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California dreamin': Latinos in 2040

by david e. hayes-bautista

What will be the nature of the collective identity of Americans when half the population of trend-setting California becomes Latino? Will 2040 mark the final crumbling of a once-productive society into a dysfunctional, Blade Runner-type world rent by cultural separatists? Or will the year usher in a world-class state economy and society, supported by a population that is not only healthier and more hard-working but also has stronger family and community ties?

For nearly 40 years now, I have wanted to understand what shapes Latino values and behavior. As an undergraduate at UC Berkeley in the 1960s, and later as a graduate student at UC San Francisco in the early 1970s, I was taught to use “dysfunctional minority” models to understand Latinos. These models portrayed Latinos as an urban underclass caught in a tangle of pathologies, unable to function well in modern society ostensibly because of their high rates of persistent unemployment, disintegrating families, welfare dependency, poor health indicators and generally antisocial behavior.

In the late 1980s, when epidemiological data for Latinos first became available, I set out to see for myself whether Latino behaviors match the models I had been taught. I found that while Latinos have lower income, less education and less access to health care compared to mainstream whites, Latinos had relatively far lower mortality rates due to heart disease, cancer and stroke, identical infant mortality and a five-year longer life expectancy.

In 1988, I published one of the first sets of demographic projections showing that nearly half of California’s population would be Latino by the middle of the 21st century. I was surprised by the nearly hysterical public response — not to my methodology, but to the fact that I had challenged the lingering notion that if Latinos truly are described by the dysfunctional minority models, then half of California’s population would one day consist of welfare-dependent, disintegrating families stricken with health problems.

Recently, I used re-coded census data from 1940 to 2000 and discovered that over the past 60 years Latinos also demonstrated extremely strong social behavior; the highest rates of labor force participation in California; more hours worked per week; more employment in the private sector; stronger families; and less welfare usage than any other ethnic group.

My research has allowed me to look deeply into the values, daily activities, hopes and aspirations of Latinos — issues basic to the human condition. The strength and spread of Latino civil society make me optimistic about California’s future. Latinos are American, Latin-style, and will contribute to developing a distinctive, regional American identity. But is the state willing to invest in the dreams and strengths of its future majority? The choice is ours, and the time to make it is now.

Hayes-Bautista, director of the Center for the Study of Latino Health and Culture at the David Geffen School of Medicine, is the author of the recently published book, “La Nueva California: Latinos in the Golden State.”