2006 Report
Few issues seem more difficult to talk about in the United States today than racial inequality. Yet perhaps never before has there been a greater need for responsible public dialogue about this complicated subject. The people of the State of Washington feel this need especially acutely because the racial and ethnic composition of this state has been changing so dramatically in recent years, above all because of dynamic growth in the Latino population.
The process of public discussion is hampered, however, by the fact that Latinos systematically lack the advantages in education, employment, and political representation that would enable them to take full part in debate about these persistent and troubling inequalities. Indeed, as pervasive social and political disparities between Latinos and the population at large widen, we are tending more and more toward a situation where we are two societies, separate but unequal, with Latinos making up a mounting percentage of the less privileged and the disempowered.
In the fall of 2005, Whitman College undergraduates completed the initial report on The State of the State for Washington Latinos. This document was the first-ever widely inclusive account of social and political conditions for Latinos in Washington State. Spanning issue areas ranging from education to health insurance, from farm labor to housing, and from voting rights to domestic violence, the 2005 report showed graphically that the challenges and inequalities facing Washington Latinos are multiple, interwoven, and deeply entrenched. It also brought to light innovative efforts to solve these problems and sought to stimulate a new resolve by the people of Washington to address them through a comprehensive agenda for racial and social justice.
The State of the State for Washington Latinos: 2006 dramatically expands the scope of our inquiry, supplementing the earlier report with an entirely new array of research on pressing questions at stake in ensuring a better future for Latinos and all residents of this state. As before, a class of advanced and highly motivated undergraduates at Whitman College, located in Walla Walla, conducted the inquiry.
Real solutions to public problems, however, demand more than research. They also require “public work” – people from different locations in our communities working together to identify the challenges we collectively face and to forge strategies for meeting them. The State of the State 2006 is the product of just this kind of collaboration. Throughout their research investigations, the students relied on guidance from a public spirited and dedicated group of professionals from throughout Washington State.
These Community-Professional Partners are people who operate migrant health services, work with juvenile detainees and their families, coordinate bilingual school curricula, advise Latino youth groups, train Spanish-speaking preschool teachers, litigate for Voting Rights Act enforcement, build support groups for domestic violence survivors, mentor first-generation college students, provide HIV/AIDS education, serve the homeless, and develop farm worker housing. Their partnership with Whitman students embodied the “public work” among citizens on which a vibrant democracy depends.
