ABSTRACT
In 2008 white high school students in the northern town of Shenandoah, Pennsylvania, violently attacked and beat a Mexican American to death in a park while yelling racist epithets and other racist commentary. The attackers were sentenced to only nine years in prison, and just for a federal hate crime. According to the judge, “The jury found that Mr. Ramirez died as a result of his ethnicity or race.” The white attackers reportedly yelled out, “This is Shenandoah. This is America. Go back to Mexico” (Hing, 2011). In their hostile view, and in the racially framed views of other whites interviewed after the attack, the growing Latino population in the area was intruding on what was considered to be white space.
