The more I thought about the Times article and the implications of it, the more upset I became. I turned to Facebook, asking former and current Downey residents to weigh in and share their thoughts. It was after exchanging messages with educator and writer, Mari Urrutia Gedney, that I was able to better articulate why I believe the article did more harm than help.

Gedney is a current Downey resident who serves on the board of the Downey Arts Coalition, and she knows the city well. Her family moved to Downey from Huntington Park when she was in second grade and to make the cost of that possible, they had a multi-generational home. She was upset by how strongly the Times implied that moving to a city like Downey, deemed in the article to be better than neighboring cities like Bell and South Gate, equals necessary assimilation and a sort of point of pride in being able to pass as something other than Latino. Gedney says in some cases, those things are done as a way for a person to keep themselves safe – and that’s valid, but without addressing the racism in Downey or the internalized racism of those looking to shed their Latino identity, how honest are we being about our city?

Like Gedney, I no longer read theeditorial page of the Patriot. The overt racism of white residents writing letters to the editor, almost always targeting Latinos and spewing vitriol around topics like immigration, became too aggravating and hurtful. Let’s not pretend this racism only exists in the pages of a newspaper.

If you’ll recall, it was Downey residents upset by a new supermarket considering a Spanish name. So much pressure was placed on the owner that he opted out of using Spanish. This is the same city where white residents angrily addressed then-Mayor Guerra for his honest opinion as to why Trader Joe’s continuously refused to open a location in Downey, despite years of courting. “We’re not white enough or rich enough for them,” he said. All hell broke loose because here, it seems, we like to pretend that race isn’t an issue.

But it is.

Downey is the same city where my dad has been called a “wetback” standing in his own front yard. People of color friends of mine have been pulled over by Downey police officers at gunpoint for routine traffic stops. As a contributor to the Patriot, yes, I’ve written about the revitalization of Downtown Downey, which is primarily being spearheaded by young people of color, but I’ve also covered the killing of Michael Nida, the unarmed Latino father of four who was shot multiple times in the back with a submachine gun by Downey Officer Steve Gilley for a robbery Nida did not commit.

It was after a series of stories about Nida that I received a private letter from an elderly Latino man who had spent a bulk of his life in Downey. The letter detailed the multiple instances of racism he’d experienced living in our city. When I called him, asking how I could help, he simply said, “I just wanted you to know this isn’t a new thing here.” These things don’t happen in Beverly Hills, and they certainly don’t happen to white people.

It’s important to remember that numbers don’t always mean power and honestly, power doesn’t always mean power. There are many Downey residents who surely feel that because Barack Obama is president, racism is over. The Black Lives Matter movement tells us otherwise. Because Latinos make up the bulk of the population in Downey and because three of our five council members are Latino, doesn’t mean that “upward mobility” or the American Dream are a possibility – or an aspiration – for all Latinos in the city. And please, let’s stop pretending there is one Latino Experience. Some of us are much more privileged than others, depending on our countries of origin, our family’s number of years in this country, our citizenship status, our skin color, etc.

Gedney, who has appeared on the cover of the Times for her writing and educational work, told me that the most offensive part of the article was how the use of the phrase “Mexican Beverly Hills” makes the rest of Downey's population invisible, not important enough to address or talk about. I can’t help but think that’s how Downey would prefer it. If we talk about the Latinos who haven’t “made it”, we’ll have to talk about some of the reasons why. Downey clearly isn’t ready to have that conversation.