Macarena Hernandez joined the Dallas Morning News as an editorial columnist in August 2005. Prior to that, she was the Rio Grande Valley Bureau Chief for the San Antonio Express-News. She has written for the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Philadelphia Inquirer and Latina, and reported and co-produced a documentary, The Ballad of Juan Quezada, that ran on PBS/Frontline World last May.
Liz Cox Barrett: Last October — just a few months into your current job — you wrote a column about the brutal murders of six Mexican farm workers in rural Georgia and about how “horrors like these demand that a nation descended from immigrants take a hard look at the ways we think and speak about these most recent arrivals.” In the column you picked a fight with Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly — you described how some people were upset that the mayor of one Georgia town flew the Mexican flag at city hall in remembrance of the men murdered, and you wondered if the upset people “watch Fox’s O’Reilly Factor, where the anchor and the callers constantly point to the southern border as the birth of all America’s ills? (Sample comment: ‘Each one of those people is a biological weapon.’) It is one thing to want to secure the borders and another to preach hate, to talk of human beings as ailments. Taken literally, such rhetoric gives criminals like those in southern Georgia license to kill …”
O’Reilly came back swinging (you were the subject of more than one of his show’s “Talking Points Memo” monologues) calling you a “liar” and a “left-wing ideologue … running wild with hateful invectives …” You wrote a second column soon thereafter reacting to all the reactions your first column received.
What do you make of this, with hindsight? What have you learned from it all?
Macarena Hernandez: What did I learn? Not to be afraid of hate mail. As a reporter you’re kind of anonymous, but as a columnist you really put yourself out there, so you better believe what you write. I am tired of “journalists” like Bill O’Reilly and Lou Dobbs at CNN who don’t report on immigration in a responsible manner and instead just add more fuel to the fire. Man, if I wasn’t Mexican-American and if I only watched Mr. O’Reilly or Mr. Dobbs, I’d be afraid of Mexicans, too. They dedicate entire shows to villanizing Latino immigrants, as if they’re all criminals. I do think Mr. O’Reilly and Mr. Dobbs preach intolerance. This kind of venom just fuels people and gives them permission to be dismissive and treat these immigrants as disposables.
The problem is most folks talking about the border and the problems along the Rio Grande have never spent time down there. I’m a child of Mexican immigrants. I was born two miles from the Rio Grande and grew up three miles north of it. I don’t expect Mr. O’Reilly to share my perspective. But I do believe you can have intelligent and informative debates about immigration. But when you reduce it to demonizing migrants, you aren’t having discussions that move this conversation forward, toward solutions. All you’re doing is creating fear.
LCB: You’ve made a documentary, you’ve been a newspaper reporter on assorted beats, you now write editorials on behalf of the Dallas Morning News editorial board as well as editorial columns under your own byline, and you contribute to the Morning News’ blog MorningNewsViews. Which gig has been the most challenging to date, and what’s next — cable TV punditry? Perhaps, The Hernandez Factor?
When CNN Headline News came on in my school cafeteria today, I was surprised to see a map with yellow colored states and a banner headline reading "Battle Zones" running across the bottom of the screen. This referred to states where protests over proposed immigration policy have been active for the last few days. I live in Phoenix, where just like the other "Battle Zones," the protests have been peaceful and shed light on an important social issue. By calling Arizona, California and Texas battle zones, the station manages to reinforce the racial divides between our cultures and to sensationalize and misrepresent an important topic which has been, and should continue to be, addressed in a civilized and peaceful way. When 20,000 people can congregate in downtown Phoenix peacefully, it shows a maturity in modern civil rights movements that will hopefully carry through the entire debate. Thanks,
Ben Norris
Phoenix, AZ
Posted by benjamin on Mon 27 Mar 2006 at 06:55 PM