EthnicMajority

(News Observer) The Democrats are trying to make their national convention into more than just a four-day coronation of President Barack Obama in Charlotte next September. They want to turn it into a statewide event that will help keep North Carolina blue.

That was evident Wednesday, when the CEO of the Democratic National Convention Committee arrived in Durham to drop off $2 million in deposits each with the Mechanics and Farmers Bank and the Latino Community Credit Union.

The money is part of $17 million in public funding the Democrats have received – the Republicans have received a like amount – to help pay for their convention. The Democrats have made it a practice to deposit some of the money in minority-owned financial institutions.

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(Washington Post) Four years ago in Iowa, Republican caucus-goers chose illegal immigration as the most important issue facing the country. The issue of how to deal with more than 10 million unauthorized immigrants is not playing a central role in the 2012 GOP race. But fresh numbers from the Pew Hispanic Center reveal that Republicans have made little progress since 2008 in courting a fast-growing Hispanic voting bloc, two-thirds of whom voted for Barack Obama.

In their basic political party identification – the continental plates of American politics – 67 percent of Hispanics identify with or lean toward the Democratic Party, compared with 20 percent who lean toward Republicans. The 47-point Democratic advantage is larger than at any point in more than a decade of polls, including 2008, when 26 percent of Hispanics sided with the Republican Party. As we noted Thursday, Obama leads Republican frontrunner Mitt Romney by 68 to 23 percent among Hispanic voters in a hypothetical general election match-up.

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(Examiner.com) A survey released Wednesday, December 28 by Pew Hispanic Center shows that Latinos disapprove how President Obama has handled the deportation of illegal immigrants. However,  the poll also shows that they would vote to re-elect him.

According to Pew, deportations under Obama reached record levels, and rose to an annual average of nearly 400,000 since 2009; double the average of George W. Bush’s first term and 30% higher than his second term.

The record deportations came after president Obama promised an immigration reform and stating in an address in front of La Raza National Council that “communities are terrorize by ICE’s immigration raids, when nursing mothers are torn from their babies,” when he was a candidate.

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(UPI) Hispanic leaders in Phoenix say Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio should resign following a court ruling that his officers engage in racial profiling.

U.S. District Judge Murray Snow also said in his decision Friday that being in the United States illegally is not grounds for arrest.

Antonio Bustamente of Los Abogados, the Arizona Hispanic Bar Association, called Snow's ruling "monumentally important," The Arizona Republic reported. Bustamente appeared with other leaders at a news conference Monday at the El Portal restaurant in Phoenix.

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(ABC News) A senator is calling on the Defense Department to conduct a system-wide review of alleged hazing incidents in the military, after eight soldiers in Afghanistan were charged in connection with the death of Army Pvt. Danny Chen, who apparently committed suicide in October.

Chen had told family and friends that he was the target of persistent racial taunts and abusive treatment by his comrades in arms.

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, requested the investigation due to concern that Chen's death is a reflection of a larger problem of military hazing.

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(USAToday) A record number of Asian Americans are running for Congress next year, reflecting population gains and a growing sense of the need to flex political muscle.

Republican Ranjit "Ricky" Gill has already outraised Democratic incumbent Rep. Jerry McNerney in California's newly configured 9th District. In Illinois, two Democrats — Raja Krishnamoorthi and Tammy Duckworth — are vying in the new 8th District. And two current Asian-American officeholders — U.S. Rep. Mazie Hirono of Hawaii and state Rep. William Tong of Connecticut, both Democrats — are running for U.S. Senate seats.

In all, at least 19 Asian-American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) candidates have declared their bids for Congress so far in the 2012 election cycle, up from eight candidates in 2010.

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(USAToday) Barack Obama is again an Internet sensation.

A 29-year-old Barack Obama.

Internet users are enjoying a 1991 television spot in which Obama — then a student at Harvard Law School — talks about pioneering African-American lawyer Charles Hamilton Houston.

Obama — longer hair, no gray — taped the spot as part of the "Black History Minute" series run by the TBS cable station in 1991.

Who could have guessed the heights that young man would have reached in less than two decades?

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(The Hill) Democrats are counting on enthusiastic support from Hispanics to propel them to victory one year from now, even though a lack of progress on immigration reform under President Obama and increasingly harsh rhetoric from Republicans has left many Hispanics disenchanted with both parties.

Increasingly, no party or candidate with an eye toward Washington can afford not to appeal to this fastest-growing voter bloc in the country. Hispanics supported Obama by a two-to-one margin in the 2008 election over Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), then set a record for midterm voter turnout in 2010 when 6.6 million Hispanics showed up to the polls, according to the Pew Hispanic Center.

Obama remains much more popular with Hispanics than he does with the overall population. A poll released Nov. 8 by Univision/Latino Decisions showed 48 percent of Americans overall approved of his job performance; among Hispanics, it’s 66 percent.

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(Progress Illinois) If the layoffs outlined in the proposed Chicago budget come to fruition, labor leaders say they will greatly impact African American, Latino, and Asian workers who make up 85 percent of the cuts, according to their analysis. This could be devastating for communities already struggling with high unemployment rates.

While the national unemployment rate is 9 percent, African Americans currently battle an unemployment rate of just over 15 percent. The figure is 11.4 percent for Latinos.

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(Bradenton.com) With growing signs that Hispanic voters are turned off by GOP positions on immigration, U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., is using his national profile to deliver a message to his party: Tone it down.