Esther J. Cepeda

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Hi everyone,

Welcome to my archive of columns published by the Washington Post Writers Group and past columns from other publications. After you've looked around please join me on my social media networks where I post links to new columns -- and other cool stuff -- there's constant conversation, and you can get feedback on comments.

           

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~Esther
 

America's new favorite villain: Sugar

BY ESTHER J. CEPEDA, Washington Post Writers Group

Who doesn't love a good villain? A baddie who can be pointed to as the source of our worst headaches -– banish him and all our worries will be over.

Get ready to meet our next arch-nemesis.

He's so sweet, you wouldn't have expected him to be so ... evil. He's been described as toxic, poisonous and a killer. Recent studies have proved he's so bad that too much hanging around with him will actually make you stupid, altering your brain's ability to learn and remember information.

Like every dark force, he takes many faces and many names. About a decade ago, he came on the scene as the calamitous carbohydrate, the bane of dieters across the land. A few years later, he took the form of high-fructose corn syrup, terrifying one and all with his insulin-spiking, fearsome-named ubiquity.

These days he's shedding the masks of his many cripplingly addictive personas and daring us to peer into the hollow depths of his nectarous soul.

That's right my friends, prepare yourselves for an upcoming national battle against a new public enemy No. 1: sugar.

Sugar is increasingly becoming the de facto suspect in every case related to America's unrelenting obesity epidemic.

The science doesn't lie -– by most recent calculations, a single adult is said to take in close to 100 pounds of sugar a year. And yes, scientists have succeeded in making rats stupid just by plying them with fructose. There really is no question that sugar is creating a population of overweight and chronically ill sweet tooths.

But we can't blame ourselves, noooo. We don't mean to take in so many sweet calories, it just happens.

It's not our fault if there's extra sugar in nearly everything we buy from the grocery store or at restaurants because those merchants know what sells best. It's not our fault that TV reality shows and best-selling magazines grab our attention with their luscious, mile-high cakes and their perfect, museum-quality cookies and cupcakes.

And it's certainly not our fault that day care, preschool, elementary and high school snack, breakfast and lunch menus are chock-full of sugar (and it's menacing brethren, salt and fat) -- this is what the kids choose to eat, after all.

Though we have a public health crisis on our hands, it's just not very sexy to refine our policies to help people understand their responsibility for their own wellness, or to tame insidious food marketing. Better to declare war on the villain and make us all victims.

So eat up the headlines about how sugar will make you stupid, fat and sick -– we are undoubtedly in the process of defining our enemy (and did I mention already that it sure ain't us?) before we can prepare to defeat him. Once convinced of his potential harm, it will take only the un-bounding determination of our people to gain the inevitable triumph over sugar.

 

 

Esther J. Cepeda's e-mail address is estherjcepeda(at)washpost.com

 

 

 

Latinos need to be in mainstream media not 'separate but equal'

BY ESTHER J. CEPEDA, Washington Post Writers Group

As recently as five years ago, I was gnashing my teeth because the television networks catering to Hispanics in the U.S. were offering only Spanish-language programs, further isolating a population that many Americans thought didn't care about fitting in enough to bother learning the language.

Today I fear the pendulum is swinging too far to the other side. I worry that the proliferation of advertising, entertainment and news organizations hoping to engage predominantly English-speaking Hispanics will also isolate a continuously assimilating community from a mainstream that seems to view Latinos as newcomers who don't quite want to blend into the crowd.

The list of news and entertainment companies jumping into bilingual or English-only programming aimed at Latinos is long and ever-growing, the two most recent examples being Cosmopolitan magazine and Univision-ABC News.

Hearst Magazines premiered Cosmopolitan for Latinas earlier this month to its target audience, "the young, bold, Latina woman who is sexy, stylish, and intelligent," according to editor Michelle Herrera Mulligan, "and wants to see herself reflected in the pages of a magazine."

Well, OK. But isn't that what Latina magazine has been doing for about 16 years? And even it wasn't the only magazine already aimed at bilingual, fashion-conscious Hispanic women.

You have to wonder why Cosmopolitan sought to capture the attention of young Hispanic women with a separate publication instead of simply folding in more Latina celebrities, models, staff writers and photographers into its flagship offering. It's not as if you couldn't quote a Dominican starlet saying "I'm very proud to have Latin blood" or feature photo spreads of Brazilian Carnaval dancers in the regular Cosmo.

I've heard hallelujahs about how great it is that Cosmopolitan is paying attention to Hispanics. To me, it sounds a lot like "separate but equal."

Why do mainstream organizations seem to believe that Hispanics are so different, so exotic, that it's just not practical or effective to include them in their regular products, services or coverage?

This phenomenon isn't limited to Hispanics. African-Americans and Asian-Americans, increasingly tired of TV programming that looks nothing like our nation's gloriously diverse mainstream, are turning to YouTube to not only watch, but star in, the most viewed shows on the Web. According to The Washington Post, eight of the 20 YouTube channels with the most subscriptions feature minorities, mostly Asian-American, with many black and Hispanic shows filling in the top 50.

But those who don't tune in to YouTube lose out -- big time. Just ask yourself if Barack Obama could have been elected president in a nation that had never fallen in love with "The Cosby Show."

And our news ecosystem -- which some people consider the very bedrock of our democracy -- is in full fragmentation mode. It seems like every major news organization has a Latino-centric section or other "special interest" offshoot. (Disclosure: NBC Latino and several other Hispanic-focused news outlets carry my column.)

I just read a column on a major network's English-language Latino news site about Time magazine's controversial breast-feeding cover. The author wanted to discuss nursing as a professional working mom. "Since I didn't see any Latinas interviewed by Time on this issue, I thought I would offer my opinion," she wrote.

That really got me.

It's wonderful that this journalist had a place to share her viewpoint and get it out to others. But wouldn't it have been better if Time had included in its reporting a range of voices more representative of the general population to begin with? Or if major networks were open to putting such rarely heard viewpoints on their main news pages?

Niche offerings are great but no substitute for all races and ethnicities being represented in American popular culture where everyone can be exposed to the good, the bad and everything in between.

ABC and Univision's new Latino channel will be in English, and the company's leaders have said that they want to appeal to non-Hispanics as well.

I hope they do because so often the distinctions don't matter. I learned about the first American female boxer to qualify for the Olympics from reading The New York Times, an emblem of mainstream media. That the 22-year-old Houston native is of Mexican descent is a notable detail, but no more so than her gender, sport or athletic prowess. Her achievement isn't a Hispanic human interest story -- it's American history.

Esther J. Cepeda's e-mail address is estherjcepeda(at)washpost.com

 

Hispanics views on gay marriage no different than mainstream

BY ESTHER J. CEPEDA, Washington Post Writers Group

For me, the most difficult thing about a full week of news reporting and punditry regarding President Obama’s historic embrace of same-sex marriage has been getting buffeted by worn-out stereotypes about how Hispanics will act on the revelation at the ballot box in November.

So far I’ve seen it stated that gay marriage “remains highly contentious among black and Latino voters,” heard that it will aggressively alienate voters who hold socially conservative values -- and therefore be sure to turn off Hispanics -- and read that Obama’s remarks have sparked “strong reactions” from Latinos.

Oh my. Where to begin?

Let’s start with how contentious gay marriage is among Hispanics.

According to an April National Council on La Raza report on Latino acceptance and support of gays and lesbians, though there are segments of the Latino population that are at odds with the idea, 54 percent of Hispanics support legal gay marriage compared to 53 percent of Americans as a whole.

This corresponds with views toward homosexuality, in general. According to the Pew Hispanic Center’s March 2011 National Survey of Latinos, when asked whether homosexuality should be accepted or discouraged by society, 59 percent of Hispanics said it should be accepted, compared to 58 percent of the general population.

Now move on to the socially conservative values voters, with whom Hispanics are routinely lumped in because of their strong connections to religious institutions. It’s true that Hispanics are almost three times likelier to be Catholic and are more likely overall to affiliate themselves with an organized religion compared to the general public, but that doesn’t translate into a political stance.

Again according to Pew, Hispanics as a whole are about as conservative (32 percent) as the overall population (34 percent), but they’re less moderate and a bit more liberal than the general population -- 30 percent of Hispanics identify as liberal compared to 21 percent of the general population.

