At the same time, the United States, while certainly the nation that nearly every African-American would consider to be home, has hardly been hospitable to African-Americans throughout history. Even today, nearly a quarter of all African-American families in the United States live below the poverty line.
Nation plays a more prominent role in Hispanic-American communities, as these communities tend to organize themselves around national heritage. For example, the Puerto Rican community in the United States is distinct from the Mexican-American community.
It should be kept in mind, however, that both Hispanic-Americans and African-Americans tend to identify their national heritage with the United States of America - despite their troublesome relationship with their home country over the centuries.
Institutional Networks
Institutional networks continue to play a vital organizational role in minority communities. For African-Americans, particularly those residing in the southern United States, chief among these networks is church. But there are also a number of institutional networks that serve educational and political purposes. Perhaps the most famous of these is the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP.) the NAACP was founded in the year 1909 as a network working on behalf of African-Americans. Currently, the NAACP is based in Baltimore, Maryland.
A similar group was founded by and for Hispanic-Americans in the year 1929. LULAC, the League of United Latin American Citizens, is the oldest advocacy organization for Hispanic-Americans. There are over one hundred thousand members of LULAC living in the United States and Puerto Rico (Kaplowitz 2005).
Institutional networks are key for organizing and advocating on behalf of the rights of minority cultures such as African-Americans and Hispanic-Americans. As history has shown how minorities tend to be demonized by larger institutional structures, the only way to combat such negative occurrences as racism and exclusion on the systematic level is to integrate institutional networks that advocate on behalf of minorities into the dominant culture. This has certainly been the case for such organizations as NAACP and LULAC, both of which have a long history of striving to engage their represented cultures in a dialogue with the dominant, European-American culture.
Each concept applies to African-Americans and Hispanic-Americans in a particular way and has an impact on how issues related to both these minority groups play a role in the mainstream media. The current panic in U.S. culture over the rise of undocumented Hispanic-American workers, with its racist overtones, certainly resonates with the discrimination that African-Americans have experienced throughout history. Through advocacy groups on an institutional level, as well as the evolution of subcultural currents within these minorities that ultimately have an affect on the larger culture, African-Americans and Hispanic-Americans continue to demonstrate that they can no longer be relegated to minority status. Instead, African-Americans and Hispanic-Americans will form a vital segment of what it means to be an American in the 21st century.
References
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Davis, R. (N.D.) Surviving Jim Crow. Retrieved December 1, 2007 from the History of Jim Crow web site: http://www.jimcrowhistory.org/history/surviving.htm
Educational Broadcasting Corporation (2002). The Great Migration. Retrieved December
1, 2007 from African-American World web site: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/aaworld/reference/articles/great_migration.html
Kaplowitz, C. (2005). LULAC: Mexican-Americans and National Policy. College Station, TX:
Texas a & M. University Press.
Lincoln, a (1862). The Emancipation Proclamation. Retrieved December 1, 2007 from National Archives and Records Administration web site: http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/featured_documents/emancipation_proclamation/
Santa Ana, O. (2002). Brown Tide Rising: Metaphors of Latinos in Contemporary
American Public Discourse. Austin: University of Texas Press.
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