These were the opening lines to my own college application essay in 2012.

Affirmative action is in the news again, with the Supreme Court ruling this week that race-conscious admissions policies at Harvard and the University of North Carolina violate the 14th Amendment of the Constitution. But affirmative action was already a hot topic among my high school classmates over a decade ago.

I remember sitting at a large round table, filled with my mostly white and affluent peers, debating, as was the class assignment, whether affirmative action should still be in place. While one side of the room argued that it provided an unfair advantage to certain students, the other pointed out that, given the history of this country, the policy was necessary to make space on college campuses for students of color.

At the time, college was still a couple of years off for me. But I knew then that what we were ‘hypothetically’ discussing impacted me in a very real way.

As a Black and brown girl from Brooklyn attending a small and predominately white private high school, being able to highlight my identity was crucial for me. Most of my friends were fellow students of color who had gotten to our school through neighborhood college access programs. Whether it was putting together the Latino History Month assembly or attending yet another student diversity conference, taking opportunities to express my culture was my entire high school experience.

So, when it came time to apply to college, my identity as a young woman from a very Nuyorican family was at the center of it all. In my college research and campus visits, I sought out affinity groups and faces that looked like mine. My Latina identity appeared in the answers to most of the supplemental essay questions I responded to and as a discussion point in all of my college interviews.

Read the full article about affirmative action and college admissions by Carina Cruz at Chalkbeat.