To illustrate the disconnect, take another great example of how the stereotype of the socially conservative Hispanic is proved wrong: the highly controversial issue of abortion. In January, the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health commissioned a survey of registered Latino voters and found that 74 percent agree that a woman has a right to make personal, private decisions about abortion without politicians interfering.

Even more interesting, 68 percent of respondents stated that they are willing to disagree with church leaders on the topic, which illustrates that Hispanics actively separate their spiritual beliefs from their appetite for letting institutions get involved in their personal affairs.

A Latino Decisions poll said much the same last December when it found that 63 percent of Latino voters strongly disagree with religious leaders telling members which candidate to vote for -- higher than in the general electorate. Moral issues and politics simply don’t mix for the majority of Hispanic voters.

Finally, yes, there have been strong reactions among Hispanics about the president’s endorsement of gay marriage -- both pro and con -- and in roughly equal proportion to the rest of the general population.

It's simple: Hispanics reflect the general population’s attitudes toward same-sex marriage and are represented proportionally in the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender population.

According to Gary J. Gates, a demographics expert at the University of California, Los Angeles, there is no definitive count of the racial breakdown of LGBT population. But after combing data from multiple sources and surveys, Gates told me “these findings suggest that the racial/ethnic distribution of the LGBT population does not differ that much from the general population.”

Despite race or religiosity, the number of people for and against gay marriage is about the same across the nation -- current polls peg it at about half and half. So as appealing as it may be as a storyline, there’s no reason to continue making blanket presumptions about this as a voting issue among minorities.

The sad fact is that despite the potentially ground-breaking effect recent events may have on gay rights in the long term, equality based on sexual orientation is low on the list of national priorities. That agenda is topped by jobs, the economy, health care and education -- the same issues that will motivate voters of all stripes toward the polls in November or keep them away in droves.

 

 

Esther J. Cepeda's e-mail address is estherjcepeda(at)washpost.com

 

 

 

Mark Zuckerberg: fantastically successful but still a poor role model for kids

BY ESTHER J. CEPEDA, Washington Post Writers Group

My plea to Mark Zuckerberg: Please just grow up already -- you're messing with my ability to raise my sons right.

In case you haven’t heard, last week Zuckerberg showed up on Wall Street to sell potential investors on Facebook’s initial public offering in his -- and every young boy's -- trademark sneakers, jeans, T-shirt and hoodie.

A few finance guys felt dissed by a company’s chief executive strolling into America’s financial center and asking for billions of dollars -- dressed like he was on way to the laundromat.

“He’s actually showing investors he doesn’t care that much; he’s going to be him,” said Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter. “I think that’s a mark of immaturity.”

I agree wholeheartedly, but others have rushed to Zuckerberg’s defense, turning on Pachter nearly instantaneously and claiming it didn’t matter what the zillionaire wore. Comparisons to Steve Jobs’ black turtlenecks were trotted out as well as admiration for Zuckerberg’s refusal to bow to Wall Street’s pressure, give up his “hacker” street cred, or shed the symbols of his unselfconscious genius.

No surprise there -- adults of all ages have surrendered themselves to slovenliness, and it seems as though every day fewer people feel the need to show up to work dressed like they care about their employers, co-workers or customers. And no one seems to mind.

From fast-food workers manning cash registers while wearing F-word-emblazoned jewelry to managers who preside over offices looking like they rolled out of bed 10 minutes prior, the notion of showing ourselves and others respect through our manner of dress is going the way of the dinosaur.

Last fall, a suburban Chicago mom pleaded with the board of her children’s’ school district to create and enforce a dress code for teachers after she observed educators in the classroom wearing tank tops and flip-flops. Sure it was warm, she said, but “This isn’t your backyard. This isn’t the beach.”

And funerals, weddings, job interviews, graduations, church services -- none have inspired a 100 percent rate of appropriate attire for years.

As a result, I have less credibility on the topic with my tween sons every day. We got into a row last winter when I insisted they wear a shirt and tie to an evening theater performance, and they got their comeuppance that night when it quickly became obvious that our family was the only group of people not dressed like they came from a ballgame. Now the hoodies are on Wall Street.

The rumpling of society isn't Zuckerberg’s fault, of course, and he didn’t invent individualism or cults of personality. Plus, it’s great that he was worthy of having an Academy Award-nominated film made about his business venture and was named Time’s Person of the Year at age 26.

But the endless adolescence act sure isn’t making things easier on those of us who aren't rich celebrities and must care about dressing for success. And it makes it nearly impossible to pass such stodgy, old-fashioned values on to a generation with few boundaries and even fewer successful young male role models outside of sports and entertainment.

Please grow up, Mark. How you dress definitely matters.

 

 

 

Esther J. Cepeda's e-mail address is estherjcepeda(at)washpost.com

 

 

 

Tucson Mexican American Studies program's 'Precious Knowledge'

BY ESTHER J. CEPEDA, Washington Post Writers Group

I’d been really looking forward to screening “Precious Knowledge,” a documentary airing on PBS stations across the country starting May 17. Its prerelease materials promised to explain the controversy surrounding the Tucson Unified School District’s Mexican-American studies program.

Finally, I thought, I’d be able to truly understand what all the fuss was about.

The program was suspended in January for violating a recent Arizona law that prohibits students from taking courses promoting the overthrow of the U.S. government and resentment toward a race or class of people.

I’d hoped this documentary -- featuring extensive footage of typical classroom sessions -- would finally clarify whether the Mexican-American studies program was good or bad for students.

Based on my careful observation of the news coming out of Arizona, that determination was very difficult to tease out second-hand. For the most part, the state's attempts to cope with a decade's worth of illegal-immigration and border issues have been interpreted by non-border dwellers across the country as blatant racism.

Plus, I’ve been both observer and captive student in “ethnic studies” classes at the high school and university level and know that students can inappropriately be encouraged to believe that all white people are against minorities and that the only recourse is to feel victimized and then revolt.

So which was it? Did Arizona shut down a program that had improved graduation and college admission outcomes for mostly poor Hispanic students because it was radicalizing them -- or because of anti-Hispanic bias?

Unfortunately, after watching “Precious Knowledge,” I still don’t know.

Passionate teachers and fawning students chanting about love and forgiveness were presented in classrooms festooned with posters of Che Guevara. And we saw Tom Horne, the past superintendent of public Instruction for the Arizona Department of Education, fret that students are not being taught to judge others on the quality of their character instead of the color of their skin.

As students described how these specialized classes enrich their downtrodden lives, I wondered how the non-Hispanic students feel about the program and their peers. And how segregated are they? Do they get to take general education courses, lunches and gym with the rest of the student population?

But those answers aren’t found in this documentary.

It wasn’t until after I pored through the 120-page report that an independent auditor produced based on extensive focus groups, one-on-one interviews and site visits to classrooms that the film clicked into focus for me.

Released last May, eight months before the program was shut down in order to avoid the district losing more than $14 million in state aid, the report was definitive: There was no observable evidence that instruction promoted resentment toward a race or class of people. In fact, students were taught to be accepting of multiple ethnicities of people and they weren’t segregated from mainstream courses or activities.

There was also no evidence of any instruction promoting the overthrow of the government or that the program excluded non-Hispanic pupils -- white, Native American, black and Asian students took courses. Also no evidence indicated that the program advocated ethnic solidarity.

Actually, the report reads like a field manual for engaging students while boosting their academic achievement: excellent teachers delivered well-orchestrated lessons that were appropriately aligned to state learning standards and demonstrated real-life applications.

Parents were given ample latitude to opt out of some of the more controversial bits -- and yes, there were some. Paulo Freire’s “Pedagogy of the Oppressed” loomed large in the film, and there were other books, specific topics and discussions that flirted with being pure political speech and call to action.

The report detailed how teachers could balance views and materials, tone down rhetoric and bias -- and how the program as a whole could do a better job of managing the curriculum and working with the school district.

Armed with this knowledge, however, this heartstrings-pulling documentary is worth watching.

