A New Face for Hate Violence
New America Media, Commentary, Earl Ofari Hutchinson, Posted: May 23, 2009
Editor’s Note: A federal racketeering investigation culminated Thursday in the arrest of 147 members and associates of a predominantly Latino gang charged with murder, weapons and drug trafficking, and carrying out racially motivated attacks against African Americans to drive them out of a southern California city. NAM associate editor Earl Ofari Hutchinson comments on the rising Latino-on-black violence that underlies Los Angeles’ biggest gang bust.
Two weeks before U.S. Attorney Thomas O’Brien made what he called the biggest gang bust in recent history in Los Angeles, in which the Latino gang members rounded up allegedly attacked blacks, an African-American family, who had been terrorized by a Latino street gang, fled their home in Duarte, a suburb east of Los Angeles.
A few months before that, a Los Angeles County Commission on Human Relations report on hate violence for 2007 found that overall Latinos committed nearly half of the hate attacks in the county, while blacks committed 30 percent of the hate attacks. The victims of the race violence almost always have been other blacks or Latinos.
The dirty and painful secret is that blacks and Latinos can be racist, maybe even more racist than whites, toward each other. They easily buy into the racist myths, stereotypes, and negative typecasting of blacks, and their targets are almost always the weakest, most vulnerable and innocent.
The gang attacks no doubt are deliberately designed by the gang hate purveyors to send the message to blacks that this is our turf, and you're an interloper. That was the case two years ago when the feds made the first big bust of Latino gang members for years of terror attacks against black families in a South Los Angeles neighborhood. But despite arrests, police crackdowns, gang injunctions, assorted anti-violence marches and rallies, and community peace efforts, the black and Latino low intensity battle has shown no sign of abating. Federal officials even boasted after the arrest of the Florencia 13 gang’s top cats that they had broken the back of racially motivated gang crimes in the area. The boast was just that -- a boast.
The spike in Latino hate-crime violence also is due in part to the undeclared war between blacks and Latinos that has raged in some of California's jails and prisons. Jails that are grossly overcrowded, lacking in medical services and recreational activities, and rife with brutality and racial segregation. That battle has spawned an even bigger fight in poor neighborhoods between gangs over crime and drug turfs. The gang and prison violence has resulted in dozens of injuries and a few deaths. And there are constant rumors that black and Latino prison gangs have ordered retaliatory hits on other blacks and Latinos on the streets as part of their street turf battles.
In Los Angeles County jails, officials have set up special isolation units exclusively to keep Mexican mafia leaders from issuing orders for hits on gang rivals and blacks. The problem is that innocent black residents in Hawaiian Gardens and Duarte are the ones who are most likely caught in the deadly crossfire.
But the gang attacks are not solely due to wars for control of drugs, the rackets and turf. They are also because of America's changing ethnic demographics. Latinos have now toppled blacks from their long held perch as the nation's biggest minority. The impact of the surging Latino numbers has been acutely felt in many urban neighborhoods across the nation that were once exclusively black, but are now either significantly or majority Latino.
In L.A., blacks and Latinos increasingly rub shoulders with each other in neighborhoods, schools, parks, stores, and on jobs. This has stirred tense competition for low-end jobs, scarce school resources, and the use of public services.
In the past, racially motivated gang violence was relatively rare. Researchers at the University of California, Irvine found that of the 500 murders in South Los Angeles between 1999 and 2004, almost all of them were Latino-on-Latino or black-on-black. Most black and Latino residents lived in mixed neighborhoods in Los Angeles and got along in relative peace, and on the surface, anyway, with minimal friction. But as the increase in black and Latino hate crimes sadly shows, that's changing.
A few years ago, no one could have predicted the surge in hate crimes by Latino gangs, but it's happened. And the greater danger is that L.A.'s terrible spike in Latino gang racial violence could be replicated in other cities. Stemming the inter-racial hate crimes will take a loud outcry from Latino and black leaders against hate violence and an ongoing effort to ease tensions in L.A and other cities to insure that this doesn’t happen.
