We need a larger pie not smaller bites for everyone!

“The idea is not to fight over the national pie(the GNP)

but to grow the pie with market-oriented economic policies that generates social mobility.”

(Tweet by Daniel Garza, Executive Director of the LIBRE Initiative)

When we have a celebration or a family get-together and more people attend than we thought were coming, do we expect that the guests(both expected and unexpected) eat less and drink less? No, of course, we don't! What we do is we prepare(or buy) more food and drink.

Why is it then that those who would not skimp on getting more food and drink to satisfy their family and friends have such a hard time with the concept of working to create a larger economic pie instead of merely dividing up the existing supply of wealth and money in a 'more equitable manner'?! Why is it that they don't take the lessons from every day life and champion an economic policy which allows for the creation of more wealth and money? Money and wealth which would be available to those who are willing to work for it and be able to experience the social mobility that is the hallmark of our country back to its British colonial days.

The names that would be part of the list of those who have come from nothing to the top of their professions or have made personal fortunes starting with little or nothing reads like a virtual Who's Who of America! Benjamin Franklin, John Hancock, Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, Samuel Clemens(aka Mark Twain), John Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, Joseph Pulitzer, Howard Hughes, Dwight David Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, Warren Buffett, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Jennifer Lopez, Martha Stewart, Russell Simmons, Emilio and Gloria Estefan, and Oprah Winfrey are but a few examples.

These people and many, many more like them did not get their wealth or achieve their position in American society by looking to take from others but by working to create more economic pie to share, by following their American Dreams.

Ironically, it is this striving for the American Dream, the idea of working hard, getting ahead, and making life better for those who come after you, that draws hundreds of thousands to our shores every year, both through legal immigration and through immigration classified as illegal or undocumented. It is almost comical that those who would fight to the death for immigration reform so that the undocumented can remain here and become citizens are very often the same people who disparage the reason that these foreign nationals want to come here. It is comical that these people are serious critics of the work of groups such as the LIBRE Initiative whose Executive Director provided the tweet which inspired this article and who has received unfair criticism from many people in the Latino community including other writers on this website.

By Being Latino Contributor, Jeffery Cassity Jeffery Cassity is a mostly socially-liberal, fiscally-conservative Anglo male who is involved in his local Hispanic community as the widower of a 1st generation Mexican-American woman and his active, some would say hyperactive, membership in the local Council of the League of Latin American Citizens(LULAC)

Aren't Most Crimes 'Hate Crimes' by Definition?!

Do we really need hate crimes laws? Aren't MOST crimes “hate” crimes?

                                                    John Stossel on Twitter(6-6-2013)

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines a 'hate crime' as: any of various crimes (as assault or defacement of property) when motivated by hostility to the victim as a member of a group (as one based on color, creed, gender, or sexual orientation).

The question raised by John Stossel in his statement on Twitter is this: if someone who harbors an inner prejudice commits a murder, assault, robbery, vandalism or other crime against a particular individual based that person's membership in a particular group, should there be addition punishment handed out to the criminal? Is a crime any more heinous if there is a bigoted or prejudiced motivation behind the crime?

First, I would like to take a look at the second part of Mr. Stossel's statement. Most crimes are not motivated by hate or malice. They are crimes of opportunity, need, or spontaneous acts of aggression such as the drug addict seeing an unattended purse; the domestic dispute or family argument which gets out of hand.

Hate crimes, on the other hand, are the result of a planned, organized attacks on individuals or institutions who represent the groups for whom the perpetrator has a developed dislike for such as the Neo-Nazi hatred of minorities and Jews; homophobes who hate and fear homosexual males(or males they perceive as being homosexuals base on stereotypes).

To answer the first part of Mr. Stossel's statement, YES, we do need hate crimes laws. It is an unfortunate reality of not only our society but even more so in other countries. Almost weekly, on a frequency higher than in our country, we see stories in the media of 'hate crime' attacks in supposedly more sophisticated and cultured Europe. Their societies which view themselves as far more enlightened and mature than our 'Wild West' America have found themselves having to deal with the questions of integration of minority groups which we have been working on over the past fifty years and which they are coming to grips with now for the first time.

The point that Mr. Stossel should have made about hate crimes here in the U.S. is that we have to make sure what we call 'hate crimes' are really that and not just run-of-the-mill urban violence and crime or publicity stunt or innocent act of self-defense. We have seen the cases that have been exploited for ill by such men as the Rev. Al Sharpton(i.e. The Tawana Brawley case). We have to wait for all the facts of cases to come out(i.e. The George Zimmerman/Trayvon Martin case which is currently going to trial).