It’s not a persuasive defense of the academic value of Tucson’s Mexican-American studies program, which sadly remains outlawed despite its track record of uplifting students who had already been “left behind.” But it does illustrate how a group of people can turn into radical activists after a long, peaceful struggle to defend their character and education against vociferous critics who baselessly slandered them.

 

Esther J. Cepeda's e-mail address is estherjcepeda(at)washpost.com

 

 

For the next generation's sake, teach the kiddies to be parents

BY ESTHER J. CEPEDA, Washington Post Writers Group

If there's any societal group today responsible for the future well-being of our nation that isn't being held accountable enough, it's parents.

Yes, parenting is a tough job -- for the ones who really work at it. That is, the ones who ask for help or devoutly read parenting books and never stop educating themselves, growing old with self-help books such as "How to Talk So Teens Will Listen and Listen So Teens Will Talk" and "How to Really Love Your Adult Child: Building a Healthy Relationship in a Changing World."

The rest, well, I'm not afraid to say they're slackers.

What else could a person divine from the constant news headlines trumpeting parents' selfish, reckless and undisciplined behavior? And I'm not even talking about the truly monstrous ones who make the 6 o'clock news because they've horrifically abused or neglected their children.

Just look at the ones who merely qualify for enhanced knucklehead status. The ones who aren't consciously trying to screw up their progeny but simply don't know better and end up being a destructive force in kids' lives -- sometimes even as they try to shield their children from life's hard knocks.

A few examples: Skin cancer rates are flying skyward -- there has been an eightfold increase in the incidence of melanoma in young women 18 to 39. Yet a New Jersey woman now known as the "Tanning Mom" was arrested last week after allegedly taking her 5-year-old daughter into a tanning booth. She has pleaded innocent -- -- blaming the sun for the girl’s burns -- and said this about the parody of her aired on last weekend's “Saturday Night Live”: "It was well done. ... The whole thing was hysterical."

Other clueless parents include those requiring state legislation to keep them from smoking in cars with their kids and those who use public humiliation to keep their children in line. Springing to mind: the dad who shot his daughter's laptop and the Illinois couple who forced their 8-year-old daughter to wear a sandwich board outside her school that said "I like to steal from others and lie about it" after she was caught pocketing others' things.

Some parents are woefully uninformed or willfully ignorant. We have a crippling obesity epidemic threatening children who, it was recently reported, don't respond to common Type 2 diabetes disease management techniques as well as adults.

And yet parents have become terrified of apple juice's tiny traces of arsenic and diet drinks' sugar substitutes instead of being concerned about the pervasively high-calorie content of most beverages. I guess chemical fears trump the rising number of children who need to have risky surgery to get their teeth pulled because overconsumption of sugary drinks rots them before they exit preschool.

Still other parents are well-meaning to a fault. Research has documented the phenomenon of playgrounds becoming so safe, padded and hazard-free that children are too bored by them to play much. Even toddlers are at risk of having their play squashed: the rising popularity of skill-n-drill mills, aka "academic preschools," is making play-centered preschools look, well, childish.

There's really only one good way to blunt poor child rearing, but since "parent reform" would never fly like "education reform" has, we need to start molding future parents when they're young.

Today, select students in a few high schools get to play "mommy" or "daddy" to screeching, wetting "RealCare" robot babies as part of units on child development, but that's too late. We need to slip concrete examples of what good parenting looks like into elementary school students' regular language arts, health and math curricula.

Trust me, there are millions of subtle ways -- through literature, story prompts and even word problems -- to ingrain apolitical, non-moralistic basics that model how to properly nourish a family, how much exercise kids need, how much TV and video game playing is too much and the importance of reading books, eating meals and conversing as a family.

If we could just do that, society would be about one generation away from a populace that graduates high school with a basic knowledge of the care and feeding of children -- and a heck of a lot closer to curbing many of the problems students bring into classrooms from home.

Esther J. Cepeda's e-mail address is estherjcepeda(at)washpost.com.

 

 

A ‘magic bullet' for student aid applications

BY ESTHER J. CEPEDA, Washington Post Writers Group

Public policy wonks are always looking for magic bullets that have a shot at making a real impact. Every once in a while, one seems to come along.

Take the intractable issue of getting high school seniors to apply for the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA). High school teachers, guidance counselors and college access organizations across the country know the FAFSA as the mechanism for connecting the neediest students to federal and state grants, work-study awards, and loans for college.

But to low-income high school students and their parents, who believe college is key to a prosperous life but probably out-of-the-question expensive, the FAFSA is a second -- and sometimes more daunting -- spring gantlet to run after a fall's worth of completing college applications.

It's an exhausting form -- at more than 100 questions, it's four times longer than the simplest tax return -- filled with prompts that are meant to be clear but often result in confusion.

Parents of children who would be the first in their family to go to college have often remarked in frustration that you practically need a university degree to complete the darned thing. Having been trained in the art of completing FAFSAs, I'd have to agree. They're relatively straightforward for a "nuclear family" but a confusing minefield for foster children, U.S.-born children of illegal immigrants, and many others.

The magic bullet, then? Professional help.

Sure, this sounds obvious to solidly middle-class family families used to drawing on diverse resources when they need them. Unfortunately, student loan data have recently shown an uptick in low-income students taking on far-riskier private loans because of their fear of the FAFSA and a lack of help navigating it.

"The Role of Application Assistance and Information in College Decisions," a new study published in the Quarterly Journal of Economics, offers a tantalizing avenue to ensuring that the neediest students get their FAFSAs filed: tax preparers.

Researchers from Stanford, Harvard and the University of Toronto, in partnership with H&R Block, found that when families with incomes under $45,000 sought tax preparation help and were then offered immediate assistance with filing the FAFSA -- which, with the help, took a mere 8 minutes to complete -- their college attendance rates went up.

Best of all, the findings seem to indicate that this nudge even helped keep students in school for subsequent years, increasing the likelihood of graduation.

The research underscores the high degree of hand-holding that families with no prior college experience need to navigate the higher education system.

It also points out the tremendous challenge of getting more low-income families to seek out tax preparation and college financial aid help -- and that ensuring such services will be available in communities that have historically been underserved in these areas.

After all, we can tell low-income families that there's nothing wrong with asking for help until we're blue in the face, but magic bullets have to be widely available for them to make a difference on a large scale.

 

 

 

Esther J. Cepeda's e-mail address is estherjcepeda(at)washpost.com

 

 

 

Elizabeth Warren and America's affirmative action trap

BY ESTHER J. CEPEDA, The Washington Post Writers Group

This fall the Supreme Court will hear Fisher v. University of Texas, a case that could decide the fate of racial preferences in the college admissions process. And here's a perfect example of why higher education's affirmative action and diversity initiatives should focus on socioeconomic status rather than race and ethnicity: Elizabeth Warren.

It turns out that Warren, a Harvard law professor who decided to challenge Sen. Scott Brown after she was passed over as the first director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, has in the past identified herself as a minority -- 1/32nd Native American, to be exact. Warren's great-great-great-grandmother was Cherokee.

A Massachusetts genealogist tracked down Warren's long-deceased relative after Brown's campaign raised "serious questions" about her credibility. The Brown camp noted that Harvard Law School counted Warren as a Native American employee in the 1990s when the school was being attacked for its lack of diversity, and implied that her racial classification gave her an unfair advantage in getting hired to begin with.

Though Warren said she didn't know about the label Harvard had assigned her, she confirmed that she had, for about a decade, listed herself as a minority in a directory of law professors that was widely used as a tip sheet for minority recruiting purposes. Warren said she'd hoped to meet peers of a similar background but eventually gave up.

Social media streams have been brimming with offensive remarks directed at Native Americans, illustrating how completely clueless most people are about contemporary Indians -- but also how angry people get about any type of ethnicity-based preferential treatment.

Much of this mini-scandal centers around whether Warren can rightly claim to be Native American. But who has the right to tell another whether they qualify for admittance into a particular cultural heritage?

Interracial households in America recorded a 28 percent increase between 2000 to 2010, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. In my family, between me and my two cousins, we have six kids who are half Hispanic (from two different Latin American countries) and half white, black or Asian. When our kids grow up, any choice of mate will produce a child of further-diluted race or ethnicity, and so on, until our adult great-great-great-grandchildren get to decide their identity for themselves.

