This week, the National Council of La Raza is holding its 40th annual conference in our city. The event brings as many as 20,000 people to the convention center and millions of dollars to the local economy. It also brings controversy. With a name like the National Council of La Raza, the organization is easily caricatured as exclusionary and even racist.

Three years from now, all California public school students will have to take algebra, and a state proficiency exam on it, by the eighth grade. We commend the decision by the state Board of Education to make California the first state in the nation with such a requirement. By rejecting a proposal to allow educators to continue to give a less rigorous math test to students they deem insufficiently prepared to pass the algebra test, the board rightly set high expectations for all students.

In 2005 and 2006, when residents of San Diego's Uptown Planning District protested construction of two large projects that would densify their neighborhoods, one could understand their concerns and maybe even side with them. Not today.

Rightly or wrongly, much of modern business is focused on building the “brand” and protecting the equity of that brand. In its heyday, the brand of thoroughbred horse racing was built upon the sturdy shoulders and legs of horses such as Man O' War, Seabiscuit, Citation, Secretariat and Winning Colors.

La Raza's annual conference got under way yesterday at the San Diego Convention Center. It concludes Tuesday. Murguía recently met with members of the Union-Tribune editorial board.

Janet Murguía, the National Council of La Raza's president, says she has little use for those who pit groups against each other. “I don't believe in wedge politics,” she told the Union-Tribune's editorial board. “And I don't like people who try to divide and conquer. I prefer messages of unity and those who draw people together around the common good.”