On
April 23, 1999, the body of Irineo Soto Aquilar, a Mexican migrant worker,
was found in a drainage ditch near the center of Lakeside, California. He
had been stoned to death. The walls of the ditch where his body was found
were covered with swastikas and other symbols of white racism. They were symbols
well known to the children of this small town and to the three local teens
convicted of the murder. Unlike the nationally reported attack on Carlos Colbert,
the black Marine paralyzed in 1998 by white racist youths in neighboring Santee,
this horrific murder never even made headlines until this film was broadcast.
“Culture of Hate-Who Are We?” was filmed over the course of two
years and documents a series of violent and race-related events involving
angry, alienated white kids growing up in this historically white, working-class
community; from the murder of the Mexican migrant worker in the Spring of
1999, through the Spring of 2001, when two high school shootings occurred
in the adjacent towns of Santee and El Cajon.
The focus of the film goes beneath the one-dimensional, sensationalized images
of “skinheads,” or the “killer-kid” stereotypes so
often portrayed in media, to illuminate the social, economic and personal
factors molding the lives of these highly feared, yet deeply frightened young
people. Their stories are interwoven with the story of the small town they
grew up in and cherish, and whose name they wear tattooed on their bodies.
Once a lush, fertile river valley of thriving farms and ranches, Lakeside’s
streets are now lined with dilapidated strip-malls and fast food restaurants.
The San Diego River, which ran through the center of town, is now a complexity
of sand-mines, scrap metal yards, dumping pools, and drainage ditches. People
here are clinging tightly to a way of life they feel slipping away, a place
they describe as like “Mayberry,” the fictional town in the popular
1950’s television series.
The “white power,” or white racist youth of Lakeside also cling
to images from Mayberry; a safe home, a good job, loving families. Their realities
are endless cycles of rejection and neglect. This reality is captured in interviews
with several of Lakeside’s white power teens; revealing lives entrenched
with parental drug abuse, domestic violence and shattered dreams in the “Pink
Ghetto,” one of many low-income housing projects in the town.
“Culture of Hate-Who Are We?” is an unprecedented look into the
hidden world of white power youth. Living on the fringes of ordinary life,
they are kids who have slipped through the cracks of San Diego’s social
and educational systems. Their existence has gone shockingly ignored by both
local residents and media, even in the face of the murder of Mr. Soto Aguilar.
The film was honored with a duPont-Columbia Award and was a winner at Columbia
University’s Graduate School of Journalism’s “ Let’s
Do It Better!” Workshop on Race and Ethnicity in Journalism. The film
was presented at the Columbia Workshop, USC’s Annenberg Institute for
Justice and Journalism, Harvard’s School of Public Health, DePauw University
and at many local presentations. In San Diego the film won Best of Show from
the Press Club and the Sol Price Prize for Responsible Journalism (top prize)
from the Society of Professional Journalists.
In December of 2004, Eminem chose sound bites from the film to open his autobiographical
song, “Yellow Brick Road,” on his CD “Encore.”
