The Republican Party must stop stereotyping Hispanics. Propping up liberal Republican Hispanics who actively lobby against illegal immigration measures does not represent most Hispanics, who are not one-issue voters. At the same time, the right needs to let Hispanics celebrate their culture without giving them grief.
The Republican Party has been trying with little success to bring more Hispanics into the party. This has become crucially important since the Hispanic percentage of the U.S. population has been increasing so fast it accounts for 50% of the growth in population since 2000. Some progress was made in 2004, when 40% of Hispanics voted for George W. Bush. But that dropped back down again in last year's presidential race, with only 31% voting for John McCain. 67% voted for Barack Obama.
A recent Gallup poll found that 58% of Hispanics currently identify with Democrats, 20% identify with Republicans, and 22% identify with Independents. Here is a proposal for a balanced three-point plan for bringing Hispanics into the GOP.
Hispanics are generally more socially conservative than the general population, due to the importance they place on family. A majority of Hispanics support traditional marriage as evidenced by their 50%+ support for marriage ballot measures like California's Proposition 8. 49% of white voters supported the measure, whereas 53% of Hispanics supported it. Yet attempts to attract them to the Republican Party through social issues have not succeeded, and notably many pro-family organizations are still lacking in Hispanic leadership and outreach.
Some believe that President Bush's efforts to moderate the Republican Party's position on illegal immigration had some success attracting Hispanics into the party. But although McCain later outflanked Bush on moderating the party's immigration position, he failed to attract the extra 10 points that Bush did. This suggests that perhaps a slightly softer message on illegal immigration might resonate, but not quite as moderate as the McCain-Kennedy immigration reform bill.
The right needs a three-part strategy to attract Hispanics. First, Republicans need to quit acting like liberals in order to attract them. The left is always going to be more liberal on illegal immigration, so it is impossible to beat them in this area. A certain percentage of Hispanics will vote Democrat because of the illegal immigration issue – but that is little different than a similar percentage of the general population voting Democrat because of this issue.
A majority of Hispanics want secure borders and don't want illegal immigrants abusing taxpayers' money for social services. Polls in Arizona reveal that about half of Hispanics vote in favor of measures restricting illegal immigration.
On the other hand, there is no need to make illegal immigration the most important issue for Republicans. Many Hispanics have relatives who have entered the country illegally, and are more concerned with gay marriage or abortion than illegal immigration. There is a way to include enforcement of our borders as part of the Republican Party platform without making it the overarching issue. Hispanics, who are a composite of many nationalities, look a lot like the general population, so it makes sense to reach out to them with a cross-section of issues instead of trying to stereotype them.
Second, the right needs to let Hispanics celebrate their culture without giving them grief. One characteristic common to many Hispanics is they are proud of their heritage and like to celebrate it much the same way we celebrate holidays or religious traditions. It is not an affront to other Americans if a Hispanic group wants to celebrate their Hispanic heritage at an event. It is not an affront if a conservative organization decides to have a Hispanic liaison. Many Hispanics are more likely to be persuaded by another Hispanic.
Emphasizing Hispanic culture only becomes an affront if it means putting allegiance to the U.S. second. There are some organizations like "La Raza" and "MECHA" that promote separate Mexican culture so much it has a detrimental effect, especially when that kind of radical indoctrination is imposed upon young susceptible high school and university students. This kind of racial intransigence should not be treated the same as simple cultural interests and heritage preservation.
Third, an effort needs to be made by socially conservative organizations to reach out to Hispanics. There is an inherent tendency in any organization to retain the same faces in leadership for years, leaving little room for the advancement of others. This is a problem because all organizations need a regular influx of fresh faces and ideas in order to survive and adapt to change with new generations. As the Hispanic population has increased over the last generation, it has not made equivalent inroads into these conservative groups because many of the same people leading those organizations are still at the top.
With the expansion of the internet now allowing for massive democratic participation, it is no longer necessary for organizations to have only a few select leaders. Once there are visible Hispanic leaders on the right, it will become easier to attract Hispanics to conservative causes. Right now, there is not a single big name Hispanic social conservative. There are no prominent conservative Hispanic leaders who are considering running for President. This needs to change. This is not about affirmative action for Hispanics, it is about changing leadership generally which will result in newer faces of all kinds.
The Republican Party must stop stereotyping Hispanics. Propping up liberal Republican Hispanics who actively lobby against illegal immigration measures does not represent most Hispanics, who are not one-issue voters. In addition, liberal Hispanics will alienate non-Hispanics in the party with their liberal and combative approach on illegal immigration, causing unneeded conflict. Hispanics are made up of many diverse nationalities that share the common language of Spanish, including Spaniards, Mexicans, Cubans, Puerto Ricans, and most South American countries.
