“The Hispanic Information Super Highway Shrinks”

Now that Jay Leno has been let go by the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) I no longer have any reason to watch NBC except during football season when they have a National Football League game on Sunday nights. Add to that, the demise of NBC Latino.
COMCAST owns NBC and one would think that the all-knowing cable behemoth would be aware of how many Hispanic/Latinos subscribe to their far-flung cable and Internet system and that they would know how many Hispanics there are who might be interested in a Latino/Hispanic web site crammed with news and information about and by Hispanics. One would think.
So why with the American Hispanic population burgeoning, with Hispanic high school and college graduates growing in number every semester, every year, in every community and state did COMCAST shut down NBC Latino?
Notice I’m not pushing Spanish-language media because though nice and proudly ethnic, we must not only speak but excel at and with English. I want a thriving English-speaking Hispanic community that catches up with the dominant non-Hispanic White community in accomplishment, in economics, politics and food with a world-famous culinary industry that puts Mexican combination plates in front of everyone. The bonus, of course, is a community that is bi-lingual what with 400-million Spanish-speaking neighbors to the south of us.
That does not mean, of course, that I would junk the great history of our people that accelerated from the departure of Italian navigator from Spain in 1492, or, from the great Spanish rogue and soldier of fortune Hernando Cortes and his expedition to Mexia from Havana, Cuba 500 years ago. We have a glorious history and tradition; we have great literature, great food and a scientific background that took a grass in the Valley of Mexico thousands of years ago and transformed it into something unavailable in nature, corn, the most widely eaten food in the world today. Then, not to forget the superior astronomy of the Mexican Indian in Yucatan.
I revel and revere that history. I revel and revere our history in the United States of America. I think others should also. So why with 53 million American Hispanics did NBC shut down NBC Latino? It did little to promote the site. It staffed it with bright non-Hispanics and used news from its news division and MSNBC, sad as that is. As heavily staffed as NBC and MSNBC are with on-camera Hispanic anchors and reporters, behind-camera editors and executives, it is amazing that there wasn’t an internal chubasco (tropical storm) of dissent and objections to the cut back (Excuse my sarcasm). Amazing!
There wasn’t and there might not be, perhaps ever, any introspection at NBC or COMCAST. Ask Jay Leno.
Corporate America hasn’t yet decided it is in its best interests to know the fast growing Hispanic/Latino community. From what we can see, it may never know. On the other hand, the best and brightest who run it and the country may wake up one day and realize that it is in its best interests to not only pay attention but to merge somewhat with the growing group, to absorb what they have to offer besides Super Bowl tortilla chips, guacamole, combination plates and “cannon fodder.”
We know that Hispanics are brand conscious, we know that they earn more money than ever, we know that they assimilate better and faster than any immigrant group in American history; these facts are not only self-evident but are proven empirically with every study performed by legitimate researchers. Compare, if you will, the Irish Catholic experience in America to today’s Hispanics. It took almost a hundred years for the Irish Catholic to reach the schooling and economic levels of average America.
According to the RAND Corporation Mexican male immigrants one hundred years ago averaged 4 (four) years of schooling. In 1950, according to Dr. Thomas Sowell’s “Ethnic America” the average Mexican American male in California had an 8th grade level education. Today Mexican American youths are averaging slightly under 12 years of schooling, three times their great grandfathers and half again that of 60 years ago. One fifth of the American military’s Combat Arms (those who handle guns, artillery and armor) are Hispanic with more than 90% being Mexican American. And, without the benefit of dozens of colleges like the 140-year-old Black college system, Hispanics are now earning more graduate degrees than ever mostly from public colleges like the California State University system, the largest public university in the world. In California alone, over 600,000 Hispanic students study at public two and four year colleges.
One will not read or hear such good news from or at NBC because it shut down NBC Latino. Too bad, 54 million Hispanic Americans in a few months, 55 million next year — you read it here, not at NBC.