by Linda Chavez

About the author: Linda Chavez is president of the Center for Equal Opportunity in Washington, D.C., and author of Out of the Barrio: Toward a New Politics of Hispanic Assimilation.

The more than 21 million Hispanics now living in the United States are fast becoming the nation’s largest minority group. Some demographers can already see the day when one of three Americans will be of Hispanic descent. Will this mean a divided nation with millions of unassimilated, Spanish-speaking, poor, uneducated Hispanics living in the barrios? Well, here is one reply: “Each decade offered us hope, but our hopes evaporated into smoke. We became the poorest of the poor, the most segregated minority in schools, the lowest paid group in America and the least educated minority in this nation.”

This pessimistic view...