Congressional Hispanic Caucus

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Miriam Jiménez
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Life ◽  
New Wave ◽  
Legislative Action ◽  
Congressional Black Caucus ◽  
Black Caucus ◽  
New Generation ◽  
National Legislature

The Congressional Hispanic Caucus (CHC) is a Congressional Member Organization, namely a coalition of members of Congress that includes representatives and senators who have Hispanic descent. Originally nonpartisan and today composed of only members of the Democratic Party, this group aims to give voice to and advance the interests of the Hispanic population of the United States in the context of the national legislature. The creation of the caucus as a legislative service organization in 1976, reflected the increasing relevance, enfranchisement, and incorporation of Hispanics into the political life of the United States; it was then celebrated by analysts and activists as an important event in the process of the representation of a demographic group that had been politically marginalized for most of the 20th century. In subsequent years, however, the caucus faced difficulties in striving to take coordinated and noteworthy legislative action and failed to attract much scholarly attention. Analysts who compared the Congressional Hispanic Caucus with the previously created Congressional Black Caucus, for example, often underlined the heterogeneity of the CHC membership, its lower level of cohesion, and its low legislative success record. Nevertheless, this has been changing recently: a new generation of scholars is introducing different perspectives to study the activities of minority congresspersons. The new wave of studies has revealed more complex ways to assess the importance of the work that the caucus and its members do. Beyond the record of modest legislative achievements, it is clear that the Congressional Hispanic Caucus has been able to lobby presidents to appoint Hispanics to executive positions and has exerted influence in some immigration debates and bills. Furthermore, it has advanced the institutionalization of initiatives to educate Hispanic leaders (through the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute, CHCI) and provided coalitional support to newly elected Hispanic congresspersons. Overall, the caucus has contributed to the fundamental task of advancing legislative agendas that reflect the interests of Hispanics in the Congress.

Party Reform as Failed Democratic Renewal in the United States, 1968–1972

1996 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 223-288 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Plotke
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
The United States ◽  
Party Politics ◽  
Political Conflict ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Party Organization ◽  
Subsequent Discussion ◽  
Made In

Between 1968 and 1972, with political conflict in America unusually high, major changes were made in rules for consituting Democratic national conventions and selecting Democratic candidates. Basic issues about the practical meaning of democratic commitments were sharply contested, and debates about party organization proved vigorous and substantial. The reforms enacted aimed partly to enhance participation and restore public respect for political life. They did not escape criticism. In fact, critics of reform became the dominant voice in subsequent discussion of what happened to the Democratic party and to party politics in the United States more generally.

Learning the Ropes: One Year in the Life of a Congressional Staffer

1998 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-35
Author(s):  
Tanya Price
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
The United States ◽  
First Century ◽  
Racial Inequalities ◽  
Research Priority ◽  
Congressional Black Caucus ◽  
Black Caucus ◽  
One Year

Anthropologists have often been accused of indulging in the exotic and esoteric. As the criticism goes, such research priority diverts us from investigating issues with direct relevance to our society's most pressing problems—racism, economic inequality, and the seeming inability of our governmental system to address these issues as we cross the metaphorical "bridge to the twenty-first century." As the following case study asserts, anthropologists who possess the tools to address inequality in the United States and can access research money and tools of scholastic research also have the responsibility to make field data available to legislators and others in the position to affect positive social change. From 1990-91, I used my skills of participant observation to study members of the United States Congress. With the help of a Graduate Legislative Fellowship awarded by the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, I was able to observe legislators in the act of making laws that tend to maintain social inequality in the United States. So, while gathering information for my doctoral dissertation in anthropology, I have also been able to call attention to the role of Congress in reinforcing economic and racial inequalities.

Specters of Belonging

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adrián Félix
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Life Cycle ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Life ◽  
The Political ◽  
Mexican Migrants ◽  
Mexican State ◽  
Mexico Border ◽  
Mexican Migrant ◽  
Transnational Citizenship

In the context of research on the “thickening” of borders, Specters of Belonging raises the related question: How does transnational citizenship thicken across the political life cycle of Mexican migrants? In addressing this question, this book resembles what any good migration corrido (ballad) does—narrate the thickening of transnational citizenship from beginning, middle, to end. Specifically, Specters of Belonging traces Mexican migrant transnationalism across the migrant political life cycle, beginning with the “political baptism” (i.e., naturalization in the United States) and ending with repatriation to México after death. In doing so, the book illustrates how Mexican migrants enunciate, enact, and embody transnational citizenship in constant dialectical contestation with the state and institutions of citizenship on both sides of the U.S.-México border. Drawing on political ethnographies of citizenship classrooms, the first chapter examines how Mexican migrants enunciate transnational citizenship as they navigate the naturalization process in the United States and grapple with the contradictions of U.S. citizenship and its script of singular political loyalty. The middle chapter deploys transnational ethnography to analyze how Mexican migrants enact transnational citizenship within the clientelistic orbit of the Mexican state, focusing on a group of returned migrant politicians and transnational activists. Last, the final chapter turns to how Mexican migrants embody transnational citizenship by tracing the cross-border practice of repatriating the bodies of deceased Mexican migrants from the United States to their communities of origin in rural México.

