Maria Echeveste, former White House Deputy Chief of Staff, and Christopher Edley Jr., a Harvard Law school professor, met Wednesday night with 50 students and administrators to discuss tensions between blacks and Latinos in politics.
The lecture, which was sponsored by For Members Only and Alianza, was intended to raise awareness about the strains among minority groups and their roles in politics. Echeveste and Edley, who are married, both worked in the Clinton White House and dealt with race issues.
“The Latino and African-American communities don’t understand each other completely; there is no hostility, but there is also no real engagement,” Edley said.
Even though she said she was “afraid of the cut-throat-fishbowl world of the White House,” Echeveste, the daughter of Mexican migrant workers, said she couldn’t refuse when she was offered the position of Deputy Chief of Staff under President Clinton, becoming the third woman in history and the first person of color to hold that position.
Echeveste said she felt she was looked as an advocate for the Latino community.
“I felt the burden and stress pretty heavily,” she said.
Despite coming from a very different background, Edley also felt drawn to politics. Under President Clinton, he was the director of the White House Review of Affirmative Action, a position he accepted because there were no other blacks in policy-making positions, he said.
Edley and Echeveste had different views on the racial climate in the Clinton Administration. Echeveste said the Clinton administration was committed to diversity. But though Edley recognized the greater diversity of the Clinton administration compared to President Carter’s, he said that it only perpetuated segregation.
“There were no people of color around the table,” he said. He said that most minorities were in the Cabinet and had no direct influence on policy.
“Race was such a powerful thing that many of Clinton’s advisors didn’t want to talk about it, Edley said.
Though the speakers said that some competition exists between blacks and Latinos, much of it is generated by outside forces.
Echeveste said that the media can create competition by writing headlines such as “Latinos overtake blacks as the largest minority.”
According to Edley, competition is unavoidable between blacks and Latinos because blacks are more represented in politics despite being outnumbered by Latinos according to the 2000 census.
Both speakers agreed that until blacks and Latinos understand each other’s perspectives, working together will be very difficult.
Weinberg junior Tiffany Berry, coordinator of For Members Only, said she hoped that this discussion will lead to the two groups understanding each other more.
“Everything the speakers said is true on a smaller level at NU,” Berry said. “Sponsoring the event with Alianza will hopefully create a pattern for the future and be more than putting two names together on a piece of paper.”
Both Echeveste and Edley said they yearn for a world where race has no importance. Echeveste said it would be like seeing someone’s hair color, noticing it, and then ignoring it. Edley said religion supplies the best analogy to a race-blind culture.
“Color gets in the way of connection,” he said. “Religion is something that is part of someone’s identity, but is not supposed to matter in interaction. Identity depends on the context and should not be totally determined by race and ethnicity.”
Katherine Unmuth, Medill junior and Alianza president, saw this event as a step closer to answering the question in a positive light.
“The event turned out great,” she said. ‘The lecture made us think about issues that Latinos and African Americans have in common and left questions open to be worked on in the future.”
