House of Representatives, the Latinos still only represent a little more than 1% of all the US elected officials. We can clearly still talk about a significant under representation of this minority. At the same time, their social situation is not the best, with a growing neighborhood poverty rate and also the fact that 60% of the Latinos think there is a lot of discrimination against their community.

Extraits

[...] Also linked to the current crisis, we can doubt that the adequate amount of money would be invested in education and to the creation of the civic education class. Finally, we can also notice that there is still excessive media coverage of the situation of the African American community. As a conclusion, I would say that reaching these goals is going to be clearly difficult. The US may have to face a significant social malaise in the coming decades, which could lead to social turmoil, if the Latino minority does not manage to catch up on the White community. [...]

[...] These measures may also help the Latino community to build a stronger political cohesion. There is clearly no easy measure to accompany this modification of the US balance of power between these communities. I will nevertheless try to find out a set of measures to cope with this pressing issue. Like Bruce E. Cain writes it in his article (CAIN (Bruce Voting Rights and Democratic Theory : Toward A Color Blind Society, In Grofman and Davidson, Controversies in Minority Voting : The Voting Rights Act in Perspective, 1992), Latinos aspire to assimilation much as have other ethnic group Hence, they should have a correct political representation, which is definitely not the case. [...]

[...] Integrating the Latino minority: a time trial? It is common knowledge that the Latino minority will certainly constitute a little less than one third of the United States population in 2050. The Latinos are already the largest minority group, representing 15% of the total US population, and according to the previous 2050 forecast, their population would triple in four decades. There are nevertheless some worrying issues to take into account now, to minimize the crucial impact they could have on the US life and social peace. [...]

[...] These strategies to sponsor an increased representation of Latinos would also help them to get a better cohesion when they vote, since 58% of the Latinos said they would be more likely to vote for one of their fellow (Pew Hispanic Center 2004). These policies would definitely participate in giving them more weight on a national scale. It is nevertheless not enough to promote more integration, more measures could be taken on the field of education is in addition the most pressing issue for the Latino community according to the Pew Hispanic Center survey of 2004. [...]

[...] It is also important to keep in mind that the Latino minority is a very young one, with an average age of 27 year old, that is to say the same average age as emerging powers like Algeria. First of all, there is a necessity to hire more Latino teachers in the schooling system. In my eyes, it is very important to have teachers coming from all the different ethnic backgrounds of a nation. Then, I would propose to create a new compulsory class for high school pupils, which would give them more civic education. [...]