Leo R. Chavez

speaker

1,192 appearances 2 recordings 2 series first heard Dec 2025 last heard 20 Dec

Leo R. Chavez’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

Trend

recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in Dec 2025 with 2.

Appearances

newest first · ▶ plays the moment

New Books in Latin American Studies · Leo R. Chavez, "The Latino Threat: How Alarmist Rhetoric Misrepresents Immigrants, Citizens, and the Nation" (Stanford UP, 2025) · 20 Dec 2025 podcast

And people say, well, why are there so many Latino and Asian kids in grade school here?

Because their parents are at the reproductive stages of their lives.

You know, the average white woman in Orange County when I started writing this was 45 years of age.

They were already not having kids.

And it's so easy to see how change occurs because of demographic realities, not to blame people, just to recognize the realities.

But blame is the game that's very popular in politics, unfortunately.

And so I kind of asked myself, these are the contexts within which the Latino narrative thrives.

And unfortunately, those aspects of American life aren't going to change in the near future.

You know, the fact that people, there's a difference in who's having kids, there's the age differences, there's the fact that the immigrants are the highest working population in America in terms of proportion.

I mean, these are all facts of life.

This is not going to change in the near future.

In fact, as I write about in the book, particularly the epilogue, in contrast to having people deported, we need to have a rational policy that allows people to come and be part of our society and integrate.

And you guessed a new way for people to regularize their status.

I mean, these are the things that are important in our society, not deporting people.

I think that's going to become very clear to a lot of people in the near future.

Remember, I'm an academic, so you can stop me from talking.

Just give me a signal and I'll stop so you can ask me another question.

Well, I mean, first and foremost, the Latino threat narrative is very effective in getting people to vote for certain candidates.

It's a very effective motivator because it's a motivation of fear.

That if you can get people afraid and you can say you can solve the problem, you hopefully get a chance to get people to come out and vote for you.

Showing 821–840 of 1,192 · page 42 of 60