Today, I am tired.
I am white presenting. What does that mean? I have white skin. But, I am a latina. My dad is much darker. Oddly, though, even being light-skinned like my mom doesn’t stop people from treating you differently when you open your mouth and you clearly have the accent everyone associates with being latinx. I won’t speak to her experiences because they are hers.
But I will speak to watching things happen to other people in my family because they looked like immigrants. I will speak to having to stand in line in dirty alleys as a child, terrified because it was 5 AM and dark and we had to be there to make it into the immigration office. I will speak to living with one foot in one culture and one foot in another. Those things, you can hit me up on.
And none of my experiences, because of my white skin and my lack of accent, even come close to comparing to what our black neighbors have dealt with. I have been crying over it.
And I have been thinking that it’s important to be honest in a campaign. If you elect me, you are getting someone who will try to understand what’s already been done and then give voice to the uncomfortable things that might need to be said. I will lose sleep over it, but I’ll do it.
Irfan Nasrullah, Amy Ritterbusch, Mary Jo LaFreniere and Lya Batlle-Rafferty at the Peaceful Protest on the Common, June 7, 2020
