Hispanic victims of race hate once more ignored by Trump and media

Hot on the heels of an apparent terrorist attack by an immigrant from Uzbekistan, a white male named Scott Allen Ostrem walked into a Walmart in Thornton, Colorado and shot and killed three people before leaving. All three were Hispanic. Where he lived, his Hispanic neighbors called him hostile, silent and vaguely threatening to them, often seen carrying a rifle. They also used the term “racist” to describe him. Yet Denver police claim he only “randomly” selected his targets. All three of the dead being Hispanic was only a “detail.” Few want to “connect the dots” and call this a hate crime. On a website called the “Discussionist,” only 20 percent of the respondents felt that the shooter targeted Hispanics. No, they are too busy accusing a Cuban-born baseball player for the Houston Astros of “ugly racism” for making faces at an Asian player for the Dodgers. 

The website Salon is pointing out that while Trump has gone on his Muslim terrorism and anti-immigrant tweet binge, he not only has failed to respond to the Walmart shooting—obviously because the victims are Hispanic and he doesn’t want to take questions about whether Ostrem’s actions were influenced by his Hispanic-hate parade—but he also (and the media generally) said nothing about the aborted attempted by another white American (Michael Christopher Estes) to set off an explosive device at an airport in North Carolina a month ago. Upon arrest, Estes admitted he wanted to “start a war on American soil.” 

Salon pointed out that “When white folks commit horrible crimes their actions are often placed in a context where they are described as ‘good people’ and ‘all American.’ This is all so "surprising" and "unimaginable," we are told, because this person was so ‘ordinary.’" But when it comes to minority groups, whether racial or religious, they are “monsters” and of some inferior form even for human scum. 

While Trump and Jeff Sessions seem to believe that stopping immigration of those of “undesirable” race and ethnicity will stop mass killings in this country (when was last time you heard of a Hispanic committing a “terrorist” act, anyways?), white people just carryon as always when a white man commits a mass shooting, even of the Las Vegas variety, or even the Oklahoma City bombing variety. Why is September 11 commemorated every year, but not April 19? Need we ask?

The racist hypocrisy of the Trump administration—with the support, for that matter, the majority in this country—is that it wants to stop what is known as the “Diversity Immigrant Visa Program,” which is essentially a mechanism for allowing immigrants from countries that have too small a population to qualify under current immigration law. Trump says he wants to scrap the program in favor of “merit-based” immigration. The hypocrisy comes in when we discover that the New York City attacker did enter the country on the basis of “merit”; he was selected from a “lottery” of approved candidates. Of course there are other reason why “merit-based” immigration is not the panacea that nativists and xenophobes think, but that is for another time.

But as usual Trump speaks for those who see everything from the prism of hate. Thus the Hispanic victims of clear and deliberate targeting in Colorado are not just victims of a racist, but of a racist society in general.