Short of that, the fed crackdown on gang hate crimes will be little more than a high profile, Band-Aid measure that will do little to alter the grim, ugly and changing face of hate violence in America.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His weekly radio show, “The Hutchinson Report” can be heard on weekly in Los Angeles on KTYM Radio 1460 AM and nationally on ktym.com
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User Comments
Anthony Los Angeles on May 25, 2009 at 11:41:26 said:
This is a joke. About a 2 weeks ago, a group of blacks shot at a group of Hispanics at a taco stand, but the crime was not considered a hate crime because the shooters were black. There have been reports in CA of blacks going on \\\\\\\"Amigo Shopping\\\\\\\" and killing and robbing Latinos of their money.
There have been many instances of black killings Hispanics, but these attacks are not classified as biased crimes. Attacks on immigrants have been happening all over the country. I\\\\\\\'ve lived in many areas of the country and there has been a similar pattern present:
CHARLOTTE, N.C.-- Authorities are questioning a man and a woman they believe stabbed four out of five people they robbed or attempted to rob across Charlotte on Friday.
Three of the victims are ice cream cart operators.
The alleged crime spree began just before noon in northeast Charlotte and continued through east and south Charlotte until the couple’s car was stopped at the intersection of Idlewild Road and Independence Boulevard in east Charlotte shortly after 2 p.m.
Police said the two black suspects were likely about to hit another apartment complex. Nearby neighbors were relieved.
==========
ROBERT K. GORDON
News staff writer
Hispanic immigrants who enter the American job market are often targets for criminals because they carry large amounts of cash and are less inclined to put their money in a bank or go to the police, law enforcement officials say.
Hispanics are often robbed on the weekends after they\\\\\\\'ve been paid, Jefferson County Sheriff\\\\\\\'s Sgt. Randy Christian said.
Sheriff\\\\\\\'s investigators say most of the robbery victims in Lipscomb and Brighton - both majority black cities - are now Hispanic, rather than black. Recent incidents bear that out. Sergio Romero Cuevas, 26, died March 1 at UAB Hospital after he was shot during a robbery at Holiday Mobile Home Park in Brighton.
A Hispanic woman was shot in February during a home invasion while she was cooking at Woodward Estates trailer park in Lipscomb. The woman, who was released from the hospital soon after the shooting, was able to throw hot grease on the assailant. Investigators say the perpetrators were black.
\\\\\\\"It seems the bad guys believe that the Hispanics are easy targets. Many of them do not have bank accounts so there is always a good chance they have cash on hand,\\\\\\\" Christian said.
\\\\\\\"The thugs also rely on the fact that many of the Hispanics are here illegally and will not report being a crime victim. Those two things I believe are making them sitting ducks for these criminals.\\\\\\\"
==========
Hispanics have become the prey of choice in crumbling neighborhoods here in one of America’s most crime-ridden cities, racial friction between the newcomers and longtime black residents has moved close to the surface.
Many bluntly assigned a racial component, saying that it was “los morenos”— their colloquial term for blacks — who were after them.“When we are leaving here after work, we have to go on foot,” Mr. Billado said, speaking through an interpreter.“The blacks are waiting for us. They’ll beat you up. They’ll take your money.”
Roger Cruz, from Honduras, said:“A lot of people don’t know how to defend themselves. There’s racism of blacks against Latinos.”
NY Times
=================
The police on Wednesday arrested a black man in the December killing of an Ecuadorean immigrant who was beaten with a bottle and a baseball bat in Brooklyn by men who yelled anti-gay and anti-Hispanic slurs at him.
“The sad part of this case for me is that these two brothers were apparently caressing each other because they were cold on the way home and the cretins that were charged with the attack mistook them for gay people,” Charles J. Hynes, the Brooklyn district attorney, said.
