2015/9/11-Aubrey Lynch looked around his college campus a year ago and saw something; or rather he didn’t see something.  “I don’t see many Hispanics here,” he admitted.  “I’m sure there are some, but I haven’t seen them, and I thought there would be a whole lot more.  Everyone I spoke to last year said they planned to go to college, but I just don’t see many in college now that I’m here.”

Lynch, a student at Hinds Community College in Raymond, is an aspiring language translator who is fluent in both Spanish and English and who volunteers his services at Catholic Charities’ Immigration and Refugee Services through a MSNAACP joint student worker program.

His background makes him somewhat sensitive to the presence of Latinos around him, so the lack of a Latino presence on the campus was something he noticed immediately.

Even though Hispanics are now the largest minority on U.S. college campuses, making up roughly 16.5 percent of all U.S. college students, according to the Pew Hispanic Center, it turns out that a college degree isn’t a reality for many Latino youth.  The Lumina Foundation for Education reports that 42 percent of U.S. whites hold a two- or four-year college degree in contrast to the 26 percent of African-Americans who hold the same.  The disparity is even greater for Hispanics, however, with only 19 percent of the U.S. Hispanic population obtaining a degree from a college or university.

Citizenship issues and blatant racism aggravate the problem for Mississippi Latinos when it comes to college.  Much of the Latino population in the state consists of new arrivals that have not yet achieved citizenship, as well as children who arrived years ago with their immigrant worker parents.  Even though many Latino youths have been here since they were in diapers, they weren’t born here — and that distinction seems to make all the difference to many state legislators.

Ocean Springs business owner Jackie Castro-Cooper is an avid youth advocate who regularly petitions the Mississippi Legislature to make college more accessible to the state’s newest residents.  Castro-Cooper does not hesitate to relay the disdain white Mississippi legislators have showed her and her young colleagues.

“We went up to the Legislature this past March and the Republicans basically spat in our face,” Castro-Cooper said.  “One guy, [Ocean Springs Rep. Jeffrey] Guice said, ‘I don’t talk to you people.’”

This shock came after Castro-Cooper helped raise money for a bus trip to the state Capitol during the 2015 legislative session, specifically to lobby legislators to remove out-of-state college tuition fees for immigrant youth who grew up in the state.  In-state college students attending the University of Mississippi can expect to pay $3,672 for one 17-hour semester.  A Latino youth who was born elsewhere faces a $10,287 price tag for the same semester — even if he or she spent 18 years here and has a southern accent lazy enough to drip molasses.

Determined to educate legislators on the situation, some coastal high school graduates, their parents and supporters spent months raising money to rent a bus for the ride up to the Capitol, in Jackson, to beg their cause, but when they arrived they were turned away by an uncompromising Legislature.

“He said, ‘I don’t talk to people who are illegal aliens,’” Castro-Cooper said of Guice.  “He basically yelled at us and walked away, in front of these kids, who had just graduated, and their families and friends.  It was horrific.”

One of the students, Aida Martinez-Bone, sent a frantic letter to a different Republican legislator.  A few days later she received a FedEx box from the same legislator.  Intrigued, she opened the box only to discover that it contained the torn shreds of her letter callously mailed back to her.  Martinez-Bone refused to name the legislator who sent her the shredded letter, as that particular legislator still holds a position of authority in the Legislature and could single-handedly sink any future appeal from Latino youth.

However, if the purpose of keeping college costs high is to discourage educational advancement among Mississippi Latinos, mission accomplished.  The average national graduation rate for white students in 2007-2008 was 49 percent.  Among Mississippi Latinos, however, the graduation rate was only 23.9 percent, rating the state only above Alaska, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Source: http://www.ncsl.org/documents/educ/LatinoCollegeCompletion.pdf

According to the NCSL, Hispanic youth face multiple college roadblocks that start as far back as junior high school.  For every 100 white students, 77, on average, graduate from high school as opposed to only 55 of 100 Hispanics who graduate.  Likewise, 55 of those 77 graduating white students enroll in college, while only 36 of the 55 Hispanic students make that same leap, discouraged by high tuition costs and urgent monetary needs that often force graduates to immediately get a job.  Of those who make it to college, 27 percent of white students eventually graduate.  That is in stark contrast to the mere 13 percent of Hispanic high school graduates who manage to acquire their college degree.

These numbers are even more significant when one considers the long-term life effects that a college degree creates.  The average worker with a bachelor’s degree earns 66 percent more in lifetime earnings than a high school graduate.  Economists also note that each high school graduate who earns a college degree enjoys a personal income increase of nearly $35,000.  This increase in personal income, in turn, decreases Medicare and Medicaid expenses.  The result is a win-win for any state that increases its college graduation rate.  In fact, if the United States were to increase its college attainment rate from 38 percent to 50 percent, the NCSL predicts there would be a boost of $475 billion in personal income, with $10 billion saved in Medicaid expenses and $4.8 billion saved in Medicare expenses.

It is therefore truly unfortunate for both the state and the nation when Republican legislators can’t overcome personal issues of racism and xenophobia long enough to make college accessible for all Mississippi students.

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Founded in 1909, the NAACP is the nation’s oldest and largest civil rights organization. Its members throughout the United States and the world are the premier advocates for civil rights in their communities, conducting voter mobilization and monitoring equal opportunity in the public and private sectors.  For more information about the Mississippi NAACP or news stories, call 601-353-8452 or log on to www.naacpms.org.  Like us on Facebook by searching Mississippi NAACP and follow us on Twitter @MSNAACP.