Ididn’t hear a lot of racial slurs. But once, in the warehouse, a Hispanic worker walked up to me and said, “What’s up my nigga?” I stared at him. I felt very uncomfortable. He didn’t work there long.

Recently I walked into the plant and a Latina shouted, “Mayate!” She warned the workers bustling by that the Mayate, or Nigga, had arrived.

On Dec. 17 I waited in the injection room for an assignment. In Spanish, one Latina asked another: “What are we going to do with the cochino?” The other Latina told her to stash me in “the little room.”

In addition to a culture of hostility and harassment, Stauffer’s / Meiji is culturally insensitive. Their employees are dressed like the Klu Klux Klan. They wear white pants and a white long sleeve shirt. They also wear a white hood. The white hood is mandatory for Black workers. Hispanics can opt out. This company is saying that Blacks are too dirty; Hispanics are clean enough.

The hood, however, wasn’t always mandatory. I used to wear a hairnet, a mask over my mouth and nose, and a beard-net. But the first week in December, a Latina forcefully grabbed me by my elbow and pulled me off floor. She demanded I wear the hood. I explained that I wore the hood for a month and it broke my prescription glasses. There was a supervisor’s meeting where they decided to let me wear a hairnet.

The Latina supervisor made me wear the white hood with safety goggles and not my prescription glasses. I’m legally blind without my prescription lenses. I worked the month of December 2022 blind. Everything is blurry. I can’t read anything, not even the time on the clock. People ask me to read details and sign papers. I’m always saying, “No veo! No veo!” meaning, “I can’t see.” Then people laugh. I’m a big joke now.

In the Los Angeles Times article “Black workers accuse Latinos of racism” published on Sunday August 25, 2022, a source named Leon Simmons, who worked at Cardinal, expressed experiencing racism like me. Simmons was diagnosed with post-traumatic syndrome. He has tremors and nightmares.

I have tremors when I think about Stauffer’s / Meiji. I’m also having nightmares. My most recent nightmare – that I can remember - was: I was driving in my car wearing Stauffer’s white hood. There were three Klu Klux Klansman in the car with me. I was driving fast trying to get away from the Klansmen. But they were my passengers.