Which brings us back to affirmative action. Unless the government decides on a minimum percentage to be considered any one of the acknowledged racial or ethnic minorities -- and requires blood tests or DNA sequencing to prove it -- how will any college or other organization with a mission to maintain a diverse faculty and student body do the sorting? And how could it possibly be fair?

Many middle- and upper-class minorities can afford a college education. So is it right for their children to be considered for extra financial aid, a break on tuition, or a coveted registration slot alongside minorities whose parents are truly poor? And what about poor white students? Are they simply out of luck because their race supposedly accords them special privileges to begin with?

But far worse is the perception that when race enters the equation, merit is overlooked in favor of whatever category needs to be added on to meet a quota -- and that minorities are more than happy to exploit such a situation.

Warren's list of accomplishments -- not the least of which is that, as a child, her parents struggled financially and troubles worsened after her father died, but she still managed to earn a full-ride, merit-based college scholarship -- is impressive by any measure. Warren worked hard to get from her kitchen-table law practice to the White House where she advised President Obama.

If we would only ensure that college is accessible to all those who can excel academically and professionally, we'd neither feel the need to question Warren's qualifications nor doubt her personal connection to her family's heritage.

 

 

Esther J. Cepeda's e-mail address is estherjcepeda(at)washpost.com

Bad economy is why any Dream Act is still a nightmare

BY ESTHER J. CEPEDA, Washington Post Writers Group

In December 2010, after the DREAM Act fell five votes short of passage in the Senate, it was understood that the issue would be dead for a while, and that Hispanics would go to the polls in 2012 and punish those who voted against the legislation.

I noted at the time that while politics and heated anti-illegal immigrant rhetoric were two main culprits, the failure of the law -- which would have created a path to citizenship for young illegal immigrants -- was, above all else, the fault of a terrible economic situation in which no extra competition for limited jobs was welcome.

Today Democrats are on the defensive as Sen. Marco Rubio, a Florida Republican seen by some in the GOP as a magnet for Hispanic voters, leads a push to introduce a modified version of the DREAM Act that would allow temporary legal residency status but no path to citizenship.

Though it has been reported that some immigrant activist organizations are talking with Rubio and this has inspired counter-lobbying from the White House, administration officials needn't get too upset.

In fact, neither should the far right of the Republican Party, which has begun hyperventilating at the thought of any type of an “amnesty” scheme.

The reason is painfully simple: The jobs situation is no better than when the DREAM Act failed.

According to the most recent figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, today's 16- to 19-year-olds face the same 25 percent unemployment rate as in December 2010. The unemployment rate for those 20-24 has improved only slightly: 15 percent in 2010 compared to 13 percent now.

Workers over 25 with only a high school diploma face an 8 percent unemployment rate -- about 2 percentage points better than in December 2010. It’s much worse for recent graduates. The Associated Press has some stomach-churning figures based on 2011 Current Population Survey data. They show that 54 percent of those with a bachelor's degree under the age of 25 were jobless or underemployed last year -- the highest share in at least 11 years.

This presents a huge obstacle for those legislators who truly believe in the need to offer relief to illegal immigrant youth who have spent most of their lives in this country. How will they sell voters on the possibility of bringing an estimated 1.2 million DREAM Act-eligible young people into direct competition with U.S.-born citizens and legal immigrants for jobs and college assistance funds?

Take it a step further and consider the pickle facing calculating politicians who embrace a no-citizenship DREAM Act simply because they'll do anything to win a few votes by making Hispanics feel like they are on "their side." Endorsing any plan allowing illegal immigrants to be able to work legally comes with the risk of eventually having to acknowledge that throughout the economic downturn, the unemployment rate among Hispanics has consistently been higher than that of the population as a whole. Thus, more demand for limited jobs could disproportionately hurt Latinos.

Though I think Rubio's idea could be a decent compromise, it might face limited support from Hispanic voters who resent an election-year ploy that doesn't offer a path to full participation in our democracy to their youngest and most assimilated family members. So far, reaction has been tepid.

Back in 2010, immigrant advocacy groups touted a Congressional Budget Office report that claimed the House version of the DREAM Act would actually reduce deficits by about $2.2 billion over the 2011-2020 period through a combination of revenue increases and lower spending.

No such data about how a so-called Republican DREAM Act would impact the economy exist today. But if the Republicans want to get their base and others on board, they'd better run those numbers. If it's true that illegal immigrant youths are the key to long-term economic growth, it'll take some heavy lifting to convince an electorate suffering through the weakest recovery on record that any legalization program will eventually break in their favor.

 

 

Esther J. Cepeda's e-mail address is estherjcepeda(at)washpost.com

April was the cruelest month to our animal friends

BY ESTHER J. CEPEDA, Washington Post Writers Group

Mother Nature has been in a bad mood this year and she's taken it out on the animals.

After an unusually mild winter -- in my neck of the woods, at least -- a hot, record-busting March came in like a lamb and left the deadly lion behavior to April.

On the first day of April, all the animals seemed to burst into the yards and the streets at once.

Batches of baby bunnies and bunches of fat bullfrogs started swelling my neighborhood's backyards, startling the men folk out with their lawn mowers and weed eaters.

And then came the cold.

A few days after temperatures had soared into the 90s, setting records, the bottom fell out. The thermometer flirted with the 30- and 20-degree marks, and I succumbed to the maternal instinct of saving the babies from the big freeze.

Breaking the rules of nature, I took four baby bunnies into the warmth of my kitchen, and felt I had done the right thing after finding the big frogs in my grass shriveled up dead from the sudden change in temperature.

Stories in my local newspaper said that all sorts of snakes, toads, bats and other creatures were dying because they'd been out too early and had run out of food at precisely the time that prey was retreating out of the cold snap.

My bunnies got fat on fresh timothy hay and food pellets during the coldest April temperatures recorded in my area in 12 years. My sons initiated an aggressive campaign for us to permanently adopt the rabbits, but we knew we needed to return them to the wild.

We had meant to keep them for only a few days, but the cold dragged on and, after seven days, they started dying. The last one made it until the afternoon of the first non-freezing morning in a week and I let him go with the hope that he'd be better off in the fresh, if chilly, air. Thankfully, he's still out there, hopping around.

The geese, too, seem uncharacteristically crazed by the weather. They usually never nest near busy streets but this month I've seen lots of them in dangerous spots. A mom and dad set up camp out behind a nearby pond, which flows up to a busy county road. I can see it from my kitchen window, and I've been on high alert, worried that their goslings would wander into traffic.

I'd sworn not to intervene but just about lost it on Sunday. My heart went into my throat as I watched one of the adult birds step right in front of a car going 40 mph.

Thankfully the humans in the area have more compassion than April's weather and, though traffic backed up suddenly, no geese -- or motorists -- were hurt.

I cursed April for its unexpected cruelties -- its southwestern heat also pushed the Gulf Coast sea turtles into an early nesting season and its record northern snowfall has the Alaskan moose foraging in the middle of highways and on people's roofs -- but rejoiced as the month turned.

Good riddance, April. I've never been so happy to see you go.

 

 

Esther J. Cepeda's e-mail address is estherjcepeda(at)washpost.com

Sotomayor on Arizona SB1070: Liberal Hispanic or truly wise Latina?

BY ESTHER J. CEPEDA, Washington Post Writers Group

When Sonia Sotomayor made history in 2009 by becoming the first Latina named to the Supreme Court, Hispanics were overjoyed.

Her story was a deeply satisfying one about the Bronx-bred daughter of Puerto Rican parents who, despite coming from humble means, made it to the big leagues of justice.

At that time, a little over two years after the last serious attempt at comprehensive bipartisan immigration law reform failed in the Senate, seeing a woman of the same ethnic group as millions of illegal immigrants who were being villainized gave some Hispanics a special feeling of connection to the American judicial process.

Wednesday, as news was breaking about how the court might be leaning after the Obama administration presented its oral arguments in favor of striking down Arizona's "papers, please" immigration law, you had to wonder whether the feelings were still so special.

