Author Archives: The Official Google Blog

Manage tags easily and safely with the new Community Template Gallery

Businesses often work with trusted partners to conduct a variety of important functions on their websites. These partners can help businesses accurately measure their online conversions or determine which product reviews to display. For all this to work  businesses need to implement tags, or code written by their partners, directly on their sites. It’s critical for businesses to trust that these tags are working as intended to protect their customers and brand. 


With that in mind, we’ve created the new Community Template Gallery for Google Tag Manager. Community Template Gallery is an open platform where partners can share their tag templates. Businesses can then customize these templates to easily implement tags on their websites.


Not only does Community Template Gallery help businesses quickly implement and manage tags, but it also provides more transparency into how these tags will behave—making the whole tagging process easier and safer.

Less code is more 

In the past, if your business needed to implement a partner tag that wasn’t already integrated with Tag Manager, getting that tag up and running would take a lot of manual work. You might have to consult with your partner to determine how to correctly customize and place the tag on your website so it was tailored for your business needs. Not only did this take a lot of time, it also required heavy involvement from developers, leaving lots of room for error.


Community Template Gallery reduces the potential for incorrect implementation. Once your partner shares their tag template in the gallery, you can find it and simply enter the required information in an intuitive UI. You do not need to customize any HTML or Javascript.
Businesses can add tag templates to their workspace and then tailor the tag by completing the form.

Businesses can add tag templates to their workspace and then tailor the tag by completing the form.

Community Template Gallery also helps partners keep tag templates up-to-date. Whenever partners make updates to their tag templates, the latest version will quickly become available. And if you’ve already implemented that tag template,  we’ll notify you that there is a new version that you can review before making the update.

Increased transparency 

When you publish a partner’s tag on your website, you need to understand what it does and trust that it won’t do anything unexpected. That’s why we’ve built a permissions system into Community Template Gallery.


Before you implement or update a tag from the gallery, you will now be able to review and approve the actions it will take when it becomes live on your website. This gives you more control and transparency over the tags on your sites.


Businesses can review and approve how a tag will behave when implemented on a website.

Businesses can review and approve how a tag will behave when implemented on a website.

Community Template Gallery is now live in both Tag Manager and Tag Manager 360. You’ll find many tag templates already included and ready to use. If you’re a tag developer, we encourage you to build and submit your template today.

Keeping privacy and security simple, for you

Our goal has always been to create products that are simple, helpful, and intuitive. It’s no different with privacy and security: managing your data should be just as easy as making a restaurant reservation, or using Maps to find the fastest way back home.


Earlier this year, we started rolling out more ways for you to protect your data, including making our controls easier to access, new ways to use Google apps with Incognito mode, and options to automatically delete data like your Location History, searches, and other activity with Google.


Making these controls consistent across our core products will help them become more familiar, and we hope, even easier to use. Today, we’re sharing a few more updates on our progress toward this goal.

Incognito mode arrives in Maps

Incognito mode has been one of our most popular privacy controls since it launched with Chrome in 2008. We added it to YouTube earlier this year, and now we’re rolling it out in Google Maps.

Incognito mode in Maps

When you turn on Incognito mode in Maps, your Maps activity on that device, like the places you search for, won’t be saved to your Google Account and won’t be used to personalize your Maps experience. You can easily turn on Incognito mode by selecting it from the menu that appears when you tap your profile photo, and you can turn it off at any time to return to a personalized experience with restaurant recommendations, information about your commute, and other features tailored to you. Incognito mode will start rolling out on Android this month, with iOS coming soon.

Expanding Auto-delete to YouTube

In May, we announced that you could automatically delete your Location History and Web & App Activity, which includes things you've searched and browsed. We promised to bring this to more products, and now we're bringing Auto-delete to YouTube History. Set the time period to keep your data—3 months, 18 months, or until you delete it, just like Location History and Web & App Activity—and we’ll take care of the rest.
Auto-delete in YouTube History

Control your privacy with your voice in the Assistant

We’re adding new ways to easily understand and manage your data in the Assistant.

First, when you ask questions like “Hey Google, how do you keep my data safe?” the Assistant will share information about how we keep your data private and secure.

