In his column titled, “Let’s teach kids to take care of their own lives,” Ruben Navarrette recycles a conservative talking point: America is a land of unbridled upward social mobility. Only parental incompetence and/or the bad decisions of individuals stand in the way of a bright future for one and all. As evidence, Navarrette cites the achievements of his Latino family.
But while Navarrette highlights the individual accomplishments of his field worker parents, he ignores the collective struggle of Latinos for progressive labor law, decent working conditions and reasonable compensation. While tributes to personal heroism support individualist ideology, the heroism and sacrifice of Cesar Chavez and his struggle for economic justice go unnoticed. So while Navarrette and his kin benefited greatly from the sacrifices of those dedicated to the welfare of ALL MANKIND (and in the case of Chavez, the welfare of all sentient beings), the context for Navarrette’s narrative is narrowed to a historically impoverished tale of family triumph.
This is similar to ignoring the role of those who sacrificed their personal welfare in other labor and political movements; for example, what raised my Irish ancestors out of squalor by ending the wage slave, 80 hour work week in mines, mills, factories and other assorted dirty, dangerous industries – life and death labor struggles ultimately benefiting Navarrette.
We live in a country not so much threatened by individual failure as a failure to...
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