Response to what happened at Marist High School dance is disappointing

I am writing in response to letters published in the Sun-Times last week titled, “An unfair allegation of racism at Marist High School.” What happened at the dance wasn’t just students disliking music. The proof is seen in a video circulating on Instagram.

It’s disappointing, having grown up as a Mexican student in a mostly white school in the area, having experienced racism and bigotry myself.

No student should go to school and be made to feel like an “other.”

Yet for many like myself who are of a different ethnicity, race, sexuality, etc., “othering” is part and parcel of everyday life at school. Day in and day out, we hear jokes and overtures about our lives and cultures, and we’re told to suck it up and take a joke, from students and from teachers alike. My culture was being knelt against, not just over a song, and it’s part of everyday life in schools and in workplaces in America.

America loves to take and borrow from the best of all cultures and races in her borders, but when it comes to the people who have brought their culture’s best, now we aren’t deserving of the same respect as the majority. We are made to feel lesser than others, instead of feeling included as equals.

We need all parents in America to teach their children that America’s diversity is its greatest strength, and no American deserves to feel lesser than for any reason.

That goes against everything America stands for.

Chris Marquez, Andersonville

History deniers

Holocaust deniers are among the most ignorant and hateful people on our troubled planet. Apart from much photographic evidence — hard to fake back in the day — thousands of American, British, French and Russian soldiers witnessed the horror firsthand, many of them haunted by it for years.

Denying the Holocaust is like saying that the sinking of the Titanic or the San Francisco earthquake were just filmmaker spectaculars. From now on, whenever I hear one of these dolts spouting their Holocaust denial I am going to say, “You don’t really exist. You are just a weird figment of my imagination.”

Dan McGuire, Bensenville