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“Get your Mexican boyfriend out of here”. Then he was killed

Posted July 26, 2008 by Patrick Young, Esq.

Details are emerging on the beating death of Luis Ramirez in a Pennsylvania town near the epicenter of anti-immigrant activism in Hazleton.
Apparently the murderers were enraged that the victim was walking with a White girl, the sister of his White fiancee. According to the Philadelphia Enquirer:
Crystal Dillman, the victim’s 24-year-old fiancee, who is white and grew up in Shenandoah, said yesterday that Ramirez was walking her sister to a friend’s house that night.
“He was just trying to be a good person, making sure she got [there] safe,” said Dillman.

Dillman says the father of her two children was a frequent target of racial slurs.
According to published reports:.
“About 11:15 p.m., as they walked past the 25-year-old man [Luis Ramirez] and a teenage girl near Vine Street Park in Shenandoah, they taunted her: ‘‘Get your Mexican boyfriend out of here.’’ According to court records, one called Ramirez a racial slur. He responded, ‘‘What’s your problem?’‘
Some of the teens went after him. A fight broke out. Ramirez fell. They punched and kicked him repeatedly, the court records say”.
Even after Luis Ramirez was rendered unconsciuos by the beating, he was still kicked in the head by the group of football players.
One of the things that strikes me in reading many of the interviews with local officials is that they don’t think the attacks were racially motivated because people in that town use racial slurs against Latinos all the time. In fact it is so common that even some local Latinos say that they ignore being addressed with slurs!
I also note that many of the local governmental institutions, like fire departments, use the words “Irish” or “Polish” in front of their names. Not sure how they would react to naming a firecompany “Mexican Ladder Company No. 1”.
This story is finally being carried in the media outside Pa. It is extremely important that we focus on it because many people in this community have blamed the victim and his White girlfriend for his death. “If they hadn’t been dating, none of this would have happened”, as well as “if he hadn’t come to the US illegally he’d still be alive” have repeatedly appeared as comments on local web sites.
Eileen Burke, a retired cop from Philly who tried to assist the murder victim, talked about prejudice in the town:
“I came back from the city. I moved here and I cannot believe there is so much hatred to do a beating like this,” said Eileen Burke. She is a retired Philadelphia police officer and witnessed part of the beating. “What this did was brutal to me. It was brutal.”
More complete details of the attack are contained here.
I think we should also be concerned about the treatment of Ramirez’s companion, Crystal Dillman. She appears to have been treated with disrespect by the authorities as well as local residents who may see her as a marginal woman for having a sexual relationship with a non-White immigrant.
By the way, I was going to write a depressing summary of the anti-immigrant blogs on this case, but American Humanity beat me to it. And did a very good job of it to boot!
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