According to Politico’s latest October poll, Donald Trump, the Republican nominee for president who kicked off his campaign by calling Mexicans rapists and drug pushers, is polling an abysmal 17% with Latino voters. “What a surprise!” said literally nobody on this planet, ever.

However, the question that is getting raised: How is it even that high? How are any self-identified Latinos choosing to side with Donald Trump, whose campaign has been filled with hateful rhetoric towards Latinos, and who has even gone as far to say that the children of first-generation immigrants aren’t citizens regardless of their birth because they’re “anchor babies”?

It’s very simple. There is a good amount of Latinos who do not consider themselves a part of the group that Donald Trump is targeting.

You see, the problem is that a lot of people from the outside see minorities of all kinds and turn us into monoliths, but the truth is, there isn’t a whole lot of unity within a lot of minority groups. Women are split on the issue of abortion, for instance.

And when it comes to Latinos, while that word captures the fact that we are all from Latin America, it doesn’t capture much else. The idea of the Latino identity captures similar things Latinos might experience in terms of treatment by non-Latino people in America, but it does not capture our actual identity. There is an extreme amount of diversity in culture, language, and physical appearances within Latino groups.

Therefore, it makes perfect sense to me that there are Latinos who hear anti-Mexican rhetoric and go “That’s not for me”. They don’t consider themselves part of that group: illegal, dirty, the wrong kind of Hispanic. That’s not who they, the good Latinos, are.

And it breaks my heart.

I am not Mexican, the group that Donald Trump explicitly targeted. I am half Cuban, half Dominican, and I was born in the United States. But that does not mean I do not understand the larger ramifications of Trump’s statements.

First of all, what Latinos need to understand is that just because he didn’t mention us, doesn’t mean he doesn’t mean us, too. The kind of person who calls Mexicans rapists with a straight face and proceeds to build a campaign on it does not care that you are not actually from Mexico. Wherever you come from, if you speak the language, share a similar culture, and look “ethnic” enough, you are a part of the problem, in his eyes. Do not think you are safe because you can distinguish between the different Latino groups, because chances are, Donald Trump and supporters with his mindset cannot make the same distinction.

Secondly, like I mentioned, I think the idea of the “Latino identity” outside of an American context makes about as much sense as a European or African identity. Latin America is a collection of countries that differ in a million ways, and have even changed the fundamental language they speak to suit their own cultures. Speaking about ourselves as a collective erases a beautiful diversity that we should celebrate.

However, if we want rhetoric against people who look and talk like us to stop, it starts with us. There is rampant amounts of racism and classism within Latino communities that allows candidates like Donald Trump to use hateful rhetoric against one of our own, and get away with it. We need to band together and come to an understanding that an attack on any of us is an attack on all of us. Stop thinking of yourselves in categories, as one country being above the other. Stop associating Mexico with the same stereotypes Donald Trump does. Stand up for your community, because like it or not, due to the similar ways we are treated and depicted within this country’s borders, we are a community.

We need to start acting like it.