I always take with a grain of salt studies involving latinos in the United States. I always feel the frame of reference in a lot of polls is not based on the diverse cultural dynamics of US latinos. When I read polls focused on Latinos, they strike me as being based on assumptions of cultural and political assimilation made by both the pollsters and the media outlets reporting on the data finding.

The Associated Press is one of those media outlets making tons of assumptions about minority politics in the US. Check out their latest crapping on minority in this article reprinted by Newsday.

This is what they've republished :

The study, which was based on a 2005 survey of teens in grades 9 though 12, drew no conclusions as to why New York's teen girls were less likely to be on the pill than girls elsewhere, but the data suggested that cultural differences might play a role in some birth control choices.

Teen girls in the city's poor, predominantly Hispanic South Bronx neighborhood were nearly twice as likely to have had recent unprotected sex as girls nationwide. Black teenage girls in New York, on the other hand, were no more or less likely to have used birth control during their last sexual encounters than the average U.S. teenage girl.

I immediately went into a rage because there is no social, cultural or political context whatsoever to the data findings --and the AP doesn't care a bit to question those findings. On the contrary, they've taken the NYC Health Department's press release and highlighted all the negative aspects (percentages of teen pregnancy, unprotected sex) while downplaying the positives (69% teens used condoms).

Yet the biggest omission is the only direct statement by NYC Health Commissioner Thomas Frieden that appears on the report.

It's as if at the last minute the abstinence-only police demanded to put in the obligatory piece of propaganda that "compassionate conservatism" has imposed on this country's health and education systems.

This is what appeared on the report :