The speaker series is hosted by the ASU Center for Community Development and Civil Rights, which hopes to delve into numerous cultural issues facing Phoenix residents on a state and national level.
“We want to provide a forum and an opportunity for people to have conversations that are relevant to the community,” said Alejandro Perilla, director of the center. “Whether they’re on a particular subject like today’s or more broad.”
This week’s conversation was inspired by the ASU Young Latino Male Symposium, which was sponsored by the center in fall 2010.
Rick Rodriguez, the Carnegie professor of journalism at the Walter Cronkite School who also moderated the symposium, led the series’ first discussion, “Young Latino males: an American dilemma,” noting that these are “not just Latino issues, but American issues.”
Graduate journalism students who took Rodriguez’s seminar class on Latino issues last semester contributed in-depth reporting to the website. Students researched and reported on pressing issues facing young Latino males and created multimedia stories for the website.
“Don’t think of this as an issue of exclusion, but instead an issue of concentration,” Rodriguez said. “There are more Latino males in prison than in college. Something is wrong.”
Using the website as a springboard for conversation, Rodriguez spoke about three issues relating to the Latino community: machismo, Latino teen fathers and lack of educational success.
To highlight the problems with these issues, Rodriguez presented a few of the stories written by Cronkite students. Nick Newman, a graduate student at the Cronkite School, researched the presence of machismo in Latino culture.
“I found it’s a really intense culture that affects learning,” Newman said. “Boys are taught from a young age that they don’t need to ask questions and that it’s too white.”
Another story shared, titled “Mentors, teachers key for the future,” discussed how the lack of role models severely hinders all Latino students, in particular males.
“Latinas have made great strides, but we need to start looking at the potential consequences of only female advancement,” Rodriguez said. “We can’t leave just one group behind.”
The issues discussed all related back to obstacles in education and the lack of resources available to address a growing problem.
Perilla agreed, noting that classroom statistics make Latino male success more critical than ever.
“The issue here is the lack of resources to address this very critical problem,” Perilla said. “Only two percent of educators are Latino men while 20 percent of the student body happens to be Latino. How do we get more people into the classroom who can serve as role models to these young men? And women?”
Sandra Nageotte, a Phoenix resident, felt the subject matter was intriguing and decided to take her lunch break with the Center.
“I think the education part of it is probably the most important,” Nageotte said. “The low number of boys and men that are not graduating is a dilemma.”
Nageotte said the conversations were good first steps for the Center.
“A lot of what they’re doing is important,” she said. “In particular the American Dream Academy; I think that will start to address some of the things they talked about today because you get to the parents (when the boys are young).”
Further conversation topics include “Civil Rights Primer: The 14th Amendment” on March 31 and “Amexica: Tales from the Fourth World” on April 21.
“The 14th Amendment is a subject of particular importance because it’s being debated in our Legislature,” said Perilla, adding that these conversations must continue in order to provide an open discussion.
“It’s not a question of what decision you should have with respect to the debate, but rather offering more information to members of the community who can then reach their own conclusion about the 14th Amendment and the changes proposed to it.”
Contact the reporter at crcruz1@asu.edu
