Actor America Ferrera Thanks Donald Trump for Inspiring Something Brilliant in the Latino Community

Rather than chastise the presidential hopeful for his repugnant racist comments about Mexicans, America Ferrera chose to use a more powerful tool: gratitude.

From The Huffington Post:

Anyway, I heard what you said about the kind of people you think Latino immigrants are — people with problems, who bring drugs, crime and rape to America. While your comments are incredibly ignorant and racist, I don’t want to spend my time chastising you. I’ll leave that to your business partners like Univision and NBC, who have the power to scold you where it hurts. Instead, I’m writing to say thank you!

You see, what you just did with your straight talk was send more Latino voters to the polls than several registration rallies combined! Thank you for that. Here we are pounding the pavement to get American Latinos to the polls, while your tactic proves most effective. Remarks like yours will serve brilliantly to energize Latino voters and increase turnout on election day against you and any other candidate who runs on a platform of hateful rhetoric.

Do you know why that’s such a big deal, Donald? Because Latinos are the largest, youngest and fastest-growing constituency in the United States of America. That’s right! You are running for President in a country where the Latino population grew by over 49 percent from 2000-2012, while the rest of the country grew by 5.8 percent. What’s more, we are the future. The median age of the average Latino is 27 years old, compared to 42 years old for white Americans. In case you need a translation, that means there are a whole lot of Americans who are Latino and have the right to vote. And, we’re not going anywhere.

Read more.

The activist and actor goes on explain to the billionaire that he is “living in an outdated fantasy of a bigoted America” and finishes her open letter with encouragement to “Keep it up!” The same could be said to Ferrera about her efforts to rally members of the Latino community to assert their voting rights.

And, perhaps, it’s actually Ferrara that deserves a sincere “thanks” for expressing the kind of positive voice America needs to drown out remarks from cretins like Trump.

—Posted by Natasha Hakimi Zapata