Hispanic Stereotypes: Debunking Myths of Violence and Ignorance

Hispanics: The Perfect Blend of Stupidity and Violence

Some politicians are turning the spotlight to Hispanics by accusing them of being criminals. Snide comments like these are making their way across political debates and American’s minds. Since animosity towards Hispanics is not a new trend, many stereotypes have been formed against them but the most prominent ones are those that portray Hispanics as unintelligent and as a violent thug. If stereotypes like this become accepted as common knowledge, there would be a racial divide that hasn’t been seen since the early 1960s.

One of the many ways Hispanics are stereotyped is that they are portrayed as unintelligent. Such portrayal takes many forms but is often shown as a dumb gardener or house

cleaner. For example, in the ever-present animated series, Family Guy, we see a housemaid named Consuela. She made her first appearance in the sixth season (Believe It or Not, Joe's Walking on Air). Little is known of her origin, but she is consistently portrayed as an ignorant “one-trick pony” that only knows how to clean and dresses in her work uniform. This is a very harmful portrayal because it can lead to their mostly teenaged audience to expect Hispanic women to never rise past a housecleaner who speaks little English. Adam Sandler is also no stranger to resorting to stereotypes for cheap laughs. In his movie, Jack and Jill, Felipe, the gardener is a dimwitted oaf whose children’s names are all derivatives of “José”(Jack and Jill). In a scene involving Felipe and Jill, Adam Sandler’s character’s twin sister, Felipe recounts his picnic where he and his family “play soccer, eat [and] steal white people’s wallets”(Jack and Jill). Even though it is a joke, it reinforces the idea that Hispanics bring crime with themselves. If that was not enough, Eugenio Derbez, who is a respected comedian, director political commentator and Formula 1 racecar driver according to EsMas.com, is reduced to a simple typecast two-bit gardener in an American movie. Such actions may lead to the viewers of the movie to see Hispanic men as simple manual workers and criminals with little intellectual substance.
The idea that Hispanics are unintelligent is outrageous because the statistics speak against it.

According to Richard Fry and Paul Taylor, in 2011 70.2% of Hispanics in the United States who graduated in 2012 enrolled in college as compared to 66.6% of whites who enrolled in college (Bureau of Labor Statistics). These numbers indicate that Hispanics not only show an interest in higher education, they outperform their white counterparts in matters regarding college enrollment, thus rendering lifeless the common argument that Hispanics are unintelligent. Not only do Hispanics pursue higher education, they do something with it. In 1879, Yellow Fever had spread to Cuba, the home country of Carlos Finlay (The Great Fever). According the PBS article, The Great Fever, Finlay earned his medical degree in 1855. In 1881 Finlay proposed the hypothesis that Yellow Fever was transmitted through mosquitos, and not the air like proponents at the time had hypothesized earlier. The community of scientists relentlessly mocked Carlos Finlay, but the article tells us that finally, “in 1900, members of the U.S. Army Yellow Fever Board visited Finlay at his home in Old Havana. They used mosquitoes hatched from his eggs to test the hypothesis that the insects transmitted the disease and after a series of experiments showed that Finlay had been correct.”(The Great Fever). Because of that accomplishment, he was named the chief sanitary officer of the country and continued to serve until his

retirement in 1909 (The Great Fever). If Finlay had not discovered the cause of the disease, the government officials would be fighting the wrong battle and getting nowhere in an attempt to save their country from Yellow Fever. There are many cases like these, and their existence shows us that Hispanics are not as unintelligent as the media makes them out to be.
The next stereotype commonly attributed to Hispanics is that they are violent.

It is not uncommon to hear of violence and murder during the ongoing drug war and that is what people against Hispanics will quote when labeling the race. A common role on television for Hispanics is to show them as “Banditos”. Film has come a long way since then, but the trope prevails. It is no longer accustomed to show the evil mustachioed Hispanic wearing a bandolier and brandishing a Winchester rifle, but it is common to see the “cholo” sporting a flannel with a pistol tucked in his pants. Such is the case for Noel Gugliemi. Gugliemi has been the go-to person to portray the Southern Californian gangster, most notably since the Academy Award-winning movie, Training Day. In the movie, he plays Moreno, a trigger-happy thug who insists that his friend, “Smiley” kill the rookie police officer, Jake Hoyt, for having a picture of “Smiley’s” cousin (Training Day). Since then, Gugliemi has been cast in a number of films portraying criminals, gangbangers, and nameless-thugs (Noel Gugliemi). Because Gugliemi characters are similar in appearance, viewers can expect criminals to look like him and ignore the fact that some Hispanic people like to shave their head and grow a goatee as Gugliemi does. Such opinions would be stunting the development of our basic right of self-expression and impose a label to those who wish to dress in that manner. Those who correlate Hispanics with violence cite the on-going

drug war in Mexico as an argument. They argue that since Mexico is fighting a drug war, those who immigrate the United States bring their war with them. In the PBS article “The Staggering Death Toll of Mexico’s Drug War”, author Jason M. Breslow tell us that Iraq and Afghanistan’s death toll was a total of 103,051. He continues telling us, “that between 2007 and 2014 — a period that accounts for some of the bloodiest years of the nation’s war against the drug cartels — more than 164,000 people were victims of homicide.” (Breslow). The individuals who correlate Hispanics to violence cite this because it proves that the war a few miles south of the United States has a higher death toll that both wars in the Middle East combined. They continue using this information to group the Hispanic community with drug violence. If this were accepted at face value, Hispanics would continue to be isolated and seen as too dangerous to trust. “Just Walk on By” by Brent Staples demonstrates how racial stereotypes affected the minds of the people who surrounded him. In his article he briefs us about a time when a woman saw his as a possible rapist or murderer as she “cast back a worried glance,” and “after a few quick glimpses, she picked up her pace and was soon running,” (Staples). If Americans were to label all Hispanics violent, all Hispanics would be mistrusted as Brent Staples and subsequently marginalized.
The reality of the situation is that not all Hispanics are dangerous criminals like television and film make them out to be. In fact, according to the Urban Youth Workers Institute (UYWI), Noel Gugliemi the aforementioned typecast gangster is half Italian and speaks to children about the dangers of gangs in the church that he is an active member of (From Gangster to Godster: Meet Noel G.). One would never imagine that a menacing-looking thuggish person like Gugliemi would be so anti-gang if one would group him with all the other thugs, but the truth is that he is only a regular person making a living by doing what he does best, and there are many people like him (From Gangster to Godster: Meet Noel G.). Also, some people argue that the drug cartels in Mexico are rampantly infecting their society, but the Mexican Government Officials estimate that cartel trades only makes up 3 to 4 percent of Mexico's $1.2 trillion annual Gross Domestic Product (GDP) (Lee). One can deduce that crime is a small part of the GDP since, 96%-97% of it is from honest business. Some argue that Hispanics bring crime with them to the United States. According to the 2014 US Census, 17.4% of Americans are Hispanic, and the Bureau of Federal Prisons reports that 17.9% of prisoners are Hispanic. Such findings do not report any correlation between being Hispanic and being imprisoned for violent crimes. This proves that there is no significant increase in crime despite the race.
Television and Film have made great leaps to integrate all parts of society in their productions, but a common stereotype for Hispanics is to be portrayed as unintelligent and dangerous. Even though one might not be Hispanic, it is still important to take a stand in cases of racial stereotypes because race is only a social construct and to let it divide us would mean to undo the progress that is being made.