latiNOhoosier

In the league’s early years, when teams were struggling to include fan bases, the draft included territorial picks. Before the start of the draft, a team could forfeit its first-round pick and instead select a player from its immediate area, presumably with a strong local following.

At the Record Bar, Making Movies frontman Enrique Javier Chi shares a complaint with the audience. “My waitress last night was totally racist — ‘Are you black or Spanish?’ ” he says, aping her.

CARACAS, Venezuela. President Hugo Chavez today threatened the United States with an embargo on the export of shortstops until Venezuelan native David Concepcion, a five-time Gold Glove winner for the Cincinnati Reds’ “Big Red Machine” teams of the 1970’s, is inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.

The calypsonian of old combined the bawdy wit of a lovelorn English bard with the improvisatory praise instincts of an African griot. For me, the concept was driven home when my father took me to Trinidad as a 10-year-old, and I watched a roadside calypsonian whip up a rhyming verse comparing Dad to John F. Kennedy, whom he remotely resembled.

Calypso Fantasies: Beyond Island Shores : NPR Music

The rate increased in all regions from 2007 to 2008, except in the Midwest, in which the rate declined slightly to 0.23% from 0.25%. Among states, Georgia and New Mexico showed the hightest entrepreneurial rates at 0.59% and 0.58% respectively, while Pennsylvania and Missouri showed the lowest rates, 0.14% and 0.15%, respectively. The cities with the highest rates were Atlanta and Phoenix, while Philadelphia and Seattle scored at the bottom.

Entrepreneurial Spirit Still Alive And Well - Venture Capital Dispatch - WSJ

Finally in April 1948, Thelma Porter, a psychology major at Brooklyn College, was selected as Miss Subways. Her picture was splashed across black newspapers and magazines nationwide as a point of pride. She was feted nationally, including a reception at the Royal Manor Ballroom. Among those who honored her: Thurgood Marshall.

A year later, Helen Lee became the first Asian-American Miss Subways.

By the 1970s, with a rise of feminism against beauty pageants, the symbolism of a Miss Subway was less portentous, but still notable. In 1974, Sonia Dominguez became the first Dominican to win Miss Subways, which stirred pride in the Latino community. And even then, “there was definitely a pride in the Miss Subways contest,” said Marcia Hocker, who was Miss Subways for several months in 1974 and 1975.

There She Is, From a Trailblazing Beauty Pageant - City Room Blog - NYTimes.com

When Jennifer 8. Lee was in seventh grade, she made a startling discovery — fortune cookies are not an authentic Chinese food. In her New York Times best-selling book, The Fortune Cookie Chronicles, Lee wrote about the experience, “It was like learning I was adopted while being told there was no Santa Claus.”

Born in the United States of Chinese immigrant parents, Lee confesses she is obsessed with Chinese food, in particular with the Chinese-American variety. The book is for anyone who wonders who General Tso is and why we eat his chicken, or where those white takeout boxes come from.

Author of ‘The Fortune Cookie Chronicles’ dishes on Chinese American food: IU News Room: Indiana University

Anyone who doubts that people can turn their lives around quickly should meet Jose Colon.

Over the past 10 weeks, the 33-year-old Colon, of Sixth Street near Indiana Avenue in North Philly’s Fairhill neighborhood, has morphed from a crepehanger whose depression and irritability threatened to cost him his family into an optimist with an infectious love of life.

“My self-esteem was so low,” Colon recalls of the days preceding his transformation, “that I just wanted to be by myself in a dark room. I didn’t want to deal with people. Now nothing bothers me. People can scream at me and I let it go. I’m like, ‘It’s okay. I’m doing right.’”

A Gym of Their Own | News and Opinion | Philadelphia Weekly

Jose Mendez was perhaps the first Latino baseball legend ever. In his homeland of Cuba, they called him “El Diamante Negro,” The Black Diamond.

From 1908 to 1914, Mendez was one of the greatest Negro League pitchers, along with Rube Foster and Smokey Joe Williams.

