Racial Discrimination and Hispanics in the United States
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Racial Discrimination and Hispanics in the United States
Hispanics, since coming to the United States have had to deal with a great amount of prejudice and discrimination, having to endure multiple different types of discrimination as well. Members of todays society hold notions of Hispanics that they have been brought up to have. Mostly, it is not their fault that they have these notions, as it is just the way that they were brought up in the world and that this is the way the world and society as a whole think Hispanics are. Society holds some bias against Hispanics especially because they retain their language and speak it openly. What society fails to understand is that in coming to the United States, they have had to leave pretty much everything behind in terms of their regular lifestyles, cultures, and beliefs. The Hispanic people have had to adapt to the lifestyles of America, learning and assimilating the American lifestyle and culture while putting their own away in order to work in this society. The Hispanic language seems like the only form of their culture and heritage that they can keep around, so they do and embrace that.
Hispanics in the Work Force
Hispanics, due to whatever mechanic seems to be in place, be it discrimination, poor funding, or lack of interest seem to not do well in school. According to Crockett (2004) “Only 57% of Hispanics age 25 or older have completed four years of high school, and just 11% of Hispanics have at least four years of college.” Also by Crockett (2004) “Economists say schools in the Latin American homelands of many of these workers are often inferior to the worst public schools in the U.S. And once people move here, immigrants generally prefer a paycheck — which they often share with their families back home — to a report card. Hence, many Hispanics dont develop the skills needed to land white-collar jobs.” It is then this sense of mind that leads to powerful individuals, namely owners of corporations, taking advantage of Hispanics and paying them low wages in exchange for hard work. The Hispanic people just want a paycheck, so they will take mostly any job that they can get, and the above mentioned Powerful Individuals are all too eager to hire cheap labor. This then leads to Hispanics having a less apparent unemployment rate than other minorities, but at the cost of themselves being taken advantage of them by others who have no shame in doing so, as long as it lines their pockets with more money.
Of course, there is also a flip side to this issue, while some Hispanics apparently have no trouble finding jobs, others find that discrimination bars them from every getting a job in the first place. HRMagazine (2003) states that “The National Survey of Latinos, conducted by the Washington, D.C.-based Pew Hispanic Center with the assistance of the Kaiser Family Foundation, found 31 percent of the approximately 3,000 Hispanics polled reported that they or someone close to them had suffered job discrimination in the past five years because of their racial or ethnic background. Fourteen percent reported experiencing employment-related bias personally, including not being hired for a job or not being promoted because of their race or ethnicity.” More said in this survey that discrimination stops them, from succeeding in life in general. Having been discriminated against leads to drops in work performance as well as performance in school. Most said that in speaking their native language or just the way that they looked lead to them being discriminated against. The study goes on further to say that a larger number of Hispanics with a college level education will be needed to combat against the retiring baby boom generation.
In more recent news, the state of Arizona enacted a law that allows police and other government officials to question and detain any individual that they believe to be in the United States illegally. It allows the police to either fine or imprison those that they question that do not have the required identification. In a quote taken by Garrahan (2010) Nely Aguilar states that “”The police will be able to detain anyone based on the