Sotomayor was prominently featured in news stories topped by headlines describing the court as "sympathetic" and "receptive" to parts of the Arizona law, and "skeptical" of the Obama administration's arguments against it.

Judging from the lack of Hispanic comment on social media concerning Sotomayor's pointed questions to Solicitor General Donald Verrilli Jr. -- from those who were sure she'd bring a diverse (read: liberal Hispanic) viewpoint to the court -- I'd say the feelings were not so special.

Just scanning Twitter, you could see that it was primarily conservatives who were tweeting about Sotomayor. And in positive terms.

"Even Liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor Shredded the Government's Case Against Arizona's Immigration Law" read a widely retweeted headline. "When even Sotomayor turns against you, that's a good indicator it's time to throw in the towel," said a tweet directed at the American Civil Liberties Union, an organization contesting the Arizona legislation.

A comment Sotomayor directed at Verrilli -- “You can see (your argument is) not selling very well" -- was a particularly popular retweet.

What a fascinating turn of events.

When President Obama announced Sotomayor as his pick for the bench, he said, "When Sonia Sotomayor ascends those marble steps to assume her seat on the highest court of the land, America will have taken another important step towards realizing the ideal that is etched above its entrance: Equal justice under the law."

Considering that this case has turned on concerns over whether Arizona's legislation would legalize racial profiling -- though the Obama administration was arguing solely on whether the state is overreaching on the federal government's authority over immigration's rules -- I'd give anything to know what Obama's reaction was to her no-nonsense questions.

Really, anyone who accepted that Sotomayor was a super-qualified nominee who was up for the big job because of her brains and considerable experience should have expected nothing less.

Of course, for far too many, that has never been a realistic expectation. During the run-up to her confirmation, Latino advocacy groups basically blustered that she should get the nod because "it's our turn" and "we need someone representing us," while Republicans used Sotomayor's own words to push the idea that, if appointed, she would defer to a "Latino agenda."

No one knows how the Supreme Court will rule on the question of whether Arizona and other states have the right to enact immigration-related laws, nor how Sotomayor will vote on the matter. And those are only two of the burning questions before us.

Will Sotomayor's remarks turn off large swaths of Hispanics who might interpret her thorough inquiries as some sort of slight against "her people"? (Some in the Twitterverse went beyond being "very surprised" by her comments and began denouncing her as a "fake liberal" and a "fake House Latina" hours after the court recessed.)

If she eventually does rule in favor of Arizona's right to report the immigration status of detainees to the federal government, will she become the Latina Clarence Thomas, forever branded a “traitor to her race”? And how would that play during the presidential election campaign?

Or will Republicans finally respect her ability to analyze legal questions from an intellectual -- and not a liberal Hispanic -- perspective, thereby finally seeing her as a truly "wise Latina”?

We have until June to wonder.

Esther J. Cepeda's e-mail address is estherjcepeda(at)washpost.com

 

 

 

 

Food desert data shows that healthy eating is a lifestyle, not a food, choice

BY ESTHER J. CEPEDA, Washington Post Writers Group

Are you the least bit surprised that simply irrigating the nation’s so-called "food deserts" with more fresh fruits and vegetables doesn't result in healthier communities?

Two recent studies, one from the RAND Corp., and another from the Public Policy Institute of California, report that low-income neighborhoods, in addition to having more fast-food restaurants and convenience stores, also have more grocery stores, supermarkets and full-service restaurants than do more-affluent neighborhoods. A New York Times article summarizing the findings declared: "There is no relationship between the type of food being sold in a neighborhood and obesity among its children and adolescents."

This should come as no shock to anyone who actually lives in or near a food desert -- as I do.

The food-desert locator on the usda.gov website says my home sits immediately east of the only food desert within an 11-mile radius. Yet, this particular slice of a predominantly Hispanic community is served by multiple Mexican grocery stores, all within walking distance, that offer wide selections of fresh fruit, vegetables and meats at lower prices than the major grocery chain store sitting three miles down the road.

Sadly, the availability of such a bounty of healthy fare has not prevented the majority of the student body in our area's school district from being either overweight or obese.

That the elimination of food deserts is not as effective as once hoped for has been well-researched. It's been long known that opening a new grocery store in a neighborhood barely nudges vegetable consumption -- a 2002 study out of Leeds, England, measured the increase at a scant one-third of a cup daily -- if at all.

Long before these two reports made national waves for taking a knock at what some food policy wonks had previously treated as a sure thing in the fight against spiraling obesity and rampant malnutrition, critics were noting that neither the USDA nor the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies (IOM) ever established a causal link between food deserts and dietary health.

A July 2011 article in The Economist observed this sad reality of human nature: "Both (the USDA and IOM) agree that merely improving access to healthy food does not change consumer behavior. Open a full-service supermarket in a food desert and shoppers tend to buy the same artery-clogging junk food as before -- they just pay less for it. The unpalatable truth seems to be that some Americans simply do not care to eat a balanced diet, while others, increasingly, cannot afford to."

Because there is no concrete correlation between a community's stock of healthy food and actual healthy bodies, the latest research dramatically underscores the multifaceted nature of the fight against obesity. In order to address our out-of-control epidemic, increased availability of healthful food is but the key precursor to making good nutritional choices over bad ones.

Last summer the medical journal The Lancet reported that if we don't blunt the fattening of America, half of all adults will be obese by 2030. Yet the government interventions that study suggested -- such as regulating the way unhealthy foods are marketed, taxing less-healthy food options such as sugary soda and salty snacks, and subsidizing fruits and vegetables to make them more affordable than bags of Cheetos -- are nowhere near becoming a reality because of those fearful of the nanny state and their corporate backers.

And those brave enough to even hint that maybe food stamps should be restricted so that frozen pizzas, boxes of instant macaroni and cheese, candy, and other junk foods are no longer eligible items routinely get shouted down by those who can't stand the thought of federal aid having meaningful strings attached.

The bottom line is that America, especially low-income America, needs to be taught how to consume balanced meals and fit exercise into their lives so that occasional treats and splurges will do no harm. This education effort -- backed up by a wide array of effective government sticks and carrots -- must happen through schools, doctors’ offices and community organizations.

Only in such a utopia will grocers in former and current food deserts feel a profitable demand for both healthy fare and their stable of treats.

Esther J. Cepeda's e-mail address is estherjcepeda(at)washpost.com

 

 

George Zimmerman is Hispanic, but lawlessness knows no ethnicity

BY ESTHER J. CEPEDA, Washington Post Writers Group

Now that we're in the post-Zimmerman-arrest phase of the Trayvon Martin drama, let's finally confront a criticism that has been leveled at the Hispanic community.

Ever since George Zimmerman's dad wrote a letter to The Orlando Sentinel stating that the attack on Martin, an unarmed black teenager, couldn't possibly have been motivated by race because his son is a fellow minority, some have wondered why Hispanics haven't rushed to claim Zimmerman as "one of us."

The word "claim," as it has been used in the bigoted emails I've received from those who believe that all Hispanics "stick together" even in defense of illegal immigration "lawlessness," really means "defend."

For instance, just as the Martin case was quickly going viral, a right-wing radio personality accused the National Council of La Raza of not showing ethnic solidarity with Zimmerman.

Though at first Zimmerman's ethnicity was in question, we now know that he is the son of a Peruvian immigrant.

Leave aside the ongoing debate about what he could or should be labeled -- though the term "white Hispanic" makes perfect sense if you understand the U.S. Census labels and acknowledge that he's not black Hispanic, such as people from the Dominican Republic, or Asian Hispanic, such as the Fujimori political clan of Peru -- Zimmerman is Hispanic. He looks like he could be my cousin or other relative, and in his too-large dark blue suit he probably would fit perfectly at home at a "quinceañera" -- sweet 15 -- party or any other gathering of Hispanics.

In response to the vague but still ugly accusations of leniency based on ethnicity, La Raza -- a civil rights organization that does its best to publicize any and all good works by Hispanics and not surprisingly wasn't about to proudly claim Zimmerman as "one of us" -- responded by stating the obvious: "Unfortunately, being Hispanic does not mean that you aren't capable of bigotry or discrimination. It does not condone or preclude him (Zimmerman) from having acted in a discriminatory manner."

