 or years, Hispanic advocacy organizations have denied that they are in any way anti-white or anti-American. Groups such as LULAC, MALDEF, and La Raza have continually maintained that they exist solely to promote equal rights for all. The policy proclamations and mission statements of these organizations proudly proclaim their devotion to equal treatment for everyone regardless of ethnicity, and insist they harbor a deep and abiding loathing of any kind of racial or ethnic discrimination, which they vow to fight with all the means at their disposal.
But an examination of the actual composition of the leadership, boards, and staffs of these organizations reveals a rather different picture. Far from embracing the multi-ethnic diversity they advocate, these groups actually practice the opposite. Their own publicly available documents show that while they demand diversity and non-discrimination from the society at large in which they operate, they themselves prefer to practice discrimination in favor of Hispanics against non-Hispanics.
Consider LULAC, the League of United Latin American Citizens. LULAC says it is the largest and the oldest Hispanic advocacy group in the U.S. President Hector M. Flores says "LULAC's mission includes the goal of eliminating prejudice and removing barriers based on ethnic discrimination..." LULAC even published "A Civil Rights Guide to Build a Prosperous America" to help eliminate ethnic discrimation in the larger American society. In the section on policy and procedure, the civil rights guide says "the basic program of LULAC is to fight discrimation based on race, ethnicity or national origin."
But does LULAC practice what it preaches? Of the 24 members of its national executive committee, only two have non-Hispanic names. Executive Director Brent A. Wilkes and Vice President for Women Margaret Moran constitute less than 1 percent of the total executive committee, whose members are named Flores, Dovalina, Arriaga, Ortiz, Vargas, Medrano, Montanez, Cardenas, Garcia, Rivera, Rosales, Rodriguez-Slazar, Rodriguez, Velarde, Vera, Munoz, Palomares, Venegas Filberth, Roybal, and Martinez.
LULAC's national board of directors is just as ethnically pure. Except for R. Shawn McGrew in Arkansas, the 30 members of LULAC's national board listed in its civil rights guide have these Hispanic names: Rosales, Garcia, Cordova, Madrid, Rocha, Vargas, Romero, Martinez, Sierra, Sanchez, Vasquez Wilcox, Torres Caskey, Santos Adams, Soto, Esqivel, Luevano, Rivera, De Palma, Cruz, Rodriguez-Salazar, Medrano, Gonzalez, del Villar, and Pena. Ironically, persons with non-Hispanic names have even been kept off the civil rights manual update task force, except for three, Andrea Elliot, Jodi Perry, and Anne Marie Weiss, according to a list in the booklet. The other members are named Flores, Garcia, Sambrano, Vecchio, Levario, Ramos-Kaiwi, Reyes, Elizondo, Chacon, Alvarez, Rosales, Palomares, Navarro, Velasquez, Juarez, Salgado, Lara, Hernandez, Pena, and Robles.
LULAC is not alone. The Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund gives the cold shoulder to non-Hispanics too, despite its noisy chest-thumping about fighting "discrimination."
On its Web site, MALDEF brags that it "defends working class people against unfair employment practices" and notes that it is currently pursuing a case against an upscale Beverly Hills restaurant. MALDEF complains the restaurant "maintains an entirely non-Latino staff of servers and food runners" while Latinos are allegedly relegated to the bussing staff. MALDEF says its suit "challenges the restaurant's pattern of discriminatory hiring..."
But MALDEF has its own pattern of apparent ethnic favoritism, as revealed by a staff listing on its own Web site.
Of its seven-member executive staff, Charles Kamasaki and Gerald Borenstein are the only ones with non-Hispanic names. The others are named Murguia, Munoz, Diaz, Navarret,and Pompa.
In its regional offices, most of the top jobs go to Hispanics. In the Chicago office, Ricardo Meza is regional counsel; Rocio Santos, receptionist; Angie Flores, senior legal secretary; Jennifer Nagda, staff attorney; Veronica Reyes, parent school partnership director, and Virginia Martinez, legislative staff attorney. In Los Angeles, John Trasvina is president and general counsel; Gina Montoya, chief administrative officer; Olivia Paniagua, executive assistant; Carlito Manasa, building engineer; Cleotilde Rodgriguez, receptionist; Christine Martinez, director of human resources; Cynthia Valenzuela, director of litigation; Myra Navarro-Casillas, national legislative staff attorney; Magdalena Guadalupe, paralegal; Nancy Ramierez, L.A. regional counsel; Nicholas Espiritu, staff attorney; Jacqueline Matinez, legal secretary; Anna Godinez, legal secretary; Martha Torres-Vega, paralegal; Araceli Simeon-Luna, parent-school partnership director; Rocio Albarran, alumni affairs coordinator; Ana Paula Noguez, domestic violence prevention coordinator; Vilma Moreno, secretary; Adrian Sandoval, Los Angeles PSP director; Sara Zapata-Mijares, hometown association project coordinator; Monica De La Torre, youth leadership program coordinator; Etelvina De La Torre, director of development; Dahyana Cortez, development associate; Cecilia Chavira, secretary. Only six persons, including a few in the finance department, did not seem to have Hispanic names.
The overwhelming dominance of Hispanic names also appeared in MALDEF's staff listing for the other regional offices in Sacramento, San Antonio, and Washington, D.C.
Completing the pattern is the National Council of La Raza. On its Web site, NCLR describes its "institutional values" this way: "We strive for a society that is fair; and like charity, fairness needs to begin at home. We will treat each other and those with whom we work in a fair and equitable way. . . We are, after all, a civil rights organization, and we abhor discriminatory practices based on factors such as gender, ethnicity, race, religion, sexual orientation, non-job related physical limitations, or political affiliation. Our commitment to equality of opportunity goes beyond what is required by law. We seek to be an example." A display of the names of La Raza's 30-member executive committee reveals that not one of them has a non-Hispanic name.
|
