Orange Is the New Black’s Diane Guerrero: We Are ‘Treated Differently Because of the Color of Our Skin’

RUSH EXCERPT:

GUERRERO: "I don’t know why I was lucky enough to have people in my community take me in to be able to continue school or why I was lucky enough to find work or to go to college. I do know that kind of luck is one in a million. I also know I wouldn’t have been so lucky if I was one of a generation of children who would be irreversibly damaged by our government’s actions. It’s a denial of children’s humanity to say that because they were born in difficult or dangerous places at the wrong time that they don’t deserve a second chance.
[ Cheers and applause ] That they shouldn’t ask for refuge. How many more children are we willing to subject to a lifetime of pain? Once my family was taken I became fully aware that my community matters less to some people. That we are treated differently because of the color of our skin or where our parents were born. But we are now in a moment where we can no longer be blind to the blatant disregard of human life."