The Tragedy of Internalized White Supremacy: A Response to the Rise of White Nationalist Hispanics by Russell Contreras & Astrid Galvan

The Tragedy of Internalized White Supremacy: A Response to the Rise of White Nationalist Hispanics by Russell Contreras & Astrid Galvan

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

July 2025

A March 2022 Axios report, “The Rise of White Nationalist Hispanics,” authored by Russell Contreras and Astrid Galvan, paints a disturbing picture of what happens when systemic racism, cultural erasure, and historical amnesia collide. Of course, this is what Republicans want to engineer even more profoundly in the American psyche with their censorious campaigns against books, CRT, DEI, tenure, academic freedom, and the like.

That a small but vocal number of Latinos—many of them with deep ties to the very communities under attack—are now aligning themselves with white nationalist rhetoric should alarm all of us. This is not new, but it is newly visible, more organized, and more dangerous.

It is no accident that figures like Nick Fuentes and Enrique Tarrio carry Latin American heritage yet advocate for the same ideologies that have historically dehumanized, excluded, and punished his and our own people. What we are witnessing is the violent logic of internalized oppression, passed down across generations and intensified in a political climate of fear, disinformation, and performative nationalism.

Internalized oppression happens when an individual from a minoritized group adopts the same stereotypes and pejorative views that the dominant group holds toward their own.

I’ve spent my career in education fighting for equity, truth-telling, and the inclusion of our histories in school curricula. And this is why Ethnic Studies matters. This is why we must teach our children where we come from—not just geographically, but socially, politically, and spiritually. We must dislodge the myths of racial innocence that shield Latino communities from confronting our own complicity in anti-Blackness, anti-Indigeneity, and yes, anti-Mexican-ness and anti-Latino-ness as a whole.

To be clear: these individuals do not represent the majority of Latinas/os. The overwhelming majority of our community believes in justice, in equality, and in solidarity with other marginalized people. But we must also confront how a lack of historical education, coupled with conservative media echo chambers and political manipulation, has left too many vulnerable to ideologies that are rooted in prejudice, violence, and exclusion.

This is not just about individual choices—it is about a system that rewards proximity to whiteness and punishes solidarity with the oppressed. It's about a multibillion-dollar misinformation machine that targets Latino voters with lies and fear-mongering. It’s about a country that has too often failed to fully recognize Latinos as part of its racial conversation—until we show up in the wrong places, saying the wrong things. The "black-white" binary erases Latinos from public discourse.

The antidote is education. The antidote is collective memory. The antidote is love for our people that doesn’t depend on assimilation, erasure, or the politics of rejection that engenders self-hatred. We must teach our youth that their worth is not measured by how close they can get to whiteness, but by how rooted they are in justice, culture, and truth.

White nationalist Hispanics are a contradiction. They are also a warning. If we do not confront the deep scars of colonialism—within our families, our communities, and our institutions—then the cycle continues. But we have a choice. We can choose historical memory over triumphalist myth-making, solidarity over supremacy, and love and healing over hate.

We can do better. Much better. The time to choose is now.

-Angela Valenzuela

The rise of white nationalist Hispanics

• Russell Contreras,
• Astrid Galván

Nick Fuentes, the leader of a Christian-based extremist white nationalist group, speaks to his followers in Washington 

D.C. Photo: Zach D. Roberts/NurPhoto via Getty Image

Nick Fuentes, identified as a "white supremacist" in Justice Department filings, made headlines last week for hosting a white nationalist conference in Florida. His father is also half Mexican American.

The big picture: Fuentes is part of a small but increasingly visible number of far-right provocateurs with Hispanic backgrounds who spread racist, antisemitic messages.

Driving the news: Cuban American Enrique Tarrio, the former leader of the Proud Boys, a group the Anti-Defamation League calls an extremist group with a violent agenda, was arrested Tuesday and charged with conspiracy in connection to the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.

What they're saying: Experts tell Axios far-right extremism within the Latino community stems from three sources: Hispanic Americans who identify as white; the spread of online misinformation; and lingering anti-Black, antisemitic views among U.S. Latinos that are rarely openly discussed.

• Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at Cal State University, said in an interview that the trend is "part of the mutation that takes place as the racist fringe tries to become more mainstream."
• Racism is deeply rooted in Latin American and Caribbean nations, where slavery was common, Tanya K. Hernández, a Fordham University law professor and author of the upcoming book, "Racial Innocence: Unmasking Latino Anti-Black Bias," told Axios. "In Latin America, white supremacy is alive and well.”
• Even families who have been in the U.S. for generations can often bring those biases with them.

Between the lines: The U.S. trend, fueled over the course of Donald Trump's presidency and the pandemic, extends beyond movement leaders to a broader network of participants, some of whom have faced hate crimes charges.

