Racial Innocence by Tanya Katerí Hernández

Author:Tanya Katerí Hernández [Hernández, Tanya Katerí]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780807020142
Publisher: Beacon Press
Published: 2022-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

EVERYDAY VIOLENCE

It would be a mistake, though, to relegate the concern about Latino anti-Black violence only to members of Latino gangs in California and official White supremacist organizations. Some examples of non-gang-affiliated Latino anti-Black violence in California include Arturo Santiago, while riding a North County Transit bus, striking a Black man on his head with a glass bottle while uttering racial slurs.57 Another incident is that of Latinos Jeremiah Hernandez and William Soto, who were tried for burning an eleven-foot cross outside the house of a Black teenager in San Luis Obispo County, California, while she was home watching television.58 At the time the crime occurred, Hernandez was thirty-two years old and Soto was twenty years old.

Extensive property damage can also accompany Latino anti-Black racial harassment in California. Latino Mark Anthony Taylor, a student at California State University at Chico (CSU-Chico), was found guilty of causing $175,000 worth of property damage when he battered the door and window of the apartment where two CSU-Chico African American students (Abdul Benjamin and Brandon Sykes) lived, all while yelling: “N——r,” “we hate you fucking N——rs,” “you fucking N——rs get out of here,” and “you fucking N——rs, why are you here?”59 Mark Anthony Taylor was also incarcerated because his racist conduct that day included physically assaulting Brandon while calling him a “fucking N——r” a number of times and stating that he, Taylor, represented “white pride” and was thus “tired of all the things you blacks are doing around here.” Notably, Mark Anthony Taylor was joined by three White non-Hispanic students who endorsed his White supremacist violence by urging him to “get that N——r.”

Moreover, a number of examples illustrate the operation of anti-Black violence in quotidian Latino spaces across the country. Luis Alberto Gonzalez, a White Cuban, was walking in Hialeah, Florida (a predominantly Latino city outside Miami), when he saw two Black men (brothers Andy Alexander and Tarvis James) exiting a pizza parlor. Gonzalez decided to yell at them “You fucking N——rs! What are you doing in my town robbing people?!”60 Gonzalez then got in his car, and when the brothers simply walked away, Gonzalez was angered because he thought they “appeared arrogant” as they walked past him. Angered by the “arrogance” of two Black men walking the streets of Hialeah, Gonzalez accelerated his car toward the brothers and attempted to run them over. When questioned by the police, Gonzalez admitted that what motivated his actions was his prejudice against Black people.

Yet, initially, Gonzalez claimed that it was Andy and Tarvis who initiated the interaction by robbing him at gunpoint. Only when Gonzalez provided a series of conflicting versions of his robbery story did the police investigate further and conclude from the collective statements of several witnesses that Gonzalez was not the victim of a crime but rather the aggressor of violence against men who posed no threat to him. In short, Gonzalez’s anti-Black hostility informed not only his act of violence but also his falsified accusation of a criminal act by his victims.

Other cases from around the country also evidence anti-Black violence from individual Latinos.

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