11/20/1997 12:09:00 AM
Tapia Reflects on Future of Hispanics
BY DAVID D. MEDINA
Rice News Staff
November 20, 1997 -- From Chicanos in California to Puerto Ricans in New York
to Cubans in Florida, Hispanics in the United States comprise a rich mixture
of varied lifestyles.
Yet these very differences may be hampering Hispanics from advancing in this
country, suggested Richard Tapia, the Noah Harding Professor of Computational
and Applied Mathematics in a speech he gave at Rice University on Nov. 6 titled
"U.S. Hispanics: Diversity Within Diversity."
"Are we too diffused and too diverse as a group to deal effectively with
underrepresentation and to promote ourselves at the national level?" Tapia
asked. "Are we just too different that we can't have strong united leadership?"
Tapia specifically questioned whether Mexican Americans accepted their fate
too easily. Mexican Americans, he said, are known for their resiliency, but
wondered if that strength was becoming a weakness.
"We are able to be happy and live in the face of extreme poverty and adversity,"
he said. "The consequence is that we accept our fate. We do not complain,
we do not question, we do not press for change, we do not vote."
Is it no wonder then, Tapia asked, that the University of Texas law professor
Lino Graglia said that Mexican-Americans do not look at failure with disgrace?
"Is he one-hundred percent wrong, or should we give him partial credit?
Maybe he has a little tiny bit of a point," he said.
To advance in society, Tapia said, Hispanics should maintain their positive
characteristics such as pride, loyalty, hard-working, fun-loving and family-oriented.
He beseeched Hispanics not to stay ignorant and to get an education, to minimize
the conflict between blacks and browns, to strive to become part of the mainstream
America, and to make an effort to represent themselves.
In his speech, Tapia outlined the different groups of Hispanics that live in
the United States, with Mexican Americans being the majority at 65 percent,
followed by Puerto Ricans at 10 percent, Cubans at 5 percent, and the remaining
20 percent comprised of other groups.
For more than half a century, the challenge of the Chicanos, Tapia said, has
been to try to preserve the pride and strength of their ancestors while living
in the joy and warmth of their family and partaking in the American Dream. "We
have tried to do all of this in a society that has actively denied us the right
to be human," he emphasized.
And, he said, it is not only good for Hispanics to be part of the mainstream,
but it is also in the best interest of the country. Underrepresentation endangers
the health of the nation, Tapia explained.
"No first-world nation can maintain its economic health," he said,
"when such a large part of its population is outside mainstream activity
including all technological, scientific and computational activity."
