Friday, May 01, 2009

Racism Goes Viral - from MSNBC

TO ORIGINAL SOURCE


Amid swine flu outbreak, racism goes viral
Anti-immigrant hatred spreads on talk radio, Web sites
By Brian Alexander
updated 11:46 a.m. CT, Fri., May 1, 2009
“No contact anywhere with an illegal alien!” conservative talk show host Michael Savage advised his U.S. listeners this week on how to avoid the swine flu. “And that starts in the restaurants" where he said, you “don’t know if they wipe their behinds with their hands!”

And Thursday, Boston talk radio host Jay Severin was suspended after calling Mexican immigrants "criminalians" during a discussion of swine flu and saying that emergency rooms had become "essentially condos for Mexicans."

That’s tepid compared to some of the xenophobic reactions spreading like an emerging virus across the Internet. “This disgusting blight is because MEXICANS ARE PIGS!” an anonymous poster ranted on the “prison planet” forum, part of radio host and columnist Alex Jones’ Web site.

There is even talk of conspiracy. Savage speculated that terrorists are using Mexican immigrants as walking germ warfare weapons. “It would be easy,” he said, “to bring an altered virus into Mexico, put it in the general population, and have them march across the border.”

As more than 140 cases of H1N1 virus, known as swine flu, have been confirmed across the United States — from San Diego to New York City — the growing public health concern has also exposed fear and hate.

Fear and blame are counterproductive and even dangerous in any disease outbreak because the more stigmatized any group feels, the more reluctant people in that group may be to seek medical care. That only helps propagate the disease.

The attempt to scapegoat Mexicans, immigrants and Hispanic Americans is no surprise to Latino rights groups, who are now mobilizing a countereffort.

‘Ignorant beyond the pale’
Angelica Salas, executive director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles, called such comments “racist and ignorant beyond the pale … these so-called commentators shame themselves turning public health concerns into an immigrant bashing fest.”

“What we have seen is that the anti-immigrant groups are using this to shamelessly to promote their agenda,” said Liany Arroyo, director of the Institute for Hispanic Health at the National Council of La Raza.

While the war of words is mainly between the conservative commentariat and Latino advocacy groups, individual Mexican-Americas are beginning to worry.

“Our people are calling us and they are concerned,” said Florencia Velasco Fortner, chief executive officer of Dallas Consilio of Hispanic Organizations, an umbrella of affiliated service groups. “Even our staff members are starting to get a little discouraged. There was anti-immigrant sentiment prior to this and this adds fuel to the fire.”

The Consilio has mounted its own education campaign to teach Dallas-area Hispanic audiences proper disease prevention and hygiene techniques. Because many are uninsured and may avoid seeking medical care, the Consilio is also helping them find non-profit clinics and encouraging them to visit these immediately if they develop symptoms rather than waiting until they are severely ill.

As swine flu fears have spread, the backlash has also affected some Mexican restaurants’ business, possibly fueled by disparaging comments like those of Savage questioning the hygiene of workers.

Jennifer Pesqueira, whose family has owned and operated El Indio Mexican restaurants in San Diego since 1940, said her business has seen a 20 percent drop in business since the outbreak began.


Activist groups have advised their communities to be aware and on guard. “Board members put an alert out,” said Jan Hanvik, executive director of Clemente Soto Velez Cultural and Educational Center in New York. “It was a heads up, saying ‘pay attention.’ ”

Blaming ‘the other’
Fearmongering and blame are almost a natural part of infectious disease epidemics, experts say.

“This is a pattern we see again and again,” said Amy Fairchild, chair of sociomedical sciences at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health in New York City. “It’s ‘the other,’ the group not seen as part of the nation, the one who threatens it in some way that gets blamed for the disease.”

Often, a disease outbreak is an excuse to vent pre-existing prejudices. “It’s fear of people we do not know or who look different,” said Dr. Howard Markel, a medical historian at the University of Michigan and author of “When Germs Travel: Six Major Epidemics That Have Invaded America Since 1900 and the Fears They Have Unleashed.” “You take the fear of the unknown that already exists and then combine that with a real or perceived threat that is contagious disease and it’s explosive.”

During the medieval Black Plague, Europeans blamed Jews, saying they poisoned the wells. In an 1892 cholera pandemic, the U.S. blamed immigrant European Jews. In the flu of 1918, Markel said, “Italians blamed the Spanish. The Spanish blamed the Italians. For HIV it was gay men and Haitians.”

