Nick Valencia is a Hispanic male from Los Angeles, who his friends joking call “pocho” which means “white boy” and reflects how he has taken up so much American culture. Valencia regularly tries to connect back to his roots by introducing himself and making conversation with other Spanish speakers. Growing up in Los Angeles, he was lucky enough to never face any moments of overt racism. However, this all changed one day when Valencia was attending the Music Midtown festival in Atlanta. As he was talking to a group of Spanish speakers a Caucasian lady came up to him and told him, “Go home! Why don’t you go back home to Mexico before you ruin this country like you ruined your own!” Reflecting back on this moment, Valencia realizes that this problem of racism has been exacerbated by legislation that’s anti-immigration.
Nick was not alone in his experience. In fact, over the years discrimination against Hispanic people has been on the rise. In 2015, 25% of Hispanics said that they have been discriminated against, with foreign born Hispanic people being five times more likely than U.S. born Hispanics to face discrimination, according to Gallup Polls. In 2016, this number has climbed to 52% of Hispanic people saying that they have been discriminated against based on their race and ethnicity. The number is largest for Hispanic people 18 to 29 years old, with a 65% rate of feeling discriminated against, according to Pew Research. In other words, the upcoming generation of Hispanic people have felt discriminated against more than any other group of people.
The numbers about the number of Hispanic people who feel as though they have discriminated against are startling in the United States. Isn’t our country supposed to stand for equal opportunities and freedom for all? An increasingly negative attitude has been prevailing in society against Hispanic people due to increasingly strict and unfavorable attitudes towards illegal immigrants, despite the fact that these groups don’t consist of all the same people.
If we don’t take action to fix this widespread racism and bias that we are finding from legislation and political leaders to conversations between young students, we will only help allow the normalization of this kind of racism in society. To provide a truly fair and equal society for all people we need to work together to insure that racism that Hispanic people and all other people becomes non existent.
Emmy Shafer and Spanish in Miami
Legislation has allowed the normalization of racism and discrimination in the United States against Hispanic people, something that was made clear through Miami’s original status as a bilingual city which was quickly ended through strong backlash within the next few years through an intensive campaign led by Emmy Shafer against bilingualism in Miami, leading to a lack of equal opportunities to thrive for all people in this country.
Following Fidel Castro’s seizure of power in Cuba, many Cubans fled to Miami in order to flee the politically difficult situation they found themselves in. With United States political leaders quick to denounce the communist system and take advantage of their political situation, programs such as the Cuban Refugee Program, Freedom Flights, and Operation Pedro Pan came about to bring many Cubans who wanted to escape to the United States, leading to growing Cuban people populations in Miami (The Boston Language Learning Institute).
In 1963, the first bilingual education program was adopted in Coral Way Elementary School where the integration of Spanish and English teaching in the curriculum was hugely successful. Following the lead of the progress in allowing more opportunities for the new and growing population of Spanish speakers in the area, Miami finally became a bilingual community in 1973, through the cries of help from many Hispanic people who had difficulty filling out tax forms and other official government forms or accessing resources because of a simple language barrier (Johnson).
However, the official implementation of the referendum to make Miami bilingual was met with strong hatred and opposition. The leader of the group, Emmy Shafer, a Russian immigrant, strongly opposed the newfound bilingualism in Miami and created a campaign “similar to a panic or craze”(Castro, 2) targeted towards non-Hispanic white people. Shafer and her following quickly formed a new referendum to end the bilingualism in Miami and found that the first time they tried to pass this they found 71%, 44%, and 15% acceptance rate from white, black, and hispanic people, respectively. Clearly there was something more than just anti-bilingual sentiments running in this group — there was “a feeling of alienation from the community in which they lived,”(Castro, 2).
