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Sunday, August 08, 1999
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal
Recruiting of Hispanics not a change of focus, NAACP says
By Debra D. Bass
Review-Journal
NAACP leaders say a nationwide initiative to recruit more Hispanics doesn't mean the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People has changed its focus as a group founded to help blacks.
Las Vegas Chapter President Gene Collins said recruiting Hispanics will enable the NAACP to continue fulfilling its mission, which is not just to help blacks, but to fight for the disadvantaged regardless of ethnicity.
"We have to save the world in order to save ourselves," Collins said. "The thing for people to realize is that the NAACP has never solely been an organization for African Americans. The NAACP deals with human rights, civil rights and discrimination. Those are problems we all share regardless of color."
He said diversity is a major tenet of the nation's oldest civil-rights organization because anything else would be counter productive. The local chapter of about 2,000 members includes whites and Hispanics on its executive board, Collins said. The majority of members are black, but Collins said he couldn't estimate a percentage.
During the annual convention in New York last month the need to be more inclusive was promoted by the NAACP's national chairman, who urged members to work on recruiting people "who share our condition, even if they may not share our history."
Chairman Julian Bond told convention-goers that eliminating discrimination and fighting for the economic development of all constituencies should be a common cause that has no skin color.
Using "united we stand and divided we fall" type analogies, Bond asked members to imagine 2050 when Hispanics and blacks combined will constitute 41 percent of the U.S. population. (The U.S. Census Bureau makes a projection of 39.9 percent -- 24.5 percent Hispanic and 15.4 percent black.)
Collins said he understands the significance, but hasn't developed a strategy to recruit Hispanic members. He said leaders of the local NAACP and Hispanic groups have held discussions in the past.
"Blacks and Hispanics need to form a coalition and work together, ..." Frank Corro, editor-in-chief of a local Spanish-language newspaper El Mundo, said. "For years we have been trying to follow the example of successful black organizations, but joining together as a political force would be better, because so far we are being taken for granted."
Corro said large voting blocks of Hispanics and blacks working together could evoke significant changes in federal law and policies, but only if those constituents begin consistently and judiciously casting votes.
He said the process should start with Hispanics first banding together in their own organizations, such as the local Hispanics in Politics group.
Corro is not a member, because he said that it would create an ethical conflict. He is a journalist for a local newspaper and he is prone to editorialize on political issues. He said the need to unite with other minority groups for political causes has been a frequent topic of his editorials.
Fernando Romero, president of Hispanics in Politics, has similar views.
"Certainly there are issues that both the NAACP and HIP (Hispanics in Politics) share and we should participate in dealing with those issues, but I'm not saying the two groups need to attach," Romero said.
He agreed with Corro that Hispanics must first develop a strong organization of their own. Hispanics in Politics has a membership of 450 -- about 60 percent of whom are Hispanic, Romero said. He said the group will begin conducting some meetings of the 19-year-old group in Spanish to attract limited-English speakers. However, Romero, who was once a member of the local NAACP, said no group should be restrictive.
"Anyone interested in joining HIP is welcome to join and as an individual, I will join the NAACP again and I will advocate that we get together on issues of mutual interest, because we have many mutual interests," Romero said.
In many ways, the 700,000-member NAACP has been representing non-blacks for a while.
It was founded 90 years ago to push for the advancement of "colored people" at a time when the nation's laws and constitutional rights scarcely applied to blacks and other people of color. The national organization has always included whites as well as blacks.
NAACP lawyers have been as diverse as Thurgood Marshall, the late black U.S. Supreme Court justice, and Bill Lann Lee, acting head of the Justice Department's civil rights unit, who is Chinese.
Most important, the NAACP's legal victories -- especially the Civil Rights and Voting Rights acts -- have benefited Hispanics and Asians as well. Many Hispanic and Asian civil-rights groups have modeled themselves after the NAACP.
"We hope to aspire to be as successful as the NAACP one day," said Daphne Kwok, executive director of the Organization of Chinese Americans, the nation's largest Asian group.
Collins explained it succinctly, "We are all in this together."
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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