This is true. However, what might placate those who accuse the Hispanic community of acknowledging only the cream of the crop -- millionaire entrepreneurs, award-winning scientists, Hollywood mega-stars and class valedictorians -- is a simple recognition of the facts.

Like so many others in the United States, Zimmerman is Hispanic. And like too many other Americans before him, he stands accused of doing something bad. As a group, Hispanics are exactly like whites, blacks, Asians and all the combinations thereof, in that they are a diverse mix of people -- some awesome, some not. And Hispanics, like all other subgroups of Americans, can be proud of the good while accepting -- though not necessarily defending -- the bad.

Claiming anything more or less would be disingenuous.

Esther J. Cepeda's e-mail address is estherjcepeda(at)washpost.com

 

 

 

Dear candidates: Stop "Hispandering"

BY ESTHER J. CEPEDA, Washington Post Writers Group

Little else brings me as much joy as learning a new word -- especially if it perfectly captures the spirit of the moment.

“Hispandering" -- isn't that great?

I can't believe I'd never seen the term before, though a quick check on Urban Dictionary informed me it's been around since at least 2008. It means, as you may have guessed, political pandering to Hispanics. Roll it around on your tongue a bit -- it appropriately sounds similar to "hypocrisy."

I discovered this gem just a few days ago in a delightful blog post titled "Are Latinos Getting Clowned by Obama?" on the website politic365.com. The article illuminated the disappointment some of the more serious Hispanic voters and community leaders feel about President Obama enlisting the likes of George Lopez and Eva Longoria to help spread the message among Latinos for his re-election effort.

I feel disgust. That Obama thinks a comedian who has been slammed by Hispanics in the past for his sexist and stereotypical humor and a “Desperate Housewives” star who is currently under fire for co-producing a television show called "Devious Maids" are appropriate conduits to Hispanic voters pretty much says it all.

But this, folks, is the crux of presidential-candidate Hispandering: Never mind policy, trot out some Hispanic stars, drop a few words en español as you talk about how very important "Hispanic issues" are -- as if they weren't the same as all Americans' issues -- and do everything but don a golden-threaded mariachi sombrero while promising "el mundo."

Both President Obama and Mitt Romney have a fundamental misunderstanding of what most Hispanic voters want from them. Without getting into specific policy topics -- Hispanics' political views are as dramatically varied as those of white voters – Hispanics really want to be acknowledged, welcomed in the political arena, listened to, and respected.

This is not to say that there isn't a vocal minority of Hispanic voters who adore Hispandering. They absolutely want candidates who preach to the choir -- be it about "Latino empowerment" or immigration -- and do it while invoking civil-rights heroes Cesar Chavez or Dolores Huerta. These are the very people falling all over themselves because the Obama campaign just kicked off his "Latinos for Obama" website with a few Spanish campaign ads.

But Obama isn't the only Hispanderer. Though the president does have about six years worth of Hispanic Heritage Month photo-ops under his belt, Mitt Romney is getting into the spirit as well (maybe he'll even play up his family's past experience living in Mexico and start hinting about becoming the first Latino president).

The Republican National Committee has begun fanning out into key swing states to spread the word about how the "GOP is listening to Latinos" as they shape a "new direction" for America. Maybe they'll even put out some aimed-at-Hispanics campaign ads in English, instead of assuming that if they weren't in Spanish the bulk of registered Hispanic voters wouldn't understand them.

Romney's Hispandering has been subtle. He’s largely stayed mum about wild speculation regarding whether Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida or Gov. Susana Martinez of New Mexico will be his running mate (even though they've both said it's not happening).

Yet just a week ago, Romney started the process of "softening his tone" on illegal immigration -- he reportedly told supporters at a fundraiser that he would consider a Republican version of the DREAM Act. It appears he might be distancing himself from Kris Kobach, a leading author of “papers please” legislation adopted by Arizona and Alabama, downgrading him from "adviser" to "supporter." But Romney's detractors aren't buying it and Kobach himself is telling reporters that the Romney campaign has confirmed to him that he's still an adviser and "nothing's changed."

Which brings us around to immigration, the issue that most people assume Hispanics care about above all others although polls consistently say they don't. Romney and Obama have little light between them on the matter. Romney wants all the illegal immigrants to go away on their own, and Obama has deported more than a million of them.

Both candidates should vow to drop the subject in favor of focusing wholeheartedly on the economy. After all, there are plenty of other topics to Hispander on. Such a move would actually be more meaningful to the majority of registered Latino voters who care more about jobs and education than immigration anyway.

Esther J. Cepeda's e-mail address is estherjcepeda(at)washpost.com

 

 

 

 

Might illegal immigrant youth look to their homeland for opportunities?

BY ESTHER J. CEPEDA, Washington Post Writers Group

A few weeks ago, a senior at one of the local high schools asked me the question of the moment for DREAM Act-eligible students who can see that the proposed legislation won't pass anytime in the foreseeable future: What should I do? Scrape by and go to college here only to hit a brick wall once I'm looking for a real job, or just start working under the table now?

With kindness and sincerity, I told the Mexican native: Go south, young woman.

Young people here in the U.S. illegally hope for an opportunity to live the American dream but face a future of in-the-shadows misery and near-poverty. Rarely do I hear any of them wonder what opportunities an educated, bilingual go-getter might find back in their homeland.

Maybe they just don't understand how very different their situation is from when their parents came here seeking economic opportunity.

To start, education levels back in the 1990s -- when many parents of students now either graduating from high school or college first arrived -- were very low.

According to "The Geography of Immigrant Skills," a June 2011 report from the Metropolitan Policy Program at the Brookings Institution, 37 percent of all working-age immigrants in 1990 had not completed high school. The Migration Policy Institute estimates that even though education levels have risen since 1985, in 2008 61.5 percent of Mexican immigrants still arrived to the U.S. not having completed high school. The figures were similar for Central American immigrants.

Though we can't assume that all of those students who could qualify for the DREAM Act are straight-A students or miracle college graduates, it's safe to say that the majority have completed high school and have some college experience, if not a completed degree. Plus, they're likely to have far superior language skills than those their parents arrived with.

According to language acquisition data released by the Pew Hispanic Center in early April, 38 percent of foreign-born or first-generation Hispanics say they can carry on a conversation in English and 37 percent say they can read a newspaper or book in English "very well" or "pretty well." Ninety-one percent also reported speaking and reading Spanish "very well" or "pretty well."

Also, although it's true that the recent global financial crisis has hurt struggling people in nearly every country in the world, Latin America has been at the leading edge of recovery. Just one example: Mexico.

In February, Richard Fisher, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, told a group of financiers and economists in Mexico, "It is noteworthy that Mexico has recovered more rapidly from the Great Recession and the global financial crisis. ... U.S. industrial production is still not back to pre-recession levels, but Mexico's industrial production passed its pre-recession peak at the end of 2010." He praised the Mexican government for its finances -- "Your government has implemented greater fiscal discipline than mine and has done so in a way that has not hampered economic recovery."

Mexico's middle class is now the majority and, as chronicled in a recent Washington Post article, not only are newly middle class crowds learning to golf, the ones with kids are pushing them to get them into English-language academies. Meanwhile, American corporations struggle to scale up their presence in the country to meet new consumer demand.

And though young illegal immigrants often say that the United States is the only country they've ever known, if they traveled "back" to the land of their parents, they'd be doing the same as untold numbers of people who grew up in the U.S. but decided to migrate to foreign countries with unfamiliar cultures and complex languages to find opportunity. Just ask all the college students, architects, English teachers and recent business grads currently flocking to China, India and Brazil.

The unsure senior's family and friends had already given her my same advice to "go back" and she's still mulling it over.

Having lived here most of their lives, young illegal immigrants should know that entrepreneurialism is a fundamental American characteristic. In the face of a political environment that isn't likely to offer opportunities to such young people anytime soon, they should know that although they can try to find a way to scrape by here, they could take their talent, pluck and dreams, and make it elsewhere just as well. Maybe even better.

 

 

Esther J. Cepeda's e-mail address is estherjcepeda(at)washpost.com

 

Hispanics in U.S. Border Patrol - when work is a family matter

BY ESTHER J. CEPEDA, Washington Post Writers Group

Last week, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security sent out an unusually cheerful press release: "Border Patrol Academy Graduates 1000th Class."

