Raul A. Reyes: U.S. Latinos Have No Single Leader, and That's a Good Thing
[Raul A. Reyes is an attorney and columnist in New York City.]
César Chávez loomed large in my childhood home. Like virtually all Mexican-American households in the late 1960s and early 1970s, my entire family observed his boycotts in support of the United Farm Workers. Even as a kid, I knew Mr. Chávez was "one of us," and he was fighting for justice. This made up for the fact that I went years without eating grapes.
Since then, the nation's Latino leadership has evolved. Or has it?
Recently, the Pew Hispanic Center released the results of a nationwide bilingual survey of Latinos. Asked whom they considered the most important Latino leader today, 64 percent said they didn't know; 10 percent said "no one." Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor was the third most-popular answer. She was mentioned by 7 percent.
Pew noted that Hispanics do not have a unifying figure comparable to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Susan B. Anthony, or Chávez in his heyday. This led many in the media to speculate that the nation's largest and fastest-growing minority group is suffering from a lack of leadership....
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César Chávez loomed large in my childhood home. Like virtually all Mexican-American households in the late 1960s and early 1970s, my entire family observed his boycotts in support of the United Farm Workers. Even as a kid, I knew Mr. Chávez was "one of us," and he was fighting for justice. This made up for the fact that I went years without eating grapes.
Since then, the nation's Latino leadership has evolved. Or has it?
Recently, the Pew Hispanic Center released the results of a nationwide bilingual survey of Latinos. Asked whom they considered the most important Latino leader today, 64 percent said they didn't know; 10 percent said "no one." Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor was the third most-popular answer. She was mentioned by 7 percent.
Pew noted that Hispanics do not have a unifying figure comparable to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Susan B. Anthony, or Chávez in his heyday. This led many in the media to speculate that the nation's largest and fastest-growing minority group is suffering from a lack of leadership....