Individuals from minority groups slam media narratives that they are fueling White supremacy
Individuals from the Latino, Asian, Muslim and Black communities push back on the media narratives accusing them of aiding and abetting White supremacy in America.
After media narratives accused racial and religious minorities of espousing White supremacy for holding opinions that differ from liberal views, people from those communities are pushing back.
Left-wing political figures and media outlets in recent years have accused Latino, Asian, Muslim and Black communities in America of aiding and abetting a White supremacist agenda.
Though the reasons that sparked the name-calling differed for each group, individuals from each community told Fox News the accusations stem from liberals' intolerance of anyone voicing an opinion that doesn’t align with their own.
"Those narratives are incredibly insulting and demeaning," Jason Miyares, Virginia's first Latino attorney general, told Fox News. "If I can label — whether it's the emerging bloc of Latino voters, Asian American voters, African American voters — as somehow ‘White supremacist,’ what you're really saying is, ‘I don't need to engage you in the marketplace of ideas. I'm going to smear you.’"
INDIVIDUALS FROM MINORITY COMMUNITIES SLAM MEDIA WHITE SUPREMACY ACCUSATIONS:
He also said labeling anyone who disagrees with the left as a White supremacist will cause the phrase to lose its meaning.
"If everything is racist, nothing is racist. If everything's labeled as White supremacist, nothing is White supremacist," Miyares said.
A 24-year-old graduate student from an Asian American immigrant neighborhood in Brooklyn said linking his community to White supremacy or calling Asians "White-adjacent" is an attempt to invalidate their views.
"I just find this narrative framing disturbing," Sheluyang Peng told Fox News. "It assumes that people from racial, ethnic or religious minority backgrounds — we can't have our own opinions.
"It's like our opinions have to be approved by big media conglomerates, by academia."
Graduate student Sheluyang Peng said he found the narrative that Asian Americans were aiding White supremacy in some way "disturbing." (Fox News)
'They're doubling down and tripling down'
GOP presidential candidate Larry Elder said conservatives in minority communities "completely blow up" Democrats' narrative that they're the socially just party while Republicans are synonymous with racism.
"Now there are cracks in their foundation, so they're doubling down and tripling down," he said.
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Los Angeles Times columnist Erika D. Smith called Elder "the Black face of White Supremacy" for his political views during his 2021 bid for California governor. Rolling Stone similarly published an article in December 2022 arguing that Herschel Walker, who was at the time running for U.S. Senate in Georgia, was aiding a racist agenda.
Elder called the idea that America is systemically racist a lie, "but it's a lie that Democrats push for stuff like reparations, critical race theory, diversity, equity and inclusion.
"And when we, meaning Black conservatives and others, refute that lie, we become public enemy No. 1."
'Really shameful conduct by the legacy media'
Headlines claiming the U.S. was seeing a rise in Hispanic White supremacists circulated after a Latino man who, according to police, held "neo-Nazi ideation" shot and killed eight people at a Dallas mall in May.
The Atlantic published a piece by Adam Serwer, "Latinos Can Be White Supremacists," that said "the idea of a Hispanic person adhering to white-nationalist ideology is hardly ridiculous."
Serwer argued that, in America, "race is an ideological concept, not a scientific one."
Serwer also noted that a Fordham Law professor told him "Latinos are a pan-ethnic group" and that "we have White Hispanics, and there are some White Hispanics who hold very white-supremacist views."
In a statement to Fox News, The Atlantic's editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, wrote, "Adam Serwer is a highly esteemed and experienced journalist. The article in question is a sophisticated exploration of a complex phenomenon. In the article, Adam does not label Latino Americans as white supremacists. The article states that it is not a contradiction for a Hispanic American to also be a white supremacist.
"I would encourage Attorney General Miyares to actually read the article."
The New Yorker similarly published a piece titled "The Rise of Latino White Supremacy."
Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares said the media labeling Latinos as White supremacists was "incredibly insulting and demeaning." (Fox News)
"We live in a country where everyone from university deans to corporate executives extols the virtues of assimilation and diversity, but the growing diversity of gun owners who inflict mass death should cause us to rethink inclusion’s underlying assumptions," Geraldo Cadava wrote. "So, too, should Latino White-supremacist thinking — another marker of Latino assimilation at a time when white-power ideology is spreading rapidly at home and abroad."
Miyares, the first Hispanic to win statewide election in Virginia, criticized Cadava's take.
"The fact that The New Yorker would write that mass shootings are about the most American thing a Latino can do, I found to be incredibly insulting," he told Fox News.
Miyares said he believes the real reason for the smear stems from an exodus of Hispanic voters from the Democratic Party. Hispanic adults who believe President Biden’s policies are hurting them and their families outnumber those who believe they help them by two to one, a June 29 poll by the American Enterprise Institute found.
"This is really shameful conduct by the legacy media to suddenly say, because a new emerging voting bloc in the United States is starting to shift away from the Democratic Party, that somehow that means it's White supremacy," Miyares said.
'It's insulting, and it's also not true'
Last month, a Democrat on a Maryland county council accused some Muslim families of siding with White supremacists by protesting their school district allowing gender ideology and sexual orientation discussions in classrooms.
"This issue has — unfortunately does — put some Muslim families on the same side of an issue as White supremacists and outright bigots," Montgomery County Councilmember Kristin Mink said. "I would not put you in the same category as those folks. Although, you know, it's complicated because they're falling on the same side of this particular issue."
Kareem Monib, a Muslim father who attended the protests, said he's seen certain figures on the left comparing people from his community to White supremacists, "which is obviously not the case. We're not White," he told Fox News.
"But that tactic has been to sort of paint us as not being independent, free thinkers," Monib added. "It's insulting, and it's also not true."
Monib said the recent attacks on Muslims are a political tactic to deter concerned parents like himself from speaking out.
"It actually shows the emptiness of their criticisms because if no one is actually addressing the issues which we are bringing up, it shows that they don't have any real substantive criticisms of our very simple and straightforward claims for religious freedom," he said.
'It has nothing to do with White people'
Peng also suspects the recent media narrative that Asian Americans were aiding White supremacy originated from political motivations.
Atlantic writer Jemele Hill tweeted that Asian Americans who supported ending affirmative action "carried the water" for White supremacists. (Paras Griffin/Getty Images for Essence)
"It's a convenient boogeyman for people to blame. It's like the term Nazi," Peng said. "If you think someone's bad, just call them a Nazi, even if you have no proof.
"It erases the legitimate beliefs of various people of color that may not align with the dominant narratives going on in the media at the time."
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The Supreme Court ruled in June that Harvard University discriminated against Asian applicants in its admissions process and declared affirmative action programs at colleges or universities that accept federal funding unconstitutional.
"Harvard was ranking Asian applicants lower in personality than everyone else. That is racism," Peng said. "So, when Asian Americans oppose affirmative action, we do this because we see this as racism against us. It has nothing to do with White people."
Following the ruling, Atlantic writer Jemele Hill tweeted that Asian Americans who supported ending affirmative action "carried the water" for White supremacists.
"It's very condescending for these elite liberals to say, 'Oh, us minorities, we don't know any better,'" Peng said. "It's just not true."
Aside from The Atlantic, news outlets that published articles tying minority or racial groups to White supremacy did not respond to requests for comment for this story.