Forty-five newbies got through the Border Patrol Academy at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center (FLETC) in Artesia, N.M., one of the most rigorous federal law enforcement academies in the nation. It has graduated nearly 41,000 students -- after months of coursework in marksmanship and horsemanship, studying immigration, customs and drug laws, plus firearm and physical training -- since offering its first session in 1934 in El Paso, Texas.

At the ceremony, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said, "Today, we have the largest, best trained, and best equipped Border Patrol we've had at any time in our nation's history, and I'm proud of all the brave men and women who dedicate themselves to this important work."

More than a third of those brave men and women employed by the agency are Hispanic. And imagine the minefield a Hispanic employee of DHS has to walk through when attending family get-togethers where someone might give you the evil eye -- or a full-on tongue-lashing -- for working for "la migra."

Over the years I've interviewed Hispanic Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, immigration detention facility officers and related agency spokespersons. They've all smiled -- broadly, ruefully -- when asked "What's it like being Hispanic in your line of work? What does your family say? How do you respond to the inevitable 'how could you?'"

Answers range from "we don't talk about it" to "they're OK with it -- mostly," and "I don't care about those who call me a sellout or a traitor." Usually they have at least one horror story about a relative who refuses to be in the same room with them at holiday parties -- sometimes their relatives are immigrant activists. Many describe how they change the subject when someone tries bringing up contentious immigration-related subjects. Most say it's "usually not a problem."

A few months ago, I had the opportunity to ask a graduate of FLETC about how he deals with the emotionally thorny issue with family and friends. He told me that sometimes people bug their eyes out when they learn that anyone of Hispanic descent could work at an agency that has become synonymous with deporting Latin American immigrants, but that DHS is a great place to build a career.

The agency certainly provides lots of opportunities. According to DHS' Equal Employment Opportunity Program Status Report for fiscal year 2010, Hispanics were the largest minority group of employees, representing 19 percent of the workforce -- compared to Hispanics' 15 percent share of the civilian labor force. In U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Hispanics represent 35.8 percent of the total workforce.

For all the flack that DHS gets from immigrant and Hispanic advocacy groups, it is undeniable that the department provides good-paying professional jobs for Hispanics. All controversy aside, many of them get hired on without a high school diploma or college degree -- Border Patrol, for instance, is one of the few large law enforcement agencies that don't require them. That's quite a bridge to the American dream.

So congratulations to the 1,000th graduating class of the Border Patrol Academy. May your work be fulfilling, your careers exemplary -- and may your family leave politics out of the potlucks and the fiestas.

Esther J. Cepeda's e-mail address is estherjcepeda(at)washpost.com

 

 

The fine line between education and activism

BY ESTHER J. CEPEDA, Washington Post Writers Group

We are now a nation of activists living in a "movement" society. If something upsets enough of us, we try to get the situation rectified through online or actual take-to-the-streets protests.

Is it any wonder that the new Occupy-anything-you-can-think-of ethos has made its way into public school classrooms?

Last week, Brooke Harris, an English and journalism teacher at a Pontiac, Mich. charter school, said she'd been wrongly fired for encouraging her students to organize a fundraiser for Trayvon Martin, the hoodie-wearing Florida teen who was shot while making his way home from a convenience store.

Harris told The Detroit Free Press that her students wanted to donate to the Martin family the proceeds from a day when students would pay to wear hoodies to school, with the hoods covering their heads, in order to show solidarity with the slain teen.

She had gotten permission for the fundraiser from her principal but the superintendent, Jacqueline Cassell, forbade Harris from moving forward because students flouting the no-head-coverings policy would disrupt the entire school. Cassell told the Free Press that though she objected to the fundraiser, "I certainly would not use this issue as a reason to terminate anybody."

But Harris claims this is exactly what happened. "I was told I was a bad teacher, that I was being unprofessional," Harris said, "that I'm being paid to teach, not to be an activist."

OK. Raise your hand if you believe wholeheartedly that public school teachers are employed by taxpayers to educate students in the academic subjects required for high school graduation -- and not to feed students their personal political or social-issue opinions and encourage protests.

The problem is that it can be tough to spot a difference between a teacher who appropriately supports student efforts to exercise citizenship responsibilities taught in civics classes from one who serves as the impetus for an act of advocacy.

And it's not like teacher preparation programs routinely train new educators on how to teach critical thinking by addressing controversial current events and other touchy topics relevant to academic subject matter, with unbiased facts that present all sides of an argument. Such guidance usually isn't a staple of teacher orientation at schools, either.

Given that, for the most part, teachers mold young minds behind closed doors, you have to wonder how any lesson can be slanted when presented by an activist teacher who feels it is part of his or her mission as an educator to pass their politics on to students.

Yes, I said "activist" teachers. They believe that part of their job involves teaching students about the injustices of the world and how to challenge them -- which is fine, I suppose, if you happen to see eye-to-eye and heart-to-heart with a teacher's social and political beliefs.

Go ahead, residents of New York City, Milwaukee, Chicago, San Francisco, Boston and Atlanta, check out www.teacheractivistgroups.org and learn the missions of organizations such as "Teachers 4 Social Justice," "The Education for Liberation Network," and the "Collective of Radical Educators." All perfectly lovely organizations, I'm sure, if you don't mind a little anarchy with your algebra.

I called Kyle Olson, the founder of the reform organization Education Action Group, which routinely details examples of teachers who preach pro-union, anti-establishment political beliefs in their classrooms, and the author of "Indoctrination: How ‘Useful Idiots' Are Using Our Schools to Subvert American Exceptionalism." He offered an effective, nonpartisan tip for how all parents can navigate school situations that sometimes send kids home saying the darnedest things.

"Parents need to be engaged in the learning process," Olson said. "They need to ask their kids: ‘What happened at school today?' ‘What's your homework?' ‘What videos did you watch today?' If you're concerned, you need to find out more -- nothing will change until parents complain."

That works for teachers as well. Protesters are demanding Harris' reinstatement and have staged a rally for her. If she wasn't out of line and was wrongly terminated for merely enabling her pupils to support a cause that they believed in, her students' families are correct to exercise their right to complain online and on the streets to anyone who will listen. Advocacy for your children is a lesson more parents need to put into practice.

Esther J. Cepeda's e-mail address is estherjcepeda(at)washpost.com

 

 

 

Misreading the Hispanic voter

BY ESTHER J. CEPEDA, Washington Post Writers Group

Will Latinos actually have an impact on the 2012 elections? And will the Republican Party's hard line on illegal immigration drive Latino voters into the waiting arms of the incumbent deporter in chief?

I'm beyond tired of seeing these questions all over the news. They're the wrong questions.

Let's first start with the very concept of the "Latino vote."

Last week the Pew Hispanic Center released its report "When Labels Don't Fit: Hispanics and Their Views of Identity" and noted that of the 1,220 Latino adults surveyed who even care about the labels "Hispanic" or "Latino," the term "Hispanic" is favored by more than a 2-1 margin (33 percent versus 14 percent).

I was thrilled. "Latino" bugs me to no end. It's like nails on a chalkboard to me, especially when I've been asked where I'm from and the answer "Chicago" doesn't stop the questioner from insisting on guessing my ethnicity.

Since the majority of those of Hispanic/Latino origin who can live with a single ethnic label to describe a diverse group of people hailing from any of 20 Latin American countries prefer "Hispanic," can we also please start referring to them as "Hispanic voters"?

And the emphasis is on "voters" because there is no such thing as a monolithic "Hispanic vote."

Sure, you can go back 10 presidential elections and give precise numbers as to how many Hispanics voted Democrat over Republican, but that won't make a difference this fall. This November's elections will be decided on issues -- and not the ones usually associated with Hispanics.

For at least two years, Hispanics have repeatedly said that the economy -- not immigration -- is their top concern going into the 2012 presidential elections. Even early last November, following a full month of outrage after Alabama put the harshest anti-illegal immigration laws in the country into practice, 65 percent of Hispanic registered voters reported to Univision/Latino Decisions that jobs and the economy were the top concerns. Only 23 percent cited immigration.

