Alliance of White Anti-Racists Everywhere – Los Angeles
Hate Crimes
Report: 66 Percent of Hate Crime Victims Targeted Because of Anti-Latino Bias
02 months ago
The FBI’s annual Hate Crime Statistics report was released on Monday, and the numbers show a dramatic spike in crimes against Latinos. In total, the study reported that 66.6 percent of victims of ethnically motivated hate crimes in 2010 were targeted because of anti-Latino bias. It is the highest percentage of victims targeted for their Latino heritage in almost a decade.
There was an 11 percent spike from the previous year’s report that showed Latinos accounting for nearly 45 percent of hate crimes based on ethnicity or national origin.
“These crimes basically target you for who you are,” the FBI’s Erik Vasys said later in a press conference. “There’s a lot of factors that go into possible rises in statistics. It could be anything from more agencies participating to better and more accurate reporting.”
While the FBI says it’s unclear why hate crimes agaisnt Latinos are on the rise, it is important to note that between 2000 and 2010, the Latino population grew by 43 percent — or four times the nation’s 9.7 percent growth rate. All fifty states and Washington D.C. saw rises in the Latino population.
Some say the number of hate crimes may even be higher for Latinos because they’re the least likely to report crimes against them. Mark Potok, a spokesperson for the Southern Poverty Law Center, told The Huffington Post: “One thing to understand is that Latinos, and in particular undocumented immigrants, are among the least likely to report hate crimes because they fear deportation.”
The Hate Crime Statistics Program of the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program collects data regarding criminal offenses that are motivated, in whole or in part, by the offender’s bias against a race, religion, sexual orientation, ethnicity/national origin, or disability and are committed against persons, property, or society.
Groups Push FCC to Regulate Hate Speech
01 year ago
A coalition of more than 30 groups requested this week that the FCC monitor hate speech on cable news and talk radio programs, The Hill reported this week.
The request comes as the FCC prepares to tackle net neutrality, and supports a petition filed last year by the National Hispanic Media Coalition asking the commission to look into the relationship between hate speech and the rising number of hate crimes against Latinos.
This latest request was sent as a letter by groups including Free Press, the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, and the Center for Media Justice, arguing that the Internet has made it harder for the public to separate facts from “bigotry masquerading as news.”
Though the groups didn’t name any names, they also accused syndicated radio programs of using hate speech as a profit-model and hiding behind the invisibility of the Internet.
“As traditional media have become less diverse and less competitive, they have also grown less responsible and less responsive to the communities that they are supposed to serve,” the organizations wrote to the FCC. “In this same atmosphere hate speech thrives, as hate has developed as a profit-model for syndicated radio and cable television program masquerading as ‘news.
…”The Internet gives the illusion that news sources have increased, but in fact there are fewer journalists employed now than ever before. Moreover, on the Internet, speakers can hide in the cloak of anonymity, emboldened to say things that they may not say in the public eye.”
Ironically, news of the request also sparked a slew of what could be considered hateful comments over at The Hill, including gems like: “Get Obama first. That half breed hates whites and he lets them know” and “If you do not like what you hear..don’t listen. We are not in Venuzuela (yet).”
The Softer Side of Hate Crime?
01 year ago
When should a teenage killer be viewed with sympathy? The New York Times broached that issue yesterday with a long profile of Jeffrey Conroy, recently convicted in the case of the stabbing death of Ecuadorian immigrant Marcelo Lucero. While press accounts have focused on Conroy and his friends’ belligerence and bigotry, the Times attempted to put a human face on the teen by fleshing out his background:
He turned 19 in January and it shows. Though dressed in a green prisoner’s uniform, he still has the face, the demeanor and the vocabulary of a boyish teenager. …
He said he feels sadness and sympathy for the Luceros, and for Mr. Lucero’s younger brother, Joselo Lucero, a presence in the courtroom throughout the trial. “I would just look at him and then I would look away,” Mr. Conroy said. “I feel bad for him. I got a brother, too. I couldn’t imagine him dying.”
So what should we make of Conroy’s world, the nature or nurture that produced such inexplicable violence?
Mr. Conroy’s life was typical of what it’s like growing up in the predominantly white middle-class towns and villages of eastern Long Island, but his experiences also had shades of diversity. He listened to Jay-Z, Nas and other black hip-hop artists. His half-sister from his father’s previous marriage is part Puerto Rican. One of his best friends is Turkish.
