Herman Badillo

By: Amanda Perez, Wagner College ‘16

“Herman Badillo is a true leader who doesn’t flinch from expressing difficult truths. His own amazing story provides inspiration and the moral authority that allows him to advocate hard choices for American Hispanics. He has provided an important blueprint for incorporating the nation’s largest ethnic community into the mainstream of this great nation,” says Linda Chavez, a former Reagan White House official and author of Out of the Barrio: and Towards a New Politics of Hispanic Assimilation.⁽¹⁾

Controversial Views: Herman Badillo’s book, One Nation, One Standard: An Ex-Liberal on How Hispanics Cam Succeed Just Like Other Immigrant Groups, is “a memoir of Herman Badillo’s early life and political career intertwined with his reflections on increasing upward mobility of Hispanics in the United States.”⁽²⁾ He states in his book, “Hispanics, as a culture, do place less stress on the importance of education than do other, more economically and socially successful immigrant groups.”⁽³⁾  Herman Badillo began losing support from the Latino community because he criticized them for their lax work ethic.⁽⁴⁾  This proved to be low point in Herman Badillo’s leadership because now he was seen as controversial.

Thesis: With perseverance, Herman Badillo was able to escape a life of poverty in Puerto Rico in order to pursue a life in which he went on to achieve remarkable feats, such as becoming the first Puerto Rican elected to Congress in 1970, as a political reformer in New York City.⁽²⁾ He shows that anyone, regardless of ethnicity, can attain a good education and make a positive impact on the world. However, being a leader can also bring negative feedback from those who oppose your views. Having a leadership role will make Herman Badillo more aware of what works and what does not work, what former ideas appeared to be effective, and what changes needed to be made. Herman Badillo was a consistent supporter of education, particularly for Hispanic communities. However, he made a dramatic reversal from promoting to opposing bilingual education. 

Map Of Puerto Rico  

An Unusual Childhood: Five years after Herman Badillo’s birth on August 21, 1929 in Caguas, Puerto Rico, he became an orphan because tuberculosis claimed the lives of his two parents. This served to be a hard time for him because he had to adjust to a life in which he began living with his Aunt Aurelia. She played a significant role in his life because she was the person who enabled him to attain an education in New York City. He became involved in the student government and was even elected president of his class. This proved to be his first instance of holding a leadership position.⁽²⁾ He was able to develop independence and confidence which are two leadership qualities that are needed in order to be an effective leader. This event displays Herman Badillo’s ability to stay strong during such a grim time. Even after the death of his two parents, he continued to stay determined to achieve a better, poverty-free life for himself in New York City. He teaches others to persevere when times seem bleak.

Herman Badillo was the FIRST Puerto Rican to become: Bronx Borough President in 1965,  A Member of the U.S. House of Representatives in 1970, and Deputy Mayor to City of New York in 1978.⁽³⁾

Bilingual Education? “I saw that my colleagues could not keep up and most of them fell behind and that was the reason that I became, at that point, committed to doing something about education because I felt that this was happening to hundreds of thousands of Puerto Ricans and Latinos,” says Herman Badillo. He did not feel that it made sense for teachers to speak English and many students to speak Spanish. At the age of only eleven, Badillo wanted bilingual education to be implemented. The leadership skill that he attained was critical reflection.⁽⁵⁾  After critically reflecting on his success in helping to pass the Bilingual Education Act of 1968 in Congress, Badillo changed his thoughts about the effectiveness of bilingual education because he believed that bilingual education hurt the students more than it helped them. He felt this way because students remained in bilingual schools for two, four, six, and even eight years. Therefore, Badillo felt this was a setback for the Hispanic peoples’ increasing upward mobility in the United States, so he became a critic of bilingual education.⁽⁶⁾

How Herman Badillo relates to me: My participation in the Port Richmond/Generation Citizen Project connects with Badillo’s leadership skill of critical reflection. Just like Badillo did, the Wagner College students, Port Richmond High School students, and the faculty demonstrated critical reflection during the Port Richmond/Generation Citizen Project. Even though we were all excited to take on the cleaning up the parks project in Port Richmond, we knew that a more pressing issue was before us. Hurricane Sandy had left Staten Island in shambles after its destruction. Many people lost everything they owned and are still struggling to make ends meet. We realized that helping the Hurricane Sandy victims was a more appropriate and significant project to take on. Therefore, we all came together to go to Project Hospitality in Port Richmond to serve the needs of the Hurricane Sandy victims by sorting different necessities for them. Similarly, after critical reflecting, Badillo realized that bilingual education was not an efective way to educate Hispanics after he was a strong advocate for it for so many years.

Herman Badillo is my fifth cousin, so learning more about him was inspiring for me. He is my role model because he persevered throughout his life and never backed down from expressing his views. His unique story should inspire others to want to do their best in life, just like he did. He is a man who has experienced high and low points as a leader, but he remains to be an inspirational leader who proves that any person can accomplish noteworthy achievements if he puts his mind to them.

Bibliography

(1)   “Herman Badillo.” Last modified 2010. http://hermanbadillo.com.

(2)   Lang, Dorothy. “One Nation, One Standard: An Ex-Liberal on How Hispanics Can Succeed Just Like Other Immigrant Groups, by Herman Badillo.” Academic Questions 20, no. 3 (Summer2007 2007): 251-255. Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost.

(3)   Falcón, Angelo. “One Nation, One Standard: An Ex-Liberal on How Hispanics Can Succeed Just Like Other Immigrant Groups.” Centro Journal 19, no. 2 (Fall2007 2007): 265-268. Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost.

(4)   “Herman Badillo.” Last modified November 25, 2012. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herman_Badillo.

(5)   Preskill, Stephen and Stephen Brookfield. Learning as a Way of Leading: Lessons from the Social Justice Struggle. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 2009.

(6)   Sanchez-Korrol, Virginia. “A Conservation with Herman Badillo: The Early Years.” Last modified March 18, 2011. http://centropr.hunter.cuny.edu/voices/depth/indepthbadillo.

 Other Scholarly Sources:

Badillo, Herman. One Nation, One Standard: An Ex-liberal on How Hispanics Can Succeed Just Like Other Immigrant Groups. Penguin, 2006.

Sales, William W., and Rod Bush. “The political awakening of blacks and Latinos in New York City: competition or cooperation?.” Social Justice 27, no. 1 (79) (2000): 19-42.

Schwinge, Diana. “Standards, Exit Exams, and the Politicization of Bilingual Education: The Writing Exit Exam at Hostos College.” Working Papers in Educational Linguistics 16, no. 2 (2000): 43-61.