We can stop the hatred

    The media is constantly praising and admiring Latino achievements, accomplishments, traditions, foods, various cultures and the beauty of our native homelands.

    But recently the media seems to be saturated with negativity and hate. With this year being an election year, there is definitely an interest in political issues. The boiling concern of the National Council of La Raza is immigration and the demonization of Latino immigrants, whether illegal or not.

    The National Council of La Raza, which is the largest national non-profit Hispanic civil rights and advocacy organization in the U.S., has decided to take a stance against the hate speech that has slowly been surfacing in the media.

    This organization has taken up the task of documenting hate groups and vigilantes that are active in the anti-immigration movement.
After plenty of investigations, the National Council of La Raza has come to some startling conclusions. They claim that the debate over the immigration issue no longer exists.

    They also state that the media has been infiltrated by extremists and hate groups and that the media has allowed hate and violence toward certain religions, racial groups and ethnicities to be portrayed.

    The organization has recorded proof where Latino immigrants are referred to as threats to American society, subhuman and, at times, inferior. For more information on the findings, research and the study conducted by the National Council of La Raza please visit www.wecanstopthehate.org.

    When the media uses words claiming that our country is being “invaded” or that we are undergoing an “invasion” or that “there is a massive moving herd of illegal aliens flooding our country” it creates an inaccurate and false depiction. History proves that such an occurance may lead  to extreme civil rights abuses.

    The power and influence that the media has on thoughts and opinions is immeasurable. The minds of people are like clay; when the media offers biased points of views it can mold views and opinions on issues, especially on such big and controversial issues as immigration.

    People immigrate to the United States for many reasons, whether it be to escape poverty, to receive an education, to escape genocide, or flee any other unfair form of government.

    The media has set loose a wave of attacks and hate speech against immigrants. They have unleashed the resentment and hatred that has never been seen within our generation before.

     The media has caused the metaphor of the U.S.  as a “melting pot” to be no more. It has caused the days of welcoming people with open arms to come to an end.

    In 2006, David Ritcheson, 16, of Houston, Texas was dragged out from a party and beaten up by attackers David Henry Tuck, 18, and Keith Robert Turner, 17, after doing the unimaginable, kissing a “white girl.”

    Ritcheson was dragged out and stripped of his clothing. He was then kicked repeatedly in the chest with steel-toed boots, creating deep slashes. The attackers then drove a sharpened plastic PVC pipe into his rectum so deep that damage was caused to his internal organs. During the attack, they sputtered racial slurs at the boy.

    The attack lasted for more than an hour. Ritcheson was left lying unattended for ten hours. In December 2006, the perpetrators were convicted of aggravated sexual assault. Tuck was sentenced to life in prison and Turner was sentenced to 90 years.

    Ritcheson was quoted as saying, “I shouldn’t care what people think or say. It’s just the fact that everyone knows I’m the kid. It was bigger than Houston. It was bigger than Texas. It was bigger than America. Everybody in the world knew what had happened and everybody knew the details of it.”

    As if this were not enough, the story does not end there. On July 1, 2007, Ritcheson committed suicide by jumping off the deck of a cruise ship while on a family vacation. He was unable to cope with the emotional and psychological scars thes incident and the media attention left on him.

    The underlying question is how can someone gather and muster up such anger, hatred, barbarity and savagery? Where does all of this hate come from?  Latinos are not going away. They comprise 14 percent of the population and it is estimated that they will become the majority population of the U.S. by 2050.

   It is up to our generation to be able to use our brains and be able to sift through the media’s garbage and manipulation of information. It is our job to stop the hatred.