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During the Student Action Summit (#SAS2021) organized by Turning Point USA in Tampa, Florida, Anthony Cabassa, field correspondent for El American, spoke with a group of young conservatives including Kangmin Lee, Jordan Sarmo, Noelle Fitchett and Jorge Ventura. They had the opportunity to talk about their experience as Latino conservatives.
One of the themes they all agreed on is that events like SAS allow young people, especially Latinos, to see that their conservative values are not alien to the rest of their generation.
“Latinos are culturally conservative, so the media is not accurately representing what most Latinos believe,” said Noelle Fitchett. She further highlighted the benefits that limited government can bring to minorities, and how those values can be amplified at events like this one.
They also pointed out that most media outlets seek to sell the image of conservatives as “that white guy with a pitchfork who lives in the mountains,” when the reality is completely different. “They define it that way because they know it feeds their narrative,” Jordan Sarmo mentioned.
Another issue they highlighted about conservative conferences is that you find people of any race, creed, culture or religion. “When you see a panel like this, where’s the white supremacy?” laughed Jordan.
According to Kangmin Lee, the media tries to convince minorities that they are victims of white supremacy in search of racial division, but ignores the success story behind those minority communities.
“We Asians have had, in this country, genocides, discrimination and an extensive list, but we still have the highest average income among minorities,” Lee said, explaining that this happens mainly because they stand for conservative values and “not because a white supremacist system somehow benefits Asians.”
“Good ideas win, they will always win,” he added. “Good ideas don’t have culture or skin color or race; they are always timeless.”
An insider’s look at the media
The point of Jorge Ventura, a journalist and reporter for The Daily Caller, is that the media narrative changes depending on the political interests behind each administration. “Before this last election, the Democratic [media] touched on immigration, on children locked in cages, they went to the border, but now that we have a huge crisis, they are nowhere to be found,” Ventura said. “It’s like a slap in the face to Latinos.”
Ventura insists that this is not a border crisis, but a humanitarian crisis. “When you live in the United States and you hear the term ‘humanitarian crisis,’ you think that happens in Africa or that happens in Yemen, that those things don’t happen here,” he said. “But no. It’s really happening on American soil.” He also referred to the crisis taking place on the southern border as a “human trafficking crisis” in which drug cartels benefit.
That is why he believes that, now that the crisis has reached a new peak, it is not given as much media coverage because “there is no longer political interest.” “The border issue is always divided between left and right,” Ventura said, adding that it is time to start treating it as a matter of humanitarian interest.
This interview is part of a series of interviews that El American staff conducted at the event with several conservatives who have made it their goal to defend the freedom of Americans.
You can watch these and more interviews on our YouTube channel.