“I’m nothing like what the papers said about me,” Mr. Conroy said. “I’m not a white supremacist or anything like that. I’m not this serious racist kid everyone thinks I am.”
Whether or not Conroy is a “serious racist” may to some degree be a semantic question. Or maybe this distinction between “serious” racism and the not-so-serious kind grows out of something deeper at work in the lives of kids like Conroy. The brutal murder of Marcelo Lucero tests the limits of public compassion, especially when we’re forced to wrestle with the fact that these are youth–living in typical towns, leading otherwise typical lives–charged with carrying out acts that seem incomprehensible. Do we recognize the America in which a typical high schooler listens to Nas and emblazons his skin with a swastika tattoo “as a joke?”
Pull back the frame a little and we have a question of how young people accused of crime are portrayed in the media. About two decades ago, another crime in New York, the sensational Central Park jogger case, put a different lens on a group of black youth, who were essentially tried by the media before they ever faced a jury. Condemned as savage predators, they were doomed from the start thanks to what we now know were botched confessions. Not until 2002 would they finally have their convictions dismissed, well after the state had robbed them of their youth. It was another case of the press vilifying and distorting images of young people caught up in the criminal justice system–deviants, “super-predators,” the child-monsters who represent an older generation’s hidden neuroses and fears.
How much sympathy does Conroy deserve? Whatever your personal disposition, remember that the same day his profile ran, there were legions of other youth locked up and banished, far outside the media spotlight, for whom the question of compassion won’t even be raised.
Image: Barcelo for NY Daily News
How Exactly Does A Lasso Turn Into A Noose? And Other Thoughts On UC Campus Racism
01 year ago
The student who left a noose hanging in the UCSD campus library came forward last week and has since been suspended. Yesterday, she apologized in a statement published by The Guardian, UCSD’s student newspaper.
In her words:
I found a small piece of rope on the ground earlier in the day. While I was hanging out with my friends a bit later, we tried jump-roping with it and making it into a lasso. My friend then took the rope and tied it into a noose. I innocently marveled at his ability to tie a noose, without thinking of any of its connotations or the current racial climate at UCSD. I left soon after with one of my friends for Geisel to study, still carrying the rope. After a bit of studying I picked up the rope to play with, and ended up hanging it by my desk. It was a mindless act and stupid mistake. When I got up to leave, a couple hours later, I simply forgot about it. This was Tuesday night.
She ends by saying:
I know what I did was offensive — regardless of my intentions — I am just trying to say I’m sorry. As a minority student who sympathizes with the students that have been affected by the recent issues on campus, I am distraught to know that I have unintentionally added to their pain.
Where to start? Should I dig into the comments that people have left beneath her statement? The ones that display incredulity at the fact that she’s still suspended when, duh, she didn’t mean any harm by her actions? Should I unleash my anger at the 524 people (I see you, Asian American students!!) who’ve joined the Facebook group “UCSD Students Outraged That People Are Outraged About The Compton Cookout”? (I am, however, heartened by the 854 students who’ve signed this one.)
Would it be instructive to delve into the collective psyche of our society, and that which lives in the bubble of college life? Is it worth commenting on the particular strain of frat boy bravado that shuts down every kind of social awareness and common sense and turns everything into a joke? Would it be helpful to write an indictment of the university administration that, in its silence and complacency, gives its tacit support of the racism in its midst?
The sources of my anger are many, and after reading this woman’s apology, they continue to grow. There are moments–when I am feeling charitable–that I think it’s possible this student had no idea what she was doing, that she just did not have the learned experience or personal imagination or mental capacity to make the connection between the symbolism of a noose and the events unfolding on her campus. Her apology is earnest, she writes sincerely, she is contrite.
But if that’s the case, I think we have even more reason to be disturbed. Racial ignorance is in many ways so much worse than the kind deployed by people with actual malicious intent. Last Friday, the Black Cultural Center at the University of Missouri was vandalized when thousands of cotton balls were tossed all over the building. At a town hall that the university held in response to the incident, people expressed frustration that some folks simply could not make the connection between Blacks in America and cotton.
What would I say to this gal if I could talk to her directly? A noose is never just a noose. And it’s not just your fault alone that you didn’t know that. The university where you go to school bears some responsibility for not funding ethnic studies, for obscuring the history of people of color in this country, for cutting funding for recruitment and retention programs that would make UCSD a vibrant, racially diverse campus. The state must be held accountable for making public education inaccessible to Blacks, Latinos, Native American, Southeast Asian and Pacific Islander students. You’ve got a lot to learn, but we’ve all been let down by institutions that turn a blind eye to the inequity and racism in our world.
Click here to read the 32 demands for policy change the UCSD Black Student Union has issued to the university administration.
Noose Found in UCSD Library, And The Compton Cookout Fallout Continues
01 year ago
by Julianne Hing
in Hate Crimes
The news we’re hearing out of UCSD has become increasingly disturbing. Last night around midnight students alerted administrators when a noose was found hanging in UCSD’s Geisel Library. The video above was taken this morning at a protest organized by students in response to last night’s developments.
It was never funny before, but so many of these students just don’t seem to understand that tension sparked by racist provocations will never be a joke. Students of color are downright terrified. The climate on campus, according to UCSD students we have spoken with, is tense. Students of color are rightfully angry, but also terrified for their safety. Throwing nooses around campus, that isn’t a joke. What I want to know is: why isn’t anyone calling the Compton Cookout, and the various racist incidents that have followed it, what we all know it is: a hate crime?
On Wednesday, students organized a walkout from a university-sponsored teach-in. Following the news of the Compton Cookout last week, staff from the the conservative faux-satire student publication, The Koala, left a note inside a campus television station office that said “Compton lynching” on it. Funding for the publication has since been cut off by the Associated Students of UCSD, the university’s student government.
Students are angry that even though university administrators like Chancellor Mary Anne Fox have been quick to respond in support of Black students on campus, they have also distanced themselves from the Compton Cookout incident. Campus administration initially mentioned that because the Compton Cookout was officially an off-campus event, no further action would be pursued against the perpetrators. They were quick to make public statements condemning the party, quick to host a teach-in to “explore why stereotypes still exist,” and quick to set up a website called Join the Battle Against Hate at UCSD. Helpful and positive, but not enough for students who want to see real policy and cultural changes.
And subsequent provocations are forcing administration to wake up to the racism in their midst. The Compton Cookout was organized by UCSD students who are affiliated with university-approved fraternities, now is not the time for university officials to try to distance themselves from the actions of its students or try to absolve themselves of any responsibility for the racial climate on campus.
What will it take for campus administration to take the incidents seriously enough to formally punish the students who’ve orchestrated these hateful crimes and begin to institute policy to change the culture on campus? Hopefully the organizing and continued pressure from students and faculty will force administrators to take this all seriously.
The student who hung the noose in Geisel has since come forward. “It’s someone who didn’t think that leaving a noose was an issue,” said Vice Chancellor Gary Mattews. A noose is never a joke.
Racism Exists in Saint Cloud
01 year ago
An act of hate was recently perpetrated by a resident in Saint Cloud, Minnesota. A packet of hateful, deragogatory depictions of Prophet Mohamed engaged in bestiality was posted to a telephone pole in front of a Somali store. This was a calculated move meant to cause embarrassment, and create an environment of hostility in this community of 68,000 – a third of whose population are black, Muslim, and Somali refugees
What was more frustrating was the decision by both county attorneys, Stearns and Benton, not to file criminal charges against the person responsible.
Actually this was not the first time the community has faced racism. In the conservative heartland of central Minnesota there is always the feeling by refugee communities that race plays into their daily interactions, but the hope is always that it will change for the better.
In 2001, when the largest group of refugees was moving into Saint Cloud, there was great resistant by property owners to rent to the refugee community because they believed that they would not be able to pay their rents. After some time the perception changed because of economic factors, and even organizations were for changing and renting their properties in large numbers to the refugees.
In 2002 a Somali center was vandalized and sprayed with swastikas and bullying of Somali children in the schools was quite prevalent. There were tensions between students and a feeling in the youth that affected their presence in the school system.
Human rights issues are universal. I believe it is time the community opens a human rights office, so that it can investigate hate crimes. The disgruntled who perpetrate these crimes could learn the reality around them. It is time we all defend the rights of community members, whether we are majorities or minorities, black, white or brown – we are all equal in the eyes of God.
There are many good people in the community, and I don’t want to undermine the work they do to make Saint Cloud a better place. It is my utmost hope to see the faith community play a bigger role making inroads by defending other faiths when they are demonized.