Max Castro. Published Tuesday, September 12, 2000, in the Miami Herald
So, Cubans in particular, and Hispanics in general, don't run the show in Miami after all, eh?
In fact, despite widespread belief in a dreaded ``Latin takeover,'' Hispanics are sharply underrepresented across the board when it comes to local leadership positions. That statement comes as a shock to many, but it flows from the findings of a recent survey conducted by The Herald, which
looked at 1,357 top jobs in politics, business, law, the arts and six other categories.
Why the gap between the public image and the statistical portrait? At first blush at least, the numerical evidence seems clear and the public perception pure myth. Hispanics make up almost 58 percent of the population of Miami-Dade County; they hold about 25 percent of the top slots in the area.
Less than 22 percent of residents in Miami-Dade are non-Hispanic whites; non-Hispanic whites occupy 62 percent of the most influential positions.
PRIVILEGE PERSISTS
So where is the takeover? No wonder The Herald concluded that: ``The conventional wisdom that after 40 years of Cuban immigration, Hispanics hold the reins of power in Miami-Dade County is surprisingly false.''
But there is more to it than that. Yes, the data help deflate the paranoia of some here (``the Cubans have taken over'') and the excessive pride of others (``the Cubans built Miami''). And, yes, the results also are a convenient reminder of how persistent white privilege can be in spite of
appearances. At the same time, the numbers don't give a full or totally accurate picture of the reality of power and privilege in Miami-Dade County.
One reason is that the method of the study implicitly assumes that one top job equals another top job. But, in fact, clearly not 1,357 ``top jobs'' are equal in power. Some are more equal than others, to paraphrase Orwell. Mayor of Aventura is not the same job as mayor of Miami-Dade County.
There are a relatively small number of highly public jobs that combine exceptional power, responsibility and visibility. Such positions are strategic, symbolic or both, and they usually control large budgets and many employees. And Cuban Americans have attained a remarkable number of these kinds of
positions.
SIMPLISTIC CONCLUSIONS
The area's public university is presided over by a Cuban American. So is the community college system, the largest in the country. The state attorney is of Cuban heritage. The county police chief, too. The publisher of this newspaper traces half of his ancestry to Cuba, and the partner atop the
biggest law firm in town is Cuban American. Did I forget to mention the superintendent of the Miami-Dade County Public Schools and the executive mayor of Miami-Dade County? It's little wonder some people have concluded that Hispanics already hold the lion's share of power in Miami, although as The
Herald survey shows, that's a somewhat simplistic conclusion, although hardly a crazy one.
Most people assess their level of privilege or deprivation in relative terms. Compared to their counterparts in other American cities, non-Hispanic whites here indeed have less relative political, economic and cultural power.
To African Americans, whom the survey found to have 10 percent of the influential positions, Cubans have a huge number of positions of power. That holds even more so for Haitians and other immigrant groups, who hardly register in the power scale in the county. Cuban Americans, in turn, see that,
overwhelmingly, top positions still are held by the non-Hispanic minority. That tells them they have a long way to go before they can be expected to concentrate on giving others a hand up, something they are often asked to do by the very people who hold three times their share of choice assignments.
It's a situation in which no group feels completely secure, and everyone feels somehow aggrieved or deprived. Understanding in their full complexity the forces that create such feelings and confronting them are just as crucial a challenge as facing the facts and dispelling the myths.
maxcastro@miami.edu
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