Apartheid. USA 1988

March 12, 1987:

By the year 2000, experts estimate that there will be 25 to 30 million Hispanics in the United States, or about 11 per-

[p. 45]

cent of the population. They are expected to overtake blacks to become the nation's largest minority group sometime early in the next century. In some cities, such as Houston, Texas and Los Angeles, California, Hispanic students already make up more than half the students entering public school in the first grade. In San Antonio, Texas, the nation's 10th largest city, 79 percent of the students in the San Antonio Independent School District are Hispanic.

While people of Hispanic descent are America's fastest-growing ethnic group, poverty, language problems, cultural differences and a shortage of Hispanic teachers are among the most pressing problems facing the nation's schools. A New York State study last November put the drop-out rate of Hispanic students past the ninth grade at 62 percent, against 53 for blacks and 20 percent for non-Hispanic whites. A Texas study in October put the State's drop-out rate at 45 percent for Hispanics, 34 percent for blacks and 27 percent for whites. ‘My basic belief is that the drop-out problem is like cancer,’ said James R Vasquez, superintendent of the Edgewood Independent School District in San Antonio. ‘There isn't one cause and there isn't one cure.’ According to Census Bureau figures, 13.5 percent of Hispanic people over 25 years of age have completed less than five years in school compared with 6.1 percent of blacks and 2.2 percent of whites.^66.

66. The New York Times, from a report by Peter Applebome