This Is Supposed to Show that Democrats Know Latinos Better?
A few months ago, I read about some former Clinton Adminstration Latinos deciding to take into their own hands Hispanic outreach. Seems they didn’t like the idea of the Democratic National Committee dealing with Latinos on a state-by-state basis. Instead, these DC insiders apparently thought, it would be better to create a DC-based Hispanic Strategy Center under the auspices of NDN, the well-intentioned political organization whose unfortunate strategy for all things Hispanic has always been do more Spanish-language media. This despite the fact that most Latino voters speak English. And despite the fact that Latinos are such a diverse group of people.
As I’ve written elsewhere, “Not only does a first-generation Mexican factory worker in Ohio have little in common with a first-generation Cuban doctor in Florida, but he also has little in common with a sixth-generation Mexican-American business owner in New Mexico. Democrats need to do a better job of speaking separately to all the diverse subgroups that make up the ethnic category that is Latinos.” So I was more than a little skeptical about the idea of yet another DC-centric strategy.
NDN’s immigration ad has done nothing to reassure me.
It’s very well-done, don’t get me wrong. Very evocative. Even if you don’t speak Spanish, please click here to listen to it. See what images it brings to mind.
Me, I think of a town square in a dusty Mexican town, a old man in his colorful serape with his trusty burro by his side.
What this has to do with the current American immigrant experience I have no idea. I haven’t played the ad for my Central American parents yet, but I’m sure it will mean less than nothing to them. On the other hand, I have talked to some Mexican-Americans who find the ad nothing less than offensive.
Among the ironies here is that the title of the ad is “How Little They Know Us.” The “they” in the title refers to Republicans on the wrong side of the immigration debate. I’m not sure a radio ad playing on tired stereotypes is going to do much to convince recent immigrants that Democrats know them any better. The more we get out of DC and listen to all the different kinds of Latinos - including all the different kinds of Mexican-Americans - in the places where they live, the better we Democrats will do at tapping into the tremendously underutilized potential of the Latino vote.
[Update:] My Texas blogger friend, Stace Medellin, has his take on the ad here.
June 7th, 2006 at 8:22 am
You are, of course, right on the business of the differences among the members of the Hispanic family. As you know, a Texas Mexican American is different from a Californian, Arizonan, and New Mexican
also. But like any family, we share more than a name, a common history, many traits, a feeling of belonging, unity…yes unity.
Like our “Anglo” counterparts, we may differ in philosophy, politics, and government. But as a consultant, perhaps you should be concerned with the emphasis. Republicans are reaching out to Hispanics. Democrats are attacking the Republicans for not knowing us. Hispanics have been in the Democratic Party the longest. Yet, as you say, they don’t know us either. Shame on them. Shame on us. We should be ourselves in either party. We should be leading instead of following.
Look at the American Jew. The Jewish community is always consulted on anything that has to do with Israel and the Middle East. What are we? Chop liver?
June 10th, 2006 at 11:07 am
[…] « This Is Supposed to Show that Democrats Know Latinos Better? […]