Cubans traditionally lean Republican, unlike other Hispanics. Consequently, narrow stereotyping of all Hispanics doesn't work. The right needs to take a balanced approach towards Hispanics, which means accepting their culture yet not treating them all the same. Only when the Republican Party figures out this balance will it have more success bringing Hispanics into the party.
How about this: instead of targeting specific racial or meta-racial groups with "goodies" to attract them to a particular party, cast your ideological reel and see what comes up biting. If Hispanics aren't ideologically homogeneous, and your ideas are solid, what reason is there for changing your "approach" towards that particular ethnic group? Okay, so now that we've established that we are indeed talking about racial/ethnic pandering, we have the following questions to address:
If conservative ideas aren't winning over Hispanics, is it the ideas that are at fault? To what extent can you change the ideas to suit the tastes of Hispanics and still call yourself a "Right" party ideologically? More pointedly, to what extent are you willing to sell out your ideas to pander to a demographically strong racial/ethnic group and maintain political power? At what point does the ideology become so weak that the political power loses its value? These are all important questions to ask when you are deciding on just the right compromise of ideology for votes. Just don't try to dress the pandering up as something more high minded than it actually is.
Good piece. I think Rachel is on to something in regard to emphasizing Hispanic Culture. I would love to see a republican party host a Hispanic event that integrates the best elements of the Hispanic tradition. I think this would send a powerful message to Hispanics that the GOP is not just the party of the rich white man.
Furthermore, I think it is important for the GOP to begin a serious grassroots outreach through church meetings, gatherings, or conventions. By doing this, these two groups would begin to realize important commonalities.
Rachel,
As much as I agree with the tenor of this article, I have to disagree with its main premise, that conservatives are failing to capture the Hispanic vote because we stereotype and suppress Hispanic culture.
I have to ask where you see all this conservative stereotyping of Hispanics. I realize you live in a border state and are much closer to the invasion, but we also have a large and growing Hispanic population in Maryland. Perhaps, you are seeing it at the local level from invasion anxiety, but I don’t think you can generalize this.
Though non-Hispanic, I am a product of a mixed heritage; including some Amerindian. I read and speak Spanish, have close-relatives of Hispanic and Philippine origin, have been to Central America, my dad was born and raised in Panama (my great-grandfather helped build the Canal), my son is part-Hispanic, and I have worked with and befriended Hispanic-Americans all my life. Though I am no multi-culturalist in the sense I don’t support the “all cultures are equal” rubbish, I do regard the mixing-pot as a source of cultural strength and approve some cultural leavening that isn't blind to baggage; and don’t think I am all that atypical in this viewpoint among fellow conservatives. If I am this much of a Hispano-phile, how much less ‘bigoted’ must be pandering Republicans trying their utmost to curry Hispanic votes.
I have commented on the illegal immigration issue and always distinguish between legitimate and illegitimate aliens (of whatever race). There are cultural issues regarding assimilation and political stability that are valid concerns, but it is the large scale invasion and marauding-disruptive behaviors of some that most concern all reasoning people; be they white, black, Asian, Hispanic, conservative, liberal, independent or any other. Illegal-immigration is a violation of sovereignty and a threat to our way of life, no different than some burglar invades your home, helps himself to your property, and threatens or harms your family; and then has the gall to camp out in your living room with no intention of leaving. That is bad enough, but some of these marauders are staking a claim to what is ours and mean to oust us from what is not (and never was) theirs by more than a weak claim. They are convinced of a myth they lost this territory through a purely American aggression and theft that ignores the aggressions of Mexico. They are further convinced 'they' were evicted from the territory (few Hispanics were ever evicted, most were assimilated and are part of us), that their poverty stems from denial to the greater bounty we have wrested from it, and who spread this fiction to others. The only ones evicted were Mexican grandees hated by those they oppressed.
At the time of the cession, Mexico exercised very little actual control over this territory, which contained less than 1% of Mexico’s population. Those few actually living in the southwest (Indians and Hispanics) were in a state of near rebellion against Mexico, many from having lived in impoverished serfdom. Mexican ownership of California and northern-Mexico was largely an artifact of Spanish administration lumping unaffiliated populations together, most of whom regarded themselves as victims (i.e., both non-Aztec and non-Spanish) of Mexico, and would have been happier had they been administered separately. Some of these people had been subjugated by Aztecs prior to the coming of the Spanish, and the Spanish and Mexicans effectively continued and extended that domination. The rest had little contact with either Mexico or the Spanish, and would have been surprised to learn they belonged to Mexico. There was some popular resistance to the American takeover, but this was mostly along the border with Mexico. Upper California, with its large American infusion, favored annexation. In Lower California, however, reactions were more mixed with some preferring American annexation and some rebelling (especially the coast from Los Angeles to Baja). Most of the rest (of the ceded territory) were indifferent to the change. In both New Mexico and Lower California, it was mainly landowners who resisted and there is no real way to gauge how the peons felt as their opinion was suppressed. They fought for Mexico because they were ordered to and whipped if they shirked. It was Mexico that declared war on the United States over the annexation of Texas; which Mexico had initially surrendered but then repudiated after Texan independence. It was also Mexico that committed the initial acts of aggression, attacking and killing U.S. troops sent to defend recently annexed Texas.