Do hate crimes exist? Yes! Should there be added punishment beyond the simple underlying act of violence for those convicted of hate crimes? Yes! Does every crime committed against a particular member of a particular group whose history includes being the victims of hate crimes constitute a hate crime? No!

The answer is to look at each case on its merits not to put it automatically in the category of a hate crime. The answer is to act like responsible and thoughtful adults and not like immature children allowing ourselves to be herded like sheep by some self-aggrandizing, pompous shepard, no matter who that shephard is.

By Being Latino Contributor, Jeffery Cassity Jeffery Cassity is a mostly socially-liberal, fiscally-conservative Anglo male who is involved in his local Hispanic community as the widower of a 1st generation Mexican-American woman and his active, some would say hyperactive, membership in the local Council of the League of Latin American Citizens(LULAC)

Image Issues: Ending Stereotypes!

New York Puerto Ricans, specifically Boricuas For A Positive Image, are working to ban Coors Beer as a sponsor of this year's Puerto Rican Day Parade because they feel that it is not only a symptom of the commercialism which has taken over the event but also because they want to promote a healthier lifestyle for Boricuas and other Latinos.

Many Boricuas want the organizers of the parade to move the celebration back to the original idea of a celebration of Puerto Rican culture and families and be less the promotion of the increasing number of commercial sponsors such as Coors.

Boricuas For A Positive Image also want Coors to remove the image of the Puerto Rican flag from the commemorative beer can that the company has planned on releasing for the event. "[The can is] an insult to our culture, history, and flag. We will not allow Coors to insult us," Lucky Rivera of Boricuas for a Positive Image commented.

The group has promised protests if Coors does not comply.

The protest is also an attempt to change the popular perception of Latino men that is too often and inaccurately portrayed in the media, especially film and television, of 'el borracho', the heavy-drinking Mexican or Boricua(Puerto Rican). This myth is the staple of many police procedural series set in New York City as well as many 'gangsters in the hood' movies. A notable exception to this stereotype can be seen in the movie, Trouble in the Heights, which I wrote about earlier this year for Being Latino! Instead, community leaders want the positive characteristics of being responsible, hard-working grandfathers, fathers, sons, and brothers to be what is emphasized when the general public think of Latino men.

By Being Latino Contributor, Jeffery Cassity Jeffery Cassity is a mostly socially-liberal, fiscally-conservative Anglo male who is involved in his local Hispanic community as the widower of a 1st generation Mexican-American woman and his active, some would say hyperactive, membership in the local Council of the League of Latin American Citizens(LULAC)

Context: The Meaning of What We Say as Victim of Political Correctness!

A non-tenured, African American Spanish language teacher in the New York Public Schools was fired for using the word 'negro' in a class she was teaching. It seems that her students believed that she was using the term to denigrate them. The term once being used by Caucasians to describe African American individuals. It didn't matter, to either the students or the supposedly more educated school administration that the term is the Spanish word for the color black and that the class was going over the terms for the various colors used in the Spanish language.

The use of words in our society is important. They are the primary means, whether written or verbal, with which we communicate with each other. It has become fashionable and politically-correct in recent years to judge what people say without looking at the context, the setting and circumstances in which they are speaking. This is especially true if what is being said is 'unpopular' or deemed 'old fashioned' or 'offensive' by the media and so-called Progressives.

The most common form of this world policing is the attempt to ban the use in classical literature of terms which today have different meanings or connotations than the era in which they were written. The best example of this is the way people, most notably liberal parents, get all bent out of shape when their children get an assignment in school to read Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn. Parents get all shocked and aghast when their children are forced to see the 'N' word(to save the readers of the Being Latino! website from suffering a heart attack or suffer the vapors I'll refrain from using the word here) used as part of the name of Huck's friend, Jim.

Similarly for these people there is also the use of the term 'wetback' by John Steinbeck in his work, Sweet Thursday, where it is used to describe the human cargo that one of the characters is engaged in smuggling into the United States. The term also has the history of being used as the code name for an operation by American immigration officials in the 1950s to repatriate thousands of illegal(read the more politically-correct term undocumented today) immigrants and, sadly, many US-born or naturalized Latinos as well.

There are also times when certain words sound similar to other words which are offensive to modern ears, and, whether through ignorance of the meaning of these words or an overzealous attempt to be progressive and sensitive, people get into trouble for using them. A example of this is the firing of a city government official in Washington DC which has a large African American population for using the word 'niggardly' in a public statement. It didn't matter that the word had nothing to do with the similarly sounding 'N' word nor that it was a perfectly valid use of the word in the context it was used.

