Latino Politics en Ciencia Política

The Search for Latino Identity and Racial Consciousness

Tony Affigne, Evelyn Hu-DeHart, Marion Orr

• Publisher: NYU Press
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9780814763872
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

More than 53 million Latinosnow constitute the largest, fastest-growing, and most diverse minority group inthe United States, and the nation’s political future may well be shaped byLatinos’ continuing political incorporation. In the 2012 election, Latinosproved to be a critical voting bloc in both Presidential and Congressionalraces; this demographic will only become more important in future Americanelections. Using new evidence from the largest-ever scientific survey addressedexclusively to Latino/Hispanic respondents, LatinoPolitics en Ciencia Política explores political diversity within the Latinocommunity, considering how intra-community differences influence politicalbehavior and policy preferences.

The editors and contributors, all noted scholars of raceand politics, examine key issues of Latino politics in the contemporary UnitedStates: Latino/a identities ( latinidad ),transnationalism, acculturation, political community, and racial consciousness.The book contextualizes today’s research within the history of Latino politicalstudies, from the field’s beginnings to the present, explaining how systematicanalysis of Latino political behavior has over time become integral to thestudy of political science. LatinoPolitics en Ciencia Política is thus an ideal text for learning both thestate of the field today, and key dimensions of Latino political attitudes.

PART I
Latino Political Studies

1
The Latino Voice in Political Analysis, 1970–2014

From Exclusion to Empowerment

TONY AFFIGNE

During two decades of extraordinary growth—from 29 million Latinos in 1990, to more than 53 million today—the Latino population was frequently described as a “sleeping giant” in U.S. politics, with one observer after another hailing the imminent emergence of a powerful new voting bloc.¹ Until 2012, the moniker never really fit the facts, as Latino votes, while decisive in some states and metropolitan areas, never quite reached the point where they could be said to have determined the outcome in national elections. Now, however, pundits are not so sure. It may be that the giant has in fact awakened. In the elections of 2012, Latino communities expanded their share of the electorate and provided margins of victory for President Obama in the swing states of Ohio, Colorado, and Nevada, where more than 80% of Latinos voted for the president. Even before November 6, President Obama was crediting Latinos with his prospective victory. Nationally, 75% of Latino votes went to Obama (Barreto and Segura 2012). In addition to these national impacts, expanding populations have brought Latinos to a more powerful position in local, legislative, and statewide politics, across the country. Recent growth has been dramatic, as the Latino population grew by 43.9% between 2000 and 2010 and is expected to exceed 128 million by 2060 (U.S. Census Bureau 2012). Despite Latinos’ long presence in U.S. society, and their importance in the nation’s development, the political attitudes and behavior of Latinos have been of little interest to political science in the United States—until recently. None of the field’s canonical work, for example, published between 1880 and 1980, gave any attention to Latinos at all, and only in 1970 did the first book devoted to Latino political affairs appear in print. In this chapter, lead editor Tony Affigne frames our contributors’ work in the context of real-world Latino politics and within the political science subfield of Latino political studies.^*

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A New Role for Latinos in U.S. Politics

Just before winning reelection in 2012, President Barack Obama, the nation’s first-ever African American president, told an Iowa newspaper that “a big reason” he expected to win a second term was his strong support among the nation’s growing and politically energized Latino electorate.² As it turns out, President Obama was correct. With victories in key states that year (for example, in Colorado, New Mexico, Florida, and Nevada), Obama did owe his reelection, at least in part, to extraordinary support among Latino voters.

In fact, the Latino Decisions research group reported that an unprecedented 75% of Latino voters had cast ballots for Obama, leaving only 23% for Republican Mitt Romney—a dismal showing, especially when compared to George W. Bush’s reported 44% Latino vote share in 2004.³ The 2012 Latino electorate’s turnout for Obama ranked second only to African Americans (93% in exit polling)⁴—a lopsided result explained in part by Latino voters’ distaste for the Republican candidate, who famously suggested that harsh immigration policy could work by compelling immigrants (primarily Latinos) to “self-deport.”⁵ For his part, Romney apparently had seen the handwriting on the wall; he was recorded on a secret video six months before the election, telling wealthy Republican donors that “we’re in trouble as a party” if Latinos become “as committed to the Democrats as the African American voting bloc has [been].”⁶

Romney’s anxiety was well founded. We now know that in 2012 Latino voters in Colorado supported Obama by a margin of 87%–10%, approaching the very high levels of Democratic partisanship generally associated with the African American electorate.⁷ Latino voters shaped the outcome of other major elections in 2012 as well, including the senatorial race in New Mexico, where Democrat Martin Heinrich, winning by just 5.6%, enjoyed a 77%–22% margin among Latino voters, a net advantage amounting to 21.8% of his total vote.⁸ Thus, like Senators Harry Reid of Nevada and Michael Bennett of Colorado, whose 2010 victories were built on overwhelming support among Latinos, Heinrich owes a significant political debt to his state’s Latino voters.⁹ In 2011, Reid acknowledged to a Las Vegas audience, “I would not be the majority leader in the United States Senate today, but for the Hispanics in Nevada.”¹⁰

