Leadership Quote by Grace Napolitano

Napolitano’s line is the kind of plainspoken statistic politicians reach for when they want to turn an abstract injustice into a legislative problem with a body count. Its power is in the phrase “disproportionately more likely”: a clinical, actuarial framing that quietly indicts the systems that sort people into risk. She doesn’t say Latinos are “careless” or “unlucky.” She implies an uneven distribution of danger, and in Washington that’s a cue for oversight, regulation, and funding.

The subtext is about visibility and bargaining power. Workplace injury is where inequality stops being theoretical: it’s the back, the hand, the lungs. Latinos are overrepresented in construction, agriculture, meatpacking, warehousing, and service work, often in jobs with high physical demands, contingent employment, and weaker protections. Add language barriers, fear of retaliation, and immigration status leveraged as a management tool, and “more likely to be injured” starts to read less like fate and more like design.

Context matters here. Napolitano, a long-serving Southern California Democrat, built much of her public identity around labor rights, immigrant communities, and public safety. Saying “other ethnic groups” broadens the audience while still centering the disparity; it’s coalition language, but it also risks flattening differences within “Latinos” and dodging the employers and industries responsible. Still, the intent is clear: shift the conversation from individual worker behavior to institutional accountability, where policy can actually bite.