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AfroLatino Activist Artist Antiracist l Diversifying, Decolonizing, Disrupting | Centering Justice & Joy l 👨🏾‍⚕️Medicine+Peds l Views mine 🇺🇸🇨🇴🌍🏳️‍🌈✊🏾
Mar 9, 2023 13 tweets 3 min read
Many Latinos have an identity crisis when they’re asked to comment on their race. Like most countries outside the U.S., Latinos tend to identify with their nationality, and when asked to comment on their race they either say Latino (even though that’s not a racial category), 1/13 they say they are white (since many are white presenting, 80% of US Latinos are lighter skin), or they rather not answer (bc they feel don’t know their racial background/composition/heritage and that creates cognitive dissonance I.e identity crisis). This ‘not knowing’ is 2/13
Mar 8, 2023 12 tweets 4 min read
Did you know that there is a proposal to stop the counting of AfroLatin@s?

It is true that both race and ethnicity are social constructions; however, Latinos/Hispanics are comprised of many races! Pretending that Blackness exists outside of the Latino/Hispanic ethnicity 1/11 would contribute to AfroLatin@ erasure and anti-Blackness in this country.

Help us oppose this proposal!

Here are 5 ways you can take action RIGHT NOW 👉🏾 2/11
Jul 22, 2022 10 tweets 2 min read
Pediatrician here. I’m seeing a lot of misinformation about the polio vaccine so I wanted to clear a few things up. Ninety nine out of every 100 people who get the polio vaccine series will be protected from polio, which is why doctors recommend everyone get vaccinated. 1/10 The polio vaccine was available in the U.S. in 1955. Thanks to widespread use, the U.S. has been polio-free since 1979. Inactivated polio vaccine (IPV) is the only polio vaccine that has been given in the U.S. since 2000. IPV is given by shot in the leg or arm. 2/10
Jul 21, 2022 8 tweets 2 min read
Here’s my critique of the U.S Latin dance community. My Colombian friend who grew up dancing salsa all their life shouldn’t feel “out-of-place” at your Salsa night. My Dominican friend who grew up dancing bachata shouldn’t feel out-of-place at your Bachata night. 1/8 Yet, this happens all the time.

And it’s not bc y’all have some formal training and they can’t keep up. Or bc you dance better.

You don’t.

I have yrs of training and can reassure you of that. Yet, I go to these places and see how y’all move and don’t want any part of it. 2/8
Jul 21, 2022 4 tweets 1 min read
Bachata Bachata
Jul 21, 2022 5 tweets 2 min read
Somebody had to say it. Stop making a distinction between Dominican #bachata and other forms of bachata. Bachata IS #Dominican 🇩🇴
🎯 Melanie Centeno @melanymovez: “MAKE BACHATA DOMINICAN AGAIN!!! 🇩🇴

CAUSE THIS IS NOT BACHATA!!

Nothing against these dancers because how they moved was absolutely beautiful. And they also are not aware of their participation of the white washing of our culture.”
May 19, 2022 10 tweets 2 min read
What happened in Rosewood? On Jan 1, 1923 dozens of armed white ppl descended on a Black town in Florida, where they terrorized the community, murdered residents, and burned entire buildings— all over allegations that a Black man had attacked Fannie Taylor, a white woman. 🧵 1/10 Fannie Taylor was found covered in bruises by a neighbor and claimed that a Black man had entered the house and physically assaulted her. She denied sexual abuse.

Her husband, James Taylor, escalated the situation, enlisting the KKK and the police to hunt down the culprit. 2/10
May 19, 2022 5 tweets 2 min read
A correction officer about an hour away from Buffalo shared this meme in reference to the MASS MURDER of Black people in the Buffalo mass shooting. I’M SCREAMING!
May 18, 2022 5 tweets 1 min read
The Great Replacement Theory goes back as far as the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. Americans on the West Coast thought Chinese workers were “taking” their jobs and casing lower wages. Though the Chinese were only .002% of the population, Congress passed the act anyway 1/5🧵 …in order to preserve “white racial purity” and placate white workers’ unsubstantiated fears that they were being “replaced”by the Chinese.

The effect: The Chinese Exclusion Act halted Chinese immigration for 10 yrs and made them ineligible for naturalization/citizenship. 2/5
Apr 5, 2022 4 tweets 1 min read
I can’t help but wonder what would have been said if I hadn’t been in that room? How would have this conversation have gone, if it hadn’t been interrupted by the patient due my physical presence? 1/4 I could tell my attending found this display of casual racism hilarious bc he was laughing. But he was also uncomfortable. But he was uncomfortable bc I was there and heard it all, and not necessarily (hard to know for sure) bc he thought that was she said was offensive. 2/4
Apr 4, 2022 4 tweets 1 min read
I’m in clinic, the patient’s wife is on the phone on speaker (doesn’t know I’m in the room), police sirens are heard in the background, and my attending jokes around, “are you getting arrested there?”
“No, I’m not. GOOD THING I’M NOT BLACK”
::they all start laughing :: 1/4 “I’m just a fragile white woman,” she says sarcastically.
Patient looks up at me and
says to wife, “you’re on speaker.”
“What?!,” she says (sirens heard)
“YOU’RE ON SPEAKER”
Wife says, “I’m sure he’s laughing,” she asserts.

