[summary]
Mike Gonzales
“La Raza Finally Loses ‘The Race’; The Leftist Chicano Outfit Rebrands Itself as UnidosUS”, in Wall Street Journal, June 26, 2017. p. A15.
The National Center for La Raza (National Center for The Race) has quietly renamed itself UnidosUS. The name always mean “The Race”, although anyone saying it meant that was called a racist. But at the same time, most Hispanics saw the name as off-putting. In addition, there is no one Hispanic “raza”, the term “Hispanic” is just a Census Bureau fiction, so many Hispanic populations felt excluded by “La Raza”. That is, they saw it as racist against them.
Largely funded since 1968 by the Ford Foundation and the federal government, under Trump, it will see less federal funding and will have to raise money from the people. Under Obama, the Justice Department settled lawsuits by having defendants make massive payoffs to selected leftist groups, including La Raza. This scheme funneled at least $1 billion into the hands of leftist groups allied to the Obama Administration. That is over. The $11 million a year in funding from the Obama Administration is also gone.
However, La Raza still has corporate sponsors: corporations represented on the board include Comcast, AT&T Corp., Bank of America, Chevron Corp., Coca-Cola Co., Ford Motor Co., Con-Agra Foods and other Fortune 500 firms. La Raza also has 260 local affiliates.
One demographic change for the United States is that the majority is likely to remain White for a long time. Upwardly mobile Hispanics are integrating into White mainstream society, not trying to secede. Their children think of themselves as White mainstream middle class, not Raza secessionists.
The name change of La Raza probably will not reflect the new reality and will prove to be a mere marketing ploy. It is unlikely La Raza under any name can be much more than a tool of the Democratic Party.