The Origin of Hispanic Racism

As we all may know racism has existed ever since any of us were ever born. We know the history of African American racism, Japanese racism, Jewish racism, and many others. All of these races have their known and unknown stories. Unlike all these stories many of the people in the united states do not know the history and origin of Hispanic racism. In this essay I want to discuss a little bit about some of the history of Hispanics and how this racism towards them originated and some of their stories. We are never really taught about the racist history towards Latinos in the United States.

Latinos Not many people in the United States discuss the fact that Latinos have rioted many times whether it was for their rights, discrimination, or police brutality. All three of these things prove that there has always been this racism and discrimination towards Latinos. There were a couple major events in which Latinos were rioting and protesting. Three major events that prove there has always been this racism towards Hispanics are the following. The Chicano movement of 1960, The Passaic, New Jersey riot of 1969, and the 1971 Roosevelt park riot. Many people will not discuss or talk about any of these events because they don’t care for our history. Unless it has to do with black or white people it isn’t counted as racism.

To begin the first event, I would like to discuss is the Chicano movement of 1960. It all happened in Los Angeles, Ca. This Chicano movement is one of the biggest accomplishments of Latinos to this day. This riot happened during the civil rights era with the main focus of getting rights for farm workers and educational rights for the students. Before this event happened there were already some supreme court cases that passed laws in favor of Latinos and segregated schools. In the article “History of the Chicano movement” published by Nadra Kareem Nittle published on September 10, 2018 it states the following, “Their activism actually predates the 1960s. In the 1940s and ’50s, for example, Hispanics won two major legal victories.”

Both of these victories were in relation to ending segregation in schools with every racial group not just blacks and whites. Latinos have gone through a lot to try and get equal education rights. Even to this day there are college and universities that discriminate against Latinos. A lot of us are put down saying we aren’t smart enough and that we could never graduate college just because our families don’t have an education. Thanks to the Chicano movement in 1961 we were able to have a sort of better opportunity although it wasn’t perfect afterwards, we to this day are still working on getting the rights and equality we deserve in the education system.

The Passaic riot took place in 1969. It happened in the state of New Jersey. The story was caused after a couple of major events. The first event that built up to this riot is the story of when a 12-person Puerto Rican family was evicted from their house. There was also a story of a fireman who said racist things about Puerto Ricans to a newspaper article a couple months after the first incident. In the article “The Forgotten History of Latino Riots” written by Natalie Delgadillo and published on April 11, 2017 it states what the fireman says. ““They are pigs,” the story said. “A bunch of them will be sitting around drinking beer and when one is finished...he just throws the bottle anywhere.”’” The article continues to talk about another incident in which six police officers beat a drug dealer to his death. In this article written by Natalie Delgadillo she talks about how the things Hispanics go through aren’t really shined a light on. There aren’t many articles on this particular riot because many people don’t like to admit that it happened. Even Latinos themselves like to act like this event never took place. That is why we never found out much information about it.

The Roosevelt park riot took place on June 13, 1971. The riot began when policemen wanted to arrested a young man standing in a big crowd of people. When this happened, it started as a small dispute and ended in a big fight. The policemen ended up firing at the crowd injuring around 9 people. After this the crowd ended up in downtown rioting and causing many damages. This riot ended up with many many injuries and very expensive damages to properties and more. Yet, it wasn’t really talked about. In the article “Forgotten Latino Urban Riots and Why They Can Happen Again” written by Aaron G and published on May 2nd, 2016 he states the following, “Most Americans are unaware of Latino urban riots because they fall outside of the black-white binary.” While this is true it still affects the Latino community in many ways. Most of the racism and discrimination the Hispanic community faces is not talked about because it isn’t considered racism or it is just not cared for. Many Americans think racism can only be a thing if you are a white or black person, this is actually a very unfortunate thing because my people go through a lot but aren’t helped. On the other hand, the black community has support and protests against this racism towards them.

There is many people who act like Hispanics are not discriminated again, because of this Hispanics get no help. The discrimination from the past to the discrimination today is basically the same. We are still told we have no future, called lazy, alcoholics, criminals, aliens and more. Although today it is not as bad as it was before and yes, we do have more help in the education system there is still much discrimination. Even more now that Donald trump is our president he has brought back that racism we dealt with back in the 1960s and 1970s. We again have to fight for our rights as humans and as American citizens, just like we did in the Chicano movement of 1960.

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