In our everyday lives, we have this safe space called St. Mary’s Academy, a place where we can be ourselves and not be judged by our race, ethnicity, or color of our skin. The St. Mary’s community is mostly made up of women of color.

 St. Mary’s Academy uses Integral Student Outcomes (ISO) – Live, Love, Learn, and Serve – to teach us how to be good Christians and right-minded persons. We learn to love by the stream of a moral foundation, “upholding Judeo-Christian values, and promoting respect for [ourselves] and others.” By promoting respect for ourselves and others, we are learning to love one another without thinking about our ethnicity, race, or skin color.  By doing this we learn that  we can do anything we put our minds to and we can be anything we want to be. If we want to be the first Latina president, we can. We help inspire all of those little girls who surround us and count on them to be the next Ruth Bader Ginsburg, or the next Kamala Harris. 

The day I found out that Kamala Harris was partnering with Joe Biden for Vice president, I thought about my nieces. I thought about how all girls in Catholic schools would continue to spread awareness, and how that could be them one day. This country needs a woman with a high powered position. We need the reassurance that when we are tempted to fail, if they can do it so can we. 

I recently joined a class through the Stanford Pre-collegiate Program, “Election 2020: A Panoramic View of America’s Decisive Election.” I was able to hear MSNBC´s analyst Ruth Marcus, about how she and her daughters were extremely saddened by  Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death.  She said that her daughters had admired Ginsburg from a young age. She also talked about how she would tell her daughters that they could do what Ginsburg did. She talked about the hatred and disrespect  Kamala Harris is receiving, simply because she is a woman of color. The reason why people aren’t in agreement with Harris is that they cannot see themselves listening to a woman of color and doing what she asks. People of color, especially women, need to learn how to earn our respect because not everyone in a high powered position will give it.

I live by a quote that says ¨Do not tell me the sky’s the limit when there are footprints on the moon.¨ Don’t let anyone tell you what you can and cannot do. The people that you need with you are people who are going to tell you that you can do anything.  St. Mary’s Academy provides resources to make sure women of color are safe to speak up to issues and take high powered positions in our society.

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