Losing Lynwood would be regression in fight against racism

Growing up, I really struggled with internalized racism. According to my mother, when I was 5, I once was concerned when a Mexican employee fixed our cable because I thought he would not do a good job.

This concern was shocking considering I am Mexican American and was living in Marin County’s Canal District, which has the highest concentration of Latinos in the area.

Unlike my brothers, I refused to learn Spanish. In second grade, I lied to my class and told them I was Irish. I brought ginger cookies to our cultural picnic — when in actuality,

I’d never eaten a single ginger cookie before. In seventh grade, I ditched my friend group, primarily kids of color, to fit in with the popular table: White girls and boys.

I remember hearing from my peers in high school, “You are Mexican, but you’re not, like, really Mexican.” I would feel an overwhelming sense of satisfaction when people reminded me of my ethnic ambiguity and my immense proximity to whiteness.

I grew up believing half of me was unqualified, uninteresting, ugly and unworthy. I fought so hard, internally and externally, to repress any association with this half.

When I attended college, I unpacked how, what, when, where and why this came to be. Studying at one of the nation’s bastions of radical thought, I was confronted with the hard truths of my deep insecurities.

If my environment was Marin County, the liberal California hub directly north of San Francisco, my internalized racism was harder to trace. I knew some peers in high school came to school with Confederate flags displayed on their trucks or occasionally used a racial slur for comedy. That was the usual extent to blatant racism in our county. It was only after some serious soul searching accompanied with candid conversations that I realized, the racism in my environment was an insidious one.

A whisper in my ear to let me know that I was not worthy. Those whispers are watching kids who look like I did be punished more than those who don’t — obviously not for being Black or brown, but for being aggressive or noncompliant.

Those whispers come when we enter classrooms for advanced courses on the first day of school and realize we are one of the few non-White students. It is noticing the graduates of color didn’t have as many colleges etched into their graduation cap. Or, it is stepping out of the neighborhood and realizing the bubble our family occupies is actually the minority, most people in this town don’t look or live like us. It plays in the Section 8 housing apartments near my former school every day of summer. Our classmates may have called it “Mini Mexico.”

These whispers are harder to ignore when our skin is especially dark, our accent is especially different, our clothes are especially unique or our food is especially pungent.

I benefit from my privileges as a light-skinned Latino man who is able-bodied. Many are not as favored or fortunate. Children of color are rarely told they are unworthy, but time and time again, they are given reasons to believe so.

Right now, the Novato Unified School District is considering amplifying a whisper into a yell. Lynwood Elementary School is on the chopping block, but it is one of the few examples of institutional support for students of color and bilingual students in the county.

If we end Lynwood and its program, we would reverse and regress the groundwork of antiracism, inclusivity and diversity that have been fought by giants before us. At Lynwood today, students are taught in a unique and innovative way that differences should be celebrated; that not every student looks the same or speaks the same language, but each is worthy of greatness, now and for the future.

Lynwood provides a priceless, culturally dynamic home in a county that needs and wishes to be more reflective of the world. I will work tirelessly until no children grow up hating themselves.

Learn more about #SaveLynwood at SaveLynwoodSchool. com.

Students are taught in a unique and innovative way that differences should be celebrated; that not every student looks the same or speaks the same language, but each is worthy of greatness, now and for the future.