About one in five Americans today are
Hispanic. One in four students enrolled
in our schools today, K through 12, are
Hispanic. Just over one-third of all
Catholics in the United States are
Hispanic. Who should that interest?
I would argue it interests all of us. If we
understand this community better it
allows us to make better strategic
decisions as to what kind of a country we
want to leave for our children. In
fact, this community might represent the
ideal America that we all have always
aspired for our country to be.
Five fellow political scientists and myself
got together and we decided to put
together a data set that would actually
help inform the national understanding
of what it means to the country to have
this growing Latino population
increasingly present in more parts of
the country than ever before. From this
survey, we are now on our third and final
volume, and here we are developing the
analysis based upon an understanding
that they are a community that is
characterized by a set of what we call
multiple identities. This community today,
even across generations, simultaneously
identifies very strongly with their
country of origin, but at the same time
they also identify very strongly as
pan-ethnic Latinos or Hispanics. Notice
I am not saying they are one or the other.
They are both/and. But they also
identify very strongly as Americans.
Previous research had shown that folks
by generation very quickly transitioned
from identifying first and foremost with
their country of origin and later with
their American identity. We found that
that's not the case anymore. So we are
using this concept of multiple
identities to then explain how it is
that Latinos understand themselves in
American politics.
So, for example, we found that the
strongest reason that Latinos give for
wanting to vote for Canada is because of
similar issue positions. So, are they
ethnic voters? Yes, to a degree, but
they are more substantive policy issue
voters which many of us would say is the
ideal kind of voter that you would want
and completely consistent with the
American tradition. I would like to continue
to do this research to especially
understand how those different political
identities provide new opportunities for
our political system to become more
civically engaged than ever before. I
want to do research that provides some
hints to both major political parties as
to how it is that they might be able to
make effective appeals to Latino
communities and through Latino
communities to many other communities
across the United States. My approach to
teaching graduate students is to find
what their research passion is and then
to support them in understanding how
that research can help political
institutions, can help countries, can help
citizens more effectively determine what
they might want their futures to be.
Should they at a particular time in
their career have the opportunity to
work outside of the academy, then I think
I will have done my job to be able to
support them along multiple dimensions
of their own personal development as
scholars and as citizens.
