What It Means to Be an American: Personal Viewpoint

Despite the boundaries we’ve overcome, our country is still confronting an incredible dissonance of identity. That is the reason why I chose to write one of the What it means to be an American essays. We as Americans make claims of being the land of the free and the home of the brave; however we assess how much 'freedom' our civilians are deserving of based on their skin color, religion, and income. We even deny the ability for them to consider America their shelter even when crossing oceans and borders, all while risking not only their lives but those of their loved ones, just to get here which is the bravest thing any of them could ever make themselves endure. Honestly, no one understands a struggle, as well as those that live the reality of it day by day. Who better to understand our country's concerns and disparities than those that experience the dissonance of identity every day like minorities in our nation do? Who better to mold the definition of what it means to be an American, than those that feel the imbalance with being 'too' American and American 'enough' every day of their lives?

I believe the law is words put into action. Those with the power to make law and decide what it means determine who our country is and who our country will be. We need more diversity in the practice of law so that when those important decisions are made, our experience and issues are taken into serious consideration, not simply for ourselves, but for the future prosperity of our country. A troubled country cannot grow, and without resolving our issues with race, immigration, and income disparities, we will never be united enough to prosper. We need to become examples. We can expose our children to what they could dream to accomplish every day, but without seeing themselves in a concrete example, in someone that looks and speaks like them, and has experiences like theirs, those ambitions will remain abstract dreams and not realities.

When I was 17 I first hand experienced the most bitter pill of injustice in our legal system that I could've ever gone through. I evidenced the feeling of my limbs going numb and a knot getting caught in my throat. All from an unwelcome call of my sister sobbing as she told me that our mother had been captured by ICE through a simple traffic stop on her way from delivering some food plates.

That's what life had taught me in those two years, that's how strong the lessons of inequality continue to be in our country. It wasn't until a year ago that some elementary students, I volunteered to take care of, would finally help me unlearn that terrible lesson. They were immigrants, orphans, children of criminals and gang leaders. Most of them looked tired sometimes because apparently mommy hadn't stopped crying all night for daddy and so on. But when I told them that getting an education would help them and that they could graduate high school and maybe even college, they believed me. They believed me because I look like them, and speak like them, and I can never say no to a bag of Takis or a plate of tacos just like them, and because I had already made it this far. My last day in my classroom, I sat and cried a little because I couldn't bear the thought of leaving them, until Netzy told me, 'Miss, if you can't do it then how do you expect us to do it? You said we could and we can, so now you have to, too.”

I'm a first-generation American, future first-generation college attendant, Mexican-American descendant and English is my second language, and in 2020 I will be a high school graduate. Because despite every one of those denominations provided to me by a society proving to me unsatisfied with my existence, there is an entire population of latinos and hispanics just like me that couldn’t have the privileges and blessings that I did to have the ability to overcome the hardships that every single one of those labels puts before each of us. That's what keeps me up at night, even after hours of studying. To be a more diverse law community, we need more diverse students becoming lawyers, because once we do we will never forget that this is not just about us... this is about everyone like us that couldn't and everyone after us that should.