There is also no evidence that hate crimes are motivated by the immigration control movement. Those who claim there’s a connection cannot point to a single significant commentator or politician who has advocated violence against Latinos. Nor can they find a single hate crime committed by their followers.
Although whites are the vast majority of listeners of conservative talk radio and television, they committed only 52 percent of hate crimes against Latinos—a percentage well below their proportion of 66 percent of the population. Moverover, Los Angeles County classified 42% of black-on-Hispanic hate crimes as “gang related.” This is not to suggest that blacks cannot be racist, but it is unlikely that the Bloods and Crips only decided to attack Hispanics after they listened to Rush Limbaugh.
The 2008 murder of Jose Osvaldo Sucuzhanay in Brooklyn by black men who targeted him because they mistook him as gay was denounced as a significant anti-Hispanic anti-immigrant hate crime. The New York Times ran over three dozen stories about this, including an editorial calling it a “lynching.” Even when they were at large, the race of the killers was rarely mentioned.
Attempting to understand who commits what “hate crime” is made even more problematic because of the way the FBI collects statistics. Latinos are technically not a race, but an ethnic group; and the FBI only lists Black, White, and Asian as the perpetrators—with all Hispanics being treated as white. This most likely is the reason why the FBI recorded 164 anti-white hate crimes perpetrated by “whites.”
The groups that perpetuate misconceptions about anti-Latino hate crimes make no secret of their goals. They want supporters of immigration control silenced because, in the words of La Raza president Janet Mugaria, “We have to draw the line on freedom of speech, when freedom of speech becomes hate speech.”
These organizations run relentless smear campaigns accusing virtually all opponents of illegal immigration—no matter how nuanced or tempered—of hate speech that must not be allowed on the airwaves, in print, or in front of Congress.
Before taking such draconian steps, we should at least get our facts straight.