ethnicity

My identity felt fluid and contextual. Depending on where I was or who I was with, a different aspect of my identity would come forward. When people ask about my name, Aviva, I am Jewish. When people ask about my parents, I am Indian and white. When people ask where I’m from, I say San Francisco.

I would like to offer the mantra that I use to reveal my ghastly wounds to my non-POC friends to conceal their white savior complex. Show, don’t tell.

Where are you from? This is a seemingly simple question with a straightforward answer. But for an Indian expatriate who grew up in the Middle East, the answer is not so direct.

To be honest, I don’t feel like I fit in in Latinx/Chicanx spaces. Not because people aren’t welcoming or supportive, but because I feel like I don’t belong there.

While I wholeheartedly agree with Cruz’s goals of increasing diversity on college campuses, and making college campuses more representative of the overall population, I must emphatically disagree with his assertion that the “ten percent plan is, by far, the most democratic, equal, fair and transparent admissions system of any elite university in the country.” Instead I wish to offer an alternative method, which, in my opinion, is much fairer than drawing an arbitrary cut-off line. That method can be described as affirmative action based on socioeconomic status, and not race