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“What is your race?” is a question that is commonly asked of me when I meet someone. This curiosity is shared with those who know me and some are surprised to discover that I am of mixed race and ethnicity. Some of my family and friends overlook my Asian side because I am a quarter Korean in comparison to my three quarters Mexican. Questions by friends and family to prove my knowledge and linguistic skills serve as a barrier to ethnic acceptance. For some, I am not Mexican or Asian enough to be accepted by either race but for others I am. Furthermore, as a single teenage mom, my mother prioritized my well-being before focusing on cultural experiences at home.
These challenges may have presented a hindrance towards understanding my identity, but I react to them as a form of motivation in taking up opportunities to learn more about both sides of my heritage such as through time with family in the US and in Jalisco, Mexico. Many traits I value from my Mexican heritage, like community serve as advantages that may not have been present in me otherwise and the more I learn about my Korean heritage through interactions with other Koreans the more I discover just how similar these two cultures are.
Penn Law offers opportunities to further challenge me and meet my goals. Its ties and proximity to Philadelphia and the Mid-Atlantic region provides access to a large legal market that needs to properly accommodate and represent a growing Latino population. My desire to work with this demographic has been augmented by my impression of the school’s Latino Law Students Association, which allows a Penn Law student to be active in creating a greater presence for the school in the local community but also focusing on increasing its members’ knowledge of issues through conferences with prominent Latino leaders in law and education, and collaborations with local organizations.
Given my background, I can represent Mexicans and Latinos in a legal field in which they are underrepresented while offering an ethnic dynamic that helps me understand and argue multiple viewpoints of two minority groups as well as mixed race individuals. My participation in legal discourse in law school, especially concerning race and ethnicity, will supplement the cultural and intellectual diversity of my university colleagues by questioning our assumptions, offering values and ideas from a unique perspective even within a diverse body of students.
