Sigh. Epic fail for wingers who are now spewing hate speech at a fairly staid group of NAACP types, and managing to offend nearly every Latino in America, but more importantly in that subset of Mexican-Americans. There are members of Congress, and members of state legislatures across America, who are members of the National Council of La Raza. I also wonder why they haven’t mentioned guilt by association and attacked the fundors of this insidious group? We all know they love guilt by association.
So lets talk about the associations. For those of you who don’t know much about the history of NCLR, now’s a good time for a review.
NCLR traces its origins to the civil rights movement of the 1960s, as well as to previous efforts that preceded World War II, such as those related to early school and housing desegregation. Although Hispanics, especially Mexican Americans and Puerto Ricans, participated in both movements, they did not gain widespread media coverage or national visibility for their efforts. Without such recognition, legislation such as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964, while creating enormous change in other areas of the country, had relatively little impact on the Hispanic community. In large part, the invisibility that plagued the Mexican American civil rights movement was a result of the movement’s geographic isolation, which caused it to be overshadowed by the more highly visible national movements. Additionally, Mexican Americans lacked the kinds of institutions that were critical to the success of the Black civil rights movement, and around which they could rally, unify, and organize. As Helen Rowan explained in a paper prepared for the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights in 1968:
There was no Mexican American organization equivalent of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) or the National Urban League; no Mexican American colleges; and virtually no financial or other help from outside the community itself. It has thus been extremely difficult for the leadership to develop and pursue strategies which would force public agencies and institutions to pay greater and more intelligent attention to Mexican American needs and to make changes, where necessary, to meet them. Recognizing that these hurdles imposed a critical barrier to the mobilization of an effective civil rights movement, a group of young Mexican Americans in Washington, DC decided to form a coordinating body that could provide technical assistance to existing Hispanic groups and bring them together into a single united front. In the early 1960s, this organization, called NOMAS (National Organization for Mexican American Services), met with the Ford Foundation to present a funding proposal. The meeting was one of several factors that contributed to a Ford decision to finance a major study of Mexican Americans by scholars at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), the first grant of its kind in the United States.
Like other philanthropic and government entities, the Ford Foundation was concerned about the paucity of information on, and its own lack of expertise regarding, Mexican Americans. In this context, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights began to hold a series of important and influential hearings on the status of Mexican Americans, and later other Latino groups, in the U.S. At the same time, the Ford Foundation decided to conduct a second, less academic and formal investigation, and subsequently hired three highly-respected Mexican Americans, Herman Gallegos, Dr. Julian Samora, and Dr. Ernesto Galarza, to travel throughout the Southwest and consult with other activists and leaders about what else might be done to help the Mexican American community.
For a more detailed history please read National Council of La Raza: The First 25 Years.
Okay, that done, let’s discuss their notorious, radical, KKK fundors (snark snark)
The Ford Foundation’s Presidents were noted anarchists and racists (wink) like
* Edsel Ford (founder) 1936-1943
* Henry Ford II 1943-1950
* Paul G. Hoffman 1950-1953
* H. Rowan Gaither 1953-1956
* Henry T. Heald 1956-1965
* McGeorge Bundy 1966-1979
* Franklin Thomas 1979-1996
* Susan V. Berresford 1996-2007
* Luis Ubiñas 2008-
I guess we should lay the blame at the feet of two of these noted Anti-Amuricans Henry Townley Heald :
Henry Townley Heald (1904-1975) was president of Armour Institute of Technology from 1938 to 1940, when it became Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT). He is credited with bringing architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe to Chicago in 1938 to direct IIT’s architecture program. He left IIT in 1952 to become president of New York University and later, the Ford Foundation. He appeared on the cover of Time in 1957 for his work at the Ford Foundation. A scholarship at IIT is named after him.
and
McGeorge “Mac” Bundy (March 30, 1919-September 16, 1996) was United States National Security Advisor to Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson from 1961 through 1966, and president of the Ford Foundation from 1966 through 1979. He is known primarily for his role in escalating the involvement of the United States in Vietnam during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations.
Wow, scary.
There have already been bloggers who have documented speeches made by noted Republicans, like GWB, at NCLR events. A simple google of youtube will turn up even more, since politicians from states with large Hispanic populations can’t wait to get on stage and be seen hugging a brown.
Just for fun, here’s one clip I couldn’t resist:
National Council of La Raza 2008 – John McCain
Good news for John McCain?
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