The Empire of Disgust

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Drinking Water ◽  
Sexual Orientation ◽  
Change Point ◽  
Minority Groups ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Swimming Pools ◽  
Economic Class ◽  
Group Resistance

All known societies exclude and stigmatize one or more minority groups. Frequently these exclusions are underwritten with a rhetoric of disgust: people of a certain group, it is alleged, are filthy, hyper-animal, or not fit to share such facilities as drinking water, food, and public swimming pools with the ‘clean’ and ‘fully human’ majority. But exclusions vary in their scope and also in the specific disgust-ideologies underlying them. In this volume, interdisciplinary scholars from the United States and India present a detailed comparative study of the varieties of prejudice and stigma that pervade contemporary social and political life: prejudice along the axes of caste, race, gender, age, sexual orientation, transgender, disability, religion, and economic class. In examining these forms of stigma and their intersections, the authors present theoretically pluralistic and empirically sensitive accounts that both explain group-based stigma and suggest ways forward. These forward-looking remedies, including group resistance to subordination as well as institutional and legal change, point the way towards a public culture that is informed by our diverse histories of discrimination and therefore equipped to eliminate stigma in all of its multifaceted forms.

What is Happening in the United States? How Social Classes Influence the Political Life of the Country and its Health and Quality of Life

2021 ◽  
pp. 002073142199484
Author(s):  
Vicente Navarro
Keyword(s):  
Quality Of Life ◽  
United States ◽  
Access To Health Care ◽  
Universal Access ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Context ◽  
Political Life ◽  
The Political ◽  
Race And Gender

This article analyses the political changes that have been occurring in the United States (including the elections for the presidency of the country) and their consequences for the health and quality of life of the population. A major thesis of this article is that there is a need to analyse, besides race and gender, other categories of power - such as social class - in order to understand what happens in the country. While the class structure of the United States is similar to that of major Western European countries, the political context is very different. The U.S. political context has resulted in the very limited power of its working class, which explains the scarcity of labor, political and social rights in the country, such as universal access to health care.

Immigrant Incorporation in an Era of Weak Civic Institutions

2011 ◽  
Vol 55 (9) ◽  
pp. 1189-1213 ◽  
Author(s):  
Louis DeSipio
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Community Engagement ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Immigrant Incorporation ◽  
Institutional Barriers ◽  
Naturalized Citizens ◽  
Introductory Article ◽  
Civic Institutions ◽  
The U.S

In this article, the author analyzes five domains of immigrant incorporation and participation in the United States—civic and community engagement among immigrants; naturalization patterns; immigrant (and co-ethnic) partisanship and electoral behaviors; the election of naturalized citizens, and their U.S.-born co-ethnics, as elective officeholders; and immigrant transnational efforts to influence the civic or political life of their communities or countries of origin—in an effort to highlight both the opportunities immigrants and naturalized citizens have seized in U.S. politics and the barriers, particularly, institutional barriers, they continue to face. Although the primary analytical focus is immigrants in the United States, the author is attentive to the challenge raised by Irene Bloemraad (2011 [this issue]) in her introductory article to identify opportunities for comparative insights from the Canadian case. As will be evident, the author ultimately identifies more apples and oranges in the comparison of the U.S. and Canadian cases than peas sharing an analytical pod.

The 2016 U.S. Presidential Campaign: Changing Discourse on Palestine

2016 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 34-49
Author(s):  
Phyllis Bennis
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
The United States ◽  
Presidential Campaign ◽  
Antiwar Movement ◽  
Policy Debate ◽  
Policy Analyst ◽  
Long Time ◽  
The Impact

This essay examines the discourse on Palestine/Israel in the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign, charting the impact of the Palestine rights movement on the domestic U.S. policy debate. Policy analyst, author, and long-time activist Phyllis Bennis notes the sea change within the Democratic Party evident in the unprecedented debate on the issue outside traditionally liberal Zionist boundaries. The final Democratic platform was as pro-Israel and anti-Palestinian as any in history, but the process of getting there was revolutionary in no small part, Bennis argues, due to the grassroots campaign of veteran U.S. senator Bernie Sanders. Bennis also discusses the Republican platform on Israel/Palestine, outlining the positions of the final three Republican contenders. Although she is clear about the current weakness of the broad antiwar movement in the United States, Bennis celebrates its Palestinian rights component and its focus on education and BDS to challenge the general public's “ignorance” on Israel/Palestine.

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