Our recently returned colleague has left a passionately composed post (below) that has apparently garnered some attention. After having read it a couple times I see that, in fact, Randyman has made several accurate statements. However, what catches my attention is everything that he didn't say. And the omissions are glaring. His piece is similar to an L.A. Times article from the mid 90's when the paper, under former management, was engaging in self-imposed censorship in an effort to lure Hispanic readers in a city that has grown increasingly Latino. It didn't work then because people knew it wasn't the truth and the paper backtracked when subscriptions began to get cancelled. Accuracy has its own inherent value so let me provide you with some here.
As I am both a Los Angeleno of 3 decades and, more specifically, someone who does not readily sacrifice truth at the altar of political correctness, I'll use this post to fill out what Randyman didn't say and clarify some points where what he wrote might mislead people.
Chicanos have not been as successful at achieving the American dream as what was written below would suggest. In Randy's home state of California, where a significant chunk of the Mexican-American population resides, Chicanos are statistically overrepresented in 1) prison, 2) the criminal justice system, 3) teenage pregnancies, 4) high school dropout rates, 5) arrests for possession of controlled substances, 6) truancy, 7) claims for deliquent child support payments, and 8) illiteracy rates.
And the statistical overrepresentations are not insignificant or slight. This is reality in Los Angeles and the rest of the state.
Also, as any longtime Los Angeles resident is aware, predominantly Chicano areas such as Pico Rivera, Maywood, South Central Los Angeles and East L.A. (and increasingly Inglewood which is now approximately half black and half Latino) have crime rates that reflect 3 and 4 times the amount of street crime incidents as occur in some other parts of Southern California.
The post below also does not reflect the reality that the author's grandchildren face if they are enrolled at Los Angeles Unified School District campuses. That cute little girl who appears with Randy in the picture he keeps on his homepage, as a Chicano, will have about a 51% chance of graduating with a high school diploma in an educational district wherein 71.4% of of the students are Latinos (about 55% of the entire LAUSD student population has Mexican ancestry). As a longtime Los Angeles resident would be aware, the performance of the LAUSD has simultaneously plummeted like a stone during the past two decades as the Chicano population it teaches has grown in leaps and bounds. This sad reality is reflected in Los Angeles' best post-secondary institutions as well. In a county (Los Angeles) where Mexican-Americans are more populous than blacks, Asians, and roughly present in equal numbers to whites, they represent only 10% of the students enrolled at the city's four best universities - UCLA, USC, Pepperdine and Loyola Marymount. This makes Chicanos far less successful as immigrants in comparison to other recent arrivees such as Persians, Russian Jews and Chinese.
The post below also talks about "many obstacles" faced by Mexican-Americans. But the elephant in the room that is not mentioned is that Chicanos who, as an ethnic group, have one of the lowest average household incomes in the country, are shooting themselves in the feet with a culture that places little emphasis on formal education and whose members commonly have children they are unable to afford without government assistance.
The reality of all these factors mixed together? Chicanos in the U.S. consume more services provided by the government than their tax dollars generate. And this is according to the U.S. Census Bureau, it is not a matter of opinion.
As to inferences that "we are not illegal immigrants" and "we can read and write and speak English quite well," these observations are plainly overbroad. I'm confident they apply to Randyman and his family, however, as a Los Angeleno he passes by at least dozens of Mexican-Americans each day of whom these things are not true.
Also, the suggestion that Chicanos have "suddenly become foreigners in their own homeland," is almost entirely divorced from reality. At the time California was annexed by the United States there were, by some estimates, about 5000 Mexican nationals here. The ENORMOUS majority of people of Mexican ancestry present in this country knowingly migrated, or have relatives/ancestors who migrated, into the U.S. after the Rio Grande River became the defacto border. And this applies to the entire country, not just the Golden State.
The bottom line - as a collective, Chicanos represent little more than cheap American labor and a steady source of income for this country's poorer neighbor to the immediate south.
