Be persuaded to vote republican but only at the party impresses the communitys core values. The program is about an hour. Host mike i am fascinated by your book in particular in the title. You refer to what i think is the politically correct term of latinos as hispanics. So i would like you to dig into that and tell me why you refer to or i suppose i will put it this way, how dare you break out of the politically correct bubble of latinos and refer to hispanics. What are the roots of that . Guest thank you for that question. I think both terms are anyway false of their own way. The term hispanic for example is the product of the bureaucracy. Bureaucrats working in the Nixon Administration in the 1970s were all of a sudden faced with this big influx of new immigrants because the laws have been changed in the 1960s, a lot of whom are immigrants from latin america including me and my family by the way he came here in 1974 and its almost like they didnt know how to handle this multitude of people but more important than not, this is the aftermath of the Civil Rights Act which was created for africanamericans and then all of a sudden the bureaucracy and many of the leaders post of the activis activists. Guest the activists of the group also want to get in on the acts of the bureaucracy creates for minorities which eventually by the end of the 70s were africanamericans, hispanic, native americans and asians. So the term hispanic is created and minorities as immigrants. It sets them apart and it does so for the purpose of giving them affirmative action in government setasides read explicitly if you go back to the documents of that eric is the this is what it says and does. Host was this the governments intent or activists within the government . With activists outside partial groups putting pressure on the government collects what do you think this manifests itself in . Guest i think the answer is both. Obviously the activists especially the mexicanamerican activist, theres a famous book written in the early 70s saying mexicanamericans and they wanted to make mexicanamericans into one of the minority groups. Now i think you have to understand that the mexicanamericans rankandfile themselves is really hard. They did not want to be seen as minorities. Host most mexicanamericans at that time saw themselves as white. Guest in fact many of them still to this day if you look on the census form, this has to do with reality and. Host far be it from government to vindicate from reality. Guest government should not be involved at all erisa classifications. I mean government should strive for a colorblind policy so we can have a Colorblind Society with government from the beginning has been involved in these classifications. Out of that comes the term hispanic. I remember when i was a right. Host lets divert a little bit and talk about you. You said you obviously migrated here. From where and what were the circumstances . Guest i was born in cuba and i left cuba under horrible circumstances, communism and all that and then went to spain at the age of 12. Two years later we came here to new york. Host you must be a mets fan. Im a yankees fan. Guest im a mets fan but i did go to shea stadium a lot and i tell people i was raised under fidel castro and cisco franklin. So when i was first informed by one of my uncles and theres this new term being bandied about we are going to be called hispanics i said what . What is that about . I am cuban and what i was becoming less american. Today i see myself as a cubanamerican, as an American Perspective way. A conservative american but also a cubanamerican. Im very proud of my heritage in my lineage so i wrote the book to shine a light on the book. A lot of the books are written about hispanics and i have to use that term because its been created. It does not talk about any of these things so i wrote a race for the future to my checo line on this and we can go on about latino later but hispanics part of bureaucracy in order to give affirmative action and government benefits to this group and other groups. Host of course the term hispanic is a very inaccurate term because within that generalization of spanish were latinos there are so many subgroups. You have cubanamericans and you have got Puerto Ricans that are also caribbean and cuba is a caribbean nation but you also have Central America and then you have the oldest socalled hispanic group, mexicanamericans in the southwest. Lets dive into that little bit. The variations within the big umbrella of hispanics. Guest that is one of the worst things about these labels for hispanic or latino which i hardly ever use is that it conceals these differences and it creates the false impression in this monolithic community. Now obviously language is a very paula a powerful thing and the fact that a guatemalan immigrant can arrive here and saying argentine or cuban is very important but i can tell you a guatemalan arriving in the u. S. Would not see an argentine his compatriot and a quarter mall in american would have much more in common with americans who are not hispanic then she would say venezuela. So i think yes the language at bowery a very powerful bond we both agree. Host any other ties . Obviously language is the most obvious tie among the various latino subgroups that are there any other ties that you are aware of in researching the bo book . I was inspired as a young man meeting thomas soul who im sure we both admire and he wrote a book called ethnic america. I saw your book is almost, almost an improvement in that it dug even deeper into the various ethnics which focus on latinos were hispanics. But im just fascinated by the way you go to the history and not only diversity it seems to me the purpose of the book is not only diversity among the different hispanic groups but generationally theres a difference as well. Guest i think that is a very important point and i go on and i look into this deeply in a race for the future. Take mexicanamericans. You know to begin with is a misnomer in many ways. Some mexicanamericans have never belonged to the