NY Times
Anthony Los Angeles on May 25, 2009 at 11:07:15 said:
This is a joke. About a 2 weeks ago, a group of blacks shot at a group of Hispanics at a taco stand, but the crime was not considered a hate crime because the shooters were black. There have been reports in CA of blacks going on \\\\\\\"Amigo Shopping\\\\\\\" and killing and robbing Latinos of their money.
There have been many instances of black killings Hispanics, but these attacks are not classified as biased crimes. Attacks on immigrants have been happening all over the country. I\\\\\\\'ve lived in many areas of the country and there has been a similar pattern present:
CHARLOTTE, N.C.-- Authorities are questioning a man and a woman they believe stabbed four out of five people they robbed or attempted to rob across Charlotte on Friday.
Three of the victims are ice cream cart operators.
The alleged crime spree began just before noon in northeast Charlotte and continued through east and south Charlotte until the couple’s car was stopped at the intersection of Idlewild Road and Independence Boulevard in east Charlotte shortly after 2 p.m.
Police said the two black suspects were likely about to hit another apartment complex. Nearby neighbors were relieved.
==========
ROBERT K. GORDON
News staff writer
Hispanic immigrants who enter the American job market are often targets for criminals because they carry large amounts of cash and are less inclined to put their money in a bank or go to the police, law enforcement officials say.
Hispanics are often robbed on the weekends after they\\\\\\\'ve been paid, Jefferson County Sheriff\\\\\\\'s Sgt. Randy Christian said.
Sheriff\\\\\\\'s investigators say most of the robbery victims in Lipscomb and Brighton - both majority black cities - are now Hispanic, rather than black. Recent incidents bear that out. Sergio Romero Cuevas, 26, died March 1 at UAB Hospital after he was shot during a robbery at Holiday Mobile Home Park in Brighton.
A Hispanic woman was shot in February during a home invasion while she was cooking at Woodward Estates trailer park in Lipscomb. The woman, who was released from the hospital soon after the shooting, was able to throw hot grease on the assailant. Investigators say the perpetrators were black.
\\\\\\\"It seems the bad guys believe that the Hispanics are easy targets. Many of them do not have bank accounts so there is always a good chance they have cash on hand,\\\\\\\" Christian said.
\\\\\\\"The thugs also rely on the fact that many of the Hispanics are here illegally and will not report being a crime victim. Those two things I believe are making them sitting ducks for these criminals.\\\\\\\"
==========
Hispanics have become the prey of choice in crumbling neighborhoods here in one of America’s most crime-ridden cities, racial friction between the newcomers and longtime black residents has moved close to the surface.
Many bluntly assigned a racial component, saying that it was “los morenos”— their colloquial term for blacks — who were after them.“When we are leaving here after work, we have to go on foot,” Mr. Billado said, speaking through an interpreter.“The blacks are waiting for us. They’ll beat you up. They’ll take your money.”
Roger Cruz, from Honduras, said:“A lot of people don’t know how to defend themselves. There’s racism of blacks against Latinos.”
NY Times
=================
The police on Wednesday arrested a black man in the December killing of an Ecuadorean immigrant who was beaten with a bottle and a baseball bat in Brooklyn by men who yelled anti-gay and anti-Hispanic slurs at him.
“The sad part of this case for me is that these two brothers were apparently caressing each other because they were cold on the way home and the cretins that were charged with the attack mistook them for gay people,” Charles J. Hynes, the Brooklyn district attorney, said.
NY Times
Karl on May 24, 2009 at 18:03:06 said:
@ Jenny;
I see your blog comments all over the net.
Just one thing; you claim to be "a native person, of Wampanoag ancestry"
kvetcher.net/2009/01/2271/jewish-unease-towards-mass-immigration-from-islamic-countries-spreads-left/
You're from Massachusetts? What the hell do YOU know about L.A.?
Did you take a trip to Disneyland? Now you're an expert on L.A.? Disneyland isn't even in L.A....
