In a recently released study, apartment hunting site, Adobo, found Bakersfield to be the most anti-Hispanic city in the nation, based on tweets.
The report analyzed 12 million tweets between June 2014 and December 2015 to figure out what words Americans are using to describe different races, ethnicities, genders and sexual orientations.
Lori De Leon, who works for the Dolores Huerta Foundation said Hispanics have been discriminated against for many generations.
"Since the mid-60s, early 60s, in the grape boycott and we experienced a lot of that racism, first hand," she said.
De Leon believes racism is based on fear, "when they tweet racial slurs they're spreading racism and it's time to stop that," she said.
She said people who are afraid of the unknown tend to act on it.
"If they don't take the time to learn of another person's culture, if they're only familiar with stereotypes..."
23ABC asked locals what they would do if they saw a racist post on social media.
"You just ignore them because, actually, those people are just cowards behind the computer saying their racists tweets and everything but they won't say it directly to your face," said Lionel Washington III.
"Ignore it because I know I would get mad," said Vivian Cahue.
While some refuse to acknowledge what they don't consider important, others said they would stand up for the voiceless.
"It would be easy to just scroll down but if you think about it, all the people being harmed by those comments and being offended when you don't have to say such things to hurt other people," said Martin Mendoza.
"People don't have a voice and they deserve to have one even if it's not theirs," said Isabel Armas Magana.
"I think it's each of our individual responsibilities when we see that happening to call our friends on it. Or let them know that that's not right," said De Leon.
To read the about the findings, click here.
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