Investigations:
Pastora San Juan Cafferty
Hispanic
lessons
The label "minority" is wholly inappropriate when applied to the
Hispanic population in the United States, says Pastora San Juan
Cafferty, a professor in the School of Social Service Administration
and the Center for Latin American Studies. Hispanics now constitute
11 percent of the nation's population, she notes, and are projected
to constitute one--quarter of the population by 2050. But, she
argues, it's not just the numbers that make "minority" so misleading,
"it is also the many ways that the diversity of the Hispanic population
mirrors our whole country's diversity."
In
Hispanics in the United States: An Agenda for the Twenty--first
Century (Transaction), Cafferty and co-editor David W. Engstrom,
AM'83, PhD'92, an associate professor of social work at New Mexico
Highlands University, call for U.S. policy makers to consider
Hispanics as a microcosm of American society and to recognize
that the challenges facing Hispanics also face society as a whole.
The
U.S. Hispanic population is often regarded as a homogenous one
because of its shared Spanish language, notes Cafferty, who emigrated
from Cuba when she was 8 years old. But in fact, she says, Hispanics
are racially very diverse. If they migrated from the Caribbean,
she explains, they may be of European descent, or of European
and African, or just of African descent. Hispanics from North
America and from Mexico may have a very strong Native American
background as well as European.
Moreover,
Cafferty says, the primary issues facing U.S. Hispanics--health
care for infants and children, education, and labor-market participation--are
matters important to the whole American population. "Because Hispanics
are the youngest group in our society, and given our labor market
and Social Security structure, Hispanics will be disproportionately
supporting the rest of us in the next century," she said in an
interview with the University's Chronicle. "So we're all
better off if Hispanics fare well educationally and in the labor
market."
Hispanics
in the United States, due out in January 2000, expands on
such themes. Cafferty and Engstrom have compiled essays by social
workers, lawyers, economists, and others with insights into the
demographics, characteristics, and concerns of U.S. Hispanics.
As editor, Cafferty says, she tried to stay away from admonishing
or exhorting public-policy makers. Rather, the essays are meant
to raise questions about how policy makers have addressed the
social problems of the Hispanic population. The writers, she says,
also approached their subjects--which include Hispanic history,
employment issues, and political involvement--with an eye toward
creating a policy agenda for the next century, not just presenting
data analysis.
In
her own essay, Cafferty, who has a doctoral degree in American
literary and cultural history from George Washington University,
examines language retention within the Hispanic community and
the many issues surrounding that loyalty, including bilingual
education. She asserts that Spanish retention remains high among
Hispanics because of the proximity of immigrants' homelands, the
pervasiveness of Hispanic heritage, and the segregation patterns
that have kept some Hispanics isolated in social and economic
ghettos. Yet Hispanics speak English as much and as well as other
ethnic groups, Cafferty says, and have been falsely placed in
the center of the English-only debate within U.S. schools and
government.
Cafferty's
previous books and articles have similarly sought to broaden decision-makers'
knowledge of immigrant populations. "The misconceptions that Hispanics
somehow are a unique migration, do not learn English, are recent
immigrants, are all Catholic--all these mythologies make for confused
public policy," she says. "We must get away from stereotypes when
setting a political agenda and define the social problems, not
respond to the stereotypes."
For
her next project, Cafferty plans to return to her literary roots
and explore diversity within popular fiction. --Molly
Tschida