Rojas: Latino Inclusion — A Needed Initiative
By Wilfredo “Wil” Rojas, M.Ed. | AC JosepH Media Guest Blogger
Not long ago, Front Runner New Jersey.com officially expanded from a regular blog focusing mainly on the African American community to an umbrella publication featuring Front Runner New Jersey/La Prensa focusing on the growing Latinos in need of inclusion in the Garden State media.
New Jersey is one of the most diverse States in America, but unlike states in the Southwest, West Coast, New York, New England, Texas, Florida, Ohio, Illinois, Pennsylvania, and Puerto Rico, a colony of the United States; Latinos don’t get the same visibility in English-language media.
Front Runner New Jersey is to be applauded for reaching out and embracing our brothers and sisters in New Jersey’s diverse Latino communities.
Never in New Jersey has there been an African American-owned media outlet that tries to unite African Americans and Latinos through a media outlet. New Jersey needed a news publication committed to highlighting news happening in the diverse Latino communities of the Garden State.
The new Front Runner New Jersey/La Prensa will strive to educate its readers about Latinos and issues that affect their lives, just as we did around the recent 2nd Congressional District in South Jersey. It is through publications like the Front Runner that Latinos and the issues they struggle with daily will be exposed for all the English-speaking population to read.
As a Puerto Rican, I am excited and grateful to Clyde Hughes for embarking on such a needed initiative as Front Runner New Jersey/La Prensa. I was delighted to read the stories of individuals of Latino descent that are unselfishly and bravely contributing to changing the Latino condition in New Jersey by voicing and expressing their personalities, uniting to build a Latino community and to changing their subordinate situation as a distinct ethnic community of color.
The highlighted individuals in Front Runner New Jersey/La Prensa are making remarkable contributions to Latino histories, cultures, and struggle for socioeconomic and political parity with the dominant racial group in New Jersey.
It is the Front Runner New Jersey/La Prensa’s category goal to dispel the negative image of Latinos and build a positive vehicle towards change. This publication in South Jersey is contributing to the creation of what is quickly becoming a most popular news medium by bringing voices to the situation of persons of color to the forefront.
We hope that Front Runner New Jersey/La Prensa will be used as a tool for further study by people of all backgrounds who never heard or read the histories of Latinos and hope they will understand us as people of color living in a white-dominated country. However, most importantly we pray that young Latinos from South, Central America and the Caribbean will rally around this new feature and use social media to spread the word.
In conclusion, I want to publicly thank all Latinos who shared their story on this blog, and publisher Clyde Hughes for creating this new category in service to our community. Again, any reader wishing to contact me, can email me at wil21252@aol.com.
Bio: Wilfredo “Wil” Rojas is an award-winning columnist, veteran civil rights activist and former officer with the Gloucester County NAACP. He is the cofounder and retired director of Philadelphia Prison System’s Office of Community Justice and Outreach.
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