Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: Minorities Are Affected by Impostor Syndrome

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) said that despite her success, her plight as a woman of color from a working-class family has made her feel as if she doesn’t deserve her seat at the table.

Ocasio-Cortez, the youngest congresswoman in U.S. history, spoke Sunday about “impostor syndrome” during the Athena Film Festival. The Bronx-born Democrat was on hand for the screening of the documentary Knock Down the House, which chronicles her election to the U.S. House of Representatives.

“Every day. It still doesn’t feel real,” the Bronx-born Democrat said according to Page Six. “When you come from a poor or working class background, if you’re a woman, if you’re person of color, if you have an immigrant story, you’re a first generation, you’re always haunted by impostor’s syndrome, like this idea that you got here by accident.”

Ocasio-Cortez named dropped fellow congresswomen who made history in the 2018 midterm elections including Ayanna Pressley, Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar.

Their ability to secure seats in the U.S. House of Representatives is a sign that they “convinced others.”

She suggested that the women have had to come to their own terms of being a part of history.

“I think it helped us convince ourselves that this was not a fluke,” Ocasio-Cortez said in conclusion. “We did this and that it was a movement that did this.”