✽Ushering In A NEW ERA FOR
Latinos
BY ALMA MORALES RIOJAS
When Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s nomination hearings for the U.S. Supreme Court began, a
national news network called MANA’s office in Washington, D.C., looking for “a wise Latina” to
interview. With confidence and pride, the young Latina who answered our phone responded,
“You called the right place.” That instant, I knew that Justice Sotomayor’s nomination alone had a
powerful impact—especially on Latinas.
But what influence will Sotomayor
have on others? Will this educated,
accomplished leader serve as a
positive role model and have an
impact on corporate America?
As president and CEO of the
oldest, largest Latina organization
in the nation, I have spent a significant amount of time addressing
and trying to find solutions to the
absence of Latina executives in
corporations. My work as former
chair of the board of directors
of the Hispanic Association on
Corporate Responsibility (HACR)
has also been focused on the
presence of Latinos in corporations. The group’s mission: to
ensure the governing board and
top echelons of companies include
Latinos, because having champions at those levels has proven to
have a direct effect on the recruitment and retention of Latinos at
all levels.
An Untapped Market
The U.S. Census Bureau, after
taking a different approach to
its demographic data-collection
efforts in 2000, confirmed that
there had been a gross under-count in the Latino population
for several decades. It was discovered that Latinos were the largest
racial/ethnic group in the nation,
representing 35. 3 million people or
12. 5 percent of the total population. Today, Latinos represent 15
percent of the population.
Moreover, the U.S. Bureau of
Labor Statistics found that there
were more than 22 million Latinos
in the work force last year, representing 14. 3 percent of the total
labor pool. But among those, only
7. 1 percent were employed in management, professional or related
occupations.
One problem is that Latinos,
regardless of their national origin,
are falsely perceived as newly
arrived immigrants who are poor,
uneducated and lacking English
skills. Erased from our learning
is the fact that most of the land
from Texas to California belonged
to Mexico, or that up until WWII
our southern border was open and
Mexican Americans lived on both
sides of the border. This explains
why 58 percent of U.S. Latinos are
of Mexican descent, according to
the U.S. Census Bureau. There’s
also a failure to remember that
all Puerto Ricans are citizens and
Alma Morales Riojas is president and CEO of MANA, A National Latina
Organization, which is devoted to empowering Latinas through leadership
development, community service and advocacy.
✽
