Bushwick pol accuses challenger of switching race identities for political gain

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Bushwick Councilmember Darma Diaz accused her political challenger Sandy Nurse of switching between racial identities to suit her campaign needs at a recent virtual panel discussion.

“How do you have the right to say, ‘I’m Afro-American today, and tomorrow I’m Latina.’ The conversations are different,” said Diaz at an online talk about race identities with the think tank The Black Institute on Feb. 25. “It’s real and it’s dynamic to see how people change who they are based on the conversation, the movement, the narrative — that’s not how it should be… To me it just pisses me off and that’s the bottom line.”

Nurse, who is making a second run at unseating Diaz, was born in Panama as the child of a white American mom and a Black Panamanian dad who immigrated to the US, while both were serving in the Navy in the Central American country. She lived in Panama until she was about 5 years old, before moving with her family to different military outposts around the globe, including Cuba, South Korea, and Japan, and eventually settling in Bushwick in 2009.