Sorry, didn’t know how to phrase this. No disrespect intended to anyone.
Backstory: I have a woman from Mexico who has been cleaning for me (every other week) for 14 years. I’ll call her Maria. She’s in her 60s, is a naturalized citizen, and has lived in Texas for decades. She’s dark-skinned, looks Hispanic, and speaks with an accent. (She reads and writes English quite well.) When she came last time, she told me about something weird that happened earlier in the week. A motorcycle cop pulled her over (she drives a nice, middle-aged-woman car, just as I do) and told her she was doing 30 in a 20 zone. She said to me, “I don’t think I was, but I told him, ‘Yeah, maybe I was.’” He said he was going to give her a ticket and she would have to go to court if she disputed it. He looked at her license and then said, “You know, I think I’m just going to give you a warning,” and that’s all he did and left.
My eyebrows were up into my hairline by now, and she said, “I’m going to drive back over there, because I don’t think I was speeding.” But I said, “Maria, I think he was doing you a favor. He didn’t want you to go to court.” But she looked at me quizzically. I said, “They’re picking up all kinds of Latinos and other people who ‘look foreign’ on the slightest pretext and putting them in those camps, right here in Texas. And deporting some of them, even thought they’re here legally and have done nothing wrong. You know about this, right?”
She reacted in a completely unexpected way: she turned on me and absolutely flew off the handle. If she had been holding a flamethrower she couldn’t have been more angry or ferocious. 
She launched into a tirade–the worst anyone has ever hit me with: “No one can deport me just because I’m Mexican! I’ve never done anything wrong! I’m not a criminal! This can’t happen to me! You insult me by telling me they can deport me! You insult me!” And on and on in hat vein, until she said, “I can’t work for you any more if you’re going to insult me!”
She picked up her purse, but I was between her and the door. “Maria, you’ve known me all these years, how can you think that?” She countered with, “Well, you know me, too!” I said, “Please come over and sit down and talk to me.” She said, “I can’t talk to someone who would insult me like that!” Finally I said something I knew she would respond to, “Will you sit down and pray with me?” I know she is very religious. So we did sit and we prayed. I asked God to show her what was in my heart, that I never meant to hurt or insult her, but I was worried for her. We went along in that vein for a while and then she prayed and we both cried and hugged. And she said, “Let’s just forget it, like it never happened.” I certainly don’t plan to bring it up with her again! But looking back at the TOTALITY of the FURY she unleashed on me…it occurred to me that she has had this discussion with someone already, maybe several times. She had said all of this to someone already, someone who warned her of the peril Latino people face these days just being out and around.
I told another friend of mine this whole story. She is also Hispanic, but she doesn’t “look Hispanic.” She has light skin with freckles and light brown hair. She and her husband grew up poor on San Antonio’s West Side and did migrant farm work as children, but they both wound up with degrees and Master’s degrees (he has two) from Ivy league universities. This friend said that clearly Maria is aware of what is going on and is terrified and that was the basis for her reaction to my expressing worry for her safety.
One of the (Anglo) women here at The Home said that she was surprised–actually stunned–when another resident, an Air Force veteran, a petite woman who, yup, “looks Hispanic,” told her that when police show up for any reason (there was a fender bender in the street in front of our building last week), she is very much on edge and stays alert. She makes a point of not drawing any attention to herself.
Long way around to asking if some of y’all go on alert in crowds or situations where police are around? Do you tell your kids to be subdued around police? Here’s an article about that:
I’ve tried to tell this story using neutral, non-offensive, respectful language, and I apologize in advance if I’ve said something the wrong way or used terminology that someone finds objectionable. Talking about this stuff is like tippytoeing through a minefield anymore…
).
.
