Passing as white would make it easier to work in Mexico, she said. White migrant advocates seem to automatically command respect from locals in Reynosa. But instead of passing, Rangel-Samponaro has tried to leverage being biracial.

Posted in Excerpts/Quotes on 2022-01-11 18:51Z by Steven

Passing as white would make it easier to work in Mexico, she said. White migrant advocates seem to automatically command respect from locals in Reynosa. But instead of passing, [Felicia] Rangel-Samponaro has tried to leverage being biracial.

When she tells Mexican officials about her father, they smile and give her high fives. When she tells them she’s Black, they’re surprised.

“In their minds, Black people don’t cross into Mexico to help others,” she said.

Black migrants usually assume she’s Latina. So she makes a point of saying that she identifies as Black and that, “We are going through the same struggles.”

Molly Hennessy-Fiske, “The woman defending Black lives on the border, including her own,” The Los Angeles Times, December 27, 2021. https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2021-12-27/the-woman-defending-black-lives-on-the-border.

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The woman defending Black lives on the border, including her own

Posted in Articles, Caribbean/Latin America, Latino Studies, Media Archive, Mexico, Passing, Social Justice, United States on 2021-12-28 02:20Z by Steven

The woman defending Black lives on the border, including her own

The Los Angeles Times
2021-12-27

Molly Hennessy-Fiske, Houston Bureau Chief
Photography by Gina Ferazzi

Black border activist Felicia Rangel-Samponaro walks along a line of migrants at a border camp clinic Dec. 6 in Reynosa, Mexico. The nonprofit Sidewalk School she founded three years ago provides education and other services. (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

REYNOSA, Mexico — So much of her is hyphenated, not just her name: Felicia Rangel-Samponaro. With caramel skin and curly brown hair that’s often tied back, she can pass as Latina.

But she identifies as Black.

On the Texas-Mexico border, she’s emerged as a vigorous defender of immigrants, and that work often forces her to reckon with how race and ethnicity — real and perceived — shape lives on the border, including her own.

“There’s a lot of oppression, discrimination and racism that goes on, on both sides of the border,” she said…

Read the entire article here.

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