We’re also making it easier to control your privacy with simple voice commands. In the coming weeks, you’ll be able to delete Assistant activity from your Google Account just by saying things like “Hey Google, delete the last thing I said to you” or “Hey Google, delete everything I said to you last week.” You won't need to turn on any of these features—they will work automatically when you ask the Assistant for help. If you ask to delete more than a week's worth of data from your account, the Assistant will point you directly to the page in your account settings to complete the deletion. We’re rolling this out in English next week, and in all other languages next month.

Privacy actions in the Assistant

Strengthening your password security

Protecting your privacy online requires strong security, and that’s why we protect your data with one of the world’s most advanced security infrastructures.

Tools like ourSecurity Checkup help users by automatically detecting potential security issues with your Google Account and make it easy for you to add extra protections to keep your account safe, like removing old devices or unused apps that still have access to your account.

But we also want to help protect you across the internet, and a big part of that is helping you remember passwords for your other online accounts. With so many accounts, bad habits like using the same password across multiple services are common, and make all of your accounts as vulnerable as the weakest link. If someone steals your password once, then they could access your information across different services using that same password. 

Our password manager automatically protects your passwords across your different accounts, and today, in time for Cybersecurity Awareness Month, we’re making it much more powerful. We’re introducing the Password Checkup, a new feature that—with one click—tells you if any of your passwords are weak, whether you’ve reused them across multiple sites, or if we've discovered they've been compromised (for example, in a third-party data breach). Find more about the Password Checkup in this post.

Password Checkup

We’re constantly working to improve the products that billions of people use, right now. We’re also looking to the future so that teams at Google, and other organizations, can build new products and develop new engineering techniques, with privacy and security as core principles. In May, we opened the new Google Safety Engineering Center where we expect the number of privacy engineers to double by the end of 2019. We’ve also open-sourced technologies like our differential privacy library, Private Join and Compute and Tensorflow Federated. These will help any institution—from hospitals to governments to nonprofits—find better ways to gain insights from their data while protecting people's privacy.

As technology evolves, so do people's expectations for security and privacy. We look forward to building protections that aim to exceed those expectations, and will continue sharing regular updates about this work.

To stay secure online, Password Checkup has your back

We’ve all been there. Compromising security for convenience, we put our personal information at risk with poor password habits. One in four Americans use common passwords—like Abc123, Password1111, and P@ssw0rd. Sixty-six percent of Americans admit to using the same weak password across multiple sites, which makes all those accounts vulnerable. And every day, new data breaches publicly expose millions of usernames and passwords.

Until passwords become a thing of the past (trust us, we’re working on it), there’s a simple and secure solution: use a password manager, like the one built into your Google Account and Google Chrome. It generates strong, unique passwords for all your online accounts, auto-fills them as you sign in, and helps keep them safe in a central place. 

Today we’re launching the Password Checkup—a new feature built into our password manager that checks the strength and security of all of your saved passwords, tells you if we find they’ve been compromised (for example, in a breach), and gives you personalized, actionable recommendations when needed. 

A built-in password manager in your Google Account

A built-in password manager in your Google Account

With a single click, the Password Checkup tells you if: 


  • Your passwords have been compromised in a third-party breach. We’ve found more than 4 billion usernames and passwords that have been exposed due to third-party breaches. If any of these are yours, attackers could have these passwords and access your information. 

  • Your passwords are being reused across different sites. If someone gets access to a password that you reuse on multiple sites, they can use it to sign into your other accounts as well.

  • Your passwords should be strengthened. Weak passwords can be easily guessed by attackers, putting your personal information at risk. 

This is just one way we help protect you across the internet, not just on Google. The Password Checkup and the password manager are built into your Google Account, along with many other important privacy and security controls. To manage and check all of your saved passwords, you can go directly to passwords.google.com.

Coming soon: Always-on protection with Chrome

The Password Checkup is built from our Chrome extension launched earlier this year, which alerts you if your username or password has been compromised in a third-party data breach. The extension has been downloaded more than 1 million times, with nearly half of those users receiving a warning for a compromised password. Later this year, we’ll build Password Checkup technology directly into Chrome for everyone—so you get real time protection as you type your password without needing to install a separate extension. 

Features like Security Checkup, password manager and now the Password Checkup are all examples of how we're continuously working to make your online experience safer and easier—not just on Google, but across the web. So the next time you’re struggling to remember how many !’s and 1’s you added to your last password, we can help you with that. 

