Inquiry

I've been working a lot the past few weeks on my American Sociological Association presentation/paper for some three weeks from now in Boston. Twice in the past 15 years I've got proposed presentations turned down, but most of the rest of the time I've made presentation at little roundtables. Only twice - and so next time will be the second time - has the association accepted my proposals as presentations for full-blown panels. Last year's presentation on Hmong (pronounced MUNG) Americans in Minnesota's Twin Cities (and comments on it) helped beget next month's presentation comparing the strategies of Hmong and Korean Americans in Minneapolis-St. Paul with those of Cuban and Haitian Americans in Miami/South Florida. The objective is try to account for why different groups in different cities adopt different strategies.

(Two key factors I've found - whether the group is connected with the culture and language of a continental-wide culture (like Cuban Americans are to Latin America), or simply with a national culture (such as the Korean and Haitian Americans), or with a culture with no nation state (like the Hmong), and whether or not the group brings with them and encounters here advantages (government assistance, money or skills or schooling or contacts, famliarity, light skin color.) (I'm drawing from research I did at the end of our stay in Minnesota - and during trips back from Illinois and Louisville - and from research I did in South Florida in December 2006 (?) for my Celebrate the States series book for young people, "Florida.")

One of the things I'm doing is comparing the proportion of the population in these four groups with the proportion of people from each group among state legislators and regional planning commissioners covering the areas (as of June 2004). In order for this to work, I have to determine the racial/ethnic/national origin of all of the legislators and planning commissioners. This was easier to do in Minnesota because I was there then. The Web is a great resource for finding out information but Web sites are updated regularly - here one day, one the next. So it is tougher to find out information on people long gone. I have been looking for pictures of people and also biographical information (are they in a Cuban American elected officials organization? did they get an award as a distinguished black official? where were they born and what religion are they?)

Four people giving me problems: Jose "Pepe" Riesco (Miami accountant and Republican operative: is he Cuban American or other Latino?); Christine Nixon-Calamari (lawyer born in Jamaica- is she Anglo from the United States or the Caribbean or African American or Afro-Caribbean American?), Carmela Starace (former Royal Palm Beach commissioner and Florida League of Cities president, apparently now in Florida [pictured above on the right]: is she Anglo, Cuban American, other Latino, or even African American or Afro-Caribbean American?); and Kevin Foley (Republican developer, Catholic and Vietnam Marine vet, graduated from the University of Dayton: no evidence yet that he's African American - I'm leaning towards Anglo, though no picture). I've started to call some of the places where these people have served - and I'm actually trying to call a Carmela Starace in Brooklyn to just ask her. Any ideas?