Picture a tiny African girl dressed like Rainbow Dash from "My Little Pony" in a kindergarten class in a fishing village in Nova Scotia, surrounded by white kids dressed in camouflage for deer-hunting season. That was me. I bounced around singing the theme song from "Scooby-Doo," already used to being stared at whenever my mom and I walked into the supermarket or stopped at Moe’s Shack for an ice-cream cone At eight, I moved to Long Island with my adoptive family, only to find myself once again not fitting in. In middle school, I was the Black girl who some Black classmates said was never “Black enough,” while to some white classmates, I was a problem, too. In my freshman year of high school, three junior varsity football players were suspended for wearing a white pillowcase like a hood and calling me the N-word and “Nettie from the jungle” in a Discord chat. For years I was jealous of kids who seemed to belong to one group, who had “normal” names and straight hair. I wanted to be one of them, to erase the confusion I caused just by existing. But as I’ve grown older, I’ve realized not fitting in is my superpower. It has given me empathy for those who are judged “different,” and I can truly talk to anyone. I know what it feels like to be the outsider. But my story as a Black adoptee in a white family is not only about standing out in North America. It is also about the identity I carry with me from Ethiopia. I was born in a rough, remote town 200 miles south of Addis Ababa. My grandmother, Abebach, is a wood carrier, bent under loads as big as a Volkswagen. My mother, Dulame, sells fruit in the market of Ziway, where she lives with my little brother, Degenet, in a lean-to tent beside the road. Unusually for an adoptee, I have remained in close contact with my birth family. For ten years, my mother and I have exchanged letters and photos by mail. When I was twelve, I traveled back to Ethiopia and met Degenet, my Tasmanian Devil of a little brother, for the first time. He ran wild through the market, flailing, shouting, protesting every restraint. Surrounded by strangers from America, Degenet’s chaos was his act of self-defense. I saw myself in him. That trip cemented a determination in me: I must make the most of the chances I have been given, both for me and for Degenet. Every day I live with my Ethiopian family in the back of my mind. I may be a privileged American now attending an amazing college where I can see the White House from my dorm room roof, but I am also the daughter of a fruit seller and sister of a boy who will never learn to read. Life in America, with its abundance and its Netflix, makes it easy to forget poverty, but I cannot forget. I keep a framed selfie of Degenet and Dulane on my dresser to remind me daily who I am and why I am here. My Ethiopia heritage is why I am studying public policy and political science on a prelaw track. I want to use my unusual position to help give voice to who are voiceless. Many college students’ experiences of the “Third World” are defined by an Instagram photo holding a dark-skinned toddler with flies on her face. I am that child, and I want to be in the rooms where important decisions are made.

Last week, I sat in a poly-sci seminar at George Washington University called “The Politics of Information,” thinking about how quickly AI-assisted policing technologies are developing, and I started worrying about how slow the law moves by comparison. I’m 18, Black, on a pre-law track, and to me the issue of AI and policing seems genuinely urgent: These tools are being deployed now, but the criminal-justice system doesn’t yet have adequate laws to control them, or training for law-enforcement officers to protect people like me –or my little brother. My brother is 15. He’s polite, smart, and going places. Even so, he’s been racially profiled several times in stores in his young life; he’s often told me about how it makes him feel like he’s already assumed guilty of something just for existing. I cannot help but see the emerging AI law-enforcement technologies through a lens of my family’s personal experience. As a student, I look ahead to a career as a lawyer with an organization like the Equal Justice Initiative because I believe strongly in advocacy for those whose voices aren’t heard clearly, whether it’s because they are an ethnic minority, young, or poor. Who will be impacted most and first by these new AI systems? Well, us. AI technologies evolve so rapidly that the legal system has to race to keep up. By the time laws or policies are drafted, new versions of the technology (with new capabilities) are already in use. Best practices lag behind. Officers may not have the training to understand how algorithms are built or how the data sets used to train them can themselves have flaws that reflect blank spaces in science or in demographic understanding. How can lawmakers and regulators keep up? I’m especially worried about facial recognition systems. There’s evidence that many of these technologies make significantly more errors for Black people than for white people. In the Scientific American article “Police Facial Recognition Software Can’t Tell Black People Apart,” it was reported that U.S.-made recognition algorithms are often trained with too many white faces, so they perform much worse on Black faces. This isn’t just a statistical quirk if you are the person being wrongly identified. What if my little brother is misidentified or even wrongly arrested? He is a talented kid who could have a future as a scientist or lawmaker himself, but this sort of error could change everything. One of the problems that I’m learning about is how historic racism and profiling have led to an over-representation of Black people in criminal databases....and this is the same data being used to train AI. A cycle is being created. In short, this problem is more than abstract to me and I want to join those getting out ahead of it and harnessing AI in positive ways. I believe that “error rates” that disproportionately affect people of color should be treated as civil-rights issues. As a first-year student at college, I’m getting involved by doing an internship on Capital Hill with a U.S. Senator, so I can learn first hand how laws and policies are made. On campus, I have joined the GW Women’s Pre Law Society and will be reporting for its newsletter on this and other issues. I believe that being pre-law means being willing to push for justice in emerging areas, including technology. If we don’t act now, the speed of technological change will keep outpacing the protections the American people need.