Now, we have LaRaza, Mecha and others, manipulating the descendents of these victims of Spanish and Mexican oppression into believing they were abused by white-America only, that they are Mexican in origin and owe loyalty to Mexico. Yes, we treated our own Hispanics shabbily, but never as harshly as did Mexico and Spain. And, yes, they had little say in their assimilation. Had they remained a large, unassimilated northern appendage of Mexico, it is probable the majority would have continued to suffer as peons only worth what could be wrung from them. Instead, these Hispanic-Americans have thrived while the real Mexicans have been impoverished through bad (socialistic) governance. We are within our rights (including those of Hispanic-Americans), then, in demanding both this violence and nonsense be stopped; and, assuming our government won’t do anything about it, take steps to bring these facts to public attention. If that is stereotyping, then color me guilty.
I respectfully disagree with you that the answer is to change our approach to Hispanics. All you say we should be doing, we conservatives have been doing. Other than a few fringe types, most of us (including politicians) have long recognized the splits within the Hispanic community. We have always appealed to ‘traditionalists’ within this community based on shared values and studiously avoided stereotypes; which, BTW, are more the way liberals operate than conservatives. It is the same way we penetrate the black community; finding and encouraging the naturally-conservative among them drowned out by the liberal zeitgeist. It is Democrats who generally play on racial fears and divisions with which to polarize, alienate, and exploit. It takes far more effort persuading based on disarming a fear than it does exploiting such fears; which gives the advantage to whichever side is the less scrupulous. By that calculation, then, what we have been doing wrong is to not imitate Democrats more. Clearly, to win votes by racial-group, we’d have to pander to race-bias. If this is how we must win, I say the heck with that. I would rather lose to such people than become them. Absolutely, keep doing the things you say we should, and maybe find more ways to disseminate the message; but this is a difference of quantity, not quality.
http://www.dmwv.org/mexwar/history/intro.htm – historical background
I think if the Republican Party would just be itself and carry forth it's platform and make particular cultural outreaches to Hispanics, they will come. They need to come to terms with the their largely conservative base and platform and just go forth. I do like Rachel idea about presenting a principled yet personable approach.
conserativesingleguy.com
I don't disagree with Rachel regarding the types of things we conservatives could do to connect with Hispanic-Americans. What I respectfully disagree with (assuming this is what was suggested) is the notion we should reach out to illegal-aliens to garner 'their votes', votes I regard invalid. I am not even all that comfortable embracing those recently accorded amnesty, because that is sanctioning and abetting our own political and national suicide. I am fine with the cultural aspect (i.e., larger Hispanic element), but disagree with cultural suicide.
The problem we are having is not one of securing a share of the 'Hispanic vote', the problem is the fast growing 'immigrant vote' is upsetting the balance faster than we conservatives can plug the holes; especially with Democrats bestowing citizen privileges and rights through illegal means. The problem is expanding the franchise always favors the political-party willing to subvert a stable, sustainable and just franchise just to win, and is a game we can never win except by becoming the thing we most fervently wish to prevent. The individuals to whom this article would have us appeal are, overwhelmingly, recent immigrants with little to no regard for our history, values, and culture; who have been taught from childhood the reason they are so poor is that America stole their birthright (false). They come here from a country that has been socialist (varyingly) for nearly two centuries, with little real experience of the personal freedoms we cherish (other than as governmental weakness), whose experience of authority is of a system frequently disrupted and often indifferent, in which lawlessness and brigandage (especially along the border) is often the norm. They are acclimated to a poverty that encourages them to break laws even as they flee lawlessness; and propagate this lawlessness here. Those already here are as desperate to bring their families across as they were in coming, and unwilling to side with those trying to restore order; assuring the lawlessness must continue with or without our help. For the most part they are poorly educated (if at all), making supplying physical wants accompanied by demagoguery and sound-bites the most effective means of outreach. They are, for the time being, unable to earn enough to house, feed, clothe, educate, and heal themselves without nanny-state intervention or fraud. Given all this, what possible dialogue can we have with them that will get them to vote with us and against their interest as invaders; other than by seriously gutting our own (conservative) values? What have we to offer to compete with Democrat largess (at our expense) and promises to keep the border open?