As a proud Latina of maternal Puerto Rican descent, I adore Hispanic Heritage Month. I love the cultural celebrations and galas where everyone comes out strutting their stuff in colorful, glamorous gowns and stilettos or suits worn with cowboy boots and hats, like proud peacocks displaying the vibrancy of our cultura. I also love the vast diversity of ethnicities, skin tones and acentos on display at these events.   

As much as I relish Hispanic Heritage Month, I also feel a degree of disappointment every time it comes around. How is it that even with an entire nationally-recognized month set aside to celebrate our culture, so little remains known about who we are, how much we contribute to the United States, and what the continued scapegoating and marginalization costs us? Americans from all walks of life love our tacos, our salsa (#1 condiment surpassing Ketchup), and our music (Despacito is the most viewed YouTube video ever, Bad Bunny is Spotify’s most streamed artist globally), yet we remain largely invisible unless it’s to highlight the next wave of undocumented immigration or crime.   

Though 78% of Latinos are US Citizens and 67% of us have been born in the US, and many of our ancestors—from California to Florida— were here well before there was even a United States, we are still broadly portrayed as immigrants. Americans of all backgrounds incorrectly believe that the number of Latinos in the United States who are undocumented is two to three times larger than it actually is—33 percent, when it is actually about 13 percent. 

In addition to being greatly misunderstood, we remain grossly underrepresented across essential sectors of the economy and other influential spheres. Latinos comprise 18.7 percent of the population, nearly 1 in 5 souls in the US. Yet in 2020, we held just 4.1% of Fortune 500 board seats. By comparison, non-Latino Whites held 82.5% of those seats, 8.7% were held by Black professionals and Asians held 4.6% of board seats. Statistics from 2017 show that Hispanic professionals occupied only 4.3% of executive positions, roughly equal to that of Black executives and somewhat lower than Asian American executives.  

Adding to our underrepresentation is the way our economic contributions are undervalued. Latinos contribute $2.8 trillion dollars in GDP to our economy. If Latinos were a country, we would be the 5th largest economy above the UK, India and France. We are also drivers of entrepreneurship, starting new businesses at 1.7 times the US population and accounting for 50% of net new small businesses.  Latinos account for ¾ of labor force growth from 2010-2020 and are projected to account for 78% of net new workers between 2020-2030. 

Despite all the work we do to keep the economy humming, we struggle with a widening wealth gap and high levels of poverty. For example, we are among the first to lose jobs when there is an economic shock, as the great recession and COVID shutdown demonstrated, partly because we over indexed in the hospitality and caretaking sectors. Latinos make up over 18% of the population but as much as 27% are living below the poverty line. Despite the evident need for supports, Hispanic and Latinx families are underrepresented in housing assistance programs, accounting for only 19% of HUD housing assistance recipients. Latinos also hold just one fifth of the wealth of Non-Latino White households. 

These alarming realities make clear the need for systemic and localized change. At Prosperity Now we are working year-round to close the racial and economic wealth divide for Latinx communities alongside Black, Indigenous, and People of Color. We are building coalitions across diverse communities to find areas of common concern and amplify high-potential solutions that will help us achieve systemic change. One of our most recent initiatives targets the capacity of the organizations that support Black- and Brown-owned business growth and sustainability through the 1 Million BIPOC Entrepreneurs Initiative, a partnership between Avanade and Prosperity Now.  

Additionally, our Prosperity Scorecard breaks out important economic indicators by race, ethnicity, and location, to help us, and our partners across the nation, to make data-informed decisions about how to address the needs of different Latinx communities. Prosperity Now’s new Scorecard refresh will better enable data and research on Latinx policy making and impact. We also continue supporting the leadership development and capacity of black and brown non-profit leaders through the Building High Impact Nonprofits of Color Project. All of this is necessary to bringing us closer to a racial and ethnic economic justice agenda, which is part of why I am so proud to be part of an organization leading initiatives that cross color lines in support of building a multiracial movement for change. 

Despite all this good and important work, there is much work to do to build authentic coalitions. This was never more evident than with the recent release of offensive and racist remarks made by LA City Councilwoman Nury Martinez and her fellow Latino LA City Council members, laying bare just how pervasive racism and colorism remain, even within our own Latino communities. The timing of this revelation, in the middle of Hispanic Heritage Month, should focus our attention in a heightened way and with honesty and integrity on the need to address and root out racism and white supremacy in our own homes and communities.  

Having been raised by a Puerto Rican mother and Black stepfather and having a younger Black brother who I helped to raise like my own child, I witnessed firsthand how our shared struggles for equal rights, economic justice, and freedom from bodily harm by police, and others wishing to do us harm, are deeply intertwined. A belief in the need for multiracial coalitions to effect real and widespread change is in my DNA. We must not let the words of the LA City Council Members set us back in our efforts to jointly work on racial and ethnic economic justice. I join the chorus of voices from our Hispanic leadership that has disavowed this behavior and demanded that they step down. Racism is not acceptable, not at home, not in our businesses, and not in elected positions of service to the people, all people. We must be steadfast and double down on our commitment to building authentic multiracial coalitions that reach across artificial divides created partly by the reverberations of colonialism, imperialism, and the adoption of zero-sum thinking. 

The preconceptions, marginalization and exclusion that Hispanic Heritage Month is intended to combat are still rampant in our society, but what grounds me is a deep connection to the work we are doing in this organization, and the hope that you will join us in carrying it out. If you share my desire to keep pushing for multiracial justice, I invite you to partner with us and review the resources below. Stay tuned for our coalition building work around racial and ethnic economic justice. One step at a time, working together in lockstep, we can transform our economy into one that works for us all. Adelante, until our economy works for everyone.  

Abigail Golden-Vazquez 
Sr. Fellow, Strategy, Prosperity Now 
Founding ED, Aspen Institute Latinos and Society Program