Born on March 19, 1887 in Cardenas, the slightly build (5-foot-8) Mendez threw hard (he reportedly killed a teammate when he accidentally hit him with a pitch in the chest in batting practice) and had a “jug handle curve.”

Beyond Satchel: Part Three

You might wonder why I allude to this topic on this blog. It’s because, just as diversity and discrimination issues, it is all about human rights and equal rights.

A 17 year old female from Boone County, Indiana, is suing her her high school, Lebanon High School, for forbidding her from wearing a tuxedo to prom. She is a lesbian and wants to wear a tuxedo instead of a dress because a dress reflects a sexual identity that she doesn’t identify with or embrace. School district attorney Kent Frandsen stated that the school district has had a long instated policy that only allows male students to wear tuxedos to prom, and that there is no need to change this policy because up until now it has not been challenged. The student was told to either wear a dress or not go to prom.

Lebanon schools agree girl may wear prom tux

The 2007 Census of Agriculture, which was released in early February, found the operators of American farms have become more diverse in the last five years.

The count of Hispanic operators grew by 10 percent, and the counts of American Indian, Asian and black farm operators rose as well, according to the census.

Census finds more minority-run farms

That’s fine and dandy for our unemployed amigos to the south. With all due respect for my Latino brothers and sisters, I’m sure they’ll do their best and we probably won’t even know the difference unless they get creative and add some jalapenos or cumin to the mix. But that’s not the point.

J.P. DEVINE: Saying adios to a cool, crisp friend

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. — A visual analysis of television presidential campaign coverage from 1992 to 2004 suggests that the three television broadcast networks — ABC, CBS and NBC — favored Republicans in each election, according to two Indiana University professors in a new book.
Image Bite Politics

Their research runs counter to the popular conventional notion of a liberal bias in the media in favor of Democrats and against Republican candidates

‘Liberal bias?’ IU professors find network TV election coverage favors Republicans: IU News Room: Indiana University

The “Father of Boogaloo,” Joe Cuba, passed away on Sunday, February 15, 2009 at 4 p.m. at Mt. Sinai Hospital in New York. He was the most popular exponent of the boogaloo, a fused Latino and R&B rhythm that exploded onto the American top 40s charts during the turbulent 1960s & ‘70s. Hits such as “Bang Bang,” “Push Push,” “El Pito,” “Ariñañara,” and “Sock It To Me Baby,” rocked the hit parades establishing Joe Cuba and his Sextet as the definitive sound of Latin New York during the ‘60s & ‘70s. The Joe Cuba Sextet’s unusual instrumentation featured vibraphones replacing the traditional brass sound. His music was at the forefront of the Nuyroican movement of New York where the children of Puerto Rican emigrants, America’s last citizens, took music, culture, arts and politics into their own hands.

Joe Cuba: The Father of New York Boogaloo has Passed - World Music Central

During the short time Ritchie Valens was able to share his music with a national audience he had amassed four hit singles, appeared on “American Bandstand” twice and embarked on a tour of the Midwest with other rising rockers.

His career spanned just eight months, but in that short time Valens, a Mexican-American kid who would sometimes do migrant work to support his family, was able to blend the music of his ancestors with the rock ’n’ roll he taught himself to play on a second-hand guitar.

“Latinos can tip a state if others are finely balanced. In Indiana Obama got 77 per cent of the Latino vote - the highest of any state - and won it by 26,000 votes,” Mr Wijewardena said.

Boy from Oz who won Latino voters for Obama - World - smh.com.au

Sanford, Fla. - Wendy Martinez Canelones grew up Catholic and Seventh-day Adventist. But she always felt drawn to Judaism. She once had a vivid dream of herself embracing a blue volume of the Torah. She tears up recalling the dream.

Eventually, she found out why. While studying her family history, she found that she is a descendant of Jews who were killed during the Spanish Inquisition.

Some Latinos Trace Their Jewish Roots

African-American voters waited more than twice as long as others to vote in last month’s presidential election, and Hispanics were asked to show identification more often, a survey released Tuesday showed.