Pew Hispanic Center data from 2002 listed education as the most important issue to Hispanic voters, with the economy trailing a strong second. A late December 2011 Pew Hispanic Center analysis ranked education as the No. 2 most important issue behind jobs among registered Hispanic voters. Health care, taxes, and the federal budget rounded out the top five.

And the ironclad belief that Hispanics only vote for Democrats? Sure, in the last few elections a majority have, but no party can comfortably rely on past numbers. In its 2002 national survey of the Latino electorate, the Pew Hispanic Center found that 49 percent of Hispanics were registered as Democrats, 26 percent as independent/other, and 20 percent as Republican.

Today, 30 percent of Hispanics consider themselves liberal, 31 percent moderate and 32 percent conservative – an almost equal distribution. But again, who will vote Democrat or Republican is the wrong question. The right one is: Will Hispanics vote at all?

A few weeks back, several journalists finally began casting doubt on whether Hispanics would actually move the dial for either candidate since Hispanic voter registration dropped 6 percent from 2008 to 2010. This gets lost, of course, in the sea of cliched story lines proclaiming that since Hispanics are the fastest-growing portion of the population, they alone will have the power to decide who wins the presidency.

For years, the nation's few Hispanic pundits have been warning that population growth is not a guarantee of political power. In a February 2011 syndicated column, "'Largest Minority' Still Means 'Nada,'" Miguel Perez put it thusly: "Perhaps the blame (for the over-hype) should go to all the politicians who have spent years telling Latinos that ‘soon, you will be the nation's largest minority group' -- as if that would solve all our problems."

Enough with trying to predict what the registered-to-vote portion of one group of very different people who happen to share some strong or weak connection to Latin America will do come Nov. 6. In fact, forget gender, race and religion, too. The only question that really matters is: Which candidate will convince the 35 percent of the general population who call themselves "moderate" that he can fix the economy?

Esther J. Cepeda's e-mail address is estherjcepeda(at)washpost.com

 

 

A wakeup call on root causes of teen pregnancy from rural Colombia

BY ESTHER J. CEPEDA, Washington Post Writers Group

What can a 10-year-old Colombian girl teach Americans about the power of a 21st-century education?

That it must be meaningful, engaging, and clearly illuminate the path to a prosperous future.

The little girl in question is being called one of the youngest mothers in history. A resident of Manaure -- a small town about a 20-hour ride north of Bogota -- she had not seen a doctor once during her pregnancy and arrived at a local hospital last week bleeding and moments from delivering a five- and-a-half-pound baby.

As part of the indigenous Wayuu people, the girl is presumably shielded from whatever environmental and cultural factors are causing girls as young as 7 to start showing signs of puberty in the United States. Yet in the Wayuu culture, it is normal for girls to be promised to men in their clan as young as 10, with the expectation that they will someday fulfill traditional duties of being a wife and rearing children.

In other words, young Wayuu girls don't have formal professions or alternative life paths in mind as they grow up.

Though one indigenous group of people in a small corner of South America is an imperfect and extreme example, this young mother's story reminded me of a recent report from the Inter-American Development Bank showing that teen girls in Peru and Paraguay don't quit school because they get pregnant. Rather, they intentionally get pregnant because it gives them a good reason to leave school.

These mothers, according to "Educational Failure: Pregnancies to Skip School," were typically already doing poorly in school because they shared the perception that completing their education would not improve their chances of having a good life. In fact, the girls in the study reported actively choosing not to use contraceptives because starting a family would give their lives meaning compared to their frustrating or boring school experience.

Now consider that, according to "The Silent Epidemic: Perspectives of High School Dropouts," a 2006 report commissioned by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the No. 1 reason young Americans cited for dropping out was "classes were not interesting." The report said students felt a lack of connection to the school environment and a perception that school is boring. Forty-two percent of respondents said that they "spent time with people who were not interested in school."

That jibes with my own experiences teaching low-income high school students. Young people grinding away in substandard schools, whether here or thousands of miles away, often wonder whether starting a family would be a good alternative to finishing high school.

The young Colombian mom can serve as a wakeup call. As a country, we're alarmed enough about students not having access to great educational resources or role models to try to reform our way out of it. But though most people know that education is the ticket to a meaningful and rewarding life, many parents and adults are not adequately selling that value proposition.

It's time to start doing a way better job of really making our at-risk and increasingly fertile-at-younger-ages children understand what kind of lives they could have if they just stay in school.

 

 

Esther J. Cepeda's e-mail address is estherjcepeda(at)washpost.com

 

 

War on women part 2: waged by women themselves

BY ESTHER J. CEPEDA, Washington Post Writers Group

Everyone's talking about the Republican "war on women." But while women's organizations across the country are steaming mad about powerful men trying to, as many feminists have referred to it, "put them in their place,” few women seem to be interested in talking about the war on women that's being perpetrated by women themselves.

Not sure what the heck I'm talking about? The crux of my complaint can be neatly summarized by the following comment made by Lee Aronsohn, the co-creator of the CBS show "Two and a Half Men," to The Hollywood Reporter last week at the Toronto Screenwriting Conference. He was referring to the explosion of female-centric entertainment aspiring to be every bit as raunchy as manly-man programming.

"Enough, ladies. I get it. You have periods," Aronsohn said, even as he applauded comedians such as Whitney Cummings and Chelsea Handler for making it socially acceptable to talk about taboo lady subjects on TV. "But we're approaching peak vagina on television, the point of labia saturation."

I couldn't agree more. I'm all for portraying women in a realistic light and for ushering in an era where women's private parts and processes can be referred to by their anatomical names instead of infantile euphemisms or vulgar words, but that utopia is not what I'm referring to.

Countless books, magazine articles, movies and TV shows are presenting women as one of "the boys," happy to talk about their body parts, raging libidos and empty desires in the basest way possible.

The people who create, portray or otherwise exploit this new female archetype for financial gain -- and, of course, the women who buy into the grossly distorted images -- are complicit in projecting a new feminine ideal of women who aren't merely willing to talk dirty, but ready to spout bathroom humor and look hot while they're at it.

OK, some male readers might quibble with me about how sexy the cast of "Bridesmaids" looked while experiencing an explosive bout of food poisoning in lavish gowns, but you get my point. By the way, that movie is a perfect example of the young, loose and crude variation of sailor-swearing sexy -- both women and men loved it so much that it made $300 million at the box office.

Washington Post movie critic Ann Hornaday recently vented about the newly widespread preponderance of female genital jokes in reference to the new film "Friends With Kids," which falls into a category comprised of supposedly more mature women behaving lewdly. She wondered if the "V-bomb" is becoming the new "F-bomb," and decried as "lamentable" this odious trend that "has made women's most private part a favorite go-to gag."

The New York Times, describing the phenomenon, said: "these quips have become de rigueur in a certain kind of entertainment directed primarily at women, badges of progressiveness that often serve only to veil the retrograde themes lurking behind them."

The sexually liberated she-wolf in scanty sheep's clothing seems to be everywhere in varying degrees of comedy and dead seriousness. You can blame men -- as everyone always does -- for demanding such images, but women are in the driver's seat an increasing amount of the time.

For example, "Girls," the soon-to-debut HBO series created by a young woman, has been widely described as a post-college version of "Sex and the City." It isn't going to be a magnet for guys -- no more, anyway, than the endless stream of "reality" TV shows that feast the eyes of mostly female viewers on dysfunctional relationships, material excess and distorted body images.

Sure, women can choose to get angry anytime a prominent man implies that that their reproductive rights are somehow contingent on their personal sexual choices. But not without admitting that women condone a certain societal view by giving their money, time and attention to countless entertainments that feed into men's degrading views of them.

Women can choose to simply avoid the steady stream of female-demeaning media as much as possible -- though it's tough considering there will always be a grocery checkout line filled with vulgar magazine come-ons for learning "naughty" sex moves packaged as "fashion."

Such sacrifice might be less satisfying to some than just bashing Republicans for their political views about reproductive rights. But, ladies, if this is what coming a long way looks like, we're in big trouble.

 

 

Esther J. Cepeda's e-mail address is estherjcepeda(at)washpost.com