BOOK REVIEW: ‘A Race for the Future’

OPINION:

A RACE FOR THE FUTURE: HOW CONSERVATIVES CAN BREAK THE LIBERAL MONOPOLY ON HISPANIC AMERICANS

By Mike Gonzalez

Crown Forum, $26, 280 pages

When President Obama decided for purely political reasons to put off all action on immigration reform until after the November elections, Rep. Luis V. Gutierrez, Illinois Democrat, an activist on immigration policy and no friend of conservatives, pointed out that the president was “playing it safe,” fearful of losing the Senate. Playing it safe, said Mr. Gutierrez, “might win an election . But it hardly ever leads to fairness, to justice, and to good public policy that you can be proud of.”

Just so. And as Mr. Gutierrez knows, that’s a basic problem with playing identity politics. But there should also be a lesson here for Hispanic voters who increasingly support politicians who promise much to special constituencies but deliver little.

Mike Gonzalez, a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation, is concerned with what has brought Hispanic Americans to this point, and how the process can be reversed. An alliance of liberal politicians, he writes in “A Race for the Future,” interested in expanding and locking in new constituents, with federal bureaucrats, always eager to expand their empires, found their model for dealing with new immigrants — “Puerto Ricans in the ’50s, Cubans in the ’60s, and Mexicans throughout” — in the civil rights movement.

A new minority group — Hispanics — was created, “Hispanics soon appeared in the list of ’protected minorities’ under several federal laws,” the Equal Opportunity Commission chimed in and “Hispanics subsequently found a place as a group on the U.S. Census form.”

“By forcing the new Latin immigrants into a minority straitjacket, the policymakers created roadblocks to assimilation . The public sphere, where all Americans were supposed to come together as one culture became atomized to the detriment of the newcomers and their children. Barriers, which always exist when immigrants come to a country, were reinforced by bureaucratic labeling.”

Thus, the creation of another group that can be played and controlled as a distinct voting bloc, persuaded of its identity as a victimized minority and conditioned to shun the concept of assimilation and subscribe to the sort of identity-politics that will keep them politically loyal. In the process, Ex Uno Plures increasingly replaces E Pluribus Unum as our nation’s motto.

Mr. Gonzalez, who spent nearly two decades as a top-flight journalist and served in the administration of George W. Bush, was born in Cuba and educated in the United States. He was married in Scotland, where his wife was born and raised. He knows his subject both personally and professionally, and “A Race for the Future” should be required reading for all conservative aspirants for political office — and that includes candidates for the presidency two years from now.

The Hispanic vote skewed heavily for Mr. Obama the last time round, but the promises made during both terms, among them immigration reform, have remained unkept. Nor is there any apparent determination to keep them. Those promises were purely political, pitched at what liberals have come to view as a collection of victims in need of government protection and charity.

But as Mr. Gonzalez points out, the “overwhelming majority of Hispanics in this country” do not fit into “the category of people who receive affirmative action,” and our political class would do well “to decry what affirmative action, family breakdown, bad schools, and dependence on welfare have done for Hispanics. This is a case, if put in this manner, that would appeal to any proud American of Latin descent.”

Hispanics, Mr. Gonzalez writes, are “an integral part of our culture,” many of whose ancestors settled here well before other ethnic groups, their contributions “deeply woven into the fabric of America.” Today, too many of the newer arrivals “are becoming trapped in an economic underclass with little chance of mobility” because “liberal policies have been put in place: the welfare state, the continuation of counterculture, the creation of a minority ethos, the end of assimilation, the start of multiculturalism. Conservatives can point the way to prosperity.”

Hispanic Americans are extremely hardworking and conscientious, the newest arrivals often taking the jobs that keep our cities functioning, our construction projects on track, our agriculture the envy of the world. They are strong believers in the sanctity of family life, religious and deeply patriotic, with a sense of honor and duty that has distinguished the Hispanic Americans with whom many of us served. As this writer can attest, they make outstanding Marines.

In short, Hispanic Americans are natural conservatives. It would be well, as Mr. Gonzalez eloquently points out in this powerful and comprehensive analysis of the Hispanic experience in America, for conservative spokesmen and politicians to call them home and make them welcome.

John R. Coyne Jr., a former White House speechwriter, is co-author of “Strictly Right: William F. Buckley Jr. and the American Conservative Movement” (Wiley).