The Cost of Discriminating Against Latinos
Inspired by the backlash against Andy Rooney’s recent baseball-related comments that “today’s baseball stars are all guys named Rodriguez to me,” Stephen Dubner at the Freakonomics blog today is examining the cost of discriminating against Latinos.
What Dubner’s entry seems to imply is that the unacceptability (or “cost” as he puts it) of discriminating against certain groups is a function of two things: 1) a history of discrimination against a group, and 2) rising economic and/or political power of that group to fight such discrimination.
Dubner’s a smart guy who deals with tricky subjects, so I’m going to have to think on this one a while before forming my own opinion, but in the meantime, discrimination against Latinos would seem to fit his thesis very well. It is pretty undisputable that there has been a long history of discrimination against Latinos in the United States, and it is also undisputable that the economic and political power of Latinos is growing.