5 tips to make your home Wi-Fi even better

These days, access to a reliable Wi-Fi signal can feel as crucial as having basic electricity or plumbing. In fact, a recent study conducted by Kelton Research and commissioned by Google found that 28 percent of people don’t think they could last a single day without Wi-Fi. But in that same study, a whopping 81 percent of people said they have experienced issues with their Wi-Fi at home. So why is something so essential considered such a hassle?

Luckily, there are some simple strategies to maximize your home Wi-Fi network to avoid slow loading times or grumbling when you’re trying to get online. Here are a few tips for making the most out of your Wi-Fi.

Place your router as centrally as possible. 

Wi-Fi signals get weaker the farther away you go from your router, so if you keep your router by the front door, your videos might load more slowly if you’re trying to watch them by the back door. So if you can, place your router as centrally as possible within your home, though this may not always be possible depending on where your internet provider brings in the connection. And if you don’t mind your router sitting on the counter top, keep it out in the open. If you can avoid hiding it by a bookcase or filing cabinet, you can really help boost your Wi-Fi signal.

Consider a mesh network. 

A mesh network is a group of routers that wirelessly communicate with each other to create a single, connected Wi-Fi network over a large area. It allows you to have multiple sources of powerful Wi-Fi throughout your home, not just one from the main router. Having a mesh network solves the problem of having the router just relegated to a corner in the house. We created Google Wifi as a mesh system because having multiple points work together to create a seamless single network provides consistently strong coverage for all connected devices in every room of the house. 

Make sure your router is up to date. 

If your existing router is more than three or four years old, check to make sure it supports 5GHz Wi-Fi signals. Some older routers only support 2.4GHz signals, which can make your devices much slower. Think of it as having a car that isn’t fast enough to drive on the freeway. Upgrade your router to at least an 802.11ac system so you can also use 5GHz frequencies, which are like the autobahn of Wi-Fi. (There are more lanes, and higher speed limits.) 

Always, always make your network password-protected. 

Having an “open network” without a password might seem convenient, since there’s no need to remember a complicated password. But if you do that, anyone even driving by your home could join your Wi-Fi network and compromise your network, devices and data by accessing your drives or slowing down your network. Choose a strong password that’s tough for anyone to guess, but easy for you to remember. 

Create a separate Wi-Fi network for guests. 

If you have kids at home, or just get a lot of guests, chances are you’ve handed out your Wi-Fi password a lot. Setting up a guest network creates a second Wi-Fi network in your home so your guests can have a great experience while your own devices stay secure and private. 

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Accessibility for the digital world and beyond

When I joined Google’s central Accessibility team in 2013, our mission was to make our products work better for everyone. That mission hasn’t changed, but our ambition has. We’ve always worked to make it easier for people with accessibility needs to navigate the digital world, whether it’s watching a YouTube video or reading a website. Today, we also want to help people navigate the physical world.

The start of National Disability Employment Awareness Month provides a moment to reflect on the journey we’re on and what lies ahead as we deliver on our commitment to create technology that has a positive impact. A clear example of how we’re thinking through our approach can be seen via two apps: Live Transcribe and Lookout. 


Tale of two apps

The first version of Live Transcribe was built to take real-world speech and turn it into real-time captions using just the microphone on a phone. This app helps bridge the connection between people who are deaf and those who can hear. 

A few months ago we went a step further to provide a visual indicator of sounds, like a dog barking nearby, someone knocking on their door or a speeding vehicle whizzing past them. This is important to those who may not be able to hear non-speech audio cues, providing more color or information to help understand what is going on around them. 

The shift to the physical world however presents challenges that are not easy to control for. After all, we're trying to provide people with context for environments that aren’t easily understood or readily documented. This is the ambition behind Lookout, which aims to help the more than 250 million blind or visually impaired people in the world deal with the ever-changing environment we live in. The app gives auditory cues as people encounter objects, text and others around them. These spoken notifications are designed to be used with minimal interaction and provide useful information in any given environment, like if you’re standing near an elevator or what a nearby sign says.


The power of working together 

As assistive technologies, both these apps were built using a combination of an “accessibility-first” design mentality coupled with advances in technologies, like AI. But in order to ensure these products meaningfully impact the lives of the more than 1 billion people in the world with a disability, we also had to collaborate with people and communities directly affected by disabilities. 

Working together, we’re able to get real-time feedback that helps improve a product or feature and make sure we are on the right track. For Live Transcribe we worked closely with Gallaudet University, a world renowned university for deaf and hard-of-hearing students. They helped us design, test and validate that Live Transcribe met the needs of their community.

