COLUMN OF THE AMERICAS

ROBERTO RODRIGUEZ & PATRISIA GONZALES

RELEASE DATE: MAY 16, 2005

The Hate Contagion

First Person

By Roberto Rodriguez

As we decry the spread of ignorance (many Americans continue to believe that Saddam Hussein had something to do with 911 and that global warming is a myth), something more ominous is also spreading: an extremely virulent hate contagion.

Most people are not hateful. But something within most of us permits us to make exceptions. Those exceptions are more often than not perfectly rationalized. Other times, they are explained away, not as hate, bigotry or racism, but as a justifiable response to a problem.

The problem before us is that the president has gotten us into a nonsensical war. Through his logic, he is sacrificing American lives on a daily basis - as part of an effort to take the war to the terrorists - rather than wage it at home. On top of this, his tax cuts to the super rich are courting long-term economic disaster. It is in times like these that virulent hate contagions are unleashed and common sense becomes a casualty of war.

As a result of 911, the citizenry allowed the government to conduct massive raids and to conduct secret detentions of thousands of innocent Arabs/Muslims. It matters little if they were innocent. In this climate, we are to fear terrorists (read Arabs/Muslims) and we all have to do our part to find them, turn them in and root them out. It also means we have to shut down our borders and wall the entire U.S./Mexico border; it's actually the Mexicans and Central Americans we have to fear. But we don't have to fear all of them; Just the illegal ones.

So how did we get from fearing Osama to blaming Saddam, to Lou Dobbs blaming Jose for all our nations (fears) problems?

It's called scapegoat politics or the politics of blame… and truthfully, this nation has a lot of experience in this. In fact, it was founded upon making exceptions. It was founded on the dehumanization of indigenous and African peoples.

Freedom, democracy and liberty were grand concepts, but did not apply to these populations. In this respect, this society has been conditioned to accept exceptions (those that society does not deem as fully human). Through the years, Jews, the Irish, South Europeans and Asians were also at one point on this list. Mexicans have always been on this list and in a sense, occupy a very special place on it. The reason can't be due to Mexico's proximity, otherwise Canadians would also be on it. What other factor could be involved that would allow the United States to historically have disparate laws that benefit Canadians (allowing them to come into the country for six months - a good thing), but treating Mexicans like criminals?

In our modern era, for the most part, it is no longer fashionable to publicly hate Jews or people of color. To do so would find you on Southern Poverty Law Center's Hate watch list ( ). Ironically, but perhaps not unexpectedly, some peoples who formerly were subject to hate and dehumanization have also now assimilated that culture of hate. It is not rare to see Mexicans hating African Americans, nor African Americans hating Asians, nor both groups hating hating Jews or gays or each other. The one group that everyone seems comfortable hating is Mexicans and Central Americans … though people comfortably hide behind hating “illegal aliens” because illegal aliens is abstract and not a people. That's the key. They're not human. And they really do welcome immigrants, just as long as they're legal. And so vigilantes have now become our new national heroes…

When in the history of humanity has the subject of immigration -- during an economic and political crisis -- not produced antipathy toward “foreigners?”

As the crisis gets bigger -- as a result of the president's trumped-up war -- it can be predicted that society will continue to further divide between legal and illegal human populations - between hunter and hunted populations. What we may see shortly is the expansion of illegal categories (under the guise of expanding full citizenship rights to legal citizens) or the creation of legal subcategories (guest workers) that will permit their exploitation, while depriving them of their basic human rights and their full human citizenship.

Humanity's challenge is to plot out a course - even if it takes a hundred years - to get to the point where one day there will no longer be legal and illegal human populations. The abolishment of slavery was once also but a dream.



© Column of the Americas 2005