Jorge Rivas

Latino Hate Crimes Rising, What Would You Do? [VIDEO]

ABC correspondent John Quiñones has been one of a handful of Latinos reporting for the network’s most popular primetime news shows. He’s covered the Contra War in Nicaragua, civil war in El Salvador, and the U.S. invasion of Panama. Recently on his show “What Would You Do?,” a sociological experiment crossed with a hidden camera show, he covered a slightly different “war” closer to home.

Quiñones took his cameras to downtown Newark, New Jersey, to see what people would do if they witnessed a Latino hate crime in action. The scenarios played out for entertainment are a harsh reality in the lives of thousand of Latinos across the country. Late last year, the Southern Poverty Law Center reported an increase in hate crimes targeting Latinos for a fourth straight year, ” capping a 40% rise in the four years since 2003, according to FBI statistics released this fall.”

I wish John Quiñones would have contextualized these events and shared real data that informed people that these events are actually happening. But more than that I wish he’d talked about how other shows on his network, like “Homeland Security USA,” perpetuate these crimes.

Posted at 3:39 PM, Mar 27, 2009 in Immigration | Pop Culture | Video & Multimedia | Permalink | View Comments