Page 11 - Sonoma County Gazette July 2020

RACISM cont’d from page 10
It is only recently that I’ve seen water and resources provided for Vineyard workers.
My dad works in landscaping. He takes pride in his hard work. More than once clients have refused to fairly pay him only because they believed my father couldn’t do anything about it.
Longhaired and bearded, I was racially profiled while sitting on a park bench talking on the phone.
I was pulled over into our own driveway under the pretext of a cracked taillight.
Overheard a white woman say, “I didn’t think they allowed that type here” I’m a Los Angeles native, third generation Californian, ancestors settled in Rhode Island.
My name is America; in 2015 I was told by a Starbucks customer to change my name because I didn’t represent America. I’m Mexican.
I was playing Spanish music in my car and parked in the Safeway parking lot and this white woman said “she needs to listen to English; she’s in America... “
Dad, an unlicensed Landscaper, completed a job worth $4000 and the Healdsburg owners denied paying him because he was just “a Mexican who wouldn’t fight for his money because he’s illegal”.
“Your son is so cute, I hope he grows up to be a nice little Mexican boy and not a rapist like the rest of them.“ My son is four!
I’m a Latina educator in Healdsburg unified school district.
A parent once insisted that I was making derogatory remarks in my class about his political beliefs in order to embarrass his son. It was not true yet he went to the school board to complain. I was devastated and very hurt by the accusation.
“Don’t wear hoop earrings. You look too Mexican.” Said to me by a coworker.
White Power Wednesdays: at Healdsburg high school students would walk down the halls, Nazi saluting one another—2013.
My mother was assaulted at the metroPCS store in Healdsburg.
My mother is a black woman. The stores’ response was to promote the assaulter to manager.
Healdsburg High School put on the musical, “Hairspray”, and the teacher paid for the students to get spray tans. I was the only black student and was not cast in a main role.
I am Afro-Latina at HHS. My counselors prevented me from going to a four-year college.
“I don’t want my kid in the Mexican teacher’s classroom.“ Statement from a white parent to the principal during meeting with a Latina educator in Healdsburg unified school district.
“Every time we would turn off
the lights in class, people would say “Hey,” (and insert a name of a darker skinned student), “smile we can’t see you”.
Been told not to speak Spanish at work when the employees are Spanish speaking. It was very difficult to get the work done.
Multiple people, who’d never experienced getting pulled over by the police, experienced their first time while giving me a ride home from work or another location. Coincidence?
Having dinner at Dry Creek Kitchen patio, my family of seven got approached by two white men, walking on the sidewalk by the restaurant. They started harassing us. Mocking us, “since when did you start coming to nice restaurants?” Proceeded to take their phones out and they recorded the whole thing. We stayed quiet just like everyone else watching. Our white waiter begged them to let us eat. They
kept going until they decided it
was enough. Five of the seven of us worked there. That was the last time my family has eaten out together.
In seventh grade my science teacher Mrs. X Assumed that I had stolen some thing from her class because I was there early. It was my first day in HUSD.
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