Though this desire to have English as the only language could be thought of as a way this group wanted to work to unify the community, studies show that while 85% of Hispanics agreed with the statement that “the Latin influence has helped this country’s economy and made it an enjoyable place to live,”(Castro, 179) only 39% of non-Hispanic white agreed with the same statement. To make matters worse, while approximately 67% Hispanics thought that having a group that supports an anti-bilingual agenda was “an insult to the Spanish-speaking residents of Dade [county],”(Castro, 180) only 25% non-Hispanic white people agreed with the same point.
The biggest problem in this community wasn’t the fact that there were people with many different cultural backgrounds who couldn’t connect to each other, but that original residents in the community weren’t willing to accept and understand the cultural differences of a new group of people they were supposed to co-reside with. Furthermore, 75% of white people in the exit poll even voted that they would move away from the county if they found it practical (Castro). The stubbornness to hold on to a previous way of living, rather than to understand the struggles the new immigrants who came to America with a dream for a better life, is what was creating the biggest divide in the community.
Rather than having a truly anti-bilingual agenda, this group simply exploited this opportunity to express their resentment towards Hispanic immigrants and eventually were able to successfully return Miami to a English only community. Through the power of resentment, people were able to make legal forms of discrimination against Hispanic people by taking away critical resources that they need in order to succeed as citizens in the country.
Proposition 187
Proposition 187, or better known as California’s “Save our State (SOS)” initiative, passed on November 8 and became effective, working as another piece of legislation that facilitated the discrimination against Hispanic people through taking away rights rights from a subsection of their population — undocumented immigrants.
Proposition 187 is essentially had five main parts, four of which were blocked by Mariana R. Pfaelzer in 1996 for being unconstitutional. Still, the passing of the proposition and the feelings and attitudes is revealed about the citizens of California were telling of the hidden racism against Hispanic people in the country. The four parts that were blocked involved taking right of having access to the public education system, non emergency health care, and cash and related benefits away from undocumented immigrants by requiring checks of one’s legal status for these services. Furthermore, the initiative also required service providers to report people who they suspected to be undocumented immigrants, according to Ballotpedia. The part that wasn’t struck down by Pfaelzer stated that the production and use of false documents would be considered a felony, according to UC Davis’s Migration News.
Proposition 187 came about in 1994, a time where people in California were facing an economic recession, meaning that unemployment rates were at an all time high. While a normal rate of unemployment is around approximately 5%, in 1992 the rate of unemployment in California had reached 9.7% and in 1994, when Proposition 187 was accepted the rate of unemployment was at 9.2%, decreasing only a bit in the span of 2 years, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Because of the poor economic conditions of the time, it’s no surprise that when Proposition 187 came about, resentment and tensions from poor economic conditions were channeled by finding ways to discriminate against minority groups in order to solve the problems of the state. In fact, a study investigating the links between illegal immigration, nativism, and Proposition 187 explained, “a review of the long-term relationship between the United States and Mexico reveals three cycles of increased nativism toward legal and illegal Mexican immigrants which have coincided with economic downturns…have resulted in stricter immigration laws (Cornelius, 1982),”(Alvarez and Butterfield, 169). This shows more clearly than ever how people are finding excuses to discriminate against not only illegal immigrants, for whom they claim their arguments and frustrations are towards, but also legal Mexican immigrants who are just as American as the people working to discriminate against them are. How can we claim to be a country that lives up to the words on the Statue of Liberty when there is just deep rooted racism openly and even legally present in the country?
While opposition party usually likes to state how undocumented immigrants aren’t even paying taxes, yet are receiving costly government funded services such as public education, they don’t see how their method of trying to fix the problem by taking the services away from these immigrants is entirely flawed. For instance, a 12 year old child ended up dying because his undocumented immigrant parents were fearful that they would be deported back to Mexico if the seeked help from some public service (UC Davis Migration News). Denying services to all undocumented immigrants isn’t a viable option, especially since approximately 3.5 million children have parents from Mexico who are undocumented in the United States, according to the Center for American Process.