spanish colony of mexico. By the way the thing they have in common is that we were all colonized by either spain or portugal so thats a very powerful thing. These are very different. The cuisine of mexico is very different from the cuisine of cuba. Cubans and Puerto Ricans share many traits, many ethnic cultural culinary traits. We both like baseball and in south america they play baseball and when i got to spain i was a 12yearold boy and at recess i had to play soccer with spaniards who had been playing soccer since they were born. Host you had a little bit of a disadvantage, did you . Guest it was very humblin humbling. As a cuban i came out with the bad in my hand but lets take mexicanamericans. Its very important. Host the largest of the subgroups by far. Guest 66 of hispanic americans are mexicans and by far the largest and the most important. Their cultural imprint in the southwest cannot be denied. It has to be taken into account. I compared only to the influence of the scotchirish in appalachia and the south. I was just in scotland for example and if you listen to scottish music you recognize its appalacian. Its the same thing. Host are you in the middle of a Hatfield Mccoy feud here . Guest exactly. You go to texas and mexico and colorado and its the same thing. The culture and influence, the couple errors nothing without us lasso and his rodeo. The hat, well its not sure that it came from mexico. I may not go there but the cowboy many are seen with the traits of the cowboy is his stoicism. His individualism. He can be traced to the mexican man so mexicans have this very important imprint and especially new mexicans can trace their ancestry to the 1500s. I talked to a mexican that i put in my books up for very proud of that. He says one of my ancestors came as the spanish conquistador who cross the rio grande. Cubans and americans like me began to arrive in 1959 obviously because of the communist rival of fidel castro and have a complete now its true there was a cuban migration in the 1900s and 1800s to tampa and key west that the cuban migration began. We have been here since the 60s. Puerto ricans are not immigrants. They were born in the state of puerto rico which is obviously they can vote as soon as they arrive. Host in fact its fascinating in a talk about this in your book duality among Puerto Ricans in among Puerto Ricans and the one sense they are not as assimilated as some of the other groups that calm to the United States but they are born american citizens. Talk about that a little bit. Guest they dont experience the cultural guillotine. You will arrive in your cut off from the country of origin. Host as an africanamerican or black american i know nothing about this guillotine. Guest its fascinating africanamericans have gone back to africa to their roots. Traditionally many of the european went back to sicily and ireland and were cut off from her home country. In fact some immigrant communities keep traditions here that have disappeared in their homeland. Its the case with many germanamericans for several generations have german traditions that have disappeared in germany proper. Host its fascinating essay that and im a big fan of brazil. I went to el salvador and i found there were some traditions that the african transplants to brazil had kept their somewhat so that now you have west africans going to kind of like a reverse culture going to learn some of the cultural ancient cultural traditions that they have lost. Guest is a similar situation with cuba which is second only to brazil and perhaps second only to cuba and having a large and important africanamerican culture. Host a lot of people dont make that presumption. Dive diving that a little bit because the members people that immigrated after 1959 after the rise of castro, was this a mixture of cubans . Was that african cubans disproportionately . Was that european cubans are white cubans, mixed cubans . Guest obviously many mixed cubans came as well. What i have heard is that his cubans came in to florida they have a segregated state and black cubans were. They could not stand being segregated from their former compatriots so then they moved up north. Those that had a very important colony of cubans in new jersey starting in the 60s and now i dont know that for a fact that i have heard that this was something that happened in florida that black cubans that im not going to be segregated. They moved to new jersey north where there was no segregation. So yes, the socalled Hispanic Community was very varied. I think the term hispanic, i dont like its origins in fact because i dont think chavez and i dont want to hammer what she said that she said victimization robs hispanics of real power and i completely agree with that. The history of immigration in this country is crawling through broken glass to succeed. The italians did it, the average did at the bohemian stated. With hispanics is the first time the federal government intervenes and says no we must help you and it happens because they come in the 70s when theirs is the idea that the federal government must be there. Host lets drill down into that a little bit more. Tell us how this new classification enabling hispanics or latinos to have access to affirmative action into government benefits and to see themselves as differently, how is that hindered the traditional process of assimilation and immigration . Guest it sets them apart. Draws a line between them and the early immigrants and says you know you are different. You dont aspire to what they did in fact its unfortunate that we have done this is a country throw out roadblocks to assimilation. Our schools which were the cauldron where the melting pot happened. Schools were set up by the Founding Fathers from the beginning. Jefferson was very interested in education. He set out at the university of virginia. He understood that he was there and that Republican Values needed to be taught. Host that small r republican. Guest of course. When they asked if they could keep that they were concerned about keeping a about keeping the republican