The Biggest Explosion of Anti-Hispanic Sentiment in 30 years?

image from:
http://blogs.infoshop.org/UrbanGuerrilla.php?title=report_anti_war_anti_colonial_latino_you&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1


Immigration is a Proxy for Anti-Latino Racism?*


THE OPPENHEIMER REPORT
Time to hit back against anti-Latino bigotry
BY ANDRES OPPENHEIMER
aoppenheimer@MiamiHerald.com



..The recent immigration debate in the Senate, which ended with the defeat of a bill that would have given a path to citizenship to many of the 12 million undocumented workers, has given way to the biggest explosion of antiHispanic sentiment I have seen since I arrived in this country three decades ago.

Prominent academics such as Harvard University political scientist Samuel Huntington are getting away with sweeping statements such as ``America's Latino immigration deluge . . . constitutes a major potential threat to the cultural and possibly political integrity of the United States.''

While the 44 million Hispanics are the biggest minority in America, you don't see the kind of nationwide protests, legal actions or calls for boycotts on a scale that you would probably see if these statement were directed against African Americans or Jewish Americans...

My opinion: The National Council of La Raza and its sister institutions are doing the right thing with their ''Ya es hora!'' citizenship drive. But they should also launch a nationwide ''Ya basta!'' campaign to identify, name and shame those who systematically bash Hispanics.

If anti-Hispanic sentiment is allowed to keep growing, we will soon have an underclass of 12 million immigrants that will feel not only frustrated by not having a legal path to citizenship but increasingly insulted by the mainstream media.

And social exclusion mixed with frustration can be a dangerous cocktail, as we've seen in the violent 2005 riots by Muslim youths in the suburbs of Paris.

The time for Hispanics to say ''Ya basta!'' is now, before it's too late.

for entire article:

http://www.miamiherald.com/421/story/178206.html

*immigration prof blog posted on Oppenheimer's book earlier today