RACE REALITY CHECK, PART 2: NOT ALL GOOD IN THE HOOD
more real than the hill
(UPDATE: One of our commenters pointed out that Hernandez's article is a partial distillation of a longer working paper that breaks down some of the ideas more thoroughly than a newspaper column would really allow.)
In my previous post, I discussed Timothy Egan's NY Times article on Asians, UC Berkeley and affirmative action. In Tanya Hernandez's "Roots of Latino/black anger" (published in the LA Times) she also takes a worthwhile topic: anti-Black racism within the Latino community, but forces a sensationalist hook on it that both misrepresents reality as well as threatens to detract attention away from her core point. While Egan was mostly overstating the Asian influence on UC Berkeley, Hernandez is treading into even more dangerous territory by practically declaring that L.A. is the new Darfur.
CONTINUE READING...
To be more specific, Hernandez writes, "murder was a manifestation of an increasingly common trend: Latino ethnic cleansing of African Americans from multiracial neighborhoods."
This is one of those deliberate choices of words that have the effect of jack-knifing a tractor-trailer in the middle of a freeway. After all, for most people I surmise, "ethnic cleansing" is synonymous with "genocide" (the main difference being one of scale but not of concept). In other words, Hernandez is implying that there is a concerted effort by Latinos in Los Angeles (she doesn't actually cite which Latinos but we'll get back to this later) to carry out a deliberate campaign that ultimately leads to, "the elimination of an unwanted ethnic group or groups from a society, as by genocide or forced emigration."
What's curious here is that throughout the rest of the article, Hernandez relies on research data to support her argument yet here - with the most explosive argument of all - there is strangely no attempt to cite empirical sources even though such data exists. I cannot, of course, presume why this omission exists but I can say that if you look at the existing data, it complicates any easy depiction of racial violence as one-sided (let alone on the level of "ethnic cleansing").
The Los Angeles County Human Relations Commission keeps track of hate crime statistics annually (by aggregating a variety of federal, state but mostly local criminal justice sources). In their most recent report, analyzing 2005 data, what they found was the that, in L.A., 68% of Black hate crime victims were targeted by Latino perpetrators (pg. 20). That is, unquestionably, a stark and sobering statistic. Moreover, "African Americans were again targeted by far the most frequently in 230 crimes (55%). This is a rate more than five times their presence in the general population" (pg. 18). It is also a nearly 50% rise from the year before.
However, if you look at the rest of the data, "in anti-Latino crimes, 76% of the suspects were black" (pg. 20). In other words, amongst all hate crime victims, Latino victims were a little over 10% more likely to be targeted by Black suspects vs. Black victims and Latino suspects. That difference is somewhat misleading however when you factor in the disproportionate amount of Black victims overall (over half of all hate crime victims were African American in 2005). When taking that into consideration, there were roughly 156 Latino-on-Black hate crimes vs. 93 Black-on-Latino hate crimes, a sizable difference of nearly 40%, especially when noting that Blacks only constitute 10% of the L.A. County population in comparison to the whopping 46.5% of Angelinos who identify as "Hispanic."[1]
Either way, the overall pattern in Los Angeles has been that the majority of anti-Black hate crime suspects have been Latino and the majority of anti-Latino hate crime suspects have been Black. However, compared to 2004, rates of interracial hate crimes between Blacks and Latinos were down even though the overall number of hate crimes, across the board, were up, especially for Latinos who saw a nearly 100% jump in hate crime incidents compared to 2004. Moreover, Latino victims were more likely to be subject to violence compared to African American victims (67% vs. 61%). Meanwhile, the number of suspected Latino perpetrators of hate crimes decreased by 12% while the number of African American suspects increased by 10% but Latino suspects still dominate: they are 44% of all hate crime suspects, followed by Black at 30% and Whites at 24%. (Just to note: these year to year differences should always be taken with a grain of salt but I don't have sufficient access to more longitudinal studies that deal specifically with the Los Angeles area).
Where the numbers dramatically begin to skew is when you look at gang-related incidents of hate crime.
- "...the overwhelming majority of these were cases in which Latino gang members targeted African-American victims. The data show that 54 (78%) of racial crimes committed by gang members were anti-black, and only 8 (12%) targeted Latinos. Very few reports indicated that these racial crimes were committed by gang members against rival gang members; most were against victims who were not identified as gang members."
Further dissection of the data reveals some other notable figures - though with harder-to-draw conclusions. On one hand, gang-related hate crimes, overall, constitute 11% of all hate crimes - a big number but hardly the majority of hate crimes. However, in 5 out of 6 cases of racial bias-based attempted murder, the perps were Latino gang members and the victims African Americans. The reverse does NOT seem to be true: there are far fewer documented cases of Black gangs targeting non-gang affiliated Latinos.
So what does all this mean? For starters, I absolutely agree that incidents of anti-Black racism by Latino suspects - specifically in the form of violent hate crimes - is a serious issue that has gone woefully underreported or opined about. In that respect, I think Hernandez's article is important for bringing attention to the issue.