about Republican Values would be taught at the Public School level and they were until sometime in the middle of the 20th century. Host the progressive area. Guest the progressives tried it and lost and now what you have is we no longer assimilate in the Public School system and we no longer teach civic values. The civic values teach how to demonstrate. Host how to balkanize. Guest how to balkanize. Host under the guise of multiculturalism and the importance of multiculturalism. Host by the way its a very worrying thing. Let me go back to what i said and i coded into it in a race for the future at this battle was formed in the 1920s by progressives Randolph Bourne and Horace Callan and marcuse who wanted to have what they call the transnational america which was a play where you would have different pockets, federation of different nations is what they call that. They lost that fight to the abolitionists. Assimilation is one and that we have as oversold as a country close together thats able to fight world war ii as a country. You have to see these movies from world war ii. As a guy from her brooklyn in a mexican guy from texas on an irish guy from boston and a waspish guy and they are all coming together to fight in these john ways john wayne movies. Randolph bourne they never gave up. This is what you see today. Its the same ideology. Not the same people but these are the ideological heirs. Host i think its an excellent point and i think its important that they we communicate that more and more. These are americans that are pushing this balkanization and breaking away from the small r Republican Values that sustained us as a country. These are not formed. Guest herbert marcuse. Host this is something that is not coming across because of immigrants. Oftentimes is something that is given to immigrants were forcefed to immigrants. Guest thats the thing. We see immigrants have especially hispanics as agents of change. The people who want to fundamentally transform america to quote one famous progressive see hispanics at as agents of change and i go into this in my book a race for the future. I make an argument that hispanics can and should be agents for conserving our traditional values and americas place in the world. We are seeing right now in the summer of 2014 what happens when America Withdraws from being the leader in the world. Hispanics, conservatives need to join the battle, join this battle and in the subtitle of my book i say how hispanic they can break the monopoly over hispanics. The liberal monopoly over hispanics. To some degree we need to engage because hispanics need to be reached out to. They cannot just received one message. The description of america as a racist place as a place thats so unfair that hispanics need government intervention. Host actually that does cut against usually those who immigrate to the United States because when i come to United States they are not coming to a miserable racist nation. They are coming for success. Guest they are attracted by fundamentally two things, our liberty and our prosperity. This is where my family came here looking for in the 1970s to use us as agents of change to transform this historical experiment in selfgovernment that is produced so much liberty and so much prosperity. Its something i felt i had to fight again so i wrote a book. Conservatives have to reach out to hispanics with an unabashed in Norman Rockwell vision of america would still exist. We are country people pitching in together, helping each other. The only Government Official and its a wonderful life was the bank examiner. Host he is the bad guy. Guest in the end he so its a wonderful life is about a americans pitching in together regular americans immigrants and i think we have to go out and tell hispanics this is america. Dont listen to liberals and give them the mobility message, you know how to repair human capital, how to repair social capital and how to make sure they have Financial Capital in the bank account. Host absolutely one of the things you talk about your book is the breakdown in the family because traditionally those conservatives that have had the vision that you and i both share that we need to reach out to minorities and latinos and africanamericans and the like have always had a stereotype. Its a good stereotype which is latinos are hispanics are natural conservatives and they believe in family values and have stronger values. To my great chagrin when i was reading your book that may at one time been the case among hispanics but unfortunately you are following a lot of the trends that exist here in United States particularly unfortunately among my people, black americans which is the breakdown of the family. Guest riggins used to say hispanics are conservatives and just dont know it yet. Hispanics have fundamental characteristics that are conservative. For example hispanics are well represented in the armed forces. Hispanics have a strong work ethic. The immigrant hispanics and i looked at the statistics, have labor petition patient that rivals that of native americans. Hispanics believe in the Strong Family and hispanics especially mexicanamericans go to church however what has happened because the bulk of the demographic change has come from 1965 just as we have a social tearing down of the norms that have been in this country for generations in decades, we have many immigrants the culture that was presented to them. Host they have assimilated, just as some like it to some of the negative social pathologies. Guest sociologists use the term downward association. The horrifying statistic is the out of wedlock rate which is high for hispanics as a whole now, its different for different groups with high for all groups even cubanamericans. For hispanics as a whole was 53 . Host wow and that would have been the case a generation ago. Guest no, no. Let me give you statistics for cubans. I believe last year was 40 . 10 years ago was 29 . Very similar to the out of wedlock rate of nonhispanic whites. Illegitimacy is a problem because it stands upstream from a lot of social iss