Although Election Day ran smoothly for most voters, the survey of 10,000 people by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found at least one in four voters lack confidence that their votes were counted correctly.

Survey reveals voting disparities on Nov. 4 - USATODAY.com

Sometimes called “The Region,” the northwest corner of Indiana is its own place, holding special meaning for our state’s ethnic history, labor history, religious history, and women’s history.

For example, Lake County has the highest percentage of Latinos in the state, roughly 14%. This ethnic community dates back to 1919 when U.S. Steel in Gary and Inland Steel in East Chicago imported Mexican laborers to help break the Great Steel Strike of 1919 (as told by Edward J. Escobar in Forging a Community: The Latino Experience in Northwest Indiana). Women workers from the city contributed to the steel industry during WWII; their Rosie the Riveter was Mela, Queen of the 12-Inch (Bar Mill). East Chicago remains a strong Hispanic center, with its historic Our Lady of Guadalupe parish.

Meandering Indiana - 9 « Hoosierati

Here in Montana, and across the Rocky Mountain West, the election of Barack Obama represents the startling culmination of social, cultural and political changes that have been underway in this region for many years. You’ve heard a lot of this by now: the Mountain West, increasingly populated by amenity-seeking coastal migrants and Latino immigrants, and with an independent-minded electorate that’s resistant to Republican over-reaching on social issues, is no longer solid red, but rather “in play.”

The New President and the New West | Politics | New West Network

Like Hijuelos’ best-known novel, “The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love” (1990), “Dark Dude” is about a Cuban living in New York City, only the protagonist is second generation and a teenager. He is also uncharacteristically fair-skinned — a “dark dude.” According to the definition that kicks off this book for readers ages 12 and up, that’s what “a male of light skin is derisively called by persons of color.”

That description most certainly applies to Rico, a 15-year-old Cuban American with blond hair, hazel eyes and freckles. The New York City teen is often jumped by hoods who think he’s white and, therefore, has money. But he doesn’t. His “Pops” works two jobs to keep the four-person family afloat, and they’re still scraping to get by because Pops likes to drink away his paychecks.

‘Dark Dude’ by Oscar Hijuelos - Los Angeles Times

Here in “Real America,” (a.k.a. South Texas), we might enjoy breakfast tacos from Joe’s Texaco in the morning and then venture over to our favorite panaderia in the afternoon for sweet bread and coffee.

That’s hardly a news flash, but how about this: In the deep red state of Indiana, a Spanish-language radio station is handing out pan dulce at get-out-the-vote rallies for Hispanics, reports Politico.com.

Enjoying Pan Dulce in `Red America’ - The Daily Chisme : Brownsville Herald

Some three dozen workers at a telemarketing call center in Indiana walked off the job rather than read an incendiary McCain campaign script attacking Barack Obama, according to two workers at the center and one of their parents.

Dozens Of Call Center Workers Walk Off Job In Protest Rather Than Read McCain Script Attacking Obama

Similar battles are playing out in Georgia, Michigan, Missouri, Utah, and Indiana, which saw its ID law upheld by the US Supreme Court in April, despite evidence that up to 43,000 citizens lacked the necessary ID—including a dozen retired nuns turned away from the polls during primary season.

Beyond Diebold: 10 Ways to Steal This Election

WITH only two weeks to go before the election, talk has turned to the Bradley effect. The phenomenon is named for Tom Bradley, the African-American mayor of Los Angeles, who lost the 1982 California governor’s race even though exit polls predicted he’d defeat his Republican opponent, George Deukmejian. Some white people, the theory goes, tell pollsters they will vote for black candidates and then, once in the voting booth, don’t.

Op-Ed Contributor - What Bradley Effect? - NYTimes.com

bradley effect

Though Chryson belongs to a fringe political party, one that advocates the secession of Alaska from the Union, and that organizes with other like-minded secessionist movements from Canada to the Deep South, he is not without peculiar influence in state politics, especially the rise of Sarah Palin.

Barack Obama is beating John McCain because fear trumps fear. That is, the fear of many white voters for their jobs and their homes surpasses the fear some of them feel over electing a black man.