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Not Black Like You: Herman Badillo and the Limits of Liberalism
"Many Hispanic parents seem to accept the characterization of their community as a minority group, something they would find incomprehensible in the Latin and Caribbean countries from which they came. They accept labels such as 'brown people' or 'people of color.' Having gone along with such characterizations, some Hispanics behave as if they actually were a persecuted ethnic group, with a permanently diminished capacity for success..."
One Nation, One Standard, with a foreword by former NYC Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, is 228 pages long with an additional 8 pages of black and white pictures of Mr. Badillo's early career in politics. Its 11 chapters cover the author's life growing up in Puerto Rico and the United States, his rise to power as the first Puerto Rican to serve as a full commissioner of a city agency, first borough president, first Congressman and first deputy mayor. It traces his dissatisfaction with the policy positions and politics of the Democratic Party, and his decision to leave the party and become a Republican. He covers his battles with the bureaucracies of the city's public school system and its City University, as well as his role in promoting liberal legislation and policies at the local and national levels, such as bilingual education and the bilingual ballot provisions of the federal Voting Rights Act, which he now generally repudiates. He devotes a chapter to praise Giuliani, and another on the future. In other words, the book covers a lot of ground.
The Importance of Education
The central problem Badillo seeks to address is that, "(a)s a community, Hispanics have simply failed to recognize the overriding importance of education." He finds that, "The whole Hispanic community needs a total attitude adjustment regarding the importance of education." Looking specifically at Asians, he observes that, "Hispanics, as a culture, do place less stress on the importance of education than do other, more economically and socially successful immigrant groups."
He elaborates, talking of Hispanics, that: "It is up to their own community members to involve themselves in their local school systems and understand how they work. Hispanics must not count on the school system or any arm of government to orient students. That is their responsibility, and the first step should be to recognize that, as a group. Hispanics have failed to assume responsibility for their children's welfare. To be blunt, educating Hispanic children is not the duty of the governmental school system. This is their duty; as parents, family members, neighbors, and citizens. Whenever a child is left behind, it is not the fault of the teachers, or the principals, of the school chancellor, or the mayor, or the president. It is their fault."
He continues: "Any long climb takes effort, and serious educational achievement requires serious effort --- not just by individual students but by entire families and the whole Hispanic community. Hispanics must set aside talk of their great culture, their music, and their traditions and instead focus on educational accomplishment.
He concludes that, "Hispanics have no one to blame but themselves for the disastrous high-school dropout rates of the younger members of their community."
Politically correct or not, Badillo's attribution to the entire Latino community of anti-education attitudes and behaviors is classic stereotyping. The worst of it is that he is stereotyping against himself and his own family, since one must assume that he still considers himself a "Hispanic." There are clearly Latinos who do not support education or the educational aspirations of their children, that is not in dispute, the question is how many and identifying who they are. Is it 10 percent or 30 percent? Is the percentage larger among new Latino immigrants, or Cubans, or Puerto Ricans? Is it a characteristic that is economically-based, or is it more broadly cultural as Badillo states?
Latinos Versus Blacks
Although more indirectly than others who have tackled this subject, Badillo takes some pain to distance Latinos from the Black experience. Despite arguing that racial divisions need to be avoided and that "one standard" needs to be embraced by Latinos, he very bluntly describes the United States as a racist society.
"Almost from the first day I arrived in New York," he points out, "it was clear to me that in the United States you are judged by the color of your skin…"The division into majority and minority," he goes on to write, "is very rigid in this country; if even a small portion of your ancestry is African-American, you are regarded as black and as part of the minority or inferior culture. I believe this is still true today." At another point, he observes that:
". . . segregation is still a reality in many parts of this country. For example, on the Upper East Side, you seldom see African-Americans in any significant numbers. However, when you travel the subway system, you see that more than three quarters of the people are black or Latinos. A visitor would have to conclude that there are still two separate societies."
Recounting a childhood incident, he finds that "America's rigid racism --- which I acknowledge is not politically correct to discuss, but which is still evident to us from a different culture --- damages individuals."
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