Identity Crises

Esperanza lying on a bed, playing guitar

My brown is not Brazilian brown. In fact, my brown is not even brown here. I am considered white with a foreign tan, and every day that tan is fading as fall slips into winter. I realized I was white for the first time while eating dinner with a local friend, when she asked me if I identified as ‘Latina’.

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Breaking the Silence: We Need to Talk About Race in Argentina

Arriving in Argentina, I was unsure of how my racial identity would affect my experience. I perceived my time abroad as a break from microaggressions: the brief and commonplace daily verbal, behavioral, or environmental slights, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative racial slights and insults toward marginalized groups, and racism and discrimination more generally. More profoundly

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Lack of Racial Diversity and its Implications at the University of Oxford

Sunlight and lily pads on pond

Because there is no affirmative action (or the like) at the University of Oxford, and the fact that the majority of the undergraduate students must be British citizens (the United Kingdom is 87.2% white), the student population is overwhelming white and largely comes from privileged backgrounds. In contrast, approximately sixty percent of University of Oxford graduate students are from outside of Britain, and

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Diversity and Culture Shock in the United Kingdom

While I expected to experience many cultural differences in the United Kingdom, Britain’s distinctive culture has continued to shock me since flying over the Atlantic. During my first night in London, I witnessed several inebriated friends wrestling on the street as well as a group of men gleefully cursing at one another right outside an upscale hotel. While these people might have been non-British

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