Professor Tanya K. Hernández weighs in on the mayoral race in Los Angeles, following Nury Martinez’s resignation due to racist comments.
Tanya Kateri Hernandez, an Afro Latina and a Fordham University professor who has researched anti-Black racism by Latinos, told me the most important thing the next mayor can do to help us heal is avoid treating what happened as an isolated incident.
“What we miss are the ways in which this is part of — unfortunately — Latino racial pathologies,” said Hernandez, author of “Racial Innocence: Unmasking Latino Anti-Black Bias and the Struggle for Equality,” “These people resign, but then the bottom line is problematic dynamics remain unaddressed and unspoken of. You can’t intervene in something that you’re trying to be blind about.”