Within days of the 2012 election, many Republicans had come to share Reid’s assessment of the Latino electorate’s growing power. Amid fierce criticism of Republicans’ paltry Latino turnout, some party leaders dumped years of anti-immigrant rhetoric and signaled new openness to immigration reform. House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) was among those with a newfound taste for Latino interests. In a widely reported account, under the headline “Obama’s Big Hispanic Win Worries Republicans,” Speaker Boehner told ABC News two days after the election that the immigration issue “has been around too long” and that a “comprehensive approach is long overdue.”¹¹ Not surprisingly, newly elected Senator Heinrich quickly adopted his own proactive position on immigration reform, in his first month in Washington calling for a path to citizenship which is not “insurmountable” for currently undocumented immigrants.¹² Moreover, it is not just federal policy which is likely to change in coming years, as the Latino emergence continues apace. Beyond helping non-Latinos win office, Latino candidates themselves have been increasing their numbers, political influence, and seniority in state legislatures as well as in Congress. More than 5,900 Latinos/as currently serve in elected office, as do more than 10,500 African Americans and about 3,000 Asian Pacific Americans.¹³ Because of coming demographic changes, these numbers are likely to or, more precisely, will inevitably grow.

Over the next three decades, in fact, Latino, Black, Asian American, and Native American electorates are all expected to increase dramatically in size. In late 2012, estimates from the Pew Hispanic Center were projecting a doubling of the Latino electorate by 2030.¹⁴ A few weeks later, the Census Bureau released projections that the white population may peak in 2024 and then begin to fall, while by 2043 the steadily growing combined minority populations will surpass 50%, reaching an estimated 57% of the U.S. population by 2060.¹⁵ It should not be surprising, then, that American popular culture, political pundits, candidates and parties, and—at long last—scholars of mainstream politics have turned their attention to the story of the nation’s 53 million Hispanics.¹⁶

Will Latinos continue to assimilate into U.S. society, or will their growing numbers make preservation of a dualistic (Anglo/Latino) national culture possible? Are Latinos like other “minorities,” or have Spanish-descent cultures, and immigration experiences, created distinct political goals and interests which are not shared with African Americans, Asian Pacific Americans, or Native Americans? In our nation’s racially ordered politics, are Latinos likely to side with African Americans, Asians, and American Indians—or with whites? Since their forebears hail from twenty different national and colonial cultures, is it even possible for Latinos to think and behave as a single, cohesive community, or will they fracture into smaller groups, each with its own political interests, alliances, leadership, and strategies? In the chapters to follow, these and other questions will be explored. Before you examine those studies, however, it may be helpful to know some background about the field of Latino political studies—how the field developed and where we are right now—to better understand both the importance of the research reported in this book and how new work fits into the larger discipline of political science.

Today, research in Latino political studies can be classified into eight broad subfields. These include the areas of Latino political behavior; racial consciousness, linked fate, and interminority relations; identity and social theory; gender and intersectionality; representation and leadership; media and political communication; immigration, citizenship, and transnationalism; and political history and social movements. An estimated 139 books were published in these eight subfields between 1970 and 2014—with at least 36 appearing in the five-year period 2010–2014 (see appendix 1A). While not large compared to the eight or nine thousand titles published since 1970 about all other aspects of American politics, this is nonetheless a substantial canon of work and a solid foundation for contemporary research.¹⁷ You might be wondering, however, why I am using 1970 as a starting point for a count of Latino politics books. The answer is both simple and profoundly disturbing.

One Hundred Years of Exclusion

In short, the answer is this: it is impossible to count books that do not exist! Until recently, mainstream political scientists had little interest in studying Latinos; before 1970, there was no interest at all, and not a single book was published anywhere in the United States in which the political behavior, policy interests, or political leadership of the nation’s Latino population were the subject. How can this be true? After all, we who practice the craft of political science generally assume that our efforts have value precisely because we make objective, evidence-based, and relevant insights available to the public, in hopes of improving the quality and wisdom of public discourse, the practice of democracy, and the direction of public policy. What then could be at all “scientific” about ignoring millions of citizens, when we analyze American national, state, or urban political life? After all, even in the early 1960s, when immigration policy still barred nearly all Mexican and other Latin American immigrants, there were already more than 8 million Mexican Americans and Puerto Ricans living in the country, as citizens or legal residents.¹⁸ Ideally, our discipline’s professional standards encourage us to produce work as free as it can be of racial, ethnic, gender, partisan, ideological, or other biases, any of which would weaken our claim to objectivity. We aspire to systematic observation of the...