Study of Latinos Stirs Mixed Reactions

The Orange County Latino Assessment Study, a two-year survey by the Tomas Rivera Center in Claremont, drew both praise and criticism from Latino community representatives Tuesday at a briefing after the benchmark study was released.

“We know our community has a dropout problem,” said Kathy Jurado, a marketing director for Operation SER (Service Employment Redevelopment), a job training agency in Santa Ana. “We know that the poor do not have adequate health insurance and that they don’t vote. I wanted the study to explain what is causing these things.”

Jurado and other Latinos at the briefing in the county human relations office took exception to the study’s “broad consensus” of describing Latinos as “poor and uneducated dropouts,” with no explanations or recommendations to overcome the social problem.

Nativo Lopez, an immigrants’ rights advocate with Hermandad Mexicana Nacional in Santa Ana, objected to a recommendation that funding organizations pay special attention to minority coalitions rather than agencies offering direct help to the poor. Lopez called that attitude “a form of racism.”

“There’s a tendency among foundations to fund large coalition groups and not give funding to agencies who give direct help to Latino poor,” Lopez said. “Rather than a coalition, they should be giving money to immigrants who have developed their own leadership.”

Most community leaders said they were concerned that the county’s decision-makers, major funding corporations and foundations might accept the study at face value, with little room for added input.

More than 200 major county corporations and foundations, and another 200 individuals regarded as major decision-makers, are on the center’s distribution list, said Arturo Madrid, president of the Tomas Rivera Center.

Madrid said the study’s purpose is only to gather opinions from the county’s Latino community. “That is what we were commissioned to do,” he said.

Frank Dominguez, an Orange County businessman and representative of the United Way’s Hispanic Council of Orange County, helped the center select the county community leaders surveyed.