'Saturday Night Live' was terrible about Latinos way before Donald Trump

Despite vocal protests by Latino legislators and a petition that garnered more than half a million signatures, Donald Trump will host “Saturday Night Live” tonight. Many within the Hispanic community are shocked and angered that “SNL” would give airtime to Trump, seeing it as an implicit endorsement of anti-Latino sentiment. But if you examine the show’s deeply flawed history when it comes to Latino representation, you will see why “SNL” didn’t seem to have a problem with this.

“They’re bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime,” Trump said of Mexican immigrants in late June. “They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.” His comments—which were completely incorrect, since studies have found that immigrants, documented or otherwise, are less likely to commit crime—are rooted in the racist stereotype of the invading foreigner coming to the United States to suck up its resources and take over the country. This rhetoric has clearly resonated with his supporters, as evidenced by his meteoric rise in the polls. It has even struck a chord with the fringe white nationalist movement, some of which sees Trump as the only candidate that will fight “the cultural genocide” happening in America.

And while “Saturday Night Live” obviously isn’t calling all Latinos rapists or asking for the deportation of millions of undocumented immigrants, the show—which has only had two Latino cast members in its over 40 years of existence—still stereotypically portrays that community as a foreign “other” in sketch after sketch. Take for instance, “Jewelry Party,” from a 2014 episode hosted by Lena Dunham. In the bit, Cecily Strong (who is not Latina) plays Marisol, a Venezuelan sexpot who is too ignorant to realize that her boyfriend is a misogynistic men’s rights activist.