What About Minorities if Romney wins?

I will repeat the question: What will happen with the minorities if Mitt Romney becomes the next President of the United States? I don't know. You don't know. Maybe nobody knows for sure. Mitt Romney is a kind of mysterious man. He has remained vague on many policy details and never distinguished himself with specifics, except perhaps for the old -thousand times played- record stating that "Obama has failed". 

Romney's campaign has been ambiguous and unclear about almost everything and this includes his position about minorities. Then it's understandable why you and me cannot tell for sure how Mr. Romney would relate to minorities if we let him reach the White House. But if we study carefully what he has done and what he has said in the past, then we can come to the conclusion that young people, people of color, immigrants and  poor families have a lot to worry about.

Any one of the mentioned above topics deserve a specific article (or more than one), but let me this time just mention a few ideas about each one:

EDUCATION

Romney promises to consolidate the Department of Education with another agency or to make it "a heck of a lot smaller" (budget reduction: the right win catch-all solution to any government program... except defense...). There is no other department in the Federal Government that has more ability to transform communities and the life of individuals more than this agency. For many of us -the so called "minorities"-, education is the only way out of the "ghetto" and the only way of providing our families with a best future. In his amazing ambiguity, Mr. Romney has not yet formulated a clear plan to reform education in America, but he knows that this department has to go... Bravo.

WOMEN

Again we find a lot of ambiguity, but he honored us with some specifics here, when he made the point that poor women receiving government benefits should not be "stay-at-home" moms (like his wife Ann, and the wives of his close supporters), but instead should be forced to go out and get jobs so they could understand the "dignity of work" in order to receive benefits to support their families... Bravo.

THE POOR & HOUSING AND URBAN DEVELOPMENT

Back in April, in one of the few moments he talked specifics, he stated: "I'm going to take a lot of departments in Washington, and agencies, and combine them. Some eliminate... Things like Housing and Urban Development (HUD), which my dad was head of, that might not be around later". Bravo, Mr. Romney. Getting rid of HUD is a direct attack on Afro American, Hispanic, and other communities. We all know how important is this Agency for these people, and in general for working and middle class who rely on HUD's assistance in cases of housing discrimination, predatory lending, and foreclosure.

Romney's consistency is very rare, but when it comes to policies about assisting those in needs, he is consistently opposed to any real safety platform. As Zerlina Maxwell wrote on TheGrio.com: "When it comes to communities of color, middle and low income families, and anyone who isn't lucky enough to be born rich, Mitt Romney is not only lacking concern for these citizens, he is openly hostile to their concerns." And this is something that has to be said out loud, with an accent or without it


1 comment:

  1. oh, don't worry. With Romney minorities will disappear. They all will be a large majority: slaves.

    ReplyDelete