Blauner\'s Hypothesis and the Hispanics\'

Blauner's Hypothesis and the Hispanics' quality of life

In Bob Blauner's "Still the Big News: Racial Oppression in America," he discussed his hypothesis regarding racial oppression in American society, citing, in particular, the Negro experience. In discussing his hypothesis, Blauner posits that minority groups created by colonization experiences greater racial discrimination than those created by immigration. In effect, minority groups that emerged out of colonization results to greater stratification in the society.

This hypothesis was created and developed in Blauner's study of the history of African-Americans in American society. He related the emergence of a colonized minority group as white American's response to increasing "power" and dominance of black Americans in the country:

The idea of Black Power would help further radicalize the black movement and polarize the races...Instead of emphasizing the straightforward meanings of Black Power -- self-determination for Afro-Americans in controlling their own communities and defining their cultural realities -- the press...played up (and even manufactured) sinister undertones of violence, racial revenge, and black domination. Black Power...forced members of the majority to confront their "whiteness"

The black American race had been Blauner's 'model' for the colonized minorities, people who were forced to become involuntary migrants to United States. The process of 'colonization' of the Negro race as a minority in the American society was further reiterated by the black slavery system. Indeed, as he elucidated in his discourse, the colonial minority group was a result of "European conquest and colonial wardship...And as a result of slavery the "Negro race" emerged from the heterogeneity of African ethnicity."

The case of the Hispanic race was no different from the black Americans'. One of the rapidly increasing minority groups in the country, even surpassing the African-American minority group, Hispanics had experienced similar conditions that made them a colonized minority group. Hispanics demonstrate the characteristics that Blauner argued as illustrative of the African-American experience: firstly, they (Hispanics) belong to the economic periphery and secondly, they become susceptible to greater racial discrimination.

Hispanics are a colonized minority group because they are not given sufficient economic support in the society. Most members of this minority group engage in labor with lower-than-the-minimum wages; this is a result of Hispanics being illegal migrants in the country. As a result of these low incomes, Hispanics move further towards the economic periphery due to lack of opportunities, such as availing proper health services and attaining higher educational attainment.