Amid Mixed Messages, Hispanic Honor Endures
SAN DIEGO -- For the nation's 54 million Hispanics, this is a confusing time of year.
Hispanic Heritage Month, which was established by Congress in 1988 and runs from Sept. 15 to Oct. 15, is all about mixed messages. It allows for America's largest minority to feel simultaneously appreciated and unwanted.
Just like those illegal immigrants -- housekeepers, nannies, gardeners, cooks, farmworkers -- that Americans love to complain about but would hate to live without.
Projected to make up as much as 29 percent of the U.S. population by 2050, Hispanics are told that America is lucky to have them -- even though some people insist the country would be better off without them. The mainstream devours Hispanic culture and promotes bilingualism, even as Hispanics are pressured by others to assimilate and abandon their Spanish. They're told they have the power to decide elections since three battleground states -- Nevada, Florida and Colorado -- have significant Hispanic populations, even while some Republicans would like to shrink the voter pool by stripping citizenship from the U.S.-born children of undocumented immigrants.
In 2015, Hispanics are admired, feared, loved, hated, courted, despised. We need more of them. We want fewer of them.
It's dizzying. America, will you please make up your mind?
Over the next few weeks, universities, organizations and corporations will use events, initiatives and marketing campaigns to snuggle up to Hispanics with the goal of getting a slice of their $1.5 trillion in buying power. And yet, even while all this schmoozing is going on, many Americans will be succumbing to nativist impulses, spewing hate and rallying around politicians who want to build walls and outlaw Spanish in the hopes of returning the country to what it used to be.
It didn't take long for many Hispanics to conclude that when Donald Trump vows to "make America great again," what many of the GOP front-runner's supporters hear is a coded pledge to reverse demographic trends and make America white again.
Now Trump is pointing to the Iranian nuclear deal as a prime example of the Obama administration's give-away-the-store style of negotiating. The businessman claims he can make a bad deal into a good one. He is selling the idea of "winning" and tells supporters that, if they put him in the White House, they'll win over and over again.
"We will have so much winning, if I get elected, that you may get bored with winning," Trump said at a recent rally in Washington. Then he corrected himself: "You'll never get bored with winning."
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