Hate behind some of the recent gang violence

Many blacks even chalk up the attacks to ethnic cleansing campaign by  anyone from the prison Mexican Mafia to violent on-the-street gang  members. The much publicized crackdown on a Latino gang that unleashed a  three year campaign to drive blacks out of a mixed neighborhood in  South Los Angeles ripped open a dirty and very painful secret. Latinos  and blacks can and do commit hate crimes against each other.
A  Los  Angeles county Human Relations Commission report on hate violence in  2005 found that overall Latinos committed nearly half of the hate  attacks in the County, while blacks committed thirty percent of the hate  attacks. However, when it was Latino and black violence, the figure for  hate violence soared. Latinos and blacks committed the bulk of the  racially motivated hate attacks against each other. Nationally, blacks  and Latinos commit about one in five hate crimes, and many of their  victims, as in Los Angeles, are other blacks or Latinos.
This  represents two more disturbing trends. One is that blacks and Latinos  committed the majority of hate crimes in Los Angeles, and a sizeable  number of them nationally. The other is that hate crimes are  increasingly being committed by blacks and Latinos against each other  and that in some cases the victims are innocent random victims of the  violence.
The racial tinged violence in Los Angeles, Newark, and the  other cities is not the norm–yet. The overwhelming majority of physical  assaults and murders of blacks are by blacks and most attacks on  Latinos are by Latinos. However, black and Latino racial attacks against  each other, no matter how infrequent, as is the case with white on  black hate attacks, stir fear, rage, and panic, and deepen racial  divisions. Thats especially true given the latent and increasingly  openly expressed unease and hostility many blacks express toward illegal  immigration.
There are two easy explanations for the hate violence  in Los Angeles and nationally. One is that the perpetrators are bored,  restless, disaffected, jobless, untutored, or violence-prone gang  members engaging a bloody turf battles to control the drug trade. That  seemed to be the case with the Florencia 13 street gang which was the  target of a federal crackdown a year ago. Though there is yet no proof  that there was a racial motive in the shooting of Elzy and Shaw, that  possibility cant be totally ruled out.
The other explanation is  that the violence is a twisted response to racism and deprivation. The  attacks no doubt are deliberately designed by the gang hate purveyors to  send the message to blacks that this is our turf, and youre an  interloper.
There is still another reason, though, more subtle and  nuanced, as to why some gang members commit racial attacks. The violence  is a source of ego gratification for them; negative stereotypes  provided a convenient rationale for their violent acts. University  researchers found that those individuals who suffer low self-esteem or  have serious self-image problems are much more likely to view others,  especially those they consider rivals, through the warped lens of racial  stereotypes.
Then there is the vehemence of the racial hate. The  dirtier and even more painful secret is that blacks and Latinos can be  as racist toward each other as some whites can be toward them. Its easy  to see why. Many Latinos continue to demean blacks for their poverty or  type them as clowns, buffoons and crooks. Some routinely repeat the  same vicious anti-black epithets as racist whites. A 1998 poll by the  National Conference, a nonprofit organization that promotes racial  dialogue, found that Latinos were three times more likely than whites to  believe that blacks were incapable of getting ahead. These myths and  stereotypes bolster the notion that blacks are a racial and competitive  threat, and any distancing, ostracism, avoidance and even violence  toward them seems a rational response to keep blacks at arms length.
But  stereotypes can cut two ways. Some blacks feed on the same myths and  negative images of Latinos as anti-black, violence-prone gangsters who  pose a menace, and who are their ethnic and economic competitors. The  same 1998 poll found that as many blacks as whites believed that Latinos  breed big families and that they are unable to support them. The skewed  misconceptions and fears  both groups have about and toward each other  in many instances drown out the efforts by many residents in South Los  Angeles and other neighborhoods in the city where the racial attacks  occur to lessen tensions.
One thing is for certain though if city  officials, residents and the so far MIA Latino leaders dont speak out,  its a prescription for even more deadly violence. That means more  grieving Shaw and Elzy families.
– Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author  and political analyst. His new book is The Ethnic Presidency: How Race  Decides the Race to the White House (Middle Passage Press, February  2008).