Moreover, some of her main points are correct: there is a higher overall number of incidences where Latinos have targeted African Americans (vs. the inverse) for hate crimes, especially through violence. Unfortunately, it's too early for parse down the 2006 data so it's hard to know what direction these trends may go but it's very important to note: in both 2004 and 2005, there no recorded bias-related murders (there was one in 2003 where two Latino gang members killed an African American man) but the story that sparked Hernandez's article was the December 15th slaying of a 14 year old Black girl in Harbor Gateway (again, by Latino gang members).
However, none of this data supports a claim that there is a widespread Latino-coordinated campaign of ethnic cleansing of African Americans in Los Angeles. What you could say is that there is a very troubling number of incidents (even though they had been on the decline) of Latino gangs (presumably Mexican though perhaps Salvadoran, though no one specifies) targeting non-gang affiliated African Americans for violent hate crimes in specific neighborhoods (but certainly not just any/all "multiracial" ones).[2] That alone should give everyone pause and inspire a serious call to action for L.A. city and community leaders to deal with.
However, how Hernandez conflates "Latino gangs" (and really, I think we're most likely talking about Mexican gangs) into "Latinos" writ large is troubling. I cannot imagine that Hernandez would ever claim that the Mexican Mafia stands as a proxy for the entire Latino community any more than Piru Bloods represent the African American community writ large but in her article, she essentially uses the two interchangeably. For example, at the end, she writes, "the recent violence in Los Angeles has involved Latinos targeting peaceful African American citizens." This is technically true but it is nowhere near the whole story.
For example, curiously missing from this discussion is acknowledging that one of the prime locations for Latino/Black violence isn't in the streets but rather, California's penal system where racially-aligned and segregated prison gangs create an incredible amount of violence (that can spill outside once members are released back into the general population).
Though the cultural roots of White Supremacy in Central/Latin America may very well play a role in prison conflicts too, one cannot deny that the prison system itself is a uniquely different social institution that has its own kinds of cultural logic. Others have argued that the very policy of the CA prison system to segregate based on race only contributes to flaring tensions and violence. In any case, no law enforcement official or criminal justice scholar in California would ever discuss Black/Latino violence - especially gang-related - without nodding back to the prisons.[3] Yet, in this article, what happens in Pelican Bay, stays in Pelican Bay it seems.
On a different angle, one of the main arguments also being put forward by Hernandez is that these racial conflicts cannot be explained by economic forces. This certainly flies against the common understanding amongst most sociologists and other social researchers that socioeconomic factors play a key role in brewing racial tensions between historically disenfranchised communities.
If someone wants to challenge that common logic, that's fine - the social scientific method relies on challenges to prevailing beliefs. However, in one of the cases where Hernandez does rely on research (rather than anecdote), she cites the 1992 Los Angeles County Social Survey even though that data is 15 years old (and the survey is conducted annually, mind you). Moreover, 1992 was the year of the L.A. Rebellion/Riots, arguably the most important race-related event in a generation in the Southland (sorry O.J.) and would likely skew responses on account of that. In any case, the demographics of Los Angeles have changed dramatically in that decade and a half and a more recent analysis would be apropos given that.
None of this means that her argument is necessarily false but it hardly proves the case either. To dismiss socioeconomics as a factor in how interracial violence manifests in a city as spatially dense and economically competitive as Los Angeles in the way Hernandez does defies easy understanding. A single, 15 year old survey study isn't enough to make the case that socioeconomics are some kind of red herring, especially given the mountains of other social research that would suggest that at some level, economic competition feeds into racial tension. That does not presume that racist prejudice is not also at play. It merely includes a variety of factors, something that the Hernandez article fails to consider.
All this said, I think the core of Hernandez's article is actually extremely important in exploring the deeper, cultural roots of anti-Black racism within the Latino community. As she - and many others would concur - this is NOT a topic that is part of the mainstream conversation around race. Within the Left, there is a naive idealism that somehow, all people of color are in solidarity with one another (regardless if the historical record actually disproves this countless times) and especially given how Latinos will become the majority-minority soon (as has already happened in California), it is more important than ever to discuss how anti-Black sentiments within that community factor into the relationships between those communities.
Some key points in her article:
- "racism — and anti-black racism in particular — is a pervasive and historically entrenched reality of life in Latin America and the Caribbean."
"The legacy of the slave period in Latin America and the Caribbean is similar to that in the United States: Having lighter skin and European features increases the chances of socioeconomic opportunity, while having darker skin and African features severely limits social mobility."
"African Americans had substantially more positive views of Latinos than Latinos had of African Americans. Although a slim majority of the U.S.-born Latinos used positive identifiers when describing African Americans, only a minority of the foreign-born Latinos did so."
"Latinos were more likely to reject African Americans as neighbors than they were to reject members of other racial groups."
What is missing, however, is a greater discussion, or even acknowledgment, of how these attitudes play off structural forces that either reflect or feed into the perpetuation of prejudice. This can be one of those chicken/egg debates but as noted earlier in regards to the role that the segregated CA prison system plays in exacerbating racial violence, it seems myopic to suggest that prejudicial attitudes would be sufficient to explain, in Hernandez's words, "the extremity of the ethnic violence." There's many groups that hate one another. Not all those groups make it a point to murder one another in public. Take away the gang angle (which is dependent on the prison angle) and the equation changes dramatically.
