Syed Ali

To the Editor:

I have been stopped at Grand Central Terminal and had my bag searched, just for commuting with brown skin. I have had to wait at Kennedy Airport to have my Muslim identity verified. So no, I cannot stop thinking about what white supremacist insurgents got away with on Jan. 6.

And yet, my experiences are a fraction of the systemic terrors my Black and Latinx neighbors are subjected to. Americans are systematically criminalized for nothing more than their poverty and the color of their skin. It is heartbreaking to see what it takes to prompt action.

Many of us — who have watched our families be called rapists, who have had immigration bans on our nationalities and who have seen caricatures of our cultures wielded as petty insults — are wondering what has taken so long. The desecration of our democracy is appalling, but it did not begin on Jan. 6.

Syed Ali
Bronx