Rep. Luis Gutierrez: Using Race and Criminality to Exclude Refugees Isn’t New

‘There may not have been people to stand up for people like my mom and dad, but I am going to stand up for them today’

EXCERPT:

GUTIERREZ: "To me this is simply a continuation of what we heard. Mexicans are murderers, rapists, drug dealers, and there might be a few good ones, but for the most part that's who they are. And to say that that's kind of my life experience in the United States of America — I'm a little older than a lot of members of this committee, I was born in 1953 when separate Boricua was the law of the land. I lived in the north, not in the south. They didn't have a sign that said 'Negros drink here and whites drink there,' but I knew which swimming pools not to go to. I knew which schools I would not be enrolled in in the city of Chicago. I knew what parks not to play baseball in. So it's part of the continuation of using race and, at the same time, criminalization of a community to combine to create fear and to create a politicization which you benefit from. That's not new in America. I've been living that experience all of my life and I was born and raised in Chicago, Illinois."          

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