My family is Mexican too! My parents got to go to college in the 80s (first in their families), thanks to a little oft-forgotten program in CA called AFFIRMATIVE ACTION. the same that reddit probably thinks is evidence of reverse racism! And guess what! Thanks to that nifty little program, my parents eventually became educators, which allowed me to grow up in a household where college wasn't a far-reaching goal, it was simply the expectation.

Still, I grew up in the same neighborhood they grew up in. And while I benefitted enormously from everything my parents could provide me, at my public east LA high school, which is predominantly latino and asian, the services were spread thin. we had 1 college counselor for the whole school. there were 3-5 regular counselors that were supposed to stay on top of your schedule with you, make sure you're getting all the requirements for graduation and for college taken care of. that's 3-5 for a school of near 2k students. It's virtually impossible for a counselor to really make sure they're providing guidance with that many students to consider. If I hadn't had the extra privilege of having had parents who went to college (based on their hard work, but also based on a public program that recognized the obstacles that non-white students faced due to a system that privileges white students), I would not have been able to meet with my counselor and demand that I be put in this AP Class or that AP class. A lot of kids i went to school with didn't have that support or those resources.

Now tell me how once I got to college, and realized half the kids around me had gotten near perfect SAT scores thanks to $$$$$ their parents were able to pay for them, that there is no excuse? It wasn't because my classmates were less intelligent or less capable than me--there were structural barriers (overcrowded classrooms, the emphasis on mind-numbing standardized testing) that made it more difficult for college to be a possibility than someone whose parents can hire tutors and pay for extra classes, spend a week visiting college campuses, has family legacies at universities.

It's not an excuse, but it is evidence that things are not equitable. And I refuse to believe that my own position is a result of solely my hard work and ethic, when in reality there was a whole lot of shit i grew up with that made me significantly more priviliged and meant i had a much easier time in school than friends who were JUST as smart JUST as hard working, but whose parents weren't teachers.