Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Of more than 9,300 bills sponsored by representatives during the 109th Congress, I identify 47 explicitly-Latino interest bills, 211 implicitly-Latino interest bills, and 103 anti-Latino interest bills. Using a negative binomial regression model I examine whether Latino representatives sponsor more Latino interest Legislation than their non-Latino counterparts. Findings show that Latino representatives, with one exception, did not sponsor anti-Latino interest legislation. Latino representatives did not sponsor more legislation that implicitly addresses Latino interests than did non-Latino representatives. However, Latino representatives did sponsor more legislation that addresses Latino interests explicitly. In both cases, sponsorship of bills that address Latino interests varied positively with the size of Latino populations in congressional districts. These findings are significant given the important role such bills can play in raising new “Latino issues," in crystallizing Latino interests, and in enhancing a "Latino voice" in Congress.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Heuristic devices have often been posited as a potential aid to low information voters seeking to make a ?correct? vote choice, i.e. one that serves their perceived policy interests. Heuristics are seen, then, as a substitute for ?hard? political information about the policy preferences of the candidates. More recently, however, some have become to question whether reliance on cognitive short-cuts and symbols might actually undermine the collection of politically useful accurate information.
In this effort, we evaluate the role that heuristics and symbols played in the political choices made by Latino citizens in the 2000 presidential election. Using a Fall 2000, pre-election poll, conducted by the Tom?s Rivera Policy Institute (TRPI), we measure political sophistication by using a direct measure of knowledge-in-use, that is, the amount of hard political information on candidate issue positions held by each respondent. When we model this level of information, we find, first, that candidate likeability is strongly and negatively associated with the amount of accurate issue information held by respondents. We also find that levels of information interact with determinants of vote choice. Specifically, while the likeability heuristic appears to be at work in the voting calculus of many Latino citizens, its impact?along with that of the symbolic appeal of Bush?s Spanish speaking ability?crowds out the impact of more issue-based information, such as candidate issue position, among low information respondents. By contrast, issues matter to high information respondents. Our findings are consistent with earlier work in an experimental setting and are of particular importance in a community historically disadvantaged in terms of the usual determinants of political sophistication.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: There is power in numbers, and we are now beginning to see that the increasing proportion of racial/ethnic minorities in the United States is having a significant impact on electoral politics. Utilizing data from the 1999 Washington Post/Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation/Harvard University National Survey on Latinos in America, I examine individual attitudes of Latinos and their propensity to motivate affinity toward African Americans. The driving theory of this analysis is that perceived commonality between Blacks and Latinos is integral to constructing political associations at the mass level. The statistical analysis provides strong support for the contention that Latino internal commonality leads to greater commonality with African Americans, Therefore panethnicity, or a common identity among Latinos of different origin groups is a necessary component of common identity with external groups.

Perceived discrimination also suggests that group consciousness has a meaningful impact on commonality with Blacks. As expected, Latinos who believe that discrimination is a major problem for Latinos are more likely to express commonality with African Americans. Recognizing that your group faces external discrimination provides the basis for commonality, as this connects individuals to the larger experience of being a racial/ethnic minority in the United States. In regard to national origin, it is clear that Caribbean Latinos (Puerto Rican/Dominicans) and Cubans are more likely to believe that they share similarities with African Americans. These perceptions are strongest among Caribbean Latinos who live in close proximity to African Americans and face similar circumstances to African Americans due to their skin color.

Supporting Publications:
Supporting Document

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: After decades of being ignored, urban Latino youths are now regarded in the corporate realm as the “hottest” and fastest-growing segment of American consumers. Pegged by marketing boosters as “New Generation Latino,” this highly desirable group consists of predominantly U.S.-born second-, third-, and fourth-generation young adults who consume mostly English-language media and represent over $300 billion in purchasing power. Yet targeting this group – the most affluent and educated segment of the entire Hispanic market – is typically posed as a “challenge” because it requires marketers to capture the complex bilingual, bicultural sensibilities of its members, who define themselves in relation to dominant Anglo-American culture both in terms of sameness and difference: although they for the most part speak the same language and consume many of the same products as their white suburban (and black inner-city) age cohorts, young Latinos increasingly feel compelled to assert cultural pride within the mediaworlds they navigate. This is especially true for Mexican Americans, by far the largest national-origin segment and most commonly the victims of xenophobic hysteria. This paper is devoted to enumerating the strategies currently used to target New Generation Latino, and framing the “challenge” posed by such efforts within broader social tensions – tensions within the national-origin hierarchy of Latinidad as well as within U.S. society as a whole, where the cultural, economic, racial, and indeed citizenship status of Latino youths is constantly contested.

This discussion keys in especially on the use of popular music in attempts to create new media and marketing strategies to reach Latino youth. Choices in musical genre are a revealing indicator of numerous assumptions within the cultural industries about Latino youths’ social location – their status and belonging in American society and their “value” as consumers and citizens. After years of foundering with campaigns laced with tropical-pop and rock en español sounds, corporate marketers have finally begun to acknowledge that Latino youths identify strongly as part of the “hip-hop generation.” Although the move toward hip-hop represents a more accurate “in-culture” understanding of the lived experiences of urban Latinos, it is important to note that the sounds favored by Chicanos – banda, norteño, and new “urban regional” fusions of traditional Mexican music with hip-hop – are elided within this newly formed marketing model, despite the fact that such sounds dominate the Billboard Latin charts and Arbitron ratings in major Hispanic markets. This elision serves as a testament to the continuing denigration of Mexican-American expressive culture in the U.S., providing a revealing instance in which the profit logic of capitalism is trumped by racialized reasoning that places Chicanos on the bottom rungs of both Latinidad and American society.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Although, traditionally national origin identities have been preferred over the Latino identity, many Latinos have now started to prefer the latter. However, there is still relatively little known about how the pan-ethnic Latino identity is developed and what its implications are for understanding Latino politics. The focus of this study is on the effects of Latino subgroup interactions on attachments to pan-ethnic identities and preference for Latino candidates. The Latino population continues to grow, becoming more diverse with a larger number of immigrants coming from distinct parts of Latin America thus creating more opportunities for interactions between different communities. The hypothesis offered suggests that as Latinos of different national origins come into more frequent contact with one another they will become more likely to accept pan-ethnic identities and loosen their attachment to national origin identities. The 2006 Latino National Survey and the 2006 American Community Survey are used to create a multi-level model for Latino Identity and preferences for a Latino candidate. Interactions among subgroups are measured by looking at marriages between individuals of different national origins and by creating an index that measures national origin diversity within different metropolitan areas. A preliminary analysis suggests that Latino inter-group marriages have a positive effect on Latino identity. By further exploring Latino heterogeneity this study can offer a much needed insight of how the changing demographics could either help—or undermine—the salience of pan-ethnic identities and preference for a co-ethnic Latino candidate.