In our daily communications with each other, we often use words or expressions which other people may not like. The one thing we cannot do is stop at the point of merely hearing the words. We need to look at the context they are used in. Too often in our hyper-politicized world when dealing with those whose views you may not like, it is too easy to focus more on the words used than the way they are used. The one thing we cannot do is fall prey to censorship of unpopular ideas, words, or thoughts. To quote that great fictional President Matthew Shepard(Michael Douglas in the film, The American President for you non-film buffs): “You want free speech? Let's see you acknowledge a man whose words make your blood boil, who's standing center stage and advocating at the top of his lungs that which you would spend a lifetime opposing at the top of yours. You want to claim this land as the land of the free? Then the symbol of your country can't just be a flag; the symbol also has to be one of its citizens exercising his right to burn that flag in protest. Show me that, defend that, celebrate that in your classrooms. Then, you can stand up and sing about the 'land of the free'.”

IN MEMORIAM: Garnet JohnKay Wolf 'Shredder' Becker

By Being Latino Contributor, Jeffery Cassity Jeffery Cassity is a mostly socially-liberal, fiscally-conservative Anglo male who is involved in his local Hispanic community as the widower of a 1st generation Mexican-American woman and his active, some would say hyperactive, membership in the local Council of the League of Latin American Citizens(LULAC)

The Curious Case of the IRS v. Tio Taco

The current developing scandal out of the Cincinnati office of the Internal Revenue Service(IRS) in which right-wing groups, including several conservative Latino ones, were stripped down to their financial and organizational skivvies by zealous bureaucrats of the IRS brings to mind a similar attempt to use the governmental agency to go after 'enemies' of the policies of the Administration in power which occurred about 40 years ago. The only difference that seems to be emerging is that the staff of the current Chief Executive seems to purposely kept the existence of the witch hunt from the knowledge of the President instead of being directly done with the knowledge and approval of the Resident in Chief of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

What I want to address in my piece is not the scandal and abuse of power directly but the deafening silence from the Left when it comes to the seemingly unethical and illegal treatment experienced by the conservative Hispanic groups. The so-called Progressives, especially Latino groups such as MALDEF, La Raza, and LULAC, would be manning the barricades and running to the nearest press microphone if the groups suffering the questionable probing by the IRS were of a more liberal philosophy.

I believe there are two reasons we are hearing, in the words of Simon and Garfunkel, 'the sounds of silence' from these progressive Latinos: [1] the concept of Tio Taco (i.e. the Latino version of the African American Uncle Tom) and [2] hypocrisy of the Left when it comes to tolerating any views but their own.

For many Latinos, especially those who have enjoyed the benefits of a college education, look at any of their fellow Latinos who believe in the basic values of the larger society as traitors to 'la raza'. They view Latinos who believe in the promise and potential of free enterprise as people who are poor, deluded individuals who have sold out to the 'gringo' in order to be welcomed by the larger society at the expense of their membership in the Latino community. Examples of this would be: Alberto Gonzales, US Attorney General(the first Latino to hold that office)under President George W. Bush and Marco Rubio, Republican Senator from Florida, and Ted Cruz, Senator from Texas. They are vilified by the enlightened Progressive Latinos and rest of the Left. Their achievements are minimized and mocked while others like Sonia Sotomayor are honored for their achievements because they hold the 'right' political views.

This attitude also a symptom of the hypocrisy of Progressive Latinos. This attitude reflects that it is okay to hold any political view or speak out for your beliefs as long as those beliefs reflect those of the so-called Progressives. If a Latino holds a view that is anathema to what a 'real Latino' should hold, you can bet that Progressive Latinos will rush to NOT defend your rights or speak out for your fair and equitable treatment.

It is hard to see what the greater scandal here is: the seemingly unlawful treatment of conservative Latino groups by the IRS or the unfair abandonment of these groups by a hypocritical Latino Left.

By Being Latino Contributor, Jeffery Cassity Jeffery Cassity is a mostly socially-liberal, fiscally-conservative Anglo male who is involved in his local Hispanic community as the widower of a 1st generation Mexican-American woman and his active, some would say hyperactive, membership in the local Council of the League of Latin American Citizens(LULAC)

Language Accomodation on the Job: When is Enough, Enough?

A dozen Spanish-speaking custodial workers at the Auraria Higher Education Center in Denver have filed formal grievances with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission(EEOC) against their employer claiming that the school is practicing national origin discrimination because their employer has failed to communicate with them in their native language resulting in unfair working conditions.

