Latin Americans refer to American citizens with a Latin background. Latin is the parts of America that were once a part of Spain, Portugal, or France empires. The group has experienced discrimination in the past and still undergoing high levels of discrimination today. The discrimination ranges from harassment by the police, lack of opportunities in learning institutions, illegal deportations, and violation of civil rights. The community has experienced discrimination since 1848 when the U.S worn the Mexican-American war. The wars lead to signing of the Guadalupe treaty that granted the U.S 55 percent of Mexican territory ( Foster & Samuels, 2018) . The territory’s residents became U.S citizens. America used the new residence of the region for cheap labor leading to the first step of exploitation and discrimination. The Latinos were segregated in poor areas and discriminated based on language, skin color, origin, and economic status.
There are two main theories of working with the Latino American population. The first theory is the psychological theory of prejudice. It explains the reason prejudice is difficult to remove (Sanneh, 2019). Since prejudice is an attitude, Americans should be enlightened not to pre-judge the Latinos or have a negative attitude towards them. Similarly, Latinos should be encouraged not to pre-judge that they will be discriminated against but consider themselves as equal citizens. The second theory is Daniel Katz’s theory of functional approach. It intends to change the attitudes of people towards others and promote adjustments of ego defense, knowledge, and value expressions. The theory will help Latinos eliminate ego defense and other Americans to value the Latinos.
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Discrimination towards the Latinos started way back in the 1840s. It is when the Latinos continue with their Mexican culture despite becoming Americans. It made other Americans consider them as not part of Americans. The negative attitude influences many to feel that since many Latinos come from poor families they lack knowledge of living as modern Americans. Poverty promotes discrimination since they are forced to work in low earning jobs and live in poverty. Negative perception destroys interpersonal relationships since the Latinos believe that other communities do not like them while other Americans feel that the Latinos are not worth.
The potential problems that the Latinos face are harassment by the police, discrimination in place of work, negative comments in the social, and association with ill practices and poverty. The best solution to eliminating the problems is using influential platforms such as social media to portray Latinos as competent people in society (Vyse, 2018). Professionals can also criticize discrimination of the Latinos through social media, mass media, and public gatherings. Second, I would urge employers to reward competent Latinos with promotions in places of work to eliminate the negative perceptions and motivate other Latinos. When using technology such as social media and emails, one need to keep in mind that technology serves as the key way that negative perception is spread. One needs to be cautious not to add more harm through receiving negative comments on the technological platforms (Radford, 2018). As a leader, I will implement cultural diversity knowledge by considering all culture as important and not judging people based on their culture but their performance and skills. I will capitalize on posting successful actions by Latinos Americans on social media to increase knowledge on cultural diversity and demonstrate to the world that Latinos are competent people who can make exceptional success. Lastly, I will portray Latinos as educated individuals with families, friends, professional competences, who can perform equally better in organizations and different professionals.
References
Foster, Craig, & Samuels, Steven (2018). "Psychology, Skepticism, and Confronting Racism" . Skeptical Inquirer . 42 (1): 32–33.
Sanneh, Kelefa (2019). "The Color of Injustice". The New Yorker . pp. 18–22.
Vyse, Stuart (2018). "Combating Racism through Shared Goals" . Skeptical Inquirer . 42 (1): 34–35
Radford, Benjamin (2018). "Critical Thinking Approaches to Confronting Racism" . Skeptical Inquirer . 42 (1): 31.
