Latinx Threat Narrative: Are We Dangerous?

“Wet backs.” “rapists.” “criminals.” This past election cycle brought hurtful words like these back into the conversation that surrounds Latinx people in America. “Land of the Free”, “home of the brave,” “American Dream.” The rhetoric surrounding Latinx people was once promising but has quickly shifted into trigger words.

Like our Muslim folk, Latinx people have become racialized due to major events that permanently stigmitize a group of people. Most famously, the tragedy that was 9/11 brought a very negative and dangerous conversation on people who do not present or are not white. That being said, once the conversation shifted, it stuck and created a new canon as to how we see Latinx people in the media.
Kai Wei and Yu-Ru Lin in the scholarly article titled, “The Evolution of Latino Threat Narrative from 1997 to 2014” describe how the Latino Threat Narrative has been shown in the media from the years of 1997 to 2014. They found that, “Overall, about 54 % of the news articles contained LTN themes. Illegal and criminality themes account for the highest proportion (about 23 % on average) in the news articles with LTN themes. In addition to the high proportion, it also presents a steady increase from 1997 to 2014 with peaks in 2001, 2006, 2010, and 2013. These peaks indicated that illegality and criminality themes followed the fours wave pattern indicated in Figure 2. Cultural threat accounts for the second highest among the five themes (about 15%).” (Wei and Lin)

Latinx people have become a weapon to push hateful agendas. They are not people anymore, but rather they are treated as chess pieces in a game that benefits law makers, administrations, etc.