Young millennial and Gen Z voters could be a mighty force in the 2024 presidential election, with Gen Z alone accounting for over 40 million potential voters. It’s no wonder both major political parties are attempting to mobilize this group, half of whom don’t identify as Democrats or Republicans. But turnout among young voters has always been low, and their …
Our politics and news are all about the borders and divides that separate the U.S. and Mexico. But in real life, we’re becoming more alike. Some 37 million people living in the United States today trace their roots to Mexico. They are part of a giant diaspora so intertwined with American life that its political, cultural, educational, and economic impacts …
American history credits protest with ending segregation and the Vietnam War, securing women the right to vote and the LGBTQ+ community a path to equality, and building one nation out of 13 colonies. It’s a national tradition enshrined in the Constitution and fiercely protected by the legal system. But protest can also be violent, messy, and contested, and frequently ends …
New technology, declining immigration, and legislation raising the minimum wage and mandating overtime pay have profoundly changed the nature of agricultural work in California. But the work remains difficult, dangerous, and hard on the health of workers—primarily immigrants—who toil in hotter weather than they did in the past, and who lack equitable healthcare coverage and access. Undocumented farmworkers are older …
In the 1920s, Southern California’s Inland Empire was a bucolic place, dotted with small towns set amid orange groves. It was also a growing outpost for the Ku Klux Klan, whose members subjected the region’s minority residents to exclusion, harassment, and violence in following decades. Today, antisemitic, anti-Muslim, anti-Black, anti-Latino, anti-Asian, and anti-LGBTQ movements persist, with hate crimes again on …
Is “Latino” a race or an ethnicity? Is it European or American? Is it a source of strength or of subjugation? And does it bring people together—around shared histories of migration and resilience—or is it born from racial ideas about “the other,” borders, and national identity? Journalist and novelist Héctor Tobar is a professor of English and Chicano/Latino studies at …