Even now, ex-Senator Pete Wilson, supporter of Proposition 187 who campaigned as he “seized on the provocative initiative and, through a racist campaign, tapped the latent bigotry of Californians to rescue his flailing candidacy…”(Barabak) still says that he would support the proposition if he could go back and even claims that there is merit to the wall Trump desires to build on the American southwestern border, according to the Los Angeles Times. If even after twenty-three years people can’t see the mistakes that were made in the past, the problem we face even today with hidden and legal discrimination and racism against Hispanic people is just bad as it was twenty-three years ago, when Proposition 187 was passed and legalized discrimination against so many undocumented citizens.
Border Patrol Groups
Border Patrol groups such as the Minutemen in Arizona legally patrol borders but have led to increased discrimination and racism against Hispanic people, leading to the idea that is it acceptable to discriminate against a group of people who are associated with others who are popular in current political narratives and debates.
The Minutemen is an organization, co-founded by Jim Gilchrist where members are typically volunteers who come out to the border of Arizona to patrol the border and to ensure that illegal immigrants cannot cross into America. The group consisted of approximately 1,200 people who patrolled 23 miles of the Arizona border, according to Gilchrist in an interview. However, as soon as the group formed, prominent member member Shawna Forde was arrested for killing a Hispanic man and his nine year old daughter. Forde killed the two on based on the assumption that the man was a drug dealer, according to NBC news. Once again we can see how under the law, a group of people are able to take action that is not only discriminatory towards all Hispanic people, but also took the life of people who wouldn’t have been able to do anything else. Furthermore, the rise of the minutemen has also led to another group similar to the minutemen with neo-nazi members who openly wear nazi signs and are heavily armed with weaponry, according to the New York Times.
Due to a general hateful attitude towards Hispanic people spread by these border patrol groups, many other adverse effects have come into place. People have become much more bold about carrying out hateful crimes, as a man named Adolfo was beat severely and taunted for being Mexican, according to ABC news. Furthermore, the Sarah Netter from ABC news explains, “Navarrete, who is first-generation Cuban, said she believes racists and so-called Nativists are using the debate over the Arizona law as an excuse to not only broadcast their hatred for Hispanics, but also act upon it.” Due to an overall change in attitudes towards illegal immigrants, people have been able to apply their deep-rooted racist beliefs to all Hispanic people and discriminate them legally through border patrol groups that spread hateful messages.
SB 1070
SB 1070, an Arizona law signed into effect on April 23, 2010 by Jan Brewer is also called the “show me your papers” law, that worked to legalize discrimination especially against Hispanic people by creating a law that encourages and almost requires racial profiling to occur.
SB 1070 is a law that allows police officers to stop people based on reasonable suspicion that they are in the country illegally and requires them to show their documents proving they are citizens. This kind of law is most dangerous to minority groups because it, “invite[s] rampant racial profiling against Latinos…and other presumed to be “foreign” based on how they look or sound,”(ACLU). This law was a major stepping stone in changing what people thought of to be an acceptable degree of racism. Through this law, racial profiling became an activity that became legal and essentially normalized racism against Hispanic people.
In a study done on SB 1070 and how it affected public sentiment and behavior, author Rene D. Flores concluded, “the implementation of SB 1070 had a significantly negative impact on the average sentiment of messages about immigrants in Arizona. Further, although the bill’s supporters consistently argued that the law only targeted unauthorized immigrants, I find that the law also influenced tweets about Mexicans and, more generally, Hispanics,”(Flores, 335).
Furthermore, the law went further by including a section called the Employer Sanctions provision of IRCA that would penalize employers if they failed to complete a check of the potential future employee’s legal status.
Margaret Hu, explained, “Some members of Congress expressed concern that the Employer Sanctions provision basically delegated racial profiling duties to employers by deputizing them as immigration screening agents. How would an employer carry out a "show me your papers" inspection process without the risk of racial discrimination?”(American Constitution Society).
Overall, SB 1070 was a law that effectively required racial profiling to occur on a normal basis for those affected by the law and normalized the act of racial profiling. By making it required by law to racial profile, this legislation legally required some people to discriminate against Hispanic people mainly and racially profile them.