Photo: Henry "Enrique" Tarrio and the Proud Boys protest during the Million Maga March against election results, Nov. 14, 2020, in Washington D.C. Photo: Chris Tuite/imageSPACE/MediaPunch /IPX
More Latinos in the U.S. are adopting far-right extremism. The rise in the number of white nationalist Hispanics is reflected in a few things including an increase in Hispanic Americans who identify as white.
The trend is “part of the mutation that takes place as the racist fringe tries to become more mainstream,” said Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at Cal State University.
Here are five things to know about the rising trend of white nationalist Hispanics in America.
Latin American and Caribbean nations where there was slavery have had a long history of racism within their cultures. “In Latin America, white supremacy is alive and well,” said Tanya K. Hernández, a Fordham University law professor and author of the upcoming book, “Racial Innocence: Unmasking Latino Anti-Black Bias,” according to an Axios report.
Anti-Blackness is not new in the Latino community. Black Honduran author Saraciea J. Fennell told CNN that as a young girl, she was taught that light skin was better than dark skin.
“Once I got older, I realized it was an anti-Black practice because I was not being allowed to love the skin that I’m in,” she said. “We don’t tend to see stories publicly shared by those from the diaspora; it makes it seem as though we don’t exist.”
Many experts say that former President Donald Trump’s racist rhetoric tapped into racism within the Latino culture. Cuban and Venezuelan exiles in South Florida were especially drawn to Trump. There was a major shift of Latino male Americans to the Republican party during his presidency.
During the 2020 presidential campaign, New York Times reporter Jennifer Medina interviewed dozens of Mexican-American men supporting Trump and found they were attracted to “the macho allure of Trump.”
Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio is one example of a Hispanic white nationalist. Of Cuban-American and Afro-Cuban heritage, he promoted neo-fascist, right-wing ideologies for years. The Proud Boys is a far-right, neo-fascist and exclusively male organization. Tarrio was arrested on March 8, 2021, on a conspiracy charge for his alleged role in plotting the Jan. 6, 2021 siege at the U.S. Capitol. Prior to this, Tarrio was given a five-month sentence for destroying a Black Lives Matter banner that was stolen from a Black church in Washington, D.C. in November 2020, News One reported.
Tarrio has denied he is anti-Black.
“I’m pretty brown, I’m Cuban. There’s nothing white supremacist about me,” Tarrio told Insider in 2020.
According to Pew Research Center, more than half of Hispanics surveyed identified their race as white (58 percent), with the next largest share selecting the “some other race” category (27 percent).
Listen to GHOGH with Jamarlin Martin | Episode 74: Jamarlin Martin Jamarlin returns for a new season of the GHOGH podcast to discuss Bitcoin, bubbles, and Biden. He talks about the risk factors for Bitcoin as an investment asset including origin risk, speculative market structure, regulatory, and environment. Are broader financial markets in a massive speculative bubble?
According to a 2021 Pew Research Center’s National Survey of Latinos, a majority of Latinos say skin color impacts opportunity in America.
The survey found that a majority (62 percent) of Hispanic adults say having a darker skin color hurts Hispanics’ ability to get ahead in the U.S. and 59 percent say having a lighter skin color helps Hispanics get ahead.
Photo: Henry “Enrique” Tarrio and the Proud Boys demonstrate near Freedom Plaza during the Million Maga March protest regarding election results on November 14, 2020, in Washington D.C. Photo: Chris Tuite/imageSPACE/MediaPunch /IPX