• Last month, Jose Gomez III, 21, of Midland, Texas, pleaded guilty in federal court to three counts of committing a hate crime for attacking an Asian American family, including two children, he believed to be responsible for the pandemic.
• In 2018, Alex Michael Ramos, a Puerto Rican resident of Georgia, was sentenced by a Virginia District Court to six years in prison for his role in a beating of a Black man in Charlottesville, Virginia, following the "Unite the Right" rally.
• Christopher Rey Monzon, a Cuban American man and member of the neo-Confederate group League of the South, was arrested in 2017 for attempting to assault anti-racist protesters in Hollywood, Fla. He later resigned from the group and said he regretted using slurs for Black and Jewish people.

Context: At the conference in Orlando, which made headlines because U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) accepted an invitation to speak, Fuentes drew attention for comments of his own:

• "And now they’re going on about Russia and Vladimir Putin is Hitler — they say that’s not a good thing..." He then laughed and said, "I shouldn't have said that."
• Fuentes has questioned the Holocaust, criticized interracial marriage and defended Jim Crow-era segregation. The ADL describes him as "a white supremacist leader and podcaster who seeks to forge a white nationalist alternative to the mainstream GOP."

Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio wears a shirt supporting Derek Chauvin, the police officer convicted of killing George Floyd. Photo: Chandan Khanna/AFP via Getty Images

• Tarrio, 38, has previously faced charges: He was sentenced to five months in jail for setting fire to a Black Lives Matter banner stolen from a historic Black church in Washington, D.C.

• 
  

• • "I'm pretty brown, I'm Cuban. There's nothing white supremacist about me," Tarrio told Insider in 2020.
  • But Tarrio was suspended from Twitter in 2019 for posting anti-immigrant threats, has denigrated transgender people and has used racist language to describe a Black actor.

  But, but, but: There are limits to how accepted some far-right Latino activists can become in white supremacist and neo-Nazi circles, Mark Pitcavage, a senior research fellow at the ADL's Center on Extremism, told Axios.

  • Some extremists on 4chan and 8chan say Fuentes' Latino heritage disqualifies him from speaking on white supremacy, Pitcavage said. Meanwhile, some white supremacist elements of the Proud Boys dismiss Tarrio as a leader but so far he has withstood the criticism, said Pitcavage, who monitors the chats.

  Tarrio's lawyer, Lucas Dansie, did not respond to emails seeking comment. Fuentes' American First Foundation also did not respond to requests for comment.

  What we're watching: U.S. Latinos identifying as multiracial soared during the last decade, while those identifying as solely white dropped significantly, according to the latest census.”

  Subscribe to Axios Latino and get more news that matters about Latinos and Latin America, delivered right to your inbox on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

  Editor's note: This story first published on March 10.

This article centers Latina/o/x scholars in the field of Critical Race Theory. It's clearly not a Black/white issue since so many of the concerns experienced by African Americans are the same ones experienced by Latinas and Latinos. Great closing comment by San Jose State University professor, Dr. María Ledesma:

“We obviously are not post-racial, which means we are racial,” she said. “And if we are still a racial society, then we still need critical race theory.”

Indeed. If the right doesn't want race to be an issue, then they must address systemic racism and support equity issues. Anything short of this is disingenuous, reflecting a white posture of seeking to reign superior over others primarily by not empowering them with the knowledge and civic tools that they need to enact the changes to society that will help not just to alleviate suffering, but improve their social and economic betterment and overall well-being in ways that like a rising tide, promises to lift all boats.

-Angela Valenzuela

'Manufactured boogeyman': Latino critical race theory pioneers, advocates push back

“If you’re immersed in something, it feels normal. But courts and academia do have embedded racism,” said a leading legal scholar, Richard Delgado.

By Raul A. Reyes

Oct. 29, 2021, 12:55 PM CDT / Updated Oct. 29, 2021, 3:18 PM CDT

Critical race theory, the academic field being denounced by conservative lawmakers and concerned parents, is often presented as a Black/white paradigm, but there has always been a robust Latino component, with Latino writers and scholars contributing pioneering work in the field for decades. 

“Critical race theory came out of the Latino community, almost from the beginning,” said Stephanie Fetta, associate professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. “Yet its critics want to present it as something very extreme, or as only a Black/white issue.”

That approach leaves out the experiences of Latinos in the Southwest, for example. “This disempowers the many Latinos who have suffered from oppression, such as police brutality,” Fetta said.

The theory has been around for years, but "for most of that period it didn’t rise to the level of national attention,” said Richard Delgado, a legal scholar who is one of the theory's original proponents and a professor at the University of Alabama School of Law.

