Reports indicate that anti-Latino hate groups have doubled in the past seven years. We’ve made it, people:

Growth estimates for groups with explicitly racial hate messages, due for release this year, are expected to be close to 50 percent, according to a spokesperson from the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). At the same time, data released by the FBI and California officials indicates a 35 percent spike in anti-Latino violence in the United States between 2003 and 2006.

“I do think it will continue. The fact that immigration is slowing down has not reached those groups,” said Mark Potok, director, Intelligence Report of SPLC, an organization that has expressed concern about this issue for the past four years, in relation to the hate group growth in spite of the downward trend in immigration growth.

What’s to hate? Just because we’re portrayed by mainstream media as loud, boisterous, annoying little gnats buzzing on the periphery of the blogoshpere nation, doesn’t mean these stereotypes are true:

Murguía criticized cable news television for “handing hate a microphone” by hosting representatives from hate and vigilante groups such as Dan Stein of Federation for American Immigration Reform and Jim Gilchrist and Chris Simcox of the Minuteman Project more than 110 times, usually identifying them only as “anti-immigration advocates.”

She also pointed at television figures such as CNN’s Lou Dobbs and Glenn Beck and MSNBC political commentator Pat Buchanan for copying hate speech and providing a forum that demonizes Hispanics. Representatives of CNN declined to respond to email and phone questions about NCLR’s allegation. The Anti-Defamation League, an organization listed in the Allies section of the new website, also declined to respond to questions about the issue and its involvement in the campaign and companion website.

And, sure, maybe the media is partly to blame for promoting a discourse of hate and giving it specific faces and vocabulary. But we can’t help but think that people who hate are going to hate, regardless of the target, based not only on lack or over-exposure to a group of people, but due to a great number of other factors such as economic class, education, religious teachings, etc. So, yes, it’s easy and not completely far-fetched to blame the media and its coverage of Latinos and “Latino issues”, like immigration, for the rise in hate groups, but it’s important to realize that hatred and ignorance existed long before Lou Dobbs was even a twinkle in his great-great-grandpappy’s eye.

Anti-Latino hate groups grow almost 50 percent in 7 years [Hispanic MPR]