By Tony Vera, CSW, Co-chair, Committee on Latino Affairs
(February/March 1997)
As the City's mayoral campaign begins to heat up, the Chapter's Committee on Latino Affairs (COLA) thought it would be useful to begin asking Latino social workers how they view politics and electoral participation. A mailing conducted in November, 1996 to approximately 250 Latino social workers, with a response of 18% (44), revealed some interesting findings.
The response sample was predominantly Puerto Rican (61%), with an average age of 47 (ranging from 28 to 77 years), married (57%), with 1.3 children, and having an MSW or higher degree (84%). The greater majority of respondents held positions of line worker(25%), supervisor (20%), or administrator (25%), working mostly in non-profit (57%) or public/government (27%) settings.
Being registered (93%) and Democrats (89%), sample respondents worked in agencies that promote voter registration (64%) but not always as an ongoing activity (34%) and a high proportion of respondents (48%) were not directly involved in voter registration of clients.
The level of political activism among the respondents is fairly high with 60% of the sample reporting within the activity range of 6 to 10 on a 1-10 scale-- "1" being uninvolved in the political process and "10" being actively engaged in the political process, e.g., volunteering, campaigning for a political candidate.
Latino respondents believe strongly (70%) that "voting is a critically important aspect of civic life," but they are not as firm in disagreeing (20%) with the statement that " 'my vote will make a difference' is myth"; a noteworthy proportion (16%) are undecided on this question.
Although it is commonly said in political science circles that the ablest and most intelligent candidates rarely get elected, particularly in today's political climate, making money and incumbency the strongest predictors of electoral victory, the majority (54%) of our respondents disagree that the ablest and most intelligent candidates rarely get elected. They say elections are not "illusions of participatory democracy" (72%), and voting matters to 98% of them, and according to 91% of the sample, a vote is never wasted - even when the chosen candidates has little chance of winning.
If Latinos do not vote, according to 71% of the sample, it is because they (Latino voters) do not feel politicians really care about their concerns. Although surveys conducted by the Institute for Puerto Rican Policy and others suggests that failure to vote among Puerto Ricans is seen by the voter as an act of protest, not indifference to civic responsibility, our sample respondents were divided with 36% agreeing, 37% disagreeing, and 27% undecided on this question.
NYC PACE (Political Action for Candidate Election) would be happy to know that 79% of respondents did not feel working for a candidate was a waste of time, but 20% were undecided; a significant majority (62%) would contribute financially to a candidate. They believe writing to elected officials is worth the effort (85%), but barely a majority (50%) of respondents disagreed with the statement that "money talks in politics and no politician really listens to concerns of his/her constituents," 25% were undecided and 21% agreed. This suggests that respondents philosophically embrace participatory democracy but have a healthy level of skepticism regarding the political realities.
A significant proportion of respondents will not vote for Latino candidates on ethnic appeal alone, either when considering them against white (45%) or black opponents (52%); among both choices the proportion of undecided responses is high (25% and 30% for white and black candidates respectively). The reality is, however, that Latinos generally behave much as African Americans, tending to overwhelmingly favor ethnic and racial identity over other variables such as issues or experience. Our sample, perhaps as any well educated sample, would tend to be more sophisticated in their evaluation of candidate's fitness.
Just about all respondents (95%) believe social workers have a responsibility to educate clients in becoming aware of the political process by encouraging them to register to vote, voice their concerns via petitions, writing to elected officials, participating in rallies, etc. Regrettably, only 34% of them said the agencies they work for are involved in the minimal task of ongoing voter registration.
The survey was not subjected to the statistical rigor of random sampling and findings are not necessarily representative of all Latino social workers. There is also reason to believe that the sample response is self-selecting politically, and thus providing skewed findings favoring more positive outlooks, perhaps overstating political participation. Nevertheless, the observations summarized above also tell us that there are many Latino social workers who are ready to get involved in the coming mayoral campaign, they may not be as "politically alienated" as some COLA members believed, and they will support candidates with money and sweat. There is no reason to believe Latino social workers are any less interested in politics than African-American, Asian or Euro-ethnic white social workers. With PACE encouragement , organized and well planned outreach, the Chapter may be able to mobilize the political power of the social work profession.