Kip Mooney
McKinney Boyd Valedictorian Bravely Outs Herself As Illegal Immigrant In Moving Graduation Speech.
Let’s be honest: Most valedictorian speeches are horribly boring.
Whether you’re bleary-eyed at an 8 a.m. snooze-fest or starving at a late-afternoon graduation, these speeches don’t do much to help the situation, often just standing as another opportunity for someone to misquote a writer, philosopher or celebrity. (For better or worse, if you have a friend or child at Plano Senior High School, you won’t hear a valedictorian speech at all this year. Consider yourself lucky, maybe!)
But McKinney Boyd High School’s Larissa Martinez didn’t drop your average graduation speech earlier this week. Rather, she dropped the mic on the whole endeavor. Over the course of her moving speech, the graduating senior and valedictorian revealed in that she endured an abusive and alcoholic father as a child in Mexico City and that she escaped by illegally moving to America from Mexico.
Check out the full video of her speech, as obtained by the Dallas Morning News:
“Undocumented immigrants are people, too,” she told her peers to loud applause about halfway through her talk.
It’s a phrase that seems obvious and true, but bears repeating because so many people just don’t get it. Props to Martinez for saying it — and for getting in a dig in at a certain orange-tinted asshole by also declaring, “We can America great again without constructing a wall built on hatred and prejudice.”
As she explained in her speech, the immigration system is broken, and Congress has dragged its feet for decades, with some trying to focus on adding more fencing to states like Arizona and our own Texas. Remember, Marco Rubio got crucified for even suggesting a bill that didn’t include trying to deport all 11 million undocumented immigrants already here.
It’s pretty amazing seeing a local teenager like Martinez standing up to fight in the face of that opposition.
Sure, her speech also included the standard-issue graduation speech platitudes about reaching for your dreams. But, hey, that’s what American kids talk about in these things.