Latino Vote and the GOP

In Roxana Chahin’s column “The Latino Vote Is Ripe for a Rich GOP Harvest” (Commentary, July 23) she cites and applauds the movement of Latinos from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party. One reason is the “Democrats’ growing distance from Latinos on social issues--Latino-Americans are among the most socially conservative and family-oriented people in the United States.” By this reasoning, what is Chahin saying about the values of other ethnic groups such as Afro-Americans, who remain staunchly Democratic?

In this very divisive era of racial politics, Chahin is treading dangerous waters when she writes of the need of Latinos to distance themselves from other minorities, i.e., blacks. The fact is Latinos in the U.S. have not as of yet assimilated into the middle class and until then, “issues of strong appeal to Latinos such as the war on drugs and Housing Secretary Kemp’s emphasis on home ownership” will have little appeal to the majority of Latinos who still bear the brunt of this Administration’s didactically backwards racial policies.

JIM PHILLIPS

Santa Monica