Similarly, with Lookout we relied on our Trusted Tester Program. Artist and teacher Maya Scott—along with other testers—used early prototypes to make sure it was truly beneficial for people who are blind or have low vision. 


Future focus

Next on our roadmap is building technology that benefits people with cognitive disabilities—an umbrella term used to describe someone’s inability to sufficiently process information, use their memory, make decisions or learn. Circumstances can range from mild to profound, and the population of people who have cognitive disabilities is on the rise because as we age, our cognitive functions age with us.

We’re working to understand the needs of this community so that we can build the right products. An early signpost of the direction we’re headed can be seen with Project Diva. Lorenzo Cagglioni, a Googler in our Milan office, created this app to make the Assistant more accessible for his brother Giovanni, who is legally blind and deaf and has Downs and West Syndrome. Lorenzo has since joined the Accessibility team so he can scale his work to help others like Giovanni. 

Like most accessibility advancements, these technologies will also benefit people without a disability—all the more reason that we should never assume that accessibility is someone else's problem. In the end, we’re all in this together. 

Build security into your next website

If you wanted to send a secret message by mail, would you rather send it in an envelope, or on a postcard? If you send it on a postcard, anyone who saw the postcard on its way to the recipient could read the message, or even make changes to what’s written.

Encryption on a website functions like an envelope, protecting information passed between your website and its visitors so it can’t be snooped on or changed. It’s what keeps your visitors safe from bad actors who may try to alter your site’s content, misdirect traffic, spy on open Wi-Fi networks, and inject malware or tracking. You achieve encryption on a website by installing an SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) certificate. This certificate ensures that the data passed between a web server and a browser remains private. 

To kick off National Cyber Security Awareness Month, we’re highlighting something that many website owners don’t realize—a single page that isn’t encrypted could potentially be used to gain access to the rest of the website. To avoid this, you need encryption on your entire website, not just for pages that are collecting credit card numbers or log-in info. Even unencrypted landing pages that redirect to an HTTPS page can pose risks. A single unprotected page can become a backdoor for bad actors to snoop on the rest of the site. How do you ensure your entire website is encrypted?

Use a top-level domain that is HSTS preloaded. 

The HSTS preload list tells modern browsers which websites  to only load over an encrypted connection. The fastest way to get on this list is to use a top-level domain that’s already on the HSTS preload list, such as .app, .dev, or .page. Any website on those extensions gets the security benefits of HSTS preloading from day one, so all you need to do is install your SSL certificate.

Add your website to the HSTS preload list yourself. 

Websites can be individually added to the HSTS preload list by the website owner at hstspreload.org. Keep in mind this can be a slow process because the list is manually built into the browser. That means updates to the list are made as new browser releases come out, which can take months to occur for all browsers.

More people are creating websites than ever before, with 48 percent of the U.S. population planning to create one.  To help make building your secure website a bit easier, we’ve teamed up with some of our registrar partners, who are offering free SSL certificates during the month of October. We’re also kicking off a video series where existing creators will share their tips for launching a website. You can check them out at safe.page/buildsecurely.

Build security into your next website

If you wanted to send a secret message by mail, would you rather send it in an envelope, or on a postcard? If you send it on a postcard, anyone who saw the postcard on its way to the recipient could read the message, or even make changes to what’s written.

Encryption on a website functions like an envelope, protecting information passed between your website and its visitors so it can’t be snooped on or changed. It’s what keeps your visitors safe from bad actors who may try to alter your site’s content, misdirect traffic, spy on open Wi-Fi networks, and inject malware or tracking. You achieve encryption on a website by installing an SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) certificate. This certificate ensures that the data passed between a web server and a browser remains private.

To kick off National Cyber Security Awareness Month, we’re highlighting something that many website owners don’t realize—a single page that isn’t encrypted could potentially be used to gain access to the rest of the website. To avoid this, you need encryption on your entire website, not just for pages that are collecting credit card numbers or log-in info. Even unencrypted landing pages that redirect to an HTTPS page can pose risks. A single unprotected page can become a backdoor for bad actors to snoop on the rest of the site. How do you ensure your entire website is encrypted?

Use a top-level domain that is HSTS preloaded.