Workers who first language is not English often have problems on the job communicating with their supervisors. Over the past few decades, state and federal regulations and laws have been created to deal with these issues. The standard which has developed in EEOC cases is that communications dealing directly with work assignments, safety issues and operational procedures must be done in the worker's primary language.

The issue at Auraria Higher Education Center resulted from what the employees feel is the lack of primary language communication from their employer on issues involving layoffs, transfers and resulting pay losses. The group of custodial workers felt that the Center should provide details of these layoffs in written form in Spanish like other similar institutions in Colorado and not merely rely on translators from the Human Resources Department at the institution.

The group of workers prior to filing their federal action did take the Center to arbitration at the state level. The decision there was that the Center had fulfilled its obligations in the particular circumstance. The group disagreed with this decision and retained counsel to file the federal case.

While it would certainly be respectful of these employees for the Center to be more willing to provide information in all circumstances to them in the primary language, it is not their legal obligation to do so. The standard is 'reasonable accommodation' not 'if this were a perfect world'. Employers must as matter of respect and good conscience and moral responsibility provide employees whose primary language is not English with information that directly affects the health and safety of those employees in their primary language. Common sense dictates this. In other circumstances, the availability of translators should suffice. This standard is the same one used by law in school districts across the country in communications between districts and the parents of their students whose first language is not English.

The situation at Auraria Higher Education Center seems to me to be more of an attorney attempting to use the dozen custodial employees to line his own pocket than in representing his clients' interests.

By Being Latino Contributor, Jeffery Cassity Jeffery Cassity is a mostly socially-liberal, fiscally-conservative Anglo male who is involved in his local Hispanic community as the widower of a 1st generation Mexican-American woman and his active, some would say hyperactive, membership in the local Council of the League of Latin American Citizens(LULAC)

The LIBRE Initiative: Hope for Economic Prosperity?!

The publishing last month by the Urban Institute of its latest report, Less Than Equal: Racial Disparities in Wealth Distribution and an email sent out by Daniel Garza, Jr. of the LIBRE Initiative welcoming the report and its conclusions. This prompted me to go and look on the Being Latino! website to see what it had to say about what economic opportunity and freedom should mean to Latinos. As anyone who reads the website faithfully can tell you, it told a sad tale that can be summarized as 'blame big business and white fat-cat businessmen for continuing to marginalize Latinos and other minority groups.

Going back to an article published last year, an unnamed contributor took Mr. Garza to task for being naive enough to trust in the mechanics of what he or she saw as an unfair system that merely promises equal opportunity but not necessarily equal result. The writer also chided Mr. Garza for being against government regulation to make sure that a fair field of play exists for everyone. The writer, whomever he or she is, should either (A)read and reviewed the LIBRE Initiative's website and/or (B)presented those positions honestly.

We should all read the newly released report from a non-partisan think tank originally envisioned by President Lyndon Johnson of the Great Society fame and the intellectual cream of the golden age of JFK's Camel ot and look hard at its conclusion: “...it raises the question of whether social welfare policies paytoo little attention to wealth building and mobility relative to consumption and income.

Because Hispanics and blacks are disproportionately low income, their wealth building is strongly affected by policies aimed at low-income families. Right now, safety net policies emphasize consumption: the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, for example, try to ensure that families haveenough food to eat and other basic necessities.
Many safety net programs even discouragesaving: families can become ineligible if they have a few thousand dollars in savings. Wealth-building policies, on the other hand, are delivered as tax subsidies for homeownership and retirement. Since families of color are less likely to be able to use these subsidies, they benefit little or not at all .”

That is right, gentle reader! Your eyes are not deceiving you. The reforms that Mr. Garza and the LIBRE Initiative are calling for regarding federal spending policy and federal regulations are exactly those suggested by the Urban Institute, a child of the liberal Great Society movement. Those so-called liberals and progressives who even today are calling for more federal regulation of business and the creation of a larger federal nanny state are actually the ones who are leading the charge to continue to trap millions and millions of poor Americans, many of them Latinos, in a never-ending cycle of poverty and increased gap in wealth accumulation.

By Being Latino Contributor, Jeffery Cassity Jeffery Cassity is a mostly socially-liberal, fiscally-conservative Anglo male who is involved in his local Hispanic community as the widower of a 1st generation Mexican-American woman and his active, some would say hyperactive, membership in the local Council of the League of Latin American Citizens(LULAC).