Of Mexican American heritage, Delgado co-wrote, along with his wife, the scholar Jean Stefancic, the seminal book "Critical Race Theory: An Introduction," in 2001, Nearly 20 years later, the book, now in its third edition, is a bestseller.

Critical race theory is an advanced field meant for law and graduate schools that explores how racism is embedded in American laws and institutions. It’s an area of scholarship that analyzes how racial inequities were created and why they persist. It has recently stoked anger on conservative cable news shows and generated national headlines. Delgado said it’s not always easy for some people to accept the theory.

“If you’re immersed in something, it feels normal. But courts and academia do have embedded racism," said Delgado, and the systems have not functioned the same for Latinos and Blacks compared to whites.

Examples of how racism is embedded in the law can be seen in the U.S. Social Security Act of 1935 and the American G.I. Bill, both of which originally provided fewer benefits for people of color than whites. Critical race theory can be applied to analyze the resulting racial disparities, and to make policy recommendations on how to address them.

Delgado is dismayed by what he called the “weaponizing” of the field by politicians and commentators.

Despite the fact that the term is being thrown around in school board battles and political debate, it’s generally not taught at the K-12 level; a June survey by the Association of American Educators found that 96 percent of teachers said they were not required to teach critical race theory. It's usually not taught at the college undergraduate level, either.

“There is now this idea that the theory is being taught in elementary schools, which is ridiculous. Many of the commentators on the theory are people far outside of the field," said Gerald Torres, professor at the Yale School of the Environment and Yale Law School and another Mexican American pioneer of critical race theory.

“For Latinos, it is a way to understand how we have been put into certain categories in the U.S.," said Torres, who has been active in the field since the late 1980s. "It is a method of understanding how the racial, ethnic, and color differences among us have been managed.”  

Critical race theory began in law schools, but it’s used in other academic areas, such as public health, sociology and education. The framework can be used to study everything from the disproportionate impact of the Covid-19 virus on Latino communities to the history of bans on ethnic studies courses.

“The media hasn’t really dealt with the impact of Latinos on American culture, except through the lens of immigration," Torres said.

Torres cited protests over the killing of George Floyd and The New York Times’ 1619 Project as catalysts for the renewed interest in the theory, along with distortions of the theory by some conservatives. 

Delgado believes the topic has become controversial because of several factors: the nation’s changing demographics, disappointment among Donald Trump’s followers over his 2020 defeat, and more parental involvement in their children’s curriculums as they’ve studied at home during the pandemic.

If critical race theory seems difficult to understand, experts say, that’s because it is complicated and nuanced. It has also been mischaracterized; critical race theory has become a catch-all phrase in conservative media used to denigrate diversity efforts or what critics see as liberal school curriculums.

To María Ledesma, associate professor at San Jose State University, critical race theory is about truth-telling, a way of looking at history in a comprehensive way.

Ledesma is not surprised by the theory’s current controversy. “It is a manufactured boogeyman on behalf of conservative politicians and pundits to distract attention from the global racial reckoning movement. By making critical race theory the boogeyman, we hear less about Black Lives Matter, less about police brutality, and less about the real actions needed to change our society.” 

The biggest misconception about the theory is that it somehow teaches students of color to hate white people, Ledesma said. “Not true at all; critical race theory does not villainize one group over another.”

In June, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, signed a bill that he called a “strong move to abolish critical race theory in Texas.” In September, an NBC News analysis found that many of the schools facing critical race theory battles were in districts that were diversifying rapidly, including areas with substantial Latino growth.

Ledesma believes that critical race theory is especially important to Hispanics, because it provides a way of elevating counter-narratives.

Most Latinos are open to a fuller examination of American history. An August report from the Pew Research Center found that 59 percent of Latinos said that increased attention to the history of racism in America was good for society. About the same percentage of Latinos also said a lot more needs to be done to achieve racial equality. 

Some of the criticism within Latino communities regarding colorism — the preference for lighter skin tones over darker ones — can be seen as misdirected, according to Fetta. “When we (Latinos) point fingers at each other, that is the wrong place — we would not be doing this if we were accepted with our names, accents and skin tones by the systems and institutions around us. Colorism will only be overcome when the dominant culture is done with this type of marking.”

For Delgado, the recent firestorm has been both good and bad. While he said that he's now the eighth most-cited law professor in history, he's also felt vulnerable to attacks and is cautious in public.

Ledesma believes that critical race theory will remain a vigorous and relevant field.

“The attacks on the theory are, ironically, a reminder of how much work there is to be done. Recall that under Obama, people were saying that we were a post-racial society," Ledesma said.

“We obviously are not post-racial, which means we are racial,” she said. “And if we are still a racial society, then we still need critical race theory.”

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