The HSTS preload list tells modern browsers which websites  to only load over an encrypted connection. The fastest way to get on this list is to use a top-level domain that’s already on the HSTS preload list, such as .app, .dev, or .page. Any website on those extensions gets the security benefits of HSTS preloading from day one, so all you need to do is install your SSL certificate.

Add your website to the HSTS preload list yourself.

Websites can be individually added to the HSTS preload list by the website owner at hstspreload.org. Keep in mind this can be a slow process because the list is manually built into the browser. That means updates to the list are made as new browser releases come out, which can take months to occur for all browsers.

More people are creating websites than ever before, with 48 percent of the U.S. population planning to create one.  To help make building your secure website a bit easier, we’ve teamed up with some of our registrar partners, who are offering free SSL certificates during the month of October. We’re also kicking off a video series where existing creators will share their tips for launching a website. You can check them out at safe.page/buildsecurely.

Make the Palace of Versailles yours on Google Arts & Culture

One of the first things I saw when I arrived at the Palace of Versailles in 2011 was a construction site. In partnership with Google, we were building the History Gallery, an exhibit that brought together our art collections and digital reconstructions of the palace in 3D. The History Gallery gave people a better understanding of Versailles, and eight years later, the partnership between the Palace of Versailles and Google Arts & Culture continues to give everyone access to this cultural treasure through technology. Today, we’re launching a new online exhibition for everyone who can’t make it to Paris or who wants to explore this majestic place in a new way: Versailles: The Palace is Yours.

Our new app VersaillesVR—a technological first in the cultural world—takes visitors on a virtual reality tour of the Royal Grand Apartments, the Chapel and the Opera. To capture the imagery, we used photogrammetry—a technology that reconstructs three-dimensional models of objects and landmarks from two-dimensional photographs. It’s an invitation to discover the secrets of Versailles, and a magnificent sneak peek for those who might plan to visit in person. Though nothing will ever replace the emotion of actually stepping into the Palace, we hope this visual immersion might inspire you to do just that.

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    View of the Palace of Versailles ©THOMAS GARNIER

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    Explore 24 rooms and 150 objects in the Palace of Versailles  through a new VR app available on HTC vive and Oculus Rift

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    Inside the VR experience (here the famous Hall of Mirrors)

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    3D model of the Royal Opera House

  • Art Camera at Versailles.jpg

    Behind the scene of a high resolution Art Camera capture

  • Marie-Antoinette with the Rose - Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun - 1783 © EPV -Jean-Marc Manaï 1.jpg

    Portrait of Marie Antoinette by Elisabeth Vigée Lebrun

  • A place at the Royal table 1.png

    Come and take a seat at the King’s table and learn about delicacies served in the royal dining room

There are also 18 new online exhibitions featuring 340 artworks—including portraits of the royal family digitized in ultra high resolution and archival photos of Versailles dating from the 19th century—as well as 18 never-before-seen 3D models of iconic rooms and objects. Explore the 73-meter long Hall of Mirrors,  the King’s Bed or Marie-Antoinette’s jewelry cabinet.

Versailles has always been an incredible place to visit. Today, opening the doors of Versailles to the world means opening them virtually, too.

How a psychiatry pioneer helped me understand my mother

Editor’s note: To help families dealing with addiction, Google has given over $1 million worth of contributions to Partnership for Drug-Free Kids (PDFK) this year and worked with PDFK to show up for people who are seeking support. When someone searches for relevant queries such as "teen drug addiction" on Google or YouTube, they get the number to call an experienced parent coach who works with caregivers to develop individualized plans for helping loved ones with substance use. You can also find local and national helplines on our Recover Together site.

I can still vividly remember confronting my mother when I was in my late teens. After a lifetime of dealing with her unreliability, I had just had it. In a blowup conversation, I told her that she had chosen drugs over me. 

At the time, I looked at her years of being incarcerated or held up in halfway homes as abandonment. But I now know that there was no other place she would have rather been than to be home with me—clean and sober. While my mother ultimately died of an opioid overdose, truthfully the drug had been slowly taking her over the years. I’ve come to understand that she only chose drugs once. She started using at 13 years old, and that was the one and only time it was her decision. After that, the drugs had her and never let go.

Today’s global Google Doodle honors the late Dr. Herbert D. Kleber, who followed a calling in his life to study patients with addictions, like my mother. It was a direction he didn’t plan for in his professional career as a psychiatrist. However, his pioneering work on understanding and treating addiction brought the scientific community to the understanding that drug addictions are physiological shortcomings, and not moral ones. I’m grateful for Dr. Kleber’s work, because it has certainly helped me better understand my mother’s plight. 

