As part of Hispanic Heritage Month, the Latino Student Union joined with Sur Magazine and La Alianza last night to host a speaker who warned against the pervasiveness of white supremacist discourse on the Internet.
Students packed the Kaleidoscope Center for Cultural Fluency last night to hear University Spanish Prof. Ruth Hill's "From Jim Crow to the Internet Age: White Supremacist Lies about Latinos" speech, which highlighted the similarities of white supremacist views from the early 20th century to the present. She said racist discourse about Latinos on the Internet is not much different than text published over a century ago. She also discussed similarities in historical and modern supremacists' views, noting that both have expressed fear of racial mixing and claim that many powerful ancient cultures, such as the Egyptians and Aztecs, were actually white.
Hill noted during a question-and-answer period that one of her main concerns about white supremacist Web sites is that many offer free products to children, including video games and CDs, that spread their message of white superiority, highlighting the power of Web sites to potentially reach a wider audience than many works of modern literature could.
"Some of the risks are the same, but we're talking about scale," she said.
In an interview after her presentation, Hill explained that the issue of white supremacy is directly relevant to the University community, given the University's historical role in the white supremacy movement.
"This is all part of the history of U.Va.," she said, noting that some of the University's buildings are named after key players in the eugenics movement of the early 20th century.
Hill added that she was impressed by the event's turnout as well as by the questions attendees asked.
"I have so much more confidence in this generation than in my own" in terms of dealing with these issues, she said.
Sur Magazine Editor Elio Jordan also expressed his excitement about the turnout of the event.
"I think it's awesome," he said. "This is stuff that people really have no idea about."
La Alianza Chair Carla Zeballos said she worked closely with the Office of the Dean of Students to organize the event, noting that event coordinators encouraged the entire University community to attend.
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