Girls' YouTube Rant Highlights Persisting Black/Brown Racism (VIDEO)
There are plenty of disturbing things about anti-African American rant by two teen girls from Gainsville, Florida that went viral on YouTube last week. The post received millions of views, thousands of comments, and the girls have been bombarded with death threats and hate mail. They even were expelled from their high school over the video.
But, in case you can't make it through the nearly 14-minute long tirade (maybe better not to), one of the troubling parts of the video is the intricacy of interracial hatred that emerges from the girls and their commenters -- one of the girls is Latina.
After about twelve minutes of comments like, "You can understand what we are saying, our accents, we use actual words. Black people do not," one of the young women addresses the fact that she is half-Cuban, distancing herself from other immigrant groups.
She reads commenters from prior videos who call her a "dirty spic", who tell her to "learn the country's language", and say that she should "f*ck off and eat some tacos." A final commenter who calls her "racist" says, "What makes it worse is that you are Hispanic. At least black people are here because you were brought here, you dirty pigs f*ckin' taco eaters just wormed your way here."
She shoots back that she herself is not an immigrant, but rather her family were the ones who came to the U.S. after Castro "ruined it." She says her family "owned all the railroads and half of Cuba" and her great grandfather was the "Mayor of Havana".
While the Latina girl in the video is not a politician or a celebrity, her words of hate won't be easily forgotten by the thousands who've watched her. And, they certainly aren't the first hateful words exchanged between members of two minority groups.
In 2008, following major brawls between black and Latino students at Los Angeles public high schools, African American activist, author and HuffPost blogger Earl Ofari Hutchinson wrote in the L.A. Times that, "hate crimes have jumped to a five-year high in [Los Angeles] county. The bulk of the crimes were committed by blacks and Latinos and against each other."
"The question is not whether black and brown tensions in L.A. are something to be concerned about, but what can be done to reduce the tensions," Hutchinson wrote.
But it's not just black and Latino high schoolers at fault.
Last October, black comedian Katt Williams delivered his own racist rant in a night club in response to a Latino heckler. Williams told a heckler that, "if you love Mexico, bitch, get the f*ck over there!"
Latino author Luis Rodriguez wrote a blog for LatinoVoices calling for better relations between the two minority groups. Rodriguez wrote:
"What we often forget is that idiots come in all colors--if I have any prejudice it's against people who don't know what they're talking about, who don't know their own history, let alone that of others."
He concluded that, energy spent by one minority hating another "is energy that could be better spent fighting for justice, economic equity, and a social transformation that benefits our children, our well being, and future generations."
WARNING: the following video is disturbing, contains lewd language, and is NSFW.
WATCH:
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First Posted: 02/23/2012 6:25 pm Updated: 02/27/2012 9:15 am