Porterville

On Sunday, November 9, 2014, a three-year-old Porterville girl was hit by an automobile and died at the scene. This should have been the headline of news reports in my small hometown of Porterville, California however, most news reports began with the phrase “Illegal Immigrant Drunk Driver…” The accident occurred a few blocks from my home in East Porterville, where the victim was attempting to purchase ice cream from an ice cream truck that was parked on the unpaved sidewalk. The assailant, an eighteen-year-old man who was driving under the influence, drove into the crowd of children who were purchasing ice cream, pinned the victim against the ice cream truck, and fled the scene. I first heard of this incident the morning of Veterans Day, two days after the occurrence, when I woke up and checked my Facebook feed. As I scrolled through my news feed, I spotted a news article that reported on the incident and I noticed that the post contained 97 comments. I viewed the comments and I was frankly in utter shock, disbelief, and disgust. The following images are screenshots of a few comments that accompanied the Facebook post.

Warning: these images contain strong language and the identities of those who posted the comments have not been censored

My hometown of Porterville has 55, 697 residents, 63 percent of whom identify as Hispanic. The area that that I was raised in is named East Porterville and is past the Porterville city limits, so it considered Tulare county territory. East Porterville has a population of 7,331, 75 percent of who are of Hispanic descent. This demographic information is relevant to and enhanced the shock, disbelief, and disgust that I felt after reading the Facebook comments because despite the fact that most of my community is Hispanic, the comments displayed multiple levels of racism including individual and institutional racism. For the purpose of the blog post, I will describe the vicious cycle of institutional and individual racism as they apply to the incident and to the comments.

The Facebook comments above and the 94 not presented above express individual racism that results from institutional racism. Tanya Golash-Boza defines individual racism as the act of one person discriminating against another according to race or ethnicity and institutional racism as “policies, laws, and institutions that reproduce racial inequalities” (184). She explains that in 2011, 40 million immigrants resided in the United States. This means that three years ago immigrants made up 14 percent of the total population and the immigrant population continues to fluctuate (361). Golash-Boza further asserts that immigration fluctuates due to the racialized immigration policies and laws that have been enacted. For example, after the 1996 Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA) eliminated judicial review for deportation orders and required non-citizens to be detained. The name of the act itself suggests and reproduces the idea that immigrants are terrorists that must be apprehended and eliminated. Policies and laws such as the AEDPA are acts of institution racism that have constructed the individual racism that is seen in these comments. The people who wrote these comments did not see a mourning family, instead they saw a criminal and stereotyped that all immigrants are dangerous drunks that murder innocents. This is a lot to swallow, but the 97 Facebook comments that I stumbled upon demonstrate that institutional racism and individual racism remain rampant in our diverse communities.

Although laws no longer permit racism, racism persists in our communities. This persistence is apparent when reading the 97 Facebook comments because one is able to view how overt institutional racism, which was once permitted, has reproduced and instilled racism as a social and societal norm. My community is so accustomed to practicing racism that instead of mourning the loss of a child, my community focused on pointing fingers at an "illegal immigrant." This criminalization of immigrants, especially Latinos, is a form of  institutional racism that fuels racism because racial stereotypes, including the ones applied in the Facebook comments, are formed and reproduced through outlets such as the media. My community's reaction to this tragic event serves as an example of the vicious racism cycle that continues and will continue to manifest in our communities even though laws no longer permit racism.