Jenny on May 23, 2009 at 23:10:15 said:
Mr. Hutchinson, either you're had your head buried in the sand, or you're lying. You claim a few years back no one could have predicted this???? Hispanics and their gangs have been slaughtering black Americans in Los Angeles for decades, and back in the late '90s for a short period of time, the media actually reported it. I remember a series of articles titled, LA Black Out.. I'm sure you do as well, but that doesn't serve your narrow point of view, does it?
I'm tired of your game. All human beings are capable of hatred and racism wasn't invented by white people, it's as old as the world, and it's been in each country, each race and ethnicity. Your problem is, you're a racist, and as bad, you don't really care what happens to black people or anyone else. You view such deaths as collateral damage.
The Hispanic illegals you are so worried about, are the descendants of the Spanish who perpetuated genocide of the indigenous of the lands now referred to as "Latin America", and to replace them, inspired by their Arab and African trading partners, practice of selling African into slavery, the Spanish invented the trans-Atlantic slave trade. They imported more than 8 million Africans to those lands, and worked virtually all of them to death. Racism is very much alive in Latin America, have you ever talked to an Afro-Latino?
I know you need to blame everything on white people, no matter how innocent they are, you hate them, just like your peers in the klan, you need to blame your object of hate for everything to excuse the injustices you want to perpetuate. That's why you try and spin things, to claim that your sainted illegals had to have learned racism, when they came here. Irregardless of the fact that you know very well about the racism south of the border.
You want to talk about power? When the Rutgers women's basketball team were insulted by that talk radio dj, we saw all the black television and media executives crawl out of the woodwork and express their disdain. Do you know what was my first impression when I saw their numbers? What popped into my head was, where the hell were these people after hurricane Katrina? These wealthy and obviously powerful individuals had every ability to make their voices heard. To speak out against the poverty that was brutally obvious. It opened the eyes of so many citizens across the nation. Their voices could have loudly demanded that CNN, MSNBC, the big three network news organizations all start reporting on such issues regularly. That it was a scandal that such poverty should exist.. but they didn't, did they?
The big fat joke that is Roland Martin, who has been sitting in for another journalist on CNN (for a month), can't be bothered to report the realities. He's too busy pimping for the clothing designers who are sending him free suits (he loves that cheap foreign labor) and tacky ties and hankies. It's all he talks about on the air, and on his Facebook. We have citizens, black, brown and white, living in tent cities all across this nation, because they have been displaced by illegal aliens and through the exploitation of our visa programs and outsourcing. Good, hard working men, women and their children, some elderly people, who worked hard their entire lives, and are now living in their car, or in a tent or under a tarp covered box. I've seen local news reports of these good and decent human beings, trying to understand what has happened to them, how they're trying to find a way to find work and ultimately get an apartment, they've also explained how they are denied help. I watched a husband and wife, they were a black couple, show how they built a shack out of crates, and they were proud of their hard work and efforts, showing how the roof didn't leak. None of those citizens were whining and complaining, they were honestly speaking about their situations, and they were all living together as a community and looking out for each other. Let's talk about who has power, take Los Angeles, and how long as that crook Villaraigosa been in office? And tell me exactly who has power and control. You know as well as anyone else, LA has been reduced to the corrupt status quo of Mexico, under Villaraigosa, and his cronies, you're a liar if you deny it.
Pull the racist card out of your fat ass, and start addressing your own hatred and racism, as you are a big part of the problem. The way I see it, you're no different than those Africans who sold their fellow Africans into slavery, as you're taking pay, to promote hatred, racism and lies, as a means of exploitation.
Rob on May 23, 2009 at 10:39:10 said:
Yeah, but Earl, it's always YT's fault. C'mon now. We got to keep up appearances. Racism is prejudice plus power, right? And Blacks and Latinos have non, YT got it all. If you let YT off the hook he might start resisting multi-cultism.
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