This spring, in my last semester of high school, I had the privilege of taking a history class called " Law and American Society.” Our teacher, Ms. Williams, had us study several landmark cases that have appeared before the U.S. Supreme Court over the long decades of American history, beginning with the defining moment of "Marbury v. Madison," when the role of the court was defined forever and the court was cemented in power. The most interesting case for me, however, was a very recent and very important one: "Students for Fair Admissions Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College and Students for Fair Admissions Inc. v. University of North Carolina." There were two reasons why this case resonated with me so strongly. Firstly, because Ms. Williams instructed us to write either a mock dissent or mock majority (agreeing) decision, an exercise that taught me so much about how courts work and how arguments are made. Secondly, because I myself am a Black student who came to my boarding school, Phillips Exeter Academy, through a program for low-income students that some in America today might consider an example of that scary and terrible thing “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.” My resulting final paper was a fully fledged, nearly nine page dissent in the "Students for Fair Admissions Inc" case. As I wrote in my opening paragraph of my dissent, the majority’s decision in "Students for Fair Admissions Inc" turns "a blind eye to the current state of institutionalized racial inequality in American society and, for this reason, its logic is fatally flawed.” The decision to undo a system of affirmative action, I wrote, was based on wishful thinking about the current state of equality in America. “The Court is arguing that systemic injustice and discrimination will simply disappear after a time period that can be predetermined,” I wrote in my closing and concluding paragraph, “and that the need for action to promote inclusivity in the college admissions process will then cease to exist, but that narrative has no relation to current reality. There is no expiration date on racism. Central to the decision in 'Students for Fair Admissions' is the wishful thinking that affirmative action will one day soon no longer be necessary. In Grutter, the Court estimated that the need for race-informed admissions would no longer be necessary in 25 years. Justice Roberts, speaking for the majority in 'Students for Fair Admissions,' optimistically says that that time clock will run out in only three more years. Sadly, the Justice is mistaken. That day is not yet in sight. Racism persists. In today’s decision, the Court bans the medicine before the illness has been cured.” Today, I am a high school graduate who, because of financial aid and because of my own very hard work (ant not just DEI) will be attending college in the fall– again on full financial aid– to study political science on a prelaw track, with a long-term intention to follow in the footsteps of Bryan Stevenson and the Equal Justice Initiative. I believe that my success is a good example of why the Supreme Court majority was simply incorrect in its decision in "Students for Fair Admissions."

Ever since I was a little girl of six or seven years old, I’ve been aware of the inequalities that shape all of our lives. I grew up in a low-income, adoptive single-parent household, in a resort town where the "one percent" come for vacation, and this unusual point of view taught me very early how uneven the starting lines are for people. So much depends on where you're born and to what kind of family you are born. Add onto this the fact that I am adopted and remain in regular contact with relatives in Ethiopia, who are among the poorest of the world's poor, and I feel like I have an unusual and very personal perspective on economic inequality. But my life so far has also taught something else important: that education can be a miraculous key to change. My ambition is to use my education not only to elevate my own life, but to advocate for people like my Ethiopian birth family who have such a hard time having their voice heard. In college, I plan to major in political communication and government so I can get the tools I’ll need to work as a policy advocate or lobbyist for nonprofits focused on poverty and equity. College will equip me with more than just knowledge-- it will provide me with the mentors and hands-on experience I need to understand how government systems and the power structure work so I can influence them from the inside. I’m especially excited about attending a university where service is part of the academic culture. I want to get out into the community to do research and take part in internship programs that will allow me to work directly with, for example, a policy institute or maybe even on Capitol Hill. Beyond coursework, I know that being surrounded by people from many backgrounds will push me to think more critically and to be a more well-rounded person. In high school, I was lucky to meet kids from around the world (from Mexico City to Hong Kong and Lebanon) and our late-night conversations really have shaped who I am. I’ve already learned so much from friends and classmates whose perspectives differ from mine, but college will expand that circle even further. As an international adoptee in a multi-racial family, I often joke that I sometimes feel like a diplomat, because I have always had to move between groups and identities and to translate across economic and ethnic divides. My aim in college is to continue to gain skills as a community builder and coalition builder across these dividing lines. My goal is not just to make a living but to make a difference in the world, so that the world we live in can be just a little more fair