(She might also have mentioned the incidents of racial conflict in L.A. public schools, which, besides prison, is a "ground zero" for brewing racial conflicts.[5])
What is unfortunate is how Hernandez's article has gotten great play in the worst of places: Right-wing, anti-immigration sites who are perverting her arguments into another justification for attacking Latino immigration under the disingenuous mantle of protecting African Americans (and other Americans by extension) from the scourge of Latino racist violence. I think it goes without saying that most fervent, anti-immigrant groups are no friends to Black liberation or social justice - indeed, their racially-coded ways of talking about how immigration is changing the fabric of American identity (read: White identity/prvilege) are a close cousin to similar arguments around the "bankrupt culture" of impoverished African Americans.
While Hernandez likely did not intend for her article to have this effect, by sensationalizing the violence angle of her argument - especially when the data doesn't support that read - her article plays very nicely into the hands of those who would pervert its aim to spur up paranoia around violent Latino gangs putting American lives at risk (see Pat Buchanan's hysteria-laden screed about the Salvadoran American gang, MS13 for example).
One last thing regarding both Hernandez and Egan's articles: both point out the challenges in trying to discuss race and ethnicity in contemporary America, not the least of which are the ways in which umbrella terms for diverse ethnic groups tend to flatten difference when really, specificity is what's needed. (This is not a new point but still bears repeating).
For example, when Egan is trying to contrast the successes of Asian immigrant families with the historically underrepresented and disenfranchised Black and Latino populations (in the context of higher education), he's really talking about post-1965 Immigration Act East Asian ethnic groups: Chinese and Koreans (and to a lesser extent Japanese though their numbers have dwindled). These are the Asian communities most likely to 1) have a powerful class privilege working in their favor, at least when it comes to prioritizing resources for their children's education and 2) have avoided the direct historical legacies of anti-Asian oppression in America history by immigration in the post-Civil Rights Era.
However, as is oft-noted, for many Southeast Asian and Filipino immigrants, the advantages are not so widely shared, especially by Southeast Asian refugees whose key immigration date is not 1965 but 1975 (fall of Saigon). Those communities are far more likely to live near or under the poverty line and their arrival in the U.S. is a direct outcome of American foreign policy (one could make a similar argument for Filipinos as well given the U.S. occupation of the Philippines from the 1890s through 1930s) and thus, their disenfranchisement has roots in historical structures of imperialism and war (not to mention contemporary issues around environmental racism, public housing, gang involvement, etc.). Though Egan talks about how "Asians make up the largest single ethnic group, 37 percent, at [the UC's] nine undergraduate campuses," he treats that group as monolithic (despite later paragraphs which make note of "differences" between Asian ethnic groups but fail to specific what those differences are, especially within a social structure of power/privilege.
While there might be a fair social justice argument made to limit, say, Chinese American, access to affirmative action policies in higher education, it becomes far harder to make the same claim for Hmong or Cambodian youth. But even that becomes complicated: the first generation of post-75 Vietnamese immigrants to arrive in America were more likely to be part of the educated and political elite vs. later waves of more low-skilled, agrarian-class refugees. Does it make sense to offer social policy advantages to Vietnamese Americans across the board? Or just those who've been most socioeconomically challenged? You can see the complexity here.
Likewise, with Hernandez, apart from conflating Latino gangs with the Latino community as a whole, she rarely specifies if findings regarding one Latino group (say Mexicans or Mexican Americans) can be applied to others. In Los Angeles, Mexicans are the dominant Latino community, by far, but there are still important pockets of Salvadoran, Honduran and Guatemalans and her ideas on Black/Latino conflict in Los Angeles may have little application in, for example, New York, where Puerto Ricans are the dominant Latino group and whose community can span the range from light-skinned "Hispanic Whites" to dark-skinned morenas. That's not to say that anti-Black racism doesn't exist there but the social dynamics (and demographics) are significantly distinct.
Cursory moral of this very long story? Talking about race and racism is tremendously complicated yet even more completely necessary and to the degree that both articles (despite their flaws) push this conversation into the public sphere, I think that's great, especially if it encourages more people to push deeper into having these very difficult dialogues.
[1] The data on these figures track ALL hate crimes, not just violent assaults, attempted murders or murders (there were no racial bias-related murders in 2005 according to the report).
[2] It really needs to be said here that nationally, over 90% of Black murder victims were killed by Black suspects. One would imagine that the figure, specifically for Los Angeles, would not be dramatically lower. I doubt anyone would describe that figure as a "self cleansing."
[3] In CA prisons, the term "ethnic cleansing" might actually be more apropos but I suspect Hernandez avoids dwelling on this since it would undermine her discussion of how "peaceful African Americans" are coming under attack by violent Latinos.
[4] In public schools, most of the Black/Latino violence tends to involve Black victims and Latino suspects except, it seems, in May. Presumably, the timing of Cinco De Mayo tends to incite more Black suspects to attack Latino victims.
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