“Education is the only equalizer,” they said. Unfortunately, this is sometimes a fallacy that immigrant parents tell their children, when this statement is laced by the American sentiment of “pull yourself up by your bootstraps.” The fact is that although we may get to the ivory tower of higher education, we still must navigate spaces that are not equipped to support our diverse identities and at times can become hostile environments. I share my perspective from my experience as a first-generation queer college student, who started in community college right after high school to later earning a PhD, is currently working as a contingent faculty member in a New England liberal arts college, and has struggled for several years to find a stable position in academia. All while acknowledging my privilege as a light-skinned Latina that may have afforded me certain benefits, that often are not available to others.
Both of my parents came to this country looking for a better opportunity for themselves and their family. My father, from Mexico, first worked sorting metal, then as a pipefitter, and later for the City of Milwaukee Public Schools working maintenance with heating and air conditioning (HVAC). My mother, from El Salvador, was in charge of the most important task in our family, yet the most overlooked unpaid labor, a housewife. Both instilled the importance of hard work and integrity, and had only one requirement for my sister and I: to earn a college degree so we could live stable lives and not endure the hardships they went through.
My sister and I were born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and soon after relocated to Guadalajara, Mexico where we remained there for five years. My first language was Spanish; my family and world revolved around a country that the media and political actors have
painted as a pathway for illegal immigration, but nonetheless a culture that cemented strong foundations of love for family and a strong work ethic. Once we returned to the U.S. I started middle school, where I was separated from my class for several hours during the day to attend English as a Second Language (E.S.L.) lessons, and bring me up to speed with the rest of my classmates. However, academically I was far ahead of my class, whose math curriculum entailed fractions and negative equations, in comparison to having learned algebra and trigonometry in my fifth grade education in Mexico. After high school, I went to community college for two years to get my core classes and offset my tuition costs, where I later transferred into an undergraduate program and declared Spanish as my major. All the while I was also working full time as a Teacher’s Assistant and later a Paraprofessional in kindergarten bilingual classrooms.
I remember changing my major from International Business to Spanish after attending my first Latin American literature class; it was as though I was returning home. I later was accepted to Marquette University’s master’s program where I earned a Masters in Hispanic Literatures. Once I moved to the East Coast, I was accepted into the University at Albany’s (SUNY) PhD program where I earned my PhD in Hispanic Literatures. All this is reductive since it excludes the tireless times I felt I didn’t belong in these spaces: being financially independent, being a commuter student, not knowing how to find resources, and missing out on some of the typical college student experiences such as study abroad or participating in student-led activities. I wished I had read fellow writer Gaby Davila’s “Top 10 Things I Wish I Knew When I Was a First Gen College Freshman” before I started my process into higher education. My sister also earned a terminal degree, a law degree from Marquette University, however often we celebrate the accomplishments of Latinas without acknowledging the damage they endured in the process.
Diversity has become a blanketed checkmark in higher education, that is often treated as a problem to solve rather than focusing on being inclusive spaces. In the last couple of years that I have applied for tenure-track positions at colleges and universities, I have seen an increased number of a required “Diversity Statement” among the many documents for application – a statement that includes one’s exposure and commitment to diversity. The aspect of diversity is limiting when it is often something we must “see”, such as racial, ethnic, gender and sexual identity. It is not enough to diversify the student pool without creating a welcoming environment for them, this includes having faculty members who are like them. According to an article in the Pew Research Center, “minority students who have educators of the same race or ethnicity are more likely to look to those teachers as role models and to report greater effort in school and higher college goals.” As a first-generation college student, I often had to rely on classmates and mentors to help me find resources such as financial aid. Working and attending college full time also made me limited in my time, since I was more worried about survival than the college experience.
I started paying attention to the underrepresentation of Latinx faculty in higher education when I saw that most of the professors teaching me about my native language, its culture, and its literatures were white. Data shows that the gaps in degree attainment is correlated to race and ethnicity which is also reflected in the limitations of social mobility. Navigating my own identities as a queer woman of color in academia has been difficult not just as a first-generation student but also as a current faculty member. 
Often diversity is seen as just fulfilling a checkmark in the institution’s diversity requirement, and later reflects in students and faculty’s experiences around tokenism. I remember a professor suggested I focus my research on Mexico, since that would be easier for me. And even though my specialty is on contemporary Mexican and Latin American literature with a feminist perspective, it was a choice that stemmed from a feeling of belonging and a desire to “return home.”
Just as there exists efforts to diversify the student body in higher education, it is not enough to diversify the faculty pool without creating safe spaces for all the traumas that we go through such as imposter syndrome, tokenism, and challenges from white faculty and students who question our very presence in these institutions. In Sara Ahmed’s book On Being Included: Racism and Diversity in Institutional Life, she explains that “doing diversity work is institutional work in the sense that it is an experience of encountering resistance and countering the resistance.” The problem with diversity is that it becomes a problem to solve rather than a painful reality to work through. I have learned that in my current situation as a contingent faculty member, that is as a Visiting Assistant Professor under contract and not in a position for upward mobility, my survival has been in creating intersectional solidarity circles with other women of color and students of color. A similar sentiment that was later expressed by Ahmed in her blog: “women of colour are already ethnographers of universities; we are participating, yes, but we are also observing, often because we are assumed not to belong or reside in the places we end up.” It is my hope that as I continue to inhabit these spaces, I can be a source of support for other Latinx women, and people of color so we may form coalitions of belonging, and make diversity an issue we critique rather than being the entities that solve the institution’s requirement.