Americans “have a history of trying to keep ourselves ‘pure,’ ” Fairchild explained. “You saw it after the Civil War when slaves were denied citizenship, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries when we were alarmed over southern and eastern European immigrants. There were fears that they would pollute America’s germ plasm, make us a weak nation of imbeciles.”

Americans have time and again responded to emergencies by clamoring to shut the borders and pull up the bridges.

“I’ve blogged for years about the spread of contagious diseases from around the world into the U.S. as a result of uncontrolled immigration,” conservative columnist Michelle Malkin wrote on her Web site. “9/11 didn’t convince the open-borders zealots to put down their race cards and confront reality. Maybe the threat of their sons or daughters contracting a deadly virus spread from south of the border to their Manhattan prep schools will.” (The cluster of New York school students who first contracted H1N1 brought the virus back from Mexico. The school is in Queens.)

“People who do not really know anything are creating ideas that don’t really exist,” said Sergio Ornelas, owner of a bi-national publishing and advertising business in El Paso. “I am worried these kinds of articles and comments might create panic.”

Fighting racism with information
Blame-the-victim reactions can be fought with clear, accurate information about the disease and about how it is spreading, said Dr. Larry Kline, a San Diego physician and member of the United States-Mexico Border Health Commission. “People get snippets of information here and there, and unfortunately much of it is inaccurate. That makes things ripe for blame and blame and fear never helped anybody.”

Tamping down blame and fear isn’t just the right thing to do morally, experts agree, it’s also the right thing to do medically. Germs, Markel stressed, don’t care about skin color or national origins or borders.

“These are naturally occurring events,” he said. “We expect flu pandemics every 30 to 40 years. It’s the cost of living in a world of emerging infectious diseases. That’s the folly of prejudice. They are wherever humans are.”

15 comments:

  1. Until mental illness can be totally cured, you're going to have these type of people around.

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  2. the Jew/New World Order "crowd" have their petty little schemes like "9/11s"/"false-flag terrorist incidents"/"pandemics"/"internment camps"/"martial law" blah blah blah....none of this is gunna mean jack SHITE! in a few short years.....the coming RACE WAR is gunna overwhelm all that stoopid "Illuminati"-type-crap like a mega-tsunami..."the bottom line" is that 'primal instincts' like family, tribe, nation & race TRUMP all!

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  3. Didn't Charles Manson predict that same shit back in the 60's? Guess what dipshit, it never happened. The Illuminati? Who the fuck takes that shit serious? I mean besides nut cases and dumbasses.

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  4. This article is a total load. We all know that mexico is a turd world cesspool of crime disease and subhumans whom act like animals. A country where the average age of consent is 12 and these perverted bastards regularly have sex with their children.

    Nothing good ever comes out of such a place.

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  5. sounds like the right sort of place for "Hardly Lloyd" or wtf-ever the pathetic maggot posting as such calls his/her-self!

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  6. Post proof instead of your racism, loser. You're stupidity is showing.

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  7. Goddamn you're pathetic.

    Any whiny little article (from MSNBC nonetheless) and you'll post it.

    Get a fucking life and stop hiding behind a fake pic and name.

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  8. Funny a right winged racist calling Nikki a whiner, and whiny about it to boot. Too damn funny.

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  9. Self is rolling over laughing. Anonymous pussy tells Nikki to stop hiding behind a fake name and pic but is posting it anonymously. Racists are such losers. Funny though LOL.

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  10. Spics spread disease. Avoid spics and avoid disease.

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  11. Guess that means both of us will have to stop fucking your mommy.LOL

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  12. Michael Savage Rocks and I don't care if he IS a Jew.

    There are a few righteous Jews out there that know the score.

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  13. It isn't racist to advice folk not to travel to a nation were the disease first originated. At the first signs of this disease our borders SHOULD have been closed. Has nothing to do with racism.

    This administration better get its collective head out of it's ass, because next time the virus/disease REALLY COULD BE DEADLY.

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  14. What about those brainworms that are transmitted from Mexican produce?

    It is pretty alarming just how much produce and meat actually come from Mexica.

    Do Americans not produce anything anymore? We can't even grow our own food?

    Wake up, people.

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  15. I'm having a party with Mestizo today!

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All comments must remain civil. No threats, racist epithets, or personal attacks will be tolerated. Rational debate, discourse, and even disagreement are all acceptable as long as they remain on point and within the realm of civility.