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A few years ago, I was at a coffee shop in Los Angeles sipping on an almond milk latte, scrolling through Twitter, when a group of white girls sat next to me. They were talking about their study abroad trip to Spain that summer. One of them said how important it was "in today's market" to speak Spanish. I put my headphones on and kept reading the news stories on my feed. I came across the story of Natalia Meneses and her three-year-old-daughter, who were harassed by another shopper at Walmart for speaking Spanish. The little girl saw some flower hair clips and said, "Mira, Mami!" This was a private moment between daughter and mother. An older white woman who overheard the conversation turned to Meneses and said, "You need to teach this kid to speak English, because this is America and kids need to learn English. If not, you need to get out of this country." Only when we have the audacity to use our mother tongue do racists worry about the future of the country, but for others it's an added skill to speak Spanish. For us it threatens our livelihoods, our families, our lives.
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