I have pointed many times about how in the rare occasions that
the Seattle Times publishes a story
in which Latinos are featured prominently, it is almost always in the service
of “confirming” prevailing negative stereotypes. And from what I can tell on the
street, these stereotypes are believed by allegedly intelligent people who only
know certain “groups” from what they read in newspapers or see on cable
news. Often these stories deliberately
obfuscate; the headline in the Times about
May Day hooliganism came under a photograph of immigration marchers; it wasn’t
made clear that the people pictured were not the ones involved in the violence
that night.
Then there was a front page story about the “flash-robbery”
involving the withdrawal of cash at ATMs from the bank accounts of Middle East
oil sheiks. In a picture that covered most of the page above the cutline are
two people who were dumb enough to have their picture taken with $40,000 in
cash; it is suggested that both men are Latino, and the story claims the leader
of their “cell” was from the Dominican Republic. The problem is that the U.S.
“take” was only about 5 percent of the worldwide haul in 27 countries. According to TIME, “Officials in
Washington say the ringleaders are believed to be outside the US, but refused
to give more details due to the ongoing investigation.” It also goes without
saying that the real “masterminds” of the heist were not the clowns pictured,
but the hackers who broke into bank computers and set-up the bank accounts so
that they could be easily accessed without anyone being the wiser until later.
But with sex crimes, it’s a whole new ballgame, because this
represents the ugliest stereotype of Latinos. Yesterday a story appeared in the
Seattle Times concerning the
statutory rape of a 14-year-old girl by a 19-year-old male who was a lifeguard
at the Great Wolf Lodge, a year-round indoor aquatic recreation facility. The
accompanying photograph of the accused with a Spanish name looks like he could
be a “Mexican” because of his dark skin. However, the Great Wolf Lodge in
Washington is run in association with the Chehalis Indian Tribe, so he might
not be a “Mexican” at all. The name “Salazar” is not an unknown in the Native
American community; Paula Salazar is chairman of the Wells Indian Band, and Gilbert
Salazar is chairman of Oklahoma’s Kickapoo Tribe.
Unfortunately, such details escape most people who know “others”
only through their prejudices and stereotypes. One group of people—white
people, for example—can easily control their images in the media; they “know”
each, and even when one their own is guilty of a heinous crime, they move on to
the next story because they know that they are not “all” like that. This is not
the case with groups who are “strangers”; almost any idea can be applied to
people one only knows from second and third-hand sources. Of course, white
people are not the only ones afflicted with this problem; I was sitting on a
bus across from an older black male talking racial politics with a friend on
his cellphone; he talked about shootings as if they were just a natural way of
conducting everyday business, and I wondered if he even thought about how the
people forced to listen to his loud conversation might interpret it.
After a while he started talking about “Mexicans” in
disparaging terms, and how they were the root cause of many of the problems in
his community. Then he mentioned the story he saw in the Times about the rape, how the man pictured looked like a
“Mexican,” and how his daughter was afraid to go outside if there were any
“Mexicans” around. That was too much for me; I told him he needed to be more
concerned about what “his” people were doing, and he reacted by threatening me
with physical violence before telling his friend that he must have “hit a nerve”
because I must be a “molester” too. I retorted that he shouldn’t be making
ignorant comments about people he didn’t know anything about. The
“conversation” ended when the bus driver intervened; but this is an example of
how the media promotes the atmosphere of hate with stories that only focus on
negative stereotypes and feed into received prejudices.
The Times, of
course, unleashed on the world that pestilence known as Michelle Malkin, she of
the perpetual scowl and consumed with hate for anyone who reminds her that she
is not white, and was an “anchor baby.” She and her former guest blogger “See-Dubya”
are obviously so consumed by their hatred that that any questionable story about
Latinos is fair game so long as it suits their bizarre beliefs. Here are some
samples from Malkin’s website:
Mexican Army invades Arizona again. Malkin got this from some
border vigilante group, who claimed that the Mexican troops crossed the border
and held border agents at gunpoint. What’s that little blurb there? The State Department
has no knowledge of the incident.
Another home invasion
in Phoenix by…Cartel hitmen? Mexican military? Well, neither, as it turns
out; thugs dressed-up as police officers invaded a “drop-house” in Phoenix for
the undocumented in order to extort money and possessions from them.
Even Bigger
Outrage–Mexican soldiers hitmen arrested for murdering man in his Phoenix,
Arizona home. The Arizona Republic actually
reported that the suspects were local men who had no ties to the Mexican
military.
U.S. developing
radiation detectors for the Mexican border. This was the only thing Malkin
thought worth gleaning from a lengthy story about the Naval Postgraduate School
in Monterey, California. One paragraph mentions “experimenting with ‘drive-by
detection’ methods to determine from a distance whether a vessel is carrying a
nuclear device. Similar work is being done to deploy radiation detectors on the
U.S.-Mexico border.” There has never been any evidence that “dirty” bombs have
crossed the border (the “dirty bomb” in the Jose Padilla case only existed in
the minds of overzealous FBI agents); but the school has a contract with the Department
of Homeland Security, and since the Mexican border is closer than the
lightly-guarded Canadian border, they have to waste taxpayer money in a way the
public will “understand.”
TB-infected Mexican
national enjoys open borders. This is Lou Dobbs territory, but buried in a Wall Street Journal “expose” is this
little tidbit: “To be sure, the actual number of cases in the U.S. and Mexico
is still small and the rates of multidrug-resistant TB—or MDR—are nowhere near
as severe as India, China, or Eastern Europe, where drug-resistant TB is at
epidemic proportions.”
Oregon public schools
using Mexican government-supplied lessons. This is something about schools
in a few states purchasing Spanish-language math and reading lesson DVDs to assist in schools that
lack bilingual teachers—like, say, the state of Washington.
Hoisting the Mexican
flag at a US post office. This occurred during some immigration protest in
Maywood, California. Actually, the problems were caused by the “Save Our State”
anti-immigrant counter-protestors; the Southern Poverty Law Center calls SOS a
“violent hate group”—something which Malkin neglected to mention.
While GOP leaders push
amnesty, Dems rope more immigrants into welfare state. This story had nothing to do with “illegal” immigrants, but
the “concerns” U.S. senators with vaguely racist agendas, like Chuck Grassley, had
about immigrants who might fall under the category “public charge.” These
senators apparently assume that immigrants from Latin American only come here
for the “benefits.”
And the list goes on and on like this. A site search under
“immigration” gets you these self-explanatory headlines:
Obama’s Nominee for
Secretary of (Illegal Alien) Labor
Eating utensils
confiscated before Obama speech to Latino organization
Occupy Open Borders:
Obama delivers 800,000 more illegal alien deportation waivers
Undocumented” folly:
A liberal reporter’s illegal alien sob story
Operation Buck Up:
Stop the DREAM Act illegal alien student bailout
DREAM Act nightmare:
2.1 million future Democrat voter recruitment drive
David Neiwert makes clear in his new book on convicted
killer Shawna Forde, And Hell Followed
With Her: Crossing to the Dark Side of the American Border that there is no
delineation between “legal” or “illegal” in the minds of people who view
Latinos in the same way a racist like Pat Buchanan does: They are “out to
destroy America,” and they need to be eliminated. Ignoring the consequences of
this “dehumanizing and vicious rhetoric,” with its “delusionary, paranoid
worldview” is something the media has been very “good” at it.
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