A Word from the editor

blind spots mar vision

Tracy L. Barnett

This month’s edition is about blind spots, both personal and political.
We all have them, and we all like to think that we don’t. But seen through the lens of our next generation, they can become glaringly clear.
That’s certainly been the case for Alfredo Jiménez, the subject of our cover story this month, as he’s struggled to cope with the unwelcome inheritance of diabetes. The coming of a new daughter, combined with a near-death experience, brought the source of his denial into sharp focus. His health is no longer solely his own concern; suddenly, it is a parental responsibility.
By the same token, we’re receiving wake-up calls involving our own youth every day — if we can only pay attention. About 200 young people staged a mock graduation ceremony in the nation’s capital this month to deliver one such call. Another 200 individuals showed up the next day in the Missouri capital to deliver another.
Seen from a purely personal perspective, it’s not our problem that 65,000 undocumented young people will graduate this year without the option to go on to college. It’s not our problem that Latinos have a high-school dropout rate that’s nearly 4 times that of non-Latino whites — nor that these two facts might in some way be related. It’s probably not our problem, either, that 80 percent of low-income Hispanics are not covered by health insurance, compared with 66 percent of low-income blacks and 63 percent of low-income whites — and that a large percentage of these uninsured are children.
But Hispanic leaders who converged on Jefferson City this month urged state officials to take a longer view and to pay heed to education and health care, particularly for children, as two of the most pressing issues facing Hispanics. With one bill pending in the Statehouse that would address the needs of undocumented students and another bill that would slash an estimated 20,000 children below poverty level from the Medicaid rolls, the message is a timely one.
Sometimes it takes a crisis to bring those blind spots into focus. Let’s hope we can practice a little prevention instead.