December 30, 1999
By Raoul Lowery Contreras
I eagerly look forward to the coming new year. I speak for Hispanics, in general, and Mexican Americans, in particular.
Our babies are living longer. Our babies have an infant mortality rate a third of American Black babies and less than even Anglo (non-Hispanic white) babies, according to Federal Center for Disease Control (CDC). 70-per cent or so of our babies know who their fathers are and the mothers are usually married to them.
According to every survey conducted, almost 70-per cent of Mexican Americans believe abortion is wrong. They don't buy into the semantic Anglo "choice" argument. The vast majority of Mexican Americans believe in parental notification of abortions for minor girls. Surveys show that almost 70-percent of Mexican Americans believe in marriage. Mexican Americans have a lower divorce rate than the general population.
National unemployment among Mexican Americans is the lowest (less than 6%) since the early 1970s when demographic employment records were inaugurated.
Here in San Diego County (with 2.7% over-all unemployment) the Mexican American population of 750,000 (over 25-percent of the total working population) is racing into the New Year with more jobs and money in their pockets than ever. And, they are staking out job territories with a firmness that will linger long after the current boom fades away. Employee rosters in fast food restaurants, construction, not to mention farm work, landscaping, and hi-tech and light industry (plastics, for example) are almost exclusively Spanish-surnames.
While some scoff at fast food restaurant jobs, my 19-year-old niece is in her first year of college and is making her way with 30-hours-a-week at $11.00 an hour in a Jack-in-The-Box less than 5-miles from her home and campus. That's exactly 11-times more than I earned in my first year in college forty-one years ago. The times, they are changing.
This coming June, the Class of 2000 in California high schools will graduate more Mexican Americans than ever and the state with almost 12-million Mexican Americans will matriculate more in college than ever before, despite the voter-trashing of "Affirmative Action." In fact, the Federal Education department reports that there was a 4.5 percent increase in Mexican American college matriculation in California this year over last. This is part of the national trend of Hispanics being the fastest growing segment of the college student community of 14.5-million, according to the federal Education Department.
More Mexican Americans will earn doctorates than ever (almost 900) and more will be hired as teachers than ever. The looming retirement of over 2-million baby boomer teachers will create a giant tidal wave of Mexican Americans entering the teaching profession.
With the first presidential candidates (all Republican) calling for school vouchers for students of failing schools, voucher supporting Mexican Americans have someone to vote for that will support better education for long-ignored Mexican Americans.
In the March of 2000 California primary election, more Mexican American candidates will be on the ballot than ever before and the resultant party nominations will produce more general election Mexican candidates and victors than ever before. The November election will produce more Mexican officeholders in California than ever before and will more than likely add more state legislative office holders to the current 24 (20 Democrats and 4 Republicans). In 1990, of 120 State legislators, there were only seven Mexican American State legislators elected in California, all Democrats and all from Los Angeles.
Now, comes a study from the non-political, non-partisan National Bureau of Economic Research about children of immigrants and where they are headed in the American economic scheme. In the current Business Week, Gene Koretz writes: "Despite a big shift in national origins of immigrants since 1940 (with Mexican-origin people being the largest number of immigrants), the native-born adult children of…immigrants tended to close about 50% to 60% of the gap between average U.S. wages and the earnings of their father's ethnic group a generation earlier."
"Even more striking," Koretz writes, "immigrants' kids actually do better than the children of natives. That is, among American children with parents of the same socio-economic class, those born to immigrants tend to attain more education and to enjoy higher earnings in their jobs."
We leave behind a tradition of educational shortcomings fostered by uneducated parents and unmotivated, unprepared, very bad teachers and an educational system that ignored Mexican Americans except as fodder for blue-collar work. We leave behind a traditional ignorance of, and activism, in politics and voting. We leave behind a collective lack of self-esteem and a peasant attitude of servitude to EL PATRON, the boss man. We leave behind a Sixties-style militancy, a militancy that appealed to the media and Mexican-haters, but was discarded by Mexican Americans as a whole. We leave behind much ugliness.
We Mexican Americans enter the 21st Century with more money in our pockets, more years of school, more college degrees, more doctorates, more small businesses, more millionaires, and more job-holders. The more of us working, the fewer of us go to jail. We are living longer. Fewer of our newborns are dying. More of us will vote in 2000. Matrimony is observed by most of our young people, thus cutting the number of our children born to single mother homes. The Nineties have been but appetizers of what's coming.
Adios 20th Century, adios. Welcome, 21st century, bienvenido.
Contact Raoul at raoul@raoul.net
Return to Frontpage