More than three and an half years after the mass shooting in El Paso, the perpetrator pled guilty in February 2023 to the murder of 23 people who were shopping at a Walmart on the morning of Saturday, August 4.
In this long overdue step towards for justice for the victims, their families, and the community of El Paso, the plea also confirmed in a court of law what we have known for nearly four years: the El Paso shooting was a hate crime. The perpetrator drove ten hours from his home in Dallas to El Paso to commit what is the largest single mass shooting of Latinos in US history.
An avowed White nationalist, the shooter posted a manifesto right before the shooting in El Paso on 8chan, an extremist website frequented by White Supremacists and White Nationalists. In that manifesto, he wrote that “the attack was a response to the Hispanic invasion of Texas.” According to the New York Times, the shooter spent eight hours a day on platforms inundated with xenophobic, bigoted, and extremist language.
And rhetoric that was once limited to the fringe corners of the Internet has become ubiquitous on the Internet and social media due to several factors. The first factor is the exponential growth of the internet and social media. To be clear, the internet and social media did not create anti-immigrant sentiment or rhetoric. In fact, anti-immigrant sentiment has been a constant in American history dating back to the 19th century. Widespread anti-Irish sentiment, political parties such as the “Know Nothing” party of the mid-19 century and policies such as the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1888 attest to that.
And the Latino community has been a target of considerable and powerful anti-immigrant efforts in the last 40 years despite the fact that 80% of the population is made up of American citizens. And for those under 18, more than 90% are native-born US citizens.
But what the Internet and social media has done is turbocharge the proliferation of anti-immigrant sentiment and hate rhetoric. A recent study by the Ditch the Label, a U.S. and U.K. based global youth charity, found that online hate rose by 20% during the pandemic. And in a 2022 Texas Tribune article, Texas A&M professor Jennifer Mercieca, a researcher specializing in political rhetoric, noted the language used around immigration has shifted dramatically since 2015, with harsh and demonizing rhetoric becoming far more prevalent.
Notably, 2015 was the year that Donald Trump announced his first campaign for President, kicking off his campaign with a notorious speech in which he stated that “[Mexico is] not sending their very best…they’re bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime, they’re rapists.” This was just the beginning. Trump used every campaign rally to denigrate and demonize immigrants, especially Hispanics and Muslims. His presidency turned that rhetoric into heinous policies such as the Muslim ban and the separation of immigrant children from their families at the border.
For the first time in recent memory, an American president was openly anti-immigrant in both word and deed and giving aid and comfort to White supremacists and White nationalists. Research has shown that when those in power take these kinds of positions it does not change minds as much as it emboldens those with similar views.
Those like the shooter in El Paso were hearing from the highest office in the land that Latinos were a threat to this country, using words like “invasion,” “animals,” and “bad hombres.” And the day before the shooting Governor Greg Abbott of Texas sent out a fundraising letter that urged Texans to “defend” the state from those who wanted to “transform it through illegal immigration.” Given that phrases like “invasion” and “defend” are used to describe an enemy, it is not a leap to imagine that the shooter in El Paso may have thought he was doing what those in power wanted.
Another key factor is the extreme becoming mainstream is the lack of counterinformation to the widespread hate on the Internet and social media. In March 2023, UnidosUS and the Berkeley Media Studies Group released a report about the lack of visibility of Latinos in stories about racism and racial equity – mirroring a lack of visibility of Latino issues in general -- in mainstream news outlets in print and online. The report found that over the last three years, only 5.6% of racial equity stories included Latinos. As alarmingly, the report also found a precipitous decline in the number of racial equity stories overall since 2020, the year of nationwide protests following the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and others at the hands of law enforcement.
This combination of rampant and largely unchecked hate online and the decrease of accurate news coverage of communities of color in this country only increases the potential for more racial and ethnic-based violence. El Paso was not an isolated incident. It was preceded by a mass shooting at a Pittsburgh synagogue killing 11 and followed by a mass shooting at a Buffalo supermarket in which 10 people were gunned down. These heinous hate crimes targeting the Jewish and Black communities, respectively, were also perpetrated by shooters who were heavily influenced by online hate websites. We must act now to address the epidemic of bigotry and hate and prevent future hate-fueled tragedies such as Pittsburgh, El Paso, and Buffalo, and many others.
For years, civil rights organizations such as UnidosUS, the National Urban League, and others have urged social media companies to do a better job of monitoring and removing hateful and violent content on their platforms or in their algorithms. While some progress has been made, it is now clear that there is a need for a federal regulatory framework that centers racial equity and improves the accuracy and safety of social media platforms for users and communities.
It is also key to increase coverage of communities of color and their issues in the mainstream media. One important step in this process is to increase diversity among both those in the front and behind the camera, especially in leadership roles. Latinos, in particular, have historically been severely underrepresented in the English language news media.
Finally, we need more visible and more courageous leadership from our nation’s elected officials when it comes to denouncing hate, bigotry, and xenophobia, especially in their own ranks. UnidosUS’ polling has consistently shown that Latino voters reject candidates who seek to divide or are embraced by hate groups and want candidates who both work to bring together and treat others with respect and dignity. Working to stem White supremacy and hate is key to ensuring equality and justice for all of us.