Hey, Kiddo excerpt

An excerpt from Jarrett’s memoir, “Hey, Kiddo.”

Like Dr. Kleber, I also followed a calling. I didn’t expect to write a memoir about my relationship with my mother and her drug use. But after meeting so many young readers who also walked a similar path in life to the one I had, I truly felt the need to tell my story. It’s why I was also moved to work on this Google Doodle honoring Dr. Kleber. I hope that both offer people, especially young readers, the opportunity to see their experiences reflected in media that is visible to all.

I hear from my readers often as they recount their own complicated relationships with a parent suffering from opioid addiction disorder. When they ask what it was like to write and draw a book that recounts so many traumatic moments, I let them know that it helped me come to an important conclusion: My mother wasn’t the antagonist in the story of my life. The drugs were.

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First-ever summit connects hundreds of Latina Googlers

At the end of a two-day summit in Sunnyvale, California, keynote speaker Dolores Huerta led a chant with the audience. She asked the crowd, “Who’s got the power?” And we responded, “We’ve got the power!” She continued: “What kind of power?” We responded: “Latina power!” 

We were at the first-ever Latinas at Google Summit, which took place earlier this month. The summit, called “Building for the Future,” aimed to create community and discuss the unique U.S. experience of being a Latina at Google. Five hundred Googlers attended the summit, which featured guest speakers Huerta and “Orange Is the New Black” actress Jackie Cruz, as well as conversations with senior leaders at Google. 

A group of Google volunteers, myself included, took seven months to carefully plan workshops, music, art exhibits and food inspired by our heritage. The size of the group was awe-inspiring, and so was their response after the event. When they gave us feedback, they told us they found community in the personal stories they shared and left the summit feeling more connected. At the event, they said, they learned new ways to amplify the work they do at Google—and in turn, reach people beyond our walls.

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    Dolores Huerta and Laura Marquez speak on stage.

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    Jackie Cruz addresses the crowd.

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    The author, along with other event organizers, kicks off the summit.

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    Ana Corrales, Chief Operating Officer, Hardware, sits for a fireside chat with Lisa Martinez, Global Head of Android Security and Privacy.

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    Attendees pose for a group photo outside the event space in Sunnyvale.

One of the most inspirational moments involved Huerta, who is widely known for her advocacy, especially around farmworker rights, and her foundation, which focuses on civic engagement for young people and families. She delivered a keynote speech and later sat down for an interview with Laura Marquez, Google’s head of Latino community engagement. 

Huerta urged the crowd to use their voice to reach out to their own families and communities to educate and get involved in issues that affect our everyday lives. With one of her 11 children in the audience, Huerta shared her experience and insights that continue to guide her through her 90th birthday, and the work she’ll continue doing in the future. 

Here are a few key lessons Huerta shared with the crowd:

Own your power. 

“As women, sometimes we’re afraid of that word, power. We see it in a negative connotation. A lot of times, we as women kind of hold ourselves back a little bit from the positions we aspire to. And we think, well, maybe I’m not experienced enough, not qualified enough. And I just say: Do it like the guys do. Pretend! Think of yourselves as being the decision makers.  It takes courage to do the things we need to do. And the biggest courage of all is to stand up for ourselves.”

Don’t discount people without formal education. 

“In our organization, many of our women never had a chance to go to high school or college. But does that mean they’re not educated? You know, in Spanish, the word educado has a whole different meaning than it does in English. It means if you’re educated, you’re civil, you have a conscience, you have compassion for other people, you have good manners. That means what educado means in Spanish. It doesn’t mean you have to have a formal education. So that means that many of our parents or our grandparents who never had a chance to go to school, that doesn’t mean they’re not educated. They are educated!”

Research your history. 

“My family has been here for many generations. My great-grandfather was in the Civil War on the Union side. But when I went to Mexico, it was such a revelation to me, even though both of my parents were born in the United States of America. When I saw how many people there were who were so proud of being Mexicans, that really saved me. Because in high school, there was so much racial discrimination, I thought I was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. That really saved me in terms of my identity. I want to make sure that [Latino history] is introduced into our school books so people are proud of who they are and can stand up to racial discrimination. If we don’t know our own history, we don’t know our own identity.”

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