My attending was indeed laughing. 2/4
Apr 2, 2022 7 tweets 21 min read
DID SOMEONE ASK FOR A SPANISH SPEAKING DOCTOR?

Honored to be in this montage, created by Dr. @ebolivera. RT if you believe #RepresentationMatters, that #ImmigrantsBelongHere, that kids need role models who look like them, and that a diverse workforce improves healthcare. Thank you Dr. @ebolivera for bringing us together. 🎥@DrBryanLeyva @dermaskinmd @IsraelYahuacaMD @dr_dealba @drricardocorrea @dr_shaps @StanfordODME @djtlmd @CoachEcuaDOc @DrB2Go @HomanSandovalMD @bonill07 @drurslang @AlvaroEGalvis1 @Flavors4M @DrKeilaLopez @drisisv @ebolivera
Mar 29, 2022 25 tweets 5 min read
White people often show outrage when Black ppl do “bad things.” But they are often silent when white ppl and the systems they’ve built, which are steeped in white supremacy, do bad things *to* Black ppl. This is a thread about how the Will and Chris incident became about race. 🧵 White people’s seeming disregard for Black lives, and the inconsistency in which they apply their outrage makes white people’s response to almost any situation involving Black people, however justified, feel almost wrong in and of itself. This is especially true when
Mar 17, 2022 4 tweets 1 min read
People seem to want to know whether the relationship btwn race/ethnicity and MATCH outcome is mediated by STEP score. That is, if you control for STEP score, will the association btwn race and MATCH outcome still hold true? Here’s the answer: IT DOESN’T MATTER. And here’s why. 🧵 STEP was intended to be Pass/Fail. Throughout the years we’ve perversely assigned increasing value to STEP scores despite no evidence to support this practice. We know STEP scores don’t predict whether someone will be a good doctor, and that’s ultimately what matters, isn’t it?
Mar 15, 2022 6 tweets 3 min read
I got this message yesterday because I spoke up about Dr. Jeffrey Lieberman’s racism towards Nyakim Gatwetch. This isn’t the first time, but I’m going to address this particular message point by point because there is a lot to unpack here. 🙏🏾 I spoke out because I believe Dr. Lieberman’s behavior was reprehensible and Black patients deserve better. What is there not to believe? Pls believe it.
I did not get him fired. The consequences he’s facing are his own doing. This was also not an isolated incident.
Mar 6, 2022 7 tweets 6 min read
Letter from @ColumbiaPsych Residents to the leadership at @nyphospital, CUIMC, NYSPI + VP&S, following Dr. Lieberman’s racist comments towards Sudanese model Nyakim Gatwech. The receipts are LONG. 🧵 @ColumbiaPsych residents are asking for the following actions:

1. Transparency. This includes increased visibility and awareness of confidential and anonymous reporting procedures for workplace discrimination and professionalism concerns.
Mar 3, 2022 6 tweets 1 min read
“EVEN DURING A WAR”— A lot of people are surprised with the racism on display at the Ukraine-Poland border. It is shocking but as a doctor who studies racism in medicine, I must say I’m not surprised. A lesson from the field of medicine: it is precisely during 🧵 periods of fear, hardship, and immense uncertainty when racial prejudice is most likely to rear its ugly head. We see racism in the emergency room all the time precisely because of this. During crisis, people move from system 2 thinking (slower, more
Oct 28, 2021 8 tweets 2 min read
A thread about burnout 🧵

I recently went on a Euro trip to try to address feelings of burnout. I hadn’t traveled in 2 years, which is the longest I’ve ever gone without travel. I left to escape and to attend my bros wedding. It would be lie to say the trip wasn’t amazing. After the trip I actually felt a bit better.

My biggest disappointment though was coming back and within a few days going right back to where I was before the trip.
Oct 27, 2021 14 tweets 3 min read
Now that #JBalvin is trending after his music video sparked backlash over its portrayal of Black women, allow me to use this moment to illustrate a few points about the mechanics of racism, whiteness/Blackness, and Latinidad across different contexts. 🧵 First, let’s get this out the way: #Latinos can be white, Black, Asian, or any other race imaginable because Latino is not a race but a cultural identifier. Most Latinos are mixed race, but being mixed doesn’t mean you can’t be racist or perpetuate anti-Blackness.
May 24, 2021 15 tweets 4 min read
Tomorrow marks one year since police killed George Floyd.

Just in 2021 alone, police have killed 414 people.

So you tell me, how much progress have we made? 🧵 In 2020, police killed 1,127 people.

Black people made up 28% of these cases, despite being only 13% of the population. 2/14
Feb 22, 2021 8 tweets 2 min read
I wanted to provide some context to this tweet: I’ve been a language interpreter virtually all my life. Prior to med school, I received formal training and volunteered for 2 yrs as a Spanish language interpreter at the NIH. Today, as part of my residency 🧵 1/8 I do primary care at the Center for International Health, where I use a language interpreter for about 90% of my patient encounters. My patients are mostly East African and South East Asian. Yesterday, I stumbled upon an article about the use of interpreter services. 2/8