Word: africanized
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...Justice, decades of friction between the two groups seem to be melting like asphalt on a hot summer day in Sotomayor's native Bronx. "The symbolism can't be overstated," says former New Orleans mayor Marc Morial, president of the National Urban League, one of the country's largest African-American organizations. "There is a much greater sense of solidarity now between the two groups." Says Fernand Amandi, executive vice president of the Bendixen & Associates public-opinion-research firm in Miami: "Ethnic tensions won't be ended by one Supreme Court nomination, but the picture of an African-American President...
...Amandi notes, one election and one high-court pick won't have blacks and Hispanics sharing rap and salsa around a campfire. Immigration, for example, isn't a priority issue for African Americans - most Latinos feel Obama needs to ratchet up his commitment to it - and Latinos aren't as passionate about affirmative action. But it is indeed hard to overstate what a sea change their apparent alliance represents. As the U.S. Latino population began to mushroom in the 1980s and minority competition for employment and resources became more acute, the black-brown divide turned into a chasm. Many blacks...
...frustrations turned violent. In 1991 blacks rioted for days in Cuban-dominated Miami after the conviction of a Hispanic police officer for killing two African Americans was overturned. That same year, Hispanics in black-controlled Washington, D.C., did the same after a Latino was wounded by a black...
...Through it all, blacks tended to retain their political leverage because Hispanic voter turnout was abysmal by comparison. That began to change at the turn of this century, when Latinos not only overtook African Americans as the largest U.S. minority (now about 15% of the U.S. population) but also started building ballot-box muscle. By 2004 they seemed to be splitting with the Democratic Party as well, giving George W. Bush a surprising 44% of their vote in that year's presidential election...
...White House, Sotomayor remarked that she has "stood on the shoulders of countless people." The truth is that some of those shoulders belonged to African Americans who marched and died during the civil-rights era so minorities could someday become Supreme Court Justices. But if it's fitting that more Latinos today recognize the debt they owe the past, it's just as appropriate that blacks are more seriously acknowledging "how important Latinos are to the future of the country," says Amandi. Or, as Obama may well have been saying when he nominated Sotomayor this week, how important they already...