Latina, at the white, male New York Times: “Why are people thinking it’s OK to say racist sh-t in front of me?”

*This is a very good article about how a Latina journalist “learned to talk to white men.” Fair warning, it’s long (you have to raise that flag given today’s micro-attention spans) but worth it. VL

By Daisy Hernandez, Salon

Excerpted from “A Cup of Water Under My Bed: A Memoir”

I didn’t think white people got jobs the way Latinos did, just by talking to each other. But they do, and that’s how it happens for me. My first big job as a writer.

It’s the end of a graduate journalism class at New York University. The room fills with the familiar cacophony of a class ending: chairs scraping floors, students unzipping bags, murmurs about lunch and papers due. The professor, a thin, white woman, fastens her eyes on me.

“An editor at the New York Times is looking for a researcher for a book she’s doing on women’s history,” she says, matter-of-fact. “I thought of you. You write about feminism.”

I smile politely, uncomfortably. I’m twenty-five and writing for Ms. magazine, but I don’t consider myself someone who writes about feminism. That sounds like work other people do, people who are rich or famous or smart. I’m not a boba though. I have spent enough time around white women to know it’s better to not argue with them.

Click HERE to read the full story.

[Photo by Scott Beale/Flickr]

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