Latinos drawn to party of progressive reform
ACTIVISM:Allegiance to Democrats based on principles of New
Deal
By Art R. Nuñez
It’s not just that young minority students continue to write and
think along Democratic Party-based lines, which should in itself
cause alarm.But it’s why they do it. That’s what arrests my
attention. And I think the "why" can be traced back to an evolution
of thought which began with Roosevelt’s New Deal and its eventual
residual outcome  the guarantee of certain rights via
government-regulated policy. Not that these things are bad. They’re
good. I’m glad my mom retired recently from a factory after 20
years with the right to organize and engage in collective
bargaining. But the fleas come with the dog. What evolved as a
result of something that was originally intended to protect the
underdog is what concerns me. Although the government stepped in
for "the little guy" (or, the "forgotten man," as Roosevelt himself
put it) the stage was at the same time set for the development of a
new brand of politics that would be forever forged in
government-regulated policy. Now, legislative policy (as an
assurance of legally protected practices), again, is an optimistic
move in the right direction. And there’s no reason to think that
things would’ve changed otherwise for the "forgotten man." In any
case, we know that government-regulated policy came to define the
terms by which each partisan faction  left and right —
measured its political effectiveness. Much later, during the
counter-culture upsurge of the 1960s, ethnocentric activists began
to question their absence from mainstream society. Groups like the
National Council of La Raza and the Mexican American Legal Defense
Fund began to work the existing political structure for ways to
create inroads for their constituency. If government-regulated
sanctions worked for Roosevelt’s "forgotten man" in 1932, then, as
far as the Latino activists were concerned, the Mexican American in
the 1960s was as "forgotten" and disenfranchised as any other.
Soon, we see affirmative action implemented in public and private
institutions alike. We see Housing and Urban Development come in
and build massive Section VIII housing projects. Soon after, we
also see "free school lunch" programs, along with government
assistance of every imaginable type, to include food stamps,
welfare and Medicaid. This, again,was a good thing  according
to most, at least. There’s no reason to think that things would’ve
changed otherwise for the new Latino "forgotten man." If any Latino
student knows one thing, it’s that the Democratic Party has
historically heralded the Latino cause. Understandably, most
Latinos that I know feel a deep level of allegiance, if not to the
Democratic Party directly, then to Democratic Party-based
principles, such as the liberal distribution of resources and the
implementation of government-regulated assistance for the poor and
needy of the barrio. No problem here. I have and will always
unconditionally support these principles. However, my break with
"Latino consciousness" (not Democratic Party principles, mind you)
came when I sensed that Latino identity was no longer possible
outside the confines of Democratic Party-based ideals. What once
served in the 1960s as a mere political medium through which to
express progressive thought now has become the "articles of faith"
against which one’s ethnic ideals were determined and measured.
This dilemma, however, is easily traced: the same
government-regulated policies which made advancement possible for
the disenfranchised Latino "forgotten man" also created, through
affirmative action, a sizable middle-class Latino contingency. By
the mid-1970s, with Latinos entering mainstream society in large
numbers, there was reason to suspect that the Rooseveltian
government-regulated policy had accomplished what it sought out to
do  assimilate its "forgotten man." But "assimilation" is a
bad word among ethnic activists; to "sell out" is among one of the
chief cardinal sins. "Vendido!" as they say in Spanish. Yet few
academic activists seem to recognize the inherent irony behind the
Democratic Party-based activism which utilizes the same
government-regulated means for advancing its downtrodden as well as
its better off students. Democratic-based activism as a
configuration of government-regulated policies is by design
intended to assimilate those at it send stage  in the
university — into the middle class. Yet nowhere in Democratic
Party-based Latino activism do we see concessions for those fully
acculturated into middle classdom. They are instead chided as not
being "down." But they are in fact "down"; they are part of the
same process which Latino student "down" activists and Latino
middle-class oriented "sell-out" students share alike. In fact,
some would rightly conclude that, at this point, both of these
groups are identically middle-class, regardless of their respective
political viewpoints. It’s just that the Latino